The Elton Affair

When Thunderbird Two is stolen, the difficult task of recovering her threatens to put International Rescue's secrecy, its principles and the lives of its members at risk.

This is a work of fan fiction, based on the 1965 television series 'Thunderbirds', created by A P Films for ITC Entertainment. Characters and situations are used without official license and no profit is accrued by the author. Text and original characters are the property of the author and should not be reproduced without permission.

This story was inspired by, and originally started for, the Tracy Island Writers' Forum 'Clue Challenge', in which authors were encouraged to combine a canon character and piece of equipment with one of a list of possible locations – I'm indebted to the anonymous person who suggested 'Nevada' as a story setting.

I'd like to thank quiller for her hard work in proofing this story for me, and for suggesting changes that have improved the final result – not least amongst them the story title itself. Any remaining issues, inaccuracies or errors are, of course, my own. Please let me know if you spot any, or if you enjoy (or detest) the story. Any and all comments would be very welcome, no matter how brief, and I look forward to constructive criticism almost as much as any praise!

I hope you enjoy the story.

Part One: Getaway

Technically, I guess, it had to be Virgil's fault. One glance at my brother's sheet-white face and I thought better of mentioning that. I had more important things to think about than assigning blame – the news our spaceborne brother had just relayed top of the list.

"Are you sure?" Virgil whispered.

"Sure what the folks on the ground are telling me, or sure Thunderbird Two is actually powering up?" There was a clatter of computer keys in the background. John's voice, anxious and a little exasperated, trailed off. When it returned, the exasperation had been replaced by a grim certainty. "Both. Two's beacon is moving. I'm sorry, Virg. She's in the air."

"I locked the door." Virgil shook his head. I'd thought he was pale before. "I swear, Scott. She was locked tight!"

Worried, but painfully aware of the thundering machine all around us, I took a moment to glance over the Mole's controls. Virgil's grip on them was white-knuckled, but steady. My brother's mind might be on his stolen Thunderbird, but we were both of us too well trained to let our own troubles cripple us in a situation like this.

"If we back the Mole out now we'd have to start tunnelling from scratch." I thought aloud, as much for my own benefit as to remind John and Virgil of the facts. The buildings around here had been built on glacial gravel: loose, unstable. The Mole's tunnel was collapsing as quickly as we made it. Backing out and starting again… "The guys trapped down there wouldn't stand a chance."

Virgil glanced over at me, giving a tight-lipped nod.

"We're still fifteen minutes from breaking through." His voice was level. I couldn't help noticing though that our pace had increased, taking us marginally past 'urgent' and edging into territory we'd agreed was 'risky'. I frowned but didn't argue. I was as keen to get this rescue over with and deal with the bigger problem as my brother.

"Where is she, John?"

"Hovering. A little unsteadily. I think whoever's in there is finding Thunderbird a bit of a handful. Scott, the people on the rescue site have figured out something is wrong. The police chief you were speaking to earlier wants to know, and I quote, 'what the Hell is going on'."

"He's not the only one."

I glanced up at the curve of the Mole's ceiling, as if I might see through the metal hull and thick layer of soil above. With no victims to worry about in the surface rubble, I'd thought I could be more useful helping Virgil out here in the Mole rather than loitering at Mobile Control. I'd seldom regretted a decision more. I was as trapped as the men we were tunnelling towards, unable to react as the situation slipped beyond of my grasp. My hands clenched and unclenched helplessly. I reached, unthinking, towards the console in front of me, searching for something I could actually control, before Virgil's quick glare warned me off.

"Scott…?" John pressed.

It seems like half my life, I'm stuck in impossible situations, forced to choose between agonising decisions. I'm still sane – or close to it – for one reason only: I don't have to make them alone. I'm part of the strongest team I can imagine. Four brothers I would trust to the ends of the Earth, stunningly smart team-mates, and a father I can always rely on. Half my job as Field Commander for International Rescue is knowing when to delegate… and when I'm out of my depth.

"Virgil and I are committed for at least another two hours. We've got to focus on the rescue. John, you're gonna have to inform Base."

"Gee, thanks for that." John sounded about as enthusiastic about telling Dad we'd lost a Thunderbird as I would be. "F.A.B., and Virg…?" Our brother's voice softened. "We will get her back."

Virgil's didn't respond, his gaze locked on the monitor showing our progress. As John signed off, I kept my eyes on the console too, not daring to meet my closest brother's. I'm pretty sure neither of us shared John's certainty.

Virgil was making more adjustments than strictly necessary, his agitation obvious behind a veneer of cool efficiency.

I felt much the same, helpless and useless, stuck in this claustrophobic metal cylinder when I ought to be up there – wresting back control of my brother's Thunderbird or giving chase in my own. I kept fidgeting, my hands itching for something to do, but the Mole didn't need two pilots, let alone two jittery ones.

I left the controls alone, and let my eyes rest on the thermal scanner instead. Two man-sized heat sources were visible, unmoving, in the cavity ahead, just as they had been since I'd first arrived on the scene. Above us, on the fringes of suburban Toronto, the ruins of a twelve-storey office block lay in a towering heap of rubble. No one knew who'd set off the explosives that destroyed it, or why they'd bothered to call in an anonymous tip-off first. Just as no one had been able to tell me why the two men in the basement ignored the urgent evacuation order.

"They wanted us underground." I didn't mean to speak aloud this time, and only realised I had when Virgil's worried eyes turned towards me. "Whoever did this – whoever's in Two – they cleared the building first so I wouldn't be needed for rescues up there. So we'd both be in the Mole."

Virgil's eyes flicked away from my face and towards the men on the scanner, his frown deepening.

"They're bait?"

"If they are, they're live bait." I reminded him. "And they won't be for much longer unless we get to that air pocket soon."

Virgil glanced again at his controls before turning back to me with a reluctant nod. His eyes strayed, not for the first time, to the silent communications console and he lifted one hand from the controls to run back through his dusty brown hair.

"I wonder what's happening up there."

I let him read the sympathy in my eyes but kept my expression grave.

"They'd tell us if we asked."

He lowered the hand from his hair and, for moment, it wavered towards the switch that would connect the Mole instantly to Thunderbird Five. I held my breath, letting it out as subtly as I could when Virgil's hand returned to his vehicle's controls.

He shook his head. "We have to focus," he told me. He shot me a wry smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. He knew I'd been testing him – and that he'd passed. "As you well know. Three minutes, Scott."

Despite the severity of the situation, I couldn't help a brief smile of my own. I'd never really doubted that I could count on my brother, but the confirmation still sent a wave of pride through me.

There was no time to dwell on it. Popping the seat harness, I moved to the back of the Mole, gathering the medical kit, helmets, crowbars, jacks and other equipment we might need into a tidy pile between the seats. Virgil and I were already in our mid-blue overalls, our sashes discarded and hanging from hooks beside the other protective gear. For a few seconds, I hesitated, looking at them. I felt eyes on my back as I slipped the band of sky blue fabric over my head, shrugging to settle it over the bulky overalls. I turned, Virgil's yellow sash in hand, to find my brother watching me in reflection on his still-dark monitor. His frown deepened, and I realised that my free hand had dropped to the weapon holstered on my hip, automatically checking its position.

"Trapped or not," I said quietly, "I can't help wondering why those guys were still down here when the building blew."

Understanding dawned in Virgil's troubled eyes. "I don't know, Scott. According to my radar, that basement's only half the size it used to be. And the air must be pretty stale by now."

I shrugged, making my way forward and hooking Virgil's sash over the back of his chair before dropping into mine. I reached for my safety harness, a little frustrated when I had to adjust it before it would lie flat over the sash.

"All that tells us is that, if they were involved, something went wrong."

Virgil could only shrug in response to that, giving me another of those small, reluctant nods as he agreed to arm himself. He glanced over in my direction, checking I'd sorted out the recalcitrant straps, before tightening his grip on the Mole's throttle.

"Brace," he warned quietly. There was a change in the note of the motors, and a shuddering vibration as we left the gravel-littered soil behind us and bit into the basement's two-foot-thick concrete lining. I clenched my teeth and my fists, enduring the discomfort as the Mole did her work. A moment later, the mighty auger was chewing through nothing but air and loose debris, screaming as her unloaded engines struggled to adjust. The monitor screen in front of Virgil burst into life, showing a litter of broken concrete spars, almost hidden by a dust cloud that reflected the Mole's floodlights.

Virgil powered her engines down. After more than an hour in the thundering machine, the silence was almost disorienting. Outside, nothing moved. No voice cried out in pain or relief. Virgil stood, disquiet plain on his face as he ducked his head and slipped his sash over it. He drew his pistol, checking the settings with a quick look before holstering it smoothly. I gave my own a final check before nodding.

"Let's go," I said, leading the way into what we both knew could well be a trap.

The air was stale, thick with dust and barely breathable. I covered my face with one sleeve, seriously considering ducking back into the Mole for an oxygen mask. Virgil ruled that option out, pushing past me through the Mole's hatch and into the darkness with more haste than judgement. I pulled the collar of my overalls up to cover my mouth and followed. No way was I letting my brother out of my sight until we were sure of the situation.

Both of us had flashlights strapped to our wrists, although for the moment they did little more than highlight the dust already dancing in the Mole's more powerful illumination. When we got to the other side of the basement, where the two victims awaited us, it might be a different matter. We hadn't dared bring the Mole in too close – mincing our rescuees, or showering them with head-sized chunks of flying debris, would have rather defeated our purpose in being here.

I moved cautiously, picking my path through the rubble with care and pausing at one point to run my flashlight across the concrete ceiling. It was cracked, bowed under the weight of the collapse above. The flashlight's beam shifted as I raised my hand to touch the hard hat I was wearing. Virgil paused and glanced back at me. I nodded towards the unstable ceiling and he winced, mirroring my instinctive check of my headgear with one of his own.

A fallen pillar was braced diagonally between floor and rubble pile, blocking our only obvious route through the debris. Virgil's flashlight played across twisted steel reinforcing rods that emerged from the ends of the concrete spar and were visible below its fractured surface. He paused when he reached it, letting me catch up. I think he just intended us to help one another over the unstable obstruction. I had other ideas.

I pushed past him, getting one foot up on the pillar before he could object. The concrete spar shifted a little as I put my weight on it. I could feel Virgil's irritation as he braced it with one shoulder, eyes watchful and steadying hands ready. He could rant at me all he wanted… later. If I was remembering those thermal scans correctly, we couldn't be more than a couple of metres away from our supposed 'victims'. If either of us was going to silhouette ourselves against the Mole's lights it was going to be me.

Even so, I felt ridiculously exposed as I took a moment to get my balance before dropping down into the dark cavity beyond. My flashlight cast a narrow shaft of light through the dusty air, giving me glimpses of my surroundings as it swung around, each too brief and isolated to build up into a coherent picture. Taking a slim tube from my belt, I bent it sharply and gave it a brisk shake before tossing it into a far corner. The chemical glow it cast was dim and diffuse, but it was enough to put the space around me in perspective.

I was in a small enclave at the north-east corner of the basement, away from the centre of the collapse. The gap I'd just clambered through had once been the doorway to a chamber walled off from the main space – some kind of maintenance office, maybe. At the centre of the room stood a bare wooden table, its surface littered with dust and gravel-sized debris. A layer of powdered concrete covered the two bulky manual workers who'd been sitting at that table too, almost masking the colour of their grey overalls. One, to my left, still sat upright, hands resting slack on the table, back ram-rod straight. The second had fallen, lying on his side, his body strangely rigid as if still shaped around the matchwood chair beneath him. My hand hovered above my holster, but neither man seemed hostile. In fact, neither reacted to my presence at all.

I was already feeling guilty for my suspicions, mentally diagnosing the sitting victim with shock even as I hurried to his fallen companion. I played my flashlight across the man's bearded face, my gut twisting painfully. A thin sheen of dust clouded wide-open, staring eyes. After all this, all we'd sacrificed to keep going, it looked like we were too late.

But then I saw dark pupils contracting below their dust-shroud. I saw the powdered concrete beneath the man's cheek stirred by a whisper of expelled breath. Muttering a quiet oath, I fell to my knees by the victim's side, checking his slow but steady pulse. Puzzled, I waved a hand in front of his dusty eyes before shaking his shoulder, trying to assess the man's state of consciousness. The dust in his eyes worried me and I hesitated, not sure whether leaving the lids open or easing them closed would do more harm to the dry and abraded membranes. There would be time to worry about that in the Mole; I left the eyes alone and concentrated on his shallow breathing. There was no obvious sign of injury or physical trauma, but now that I was looking for it, I made out a slight flush of carbon dioxide poisoning beneath the grey coating on his cheek. Whatever else was going on with him, the dust at floor level couldn't be helping.

The man obviously lived an active life, maintenance work giving him an impressive bulk of muscle. I had to put my back into it as I gripped his overalls and heaved him up to a sitting position. Crouched and off-balance myself, I braced him against my chest, and was more than a little surprised when his muscles held the tension and supported his weight.

On the other side of the room, Virgil was talking to his own rescuee, confusion as well as concern colouring his professional tones. I looked over to where my brother was crouched by the table, lifting my flashlight to light him a little better and to attract his attention.

"Virg?"

"I think he's conscious, Scott, but totally unresponsive. Some kind of trance…"

We'd both been talking in whispers, wary of disturbing the rubble around us. Now Virgil's voice rose in a startled oath that echoed my own cry.

Snake-like, moving in eerie silence, my rescuee had twisted, wrapping strong arms around my chest and pinning my own arms to my side. It was almost too unexpected for me to react. My gasp pulled more dust than oxygen into my straining lungs. I was coughing before I knew it, struggling to draw breath even as I twisted and turned in the grip of a man who easily out-muscled me.

My lungs burned, my eyes dazzled by my own flashlight as its beam jerked violently across bare walls. I could feel the man's grip tightening, his body unnaturally rigid against my back. Even the meagre breath I had was being squeezed from me, spots blurring my vision.

Virgil cried out again, this time in pain. The sound focused my scattered thoughts as nothing else could.

I stopped my futile struggle, stopped trying to breathe. I went limp in my captor's grasp and felt the unnatural tension relax a little as the man struggled to adjust to my shifting weight. My next move was pure muscle memory, drilled into me during my air-force days and practiced until it took no conscious thought whatsoever.

I was almost surprised to find my assailant flying over my shoulder, twisting in the air before falling awkwardly across the rubble pile spilling through the doorway. I didn't give myself time to think about it. My hand dropped to my belt, relieved to feel the pistol still safely in its holster. It was in my hand by the time I'd twisted, still on my knees. A split second was all I needed to take in the sight of my brother, wide-eyed and coughing, struggling in the cruel embrace of his own rescuee.

Half-blinded by the stray flashlights, yet to draw a deep breath of my own and hovering on the edge of consciousness, I abandoned my five senses and acted on the sixth. My gun snapped up, aimed and fired in one instinctive movement. My flashlight sent a shaft of light along the barrel of the pistol, focussed on my brother's white face, letting me see his shock as the stun pellet skimmed past his head and burst against the other man's skin.

The second rescuee dropped like a stone, and I almost followed, letting the gun drop and my hands fall to the ground so I was supported on all fours. The stale air in the storeroom was thick and heavy with carbon dioxide, doing little to ease the tightness in my chest despite my gulping breaths. A hand fell on my shoulder and I jerked back upright before some deep instinct tagged the presence beside me as familiar.

"Scott?" Virgil was red-faced too, panting and coughing.

"I'm fine, Virg."

I clambered to my feet before he could dispute the assertion. Neither of us was fine. If we didn't get out of here soon 'fine' would cease even to be an option.

Virgil let his protest slide, his expression one of total bewilderment. He looked down at the now-motionless man I'd thrown and the second he'd left by the table. "What the hell just happened? They just grabbed… They didn't say… Not a word. That guy didn't even look at me."

"Not their fault." It was all I had breath for. I'd seen the same things as my brother. Our attackers had moved awkwardly, their dusty eyes unfocused and unblinking. Whatever their problem, I was far from sure they were even aware of it. Something decidedly screwy was going on around here. To my mind, the two men lying at our feet still fell firmly in the category of victim. Even if they hadn't, even with anger rising hot and fierce inside me, we couldn't leave them here.

Virgil steadied me as we puled the unconscious man off the rubble pile between us. I ducked, ready to haul the man over my shoulder into a fireman's carry, and froze. Caught by surprise, Virgil was forced to take the victim's weight, even as his anxious eyes turned back towards me. Mine stayed glued to the underside of the wooden table and to the compact red-lit device that neither of us had noticed before now.

"Virgil! We gotta get out of here! There's a bomb!"

Desperation tapped a reserve of strength I didn't know I had. Somehow, I don't know how, the victim was draped across my shoulder, and Virgil had boosted us both over the rubble and through the doorway before I realised he was going back for the second man. The air wasn't much fresher in the larger section of basement, but every little helped. I ran, gasping and staggering, following my own footprints through the dust and into the dazzling glare of the Mole's headlights.

We'd closed the Mole's main hatch behind us, its controls an arm stretch above my head. Bent almost double under the weight of a grown man, I had no chance of reaching them. I dumped the man I was carrying to the floor beside the curved metal hull. It felt like I was moving in slow motion, forcing myself not to waste time looking back as I felt for the keypad and typed my access code. By the time the hatch spilled its warm light into the collapsed basement, and I turned to haul my victim up by his armpits, Virgil was just a few metres away, staggering under his burden.

Dumping my own man onto the Mole's deck, I reached out, ready to help my brother up through the hatch.

And that's when the fireball blossomed behind him.

It spread like the petals of a flower, billowing and blazing with a brilliance that left me blinded. I felt a weight flung into my arms and grabbed it instinctively before tumbling backwards into the cabin. Virgil yelled, I heard a clang, and then the explosion caught up with us, turning the world into a wall of noise and pressure that faded mercifully to black.

Red lights glowed around me. Alarms blared. My head was pounding. My body shivered with pain. My thoughts came in short bursts as I tried to process the situation. There was a weight on my chest, another across my legs, and from somewhere close by I could hear an insistent series of electronic bleeps.

Ears ringing, I tried to decide whether the alarms or the bleeping was more annoying. I'd have given anything for Virgil to just shut his damn machine up for a…

"Virgil!"

A limp form slid off me, slicked by a layer of fine dust, as I jerked upright. My head spun and I pressed the palms of my hands to the deck on either side as my eyes struggled to adjust to the dim emergency lighting. I'd been lying half across the man I'd carried to the Mole, and it was Virgil's victim that I'd shoved aside when I sat up. Virgil himself lay sprawled across my long legs, his own curled up just inside the hatch he'd closed with milliseconds to spare.

The shadows shifted as I moved and I realised my flashlight was still strapped to my wrist. Clenching my fist against the icy fear I felt, I twisted a little, raising the beam of light so I could see my brother more clearly. For a moment the ice spread through my chest, the glare of the torch reflecting from a face that seemed deathly-pale. Then Virgil winced, one hand coming up to shield his closed eyes from the glare. He groaned softly, and I grinned, suddenly able to breathe again and revelling in the cool, fresh air of the Mole's cabin.

I flexed my legs, disturbing him enough that his eyes opened. He took stock of his situation with the same dazed confusion I felt.

"Scott?"

"I'd kinda like my legs back, Virg."

Groaning again, he rolled clear and up onto his knees, letting me pull my numbed limbs up to my chest and massage a little life into them. The pins and needles were excruciating. I bit my lip and rode them out, shuffling over to the two rescue victims on my backside and checking them over while Virgil staggered towards the front of the cabin.

"They're still out of it," I reported after a cursory check. "Breathing a bit better now." I squinted through the red-lit murk for the supplies I'd left handy. The force of the explosion had rocked us, scattering the stockpile across the deck. I found an oxygen cylinder and mask within arm's reach almost by chance and settled it over the face of the first victim before looking around for another. "Any chance of some real light?"

"Working on it." Virgil's voice sounded as rough as mine. He seemed to realise it and reached down for the water bottle by his seat, gulping a little before tossing it back to me. "The main generator was knocked off-line. I'm re-initialising."

I took a swig of the water, stifling a cry as the painfully bright lights returned without warning. Blinking my eyes to clear them, I looked again for the second oxygen cylinder and this time found it. With both victims breathing easier, there was time to assess their other injuries. On the whole they'd come off lightly, a little bruised perhaps but largely intact. I frowned though at the dust-reddened eyes, still staring and open in the case of the stunned man, closed on the one I'd knocked out. They needed irrigating. I grabbed for the medical kit, carefully angling the head of each unconscious victim to keep their airways clear as I trickled distilled water across the irises. With dust all around, and cleansing wipes only making a bare dent in the grime covering my hands, it was as much as I dared do. I covered both men's eyes with dampened pads and bound them gently. We needed to get them to the surface, to proper treatment, as soon as possible. Even then I wasn't convinced the sensitive membranes would recover.

The deck jolted under me. One set of alarms, presumably those relating the generator, had quietened. Another, half a tone lower, was still ringing, doing nothing for my aching head. I shot an inquisitive look towards the front of the cabin, and Virgil turned, as if feeling my eyes on him. Even in the full cabin lights, he looked a little pale, smeared with dirt and with sweat streaking the layer of dust on his skin.

"Main systems check out. The auger is fouled though. I think I can wriggle us free." He raised an eyebrow. "You want to answer Johnny while I do that?"

I'd forgotten the beeping, mentally assigning it to the same category as the alarms. I'm guessing Virgil had done the same, or he'd have mentioned it sooner. Our family wasn't going to thank us. I raised my wrist-com to my lips and stilled the urgent signal.

"Mole to Thunderbird Five."

"Scott!" John's usually level voice rang with relief.

"Virgil and I are both fine." I sounded rough as Hell and the Mole's alarms provided an unmissable backing track. Despite that, my family took me at my word.

"Thank Pete for that!" Alan yelped.

"We've been trying to raise you for almost fifteen minutes," Gordon added, voice tight.

"Alright, boys." My father's deep rumble cut across the outburst. "Scott, what happened? We were getting worried, son."

"What exploded?" John added, curiosity already replacing his concern. "I was too busy tracking whoever's in Two to monitor the rescue site."

"The guy that took Thunderbird Two wanted a clean getaway." The deck lurched again, forward and then back, as Virgil tried to use the tracks in the Mole's flanks to free her. I pushed to my feet, taking a few unsteady steps before dropping into the nearest chair and reaching for the harness. "They left a surprise for us."

"The men you went after?" Father demanded, his tone grim.

"Here. Safe, but they'll need medical attention."

Virgil shuffled the Mole again, using a combination of her tracks and linear motors to try to get the nose into free air. I glanced at him, sensing an anger to rival my own in the violent motion.

"They were hypnotised. Their eyes wide open," he snapped.

According to the scanners, the explosion had pretty much finished the work of the building collapse. The cavity around us was now rather shorter than the Mole was long. Virgil made another adjustment, debris screeching against the hull. The alarms stilled. Then another roar of sound replaced them as the tip of the auger began to turn, rising through the octaves as it built up speed. Another deft touch of the controls, a scream of cahelium steel against concrete and we were on our way.

The com had fallen silent, partly in response to Virgil's statement, partly, I think, so the guys could listen to our progress. Now, our father spoke, voice uneasy.

"What are you saying, son?"

"I'm saying we know who took her, Father." Virgil glanced in my direction and I couldn't have said whether the turbulent expression in his brown eyes was exhaustion, anger or simple hurt. "We've seen this before. He's finally done it. The Hood has my Thunderbird."

"Thunderbird One calling Thunderbird Five."

The roar of my thruster rockets almost drowned out the words. As the ground dropped away, Thunderbird One's belly camera gave me one last glimpse of the Mole. The hulking machine looked forlorn and abandoned, even with a heavy police presence surrounding it and a promise from the Canadian government that it'd be fenced from view and well guarded.

I guess something of Virgil's despondent mood had rubbed off on me. My brother's expression as we locked the Mole and walked away lingered in my memory. I forced it to the back of my mind and told myself to quit anthropomorphising.

"Thunderbird One from Base." My father's voice jerked my attention back to the matter in hand. "John's busy right now."

"Busy with what?" Virgil demanded from the jumpseat at the back of the cabin. Anyone else, my little brothers included, and they'd have been on the passenger bench in Winch Control. Right now, I wanted Virg where I could keep an eye on him.

From the tone of his voice, he'd not forgiven Dad for breaking contact after he'd established our safety. Even if I was the one insisting we complete the rescue before worrying about anything else, I had to sympathise. I'd had our two passengers to focus my jitters on, but I'd watched Virgil's face grow progressively grimmer as the Mole clawed its way to the surface. Not knowing was killing us both.

Dad hesitated, taken aback by Virgil's brusqueness. I spoke into the silence.

"Just tell us where he is and what he's doing, Father. Even with this head start, Two can't keep ahead of me for long. The moment she lands we'll have him."

"She is still in the air?" This time fear replaced the anger in Virgil's question. Dad's sigh did nothing to ease my own fluttering anxiety

"Boys, I want you to head back to Base."

"No!" Virgil's protest beat mine by a split second. Both were vehement.

"What's happened?" I asked, throat dry.

"Apparently, the Hood had trouble taking Thunderbird Two supersonic."

Dead silence reigned. Thunderbird Two was quite possibly the least aerodynamic aircraft ever to make Mach speed. Only careful alignment of her flight surfaces, a very specific angle of attack, the lift generated by near-sonic shockwaves and an awful lot of simulator practice made it possible at all. Without that… In my mind's eye, I saw Thunderbird Two plummeting nose-first, her swept-forward wings torn and twisted. I didn't dare turn around, lest Virgil read the horrors in my eyes. No doubt he was seeing his own.

"There is kind of a knack to it." That was Gordon, speaking up from the lounge back home to break the tension. "Breathe, guys. He didn't crash her. He just found he had to dawdle rather than race off into the sunset. He couldn't get the hang of high altitude either."

There was an intake of breath behind me, the first I'd heard in a while.

"What happened?" Virgil echoed in a strangled tone.

"Well…" Gordon seemed to have wrestled our father for control of the mike. The fact that Gordo's drawl had a calming effect in even the worst situations may have had something to do with why Dad surrendered it. "He was crossing some pretty major flight routes, and we don't think he's found the off-switch for Thunderbird Two's danger zone approach beacon, so air traffic control knew all about it. Gave the air force base at Elton plenty of time to scramble."

I'd turned Thunderbird One's nose homewards for lack of anything better to do. Already we were well past the border and sweeping across the mid-West states, familiar prairies spread wide and open below me. Now I glanced down at my console, expecting to see a data transmission with coordinates for Elton AFB already registering. Swearing inwardly at the blank screen, I set our heading for southern Nevada from memory alone. If Thunderbird Two was still subsonic and airborne she couldn't be too far ahead of me.

"Thunderbird One, I repeat – return to Base!"

For once in our lives, neither Virgil nor I had any problem ignoring our father. Even if I'd wanted to turn back, I had the strong suspicion that I'd face a mutiny from my passenger. Virgil snapped the buckle on his harness, ignoring my glare as he came forward to the microphone. I glanced at our heading, checked for turbulence ahead, and let my brother stand. I didn't need the fight.

"You said she didn't crash," he pressed.

Gordon's hesitation wasn't what I wanted to hear. "Well, I wouldn't exactly say his landing was pretty, but to give him his due, he was being forced down at the time."

"Then she's on the ground?" I heard the clipped, efficient tone in my own voice. Mere mention of the largest air force base in the United States had snapped memories of my air force training into sharp focus. "At Elton?"

"At the Nevada Test Site," Gordon admitted grudgingly.

Virgil frowned, his confusion obvious. "We need to go get her!"

I agreed, but if it was going to be that easy, Gordon wouldn't have been trying to buffer the news. Our father wouldn't be ordering us back to Base.

I think Dad wanted to get us home and check us over before telling us the next bit. Despite his reluctance, he seemed to have realised that discipline and blunt orders were only going to get him so far. If we were going to turn our backs on our Thunderbird, we needed an explanation.

He had one.

"Boys. General Harmon from Elton Air Force Base called Thunderbird Five direct. He told John that he'd impounded an unregistered aircraft, taking an illegal flight-path across restricted air space. And that he'd shoot down any other that came the same way. Scott, Virgil, the man has more fighter jets under his command than I can count. I'm taking this all the way up to the World President, but in the meantime, I'm not having you fly into a dogfight you can't hope to win."

I wanted to argue. My father's quiet, worried tone convinced me otherwise. I could probably outpace any jet Harmon was able to field. On top form, I might even be able to out-fly his missiles. I couldn't do both at once, or escape a sky swarming with fire and danger when I was already tired and my reaction times were shot to hell. If Thunderbird One went in now, half-cocked and against a fully alert base, the best – the very best – we could hope for was to be forced down beside her sister ship.

"Virgil, sit down and strap in."

Words seemed to fail him. His protest was writ clear across his face, in brown eyes that accused me of cowardice and betrayal. I held those eyes with an effort.

"If we go in now, you're going to my 'bird blown out from under me and both of us killed." I didn't raise my voice. I kept it level and calm. The fury in Virgil's eyes made way for a flinch and a flicker of uncertainty. "They're not going to give her back without a fight, Virg."

"Yeah," Gordon's voice from the radio startled us both. "And we can't win a fair one, so we're going to fight dirty. Come on home, fellas. We're making plans."

Virgil gave the radio a frown before shaking his head. His feet were heavy as he returned to the jumpseat. I gave my silent brother a look of concerned understanding as I watched him strap in. His eyes were down, not meeting mine.

"Base from Thunderbird One. Heading home."