Author's Note – Thank you very much to those who reviewed the Prologue of this story and/or sent me private messages. As this story progresses it is important that you take note of the time-line. To save you looking back - the Prologue was set in the future (January 26 2027). This is now the story of the events which led to the prologue. mcj

***** RECOVERY *****

CHAPTER ONE

December 26 2026

Blue Mountains

West of Sydney

Australia

David Townsend took a deep breath and swallowed hard in a last ditch attempt to convince himself that he wasn't about to embarrass himself by throwing up. They'd been twisting around these hairpin bends for the best part of two and half hours. How many more times was this horrible winding road going to veer around to the right, to the left and to the right again before they got to Wentworth Falls?

A glance at his twin brother, Jacob, told him that he wouldn't be alone if it came down to a "no holds barred" spew fest. Jake's deathly white face and look of absolute misery told him more than any words could. Too many more bends and turns in this fast road to hell and just like him, Jake would be in serious danger of losing his lunch.

"Are we there yet, Dad?" David groaned towards the front seat where his parents were deep in conversation about their investments on the international stock market.

"Still fifty two miles to go, honey," their mother called back. "Don't you worry, though. I'm sure Dad will have you there in plenty of time to do some exploring before it gets dark."

If he hadn't been feeling so blasted sick, David probably would have pointed out to his mother that he and his brother weren't ten years old anymore. Gone were the summers when they'd spent their days looking for anything with eight legs to make their mother scream at the top of her lungs. At fifteen, the thought of exploring anything was nothing short of an insult to their maturity. No-one in their right mind even wanted to go to a dump like Wentworth Falls, let alone waste any time trying to explore it. Why couldn't their parents have dished out the cash and taken them up to Queensland instead? There were girls in skimpy bikinis up there. That was every fifteen year olds dream of exploration!

As the car rounded yet another bend, the conversation between his parents shifted from the pros and cons of re-investment to the magnificence of the sprawling New South Wales scenery. The Blue Mountains of Australia were a breath-taking sight as they appeared on the hot summer horizon, with massive outcrops of red and yellow sandstone sharply complemented by the blue hazed valleys and a carpet of emerald green eucalyptus trees.

"Wow, that's beautiful!" Laura Townsend enthused, taking in the colourful display.

"Yeah...wow," Jacob mumbled with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

"Just great," David added dejectedly, when all he really wanted to say was he didn't give a crap about miles of boring looking scenery.

"And did you guys know that this whole amazing thing is listed as a World Heritage site?" their father then joined in. "All one million hectares of it…hard to believe, I know. It took the government almost four years of argument in the Land Court before those new KV towers were allowed to be constructed through the middle of it."

David immediately forgot about the winding road and the dreadful feeling of the nausea. Dropping his head back, he looked up at the black upholstered roof of the brand new car and stifled a heavy sigh.

Great! It was the KV tower shit all over again.

If there was one thing that was less cool than being the son of an electrical design engineer, it was being in a car with exactly the same design engineer when he started reminiscing about the hurdles he'd overcome during the construction of the Sydney Bulk Community Power Project.

The Sydney Bulk Community Power Project, his father's brainchild, had taken precedence over everything in their lives for the best part of the past six years. At the height of it there had been no time for anything. No time for him and no time for Jacob. It had even taken priority over their mother's forty second birthday. His father seemed to think that a couple of National Design Awards and an oversized pay check somehow made up for all the years they had lost as a family. Well, it hadn't; and now that it was finally over, the last thing any of them wanted to hear about again was how much trouble the government had getting permission to construct the new design through the stupid Blue Mountains to Sydney.

However, Damian Townsend was now on a roll and he wasn't about to stop there. There was nothing he liked more than to talk about his pivotal role in the largest and most successful electricity delivery project ever undertaken in the country, and they had no choice other than to listen to him ramble on.

Those KV towers were a work of electrical engineering excellence, even if he did have to say so himself. Over fifteen hundred of them now stretched from Lithgow to Penrith, each a self-contained substation on their own. The amount of energy and the efficient way they distributed it was remarkable; an amazing innovation.

"Two hundred thousand Sydneysiders are now reaping the benefit of six years of your old man's visionary hard work," he continued to enthuse. "Even if you two kids live to be one hundred and fifty years old, you'll never see innovation any better than that."

The frustration finally got the better of David.

"Oh come off it Dad," he complained out loud, "how about you forget about those towers for a while?"

"And by the time you actually get us to Wentworth Falls, we'll be one hundred and fifty years old."

Jacob had had enough too.

Their father took the hint and shot a rueful glance at his fifteen year old twins though the rear vision mirror of the car. There was nothing like teenagers to remind a man when he'd lost touch with his key priorities. He still got carried away with his work at times and had faithfully promised Laura and the twins that this vacation would only be about doing things together as a family.

"OK, boys," he surrendered easily. "I guess I forgot myself, again. We're going to have a great time when we get to Wentworth Falls. Let's talk about that, instead."

December 27 2026

Tracy Island

Somewhere deep in the Pacific

Scott Tracy rolled over for the fifth time in under ten minutes in a futile attempt to make himself more comfortable. His skin was clammy with sweat and his body ached all over. Even the breeze wafting in through the open balcony doors made no difference. He was finding it difficult to get back to sleep.

He tore off the sheet and sat bolt upright, raking his hands through a mess of wavy, sweat drenched hair. Damn it! He hated it when he couldn't let go of a situation. Hated it more when he knew there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He couldn't get today out of his mind.

He wasn't one to just shrug his shoulders and accept "that we just had a bad day," whenever there was a problem. To his way of thinking, a slip-up during training, even a small one, was a subtle warning they were slowly but surely heading for trouble.

The worst part was that it hadn't bothered his father all that much. Maybe after a full day of driving the Tracy Corporation into greater dominance of the aerospace market, Father thought his luck also extended to what might or might not happen during International Rescue operations.

In Father's defence, he had seemed more than a little preoccupied when Scott had stalked in behind three of his brothers and requested a few minutes of his time. Father had been in the throes of wrapping up trading for the day and was feeling pretty chuffed about the results of some rather good corporate decision making. Only someone like Jeff Tracy could have boldly floated a two per cent share of his company on the stock market and watched the share values quadruple in less than fifteen minutes. Only Jeff Tracy could make enough money to fund "the business" for the next two years before he'd sat down to lunch on the balcony with their grandmother, either.

He was in a good mood at the time and not about to give it up easily.

However, he was also the only one who could spell it out loud and clear to both Gordon and Johnny that they were expected to follow each step in the rescue process at all times. It might have only been a training exercise, but Scott considered rappelling down that cliff-face out at the Point every bit as dangerous as the real deal.

Once Father heard that, the good mood had faded. Brows knitted, lips pursed, he'd dropped the subject of funding the new high tonnage grabs for Thunderbird Two and indicated that the conversation was only to continue when they were alone and in the privacy of his study.

When the door closed behind them, there was no time wasted in getting straight to the point.

"All right, what went wrong up there, Scott?"

"I'll damn well tell you, all right."

The explanation didn't take very long.

All four of them had been undertaking the routine training exercise which should have taken less than two hours. It had been well over six months since they'd trained in roping and rappelling and Scott had decided that the best place to get in the practice was the sheer drop out at "the Point". The one hundred and ninety foot vertical cliff face located on the western edge of Tracy Island had always been a real challenge. It was also as dangerous as hell.

After a refresher on the ins and outs of rappelling technique, he'd instructed John and Virgil to descend down the cliff in tandem. He and Gordon were to follow on behind them. Before they'd set off, he'd made it extremely clear that urgency and a safe return to the starting point was the most important outcome of the training. Then, he'd gone on to reiterate his full expectation that at least two methods of backup knotting had to be used whenever they were out in the field during a rescue.

Things had been fine during the initial descent, if he disregarded the odd wisecrack from Gordon about being afraid of heights. John struggled, which was understandable given his lack of recent field experience, but with Virgil's help he settled down and soon got the hang of the anchors again.

The ascent had been fast and incident free. He'd been pleased with the time – "fifty four point seven five minutes" – their best effort yet.

It was only when the teams changed over and he'd put John and Gordon together that the problems had begun to emerge.

They'd been sharing a joke on the edge of the cliff face as he and Virgil took the lead and descended. There was no way in hell that they could have been fully concentrating on what they were doing when they followed on, and it could have ended up in disaster.

Halfway down the cliff-face, Gordon banged his funny bone on an outcrop and temporarily let go of the descender. Fortunately, John's back-up anchor allowed him to right himself in time and the exercise was completed. Neither of them had said a word to him at the time.

But he knew there was something up when he saw Virgil pull Gordon aside on their way back up to the house. He'd later found out that both Gordon and John had forgotten to check the backup knotting. They'd descended the second time relying purely on the anchors. He had been so damned pissed he could hardly believe it. An oversight like that, training or not, could have seen one, or both of them, killed.

His father's eyes had narrowed and mainly in surprise

"That's not like your brothers. They know the drill."

"I know they do, Dad, and that's exactly my point."

His aggravation had then turned into pacing.

Scott heaved his body out of bed, grabbed a towel to wrap around himself and stalked his way out onto the balcony. Fine lot of good any explanation did. Despite the potential consequences of failing to follow procedure, Father had ended up making the decision that it was better just to let things lie. There was no point taking it any further if no one had been injured, according to him, and he could well imagine that they'd been chewed out enough already without him starting on them, as well.

"Now, how about we let it go at that and see what your grandmother is rustling up for supper?" he'd said, benevolently ending the discussion. "We've both had a long day and maybe after we relax a little; things can be put back into perspective."

That had been the last thing Scott had expected to hear. Man, he almost blew. It almost sounded like Father was dismissing his concerns on the assumption that he was the one who needed a little down time.

"What's gotten into you tonight, Scott? I am not dismissing anything. You've made a valid enough point, and so have I. Everyone's capable of making a mistake, even you."

Scott sighed as he looked out over the glimmering silver and black of the Pacific and contrast of the full moon overhead. He still wasn't sure if he'd made the right decision in walking away from a statement like that.

True to his word, his father didn't raise the issue when they all sat down for dinner. There was probably no need to; the nervous silence around the table pretty well said it all for him, and both Gordon and John had made a hasty retreat before what was left of their luck ran out.

Gordon later apologised and acknowledged that fooling around during the training exercise had been dangerous. He'd said he tended to be blasé about training for situations where Father always sidelined him. He'd learnt his lesson and could guarantee that all the bases would be covered in full from now on.

"I'll hold you to that."

"Yeah, I know you will."

"I mean it, Gordon. One mistake and that's it in this game."

John, on the other hand, hadn't believed it was a problem and was still shrugging the whole thing off.

"Oh, come on Scott. Chill out why don't you? We just had a bad day, that's all."

"Chill out? If that had been the real deal out there today, Johnny, I'd be nailing your sorry ass to the wall right now."

"So, save it for the real deal and get the hell off my back!" John didn't give back any less than what he got. Phrases like "anal" and "third world dictator" really stung and so did the observation that "someone must have really pissed in your cornflakes," as he angrily stalked his way towards the door.

"Interesting evening."

As usual, Virgil's quiet observation over a late night cognac had said everything. Scott already knew he was on edge without Virgil reminding him. But just how did he explain to everyone that his intuition was overdrive at the moment and he was scared as hell that whatever was coming was about to go horribly wrong?

"Humph."

A preoccupied grunt and leaving Virgil alone on the balcony hadn't been one of his better attempts at explanation.

Then, when the image of Gordon's broken body had woken him so violently from the dream, it had taken him at least a couple of minutes to focus on where he was and to convince himself that the fall hadn't actually occurred. Gordon's wide lifeless eyes and the blood-splattered rocks seemed too real not to be some kind of premonition.

Scott inhaled deeply and forced himself to synchronise his breathing in time with the rhythm of the sea. The smell of the salt air and the gentle lapping of the waves were starting to make him feel better. It also strengthened his resolve. Intuition might be one thing, a bad dream might be another; there was only one way to finally put this one to bed.

They wouldn't like it; in fact he was sure they would try to argue with him but tomorrow afternoon he was going to call another training session and take his brothers back up to the Point. There would be no mistakes this time, no jokes…just textbook stuff. They'd complete the descent in less than forty five minutes. Only then would he be able to relax in the knowledge that their rappelling skills were top class and nothing could go wrong if they received an emergency call.

But then again, maybe not. There was still one more base another training drill wouldn't cover.

So when Alan came home from Thunderbird Five at the end of the week, they'd re-do the whole thing a third time to be sure.