A busload of school children is kidnapped and McGarrett and the team are puzzled by the ransom demand: the kidnappers want the $80 million worth of cocaine Five-0 recently seized. As the team works to locate the missing children, Danny and McGarrett question Vargas, a low-level courier and the only man who survived the recent drug bust. He doesn't seem to know anything but Kono works with him and gets him to retrace the route they took. They manage to locate the warehouse and though it contains the missing bus, the children are gone. McGarrett manages to get the Governor to let them use the confiscated drugs as bait, but when they put the drugs in the drop car, the car is immediately blown up. With the evidence destroyed, Vargas will go free, and the team realizes that the kidnappers went to a lot of trouble to free him, meaning he's much higher up in the cartel than he's admitted. With time to find the children running out, McGarrett and the team put together a bunch of other leads in order to locate them and manage a daring rescue in a rock quarry.