The rescue is underway.

Not quite forty-five minutes later, Gordon, Alan and TinTin were in Thunderbird 2, headed north at the best speed Virgil could manage. Taciturn as ever, the big, dark-haired pilot had contented himself with a congratulatory 'gold medal' back-slap before ordering Gordon and the others to strap themselves in and hang on; the Chukchi sea a mere 20 minutes away.

About halfway to the danger zone, Gordon began running scenarios through his head. The sub had still been moving when he'd last spoken to John, fighting to reach the continental shelf before her power cut out completely. If she made it, the brothers faced a precarious underwater rescue mission. If not.., if the sub sank beyond crush depth... they'd be able to do no more than recover the bodies.

Virgil seemed to guess what was going through his head. Glancing away from his controls for a moment, he said,

"We'll make it. I haven't lost a paying customer, yet."

Gordon shook his head, smiling a little.

"We don't get paid, Virgil."

"Mere technicality, Kiddo. Anyway, I'm organizing a union. Want to join?"

"Depends," Gordon responded, with feigned seriousness. "What're the dues? Like I said, my pay's seriously in arrears."

"Cigarettes?" Virgil was still (sort of) trying to kick the habit, and he'd managed to at least stop obviously carrying them.

"Sorry. I don't smoke."

Virgil's sigh was genuinely tragic. Shoulders slumping, he said,

"Didn't figure. How 'bout gum?"

"Not me, but TinTin 'll have a pack or ten about her, bet on it." Unstrapping, Gordon rose from the co-pilot's seat and made his way back to Alan and TinTin.

"Got any gum, Angel?" He asked the slender, blue-suited girl. "Virgil's about t' light up a seat cushion."

She giggled, reached into a belt compartment, and dug out a package of "raspberry blast" cotton-candy bubble gum.

"Here! But tell him he owes me, and I don't accept payment in artwork or music, either!"

Turning to regard her from the next seat over, Alan began to scowl.

"And just how's he supposed to pay you?" The youngest Tracy demanded, instantly jealous. TinTin raised a hand, palm outward.

"Te calm, Mon Petit!" She replied, once again frigidly sophisticated. "The adults will handle this."

"Yeah. Right. Too bad you aren't one... Delphine."

TinTin's dark, slanted eyes grew dangerously narrow.

"Don't you ever...EVER! ...call me that, Alan Tracy!"

Good ol' Alan; smooth as ever. Gordon shook his head, pocketed the gum, and left the two of them behind to fight it out. Up in the cockpit, he handed the stuff over to Virgil. Then it was time to mount up and hit the water.

"Be safe down there," Virgil told him, before he set off. "John's got the whole region declared hazardous to navigation, and he's re-routing all the robot traffic, but there's always one or two idiots around that nobody calculated on. Call right away if anything even starts to look funny."

"Got it, Virgil. Be seein' you."

Virgil turned back to his controls as his younger brother headed out the rear cockpit hatch. Calling in to the desk, he said,

"Island base, from Thunderbird 2. We are over danger zone. Will drop pod 4 in ten minutes from... mark. What's the word, Scott?"

Moments later, his oldest brother's face appeared on the right view screen, frowning slightly. Scott Tracy looked worried, and bone-tired. With Gordon and Alan at the Olympics, John in space, and their father in Manhattan, chairing a board meeting, he and Virgil were pulling triple duty.

"I read you, Virge." Scott responded. "I got in touch with Father about an hour ago, and he's working to call off the World Navy. Shouldn't be anybody out there but you, and maybe the Seals." Then, as another worry assailed him, "Stay in constant touch with Gordon, will you? This one's going to be tricky."

"F.A.B., Scott. I'll stick closer than his conscience." Just then, a signal light flashed up on his instrument panel. Gordon had figuratively 'kicked the tires and lit the fires', and was ready to go. "Lowering to drop height...," Virgil murmured to Thunderbird 2. "Seas are pretty rough..., forty foot waves, looks like... Let's give him another ten yards."

In fact, the weather was too foul for most rescue craft, with high winds and driving, nearly horizontal, sleet. A helicopter would have had severe trouble holding position, and many dive ships would have been swamped. Thunderbird 2 shrugged it off, as a mastodon might have lowered its mighty head against a snow squall. Thunderbird 4 would be all right, as well, once in the water. The problem lay in the drop. Flipping a comm switch, Virgil stopped chewing TinTin's high-voltage bubble gum and said,

"Ready?"

"Fire away," Gordon responded lightly, whatever nerves he might be experiencing well hidden.

"F.A.B. I'm gonna take us down a little further, Gordon. Give you less of a thrill."

"Awww...! Y' do care!"

"See what happens when you join the union? Lower drops, higher pay, and in-flight snacks, every time. Okay, Kid, brace."

Thunderbird 2 had roared down to within a hundred yards of the turbulent ocean. At this altitude, her impellers dug a great, bowl-shaped cavity in the water below. He'd have liked to go lower, but pod 4 required a certain amount of clearance, and Gordon had dropped from worse.

Virgil hit the switch just as TinTin and Alan came forward, hurling his brother to the lightless depths below.

'I spend too much damn time in free-fall!' Gordon decided, as the bottom literally dropped out of his universe. He and his seat parted company, briefly, his heavy safety straps all that prevented him from striking the overhead. Thunderbird 4 had windows, but the pod didn't, so he'd no visuals to guide him. Just that stomach-wrenching plummet, followed by...

WHAMMMMMM!

The entire pod rang like a vast bell as it hit water, then began tipping and sliding; up, down, around and sometimes through the waves, which felt a lot bigger than they'd looked.

Wasting no time, he triggered 4's launch sequence. The pod door dropped open, its tracked interior converting to a slipway. One brief glance through the opening convinced Gordon that he was better off in the water than on it. 'Rough seas' was a criminal understatement.

Throttling up, Gordon sent the boxy, thirty-foot sub sliding along its rails and out into the maelstrom. Impact; softer than the first, then a rush of bubbles and a slight creaking noise as the ocean tightened its fist on his rapidly submerging craft. Gordon hit the comm switch, meaning to call in while he still could.

"Virgil, I'm down," he reported. "Following John's coordinates to the wreck site. I'll launch a comm buoy and let you know what I find when I get there."

"Right. Transmit as long as you can, Gordon. I'll have Alan monitor this channel in case you need an assist. And stay alert down there. We may not be the only ones looking for the 'wreck'. Understood?"

"Stop worryin', Grandad, and get the grapples ready! I know what I'm doin'!" The trouble with being second-youngest was, nearly everyone felt they'd some sort of God-given right to worry, nag and coddle. Funny thing, though..., if people hadn't constantly been reminding him, Gordon would have had a hard time recalling how young he really was.

About seventy feet below the surface the turbulence ceased. He still had a strong current to contend with, but the pounding had let up, allowing him to extend his lights, and the sub's mechanical arms. There was a force field of sorts, too, but it drew a lot of power, and had to be reserved for crush-depth situations, or rapid escapes.

'Piloting' his craft with two levers ( left for plane, right for rudder), a throttle and buoyancy control pedal, Gordon continued his descent. It was dark down there, and terribly cold. Brains had rigged Thunderbird 4's lights to track Gordon's eye and head movements. Wherever he looked, the lights would point. Helpful, but still rather like exploring Carlsbad Caverns with a cigarette lighter. If it hadn't been for John's coordinates, he might have searched for months without finding anything but drifting long lines and bathypelagic monsters.

"Hey, Bro!" Alan's cheery voice crackled over the comm. He'd be losing signal soon. "How's it going?"

"Nothing yet..., should be gettin' close, though. Wait a bit..., I think I might have found somethin'..." There was the continental shelf, looming like a great, dark cliff above the murky abyssal plain. It looked like another planet down there, jelly-pale shimmering creatures, weird growths and all.

But something else..., a long, skewed shape, terribly out of place..., had caught his eye. Focus narrowed like he was waiting for the start of a race, Gordon moved in for a closer look, hardly aware he was manipulating controls rather than swimming.

"Oh..., bloody hell," he breathed. He'd found her.

"What!" Alan called over the comm, barely audible. "Gordon, wh... ing... on?"

Firing the comm buoy, Gordon continued.

"Got her, Alan. She's heeled over on her starboard side, at th' edge of th' shelf, balanced... About 200 meters down. Hang on, movin' in a bit closer."

His lights tracked up and down along the wounded submarine's length, pushing back darkness as Thunderbird 4 explored the damage. Gordon could see no sign of the explosion John had mentioned. Possibly she'd settled with the hole bottom most, those compartments having flooded first. Her hull was dented and scraped, he noticed, as though she'd bounced along the shelf's edge before coming to rest. More or less intact, though. Now for the painfully scary part.

"Goin' in to establish contact, Alan. Keep you posted."

"Gotcha, Gordon." The comm buoy was up and functioning, delivering Alan's words like he was right there in the cockpit. "Play it safe, and smart."

"F.A.B." Like his older brothers, Gordon kept his real emotions pretty well hidden. But searching for survivors always tied an ice-cold knot in his stomach. Thinking, 'Please answer,' he inched closer, extended a mechanical arm, and tapped upon the hull where the Conn Station ought to be.

Nothing, but then again, his engines might have been too loud, or the hydrophones too low. Throttling down as far as he could without being carried off by the current, Gordon turned the hydrophones up and tried again, a little farther forward, this time. Three taps... pause...

'Clang... clang... clang'

A reply! Loud and clear as church bells. Someone was alive in there, and able to respond.

"Contact established, Alan. Tell Virgil I'm negotiatin' a contract."

"Huh?" His younger brother sounded honestly puzzled, but Gordon could hear Virgil chuckling in the background.

"Fifty cents a head," He heard the pilot respond. "One time discount rate."

Getting back to business with a lighter heart, Gordon tapped upon the hull again, using Morse code.

'.. .-. .-.-.-' (IR full stop) Then, '... — .- – .-. -.- ..–..' (How many?)

Came back the tapped out reply, ' -. -.. .-.-.-' (Ninety-eight full stop)

"Ninety-eight survivors, Alan," Gordon relayed quickly. "If we stay with our first plan, I'll be liftin' them out for days. Might have to grapple her up, at that."

"There's a ship on its way, 'accidentally on purpose'," Alan told him. "The USS Hercules. John got it worked out. Transport back to wherever will be no problem, once we just get 'em out of there."

"Right. Thanks. I'll pass that along."

Back to tapping, as slimy, dark, lamp-eyed things encountered his lights and fled.

'-.-. .-. -.- — ..- .-. . .-.-. ... .- ... .-.-. ... ..–..' (Can you reach a hatch?)

Thunderbird 4 was equipped to air-lock dock with most sub-surface craft. This one might be different, though. Being a secret prototype, its specs were unknown, and couldn't be planned for. Also, its position presented a major obstacle. He was accustomed to approaching from above, not sideways. And there was the current, fierce and fast.

'-. — .-.-.- ... — – . - .-. .- .–. .–. . -.. .-.-.-' (No full stop Some trapped full stop)

As he'd feared. Gordon paused for a long moment, thinking furiously. No way to attach lines, except magnetically..., and how well would they hold against that sort of tonnage? He'd have one shot, at best. The wounded lass below wouldn't likely survive repeated attempts to raise her. Question was, where to place the lines? Needing advice, he imaged the submarine and sent the pictures up to John. As he was waiting for a reply, he heard again from the trapped submariners.

'-.-. –.- ..–.. -.-. –.- ..–..' (CQ? CQ?)

-anybody out there-

'... - .. .-.. .-.. ... . .-. . .-.-.-. — - –. .. ...- .. -. –. ..- .–. .-.-.- .–. .-.. .-. -... .-.-.-'

(Still here full stop Not giving up full stop Plan B full stop)

After consulting with John and Virgil, the rescue plan fell out this way; Thunderbird 2 would get as low as she could and drop her magnetic grappling cables. There were only four, so Gordon would have to position them precisely. Then, after Thunderbird 4 was clear, Virgil would begin a slow, steady ascent, raising the stricken sub from her precarious, cliff's edge perch. At the surface, they'd transfer the men off to the waiting Hercules.

Gordon relayed all this to Hammerhead's spokesman, then got to work. It was getting on toward dawn, upstairs, so he'd have to hurry. Security, from the US Navy's perspective, was paramount.