Thanks for reading and reviewing, Bee. =) Picked up on one of Tikatu's suggestions for this one. Short, but newly edited.
55: Turned Corner
Thunderbird 2-
They'd been able to collect only one shaken and terrified hiker… stuck at the splintered top of a shorn pine tree on a slope of sharp, unstable scree… when Dad called. Possible aftershocks, he'd said. Pick up the pace, snag the injured driver of that jack-knifed lumber truck, and then haul a$$ for the coast.
Gordon caught part of their father's call as he strode back into the cockpit, sticky with smeared, gummy pine sap.
"…immediate danger, so long as they stay away from trees and buildings. That truck is about to go off the edge, though. You're going to have to be fast."
Silhouetted against the bright view screen, Scott nodded briskly.
"What about the Mole?" he asked. "There's no way we can pick it up now, is there?"
…Now that Gordon had screwed up and left the pod behind to be crushed, he probably meant. All at once, the incoming swimmer felt about three feet high and four years old. But Scott spied him out of one blood-shot eye-corner, and waved Gordon over, miming that he was to take the controls. Dad was talking, again.
"The Mole is best off on the surface, in our own territory," said their father, sounding as tired as Gordon felt and Scott looked. "I've started legal action to declare the area a no-fly zone. That should keep the press out of the way, until we can repair 2 and return for our missing equipment. I'm more concerned about your brothers and that so-called quake machine."
There was more, but Gordon caught only bits of it, being preoccupied with lifting 2 safely away from the landslide-scarred ridge. The hiker had mentioned a boyfriend, but their campsite was gone, buried beneath a hundred feet of loose, broken rock or swept off into the lake.
Gordon hadn't known what to tell her… Jerri, her name was… except that people were looking, and that surely someone would find the poor guy. Kinda stunk, you know? Just some average Joe on a hiking trip with his girl, when the world ended; torn away with a sudden, hard roar. He hadn't even had time to get out of the tent.
Well… there was nothing Gordon could do about that one, maybe, but he could still help out with the Marina Dos Santos situation… then with finding and saving that stranded truck driver… and scooping up Virgil and Alan. No matter how bad things got, there were always a few pieces left to be swept in a pile and glued back together. Right…?
Had to push all that aside and just fly, then; minding John's directions instead of Thunderbird 2's confused, blinded instruments. Would have got lost if he hadn't, because north was doing whatever it d*mn well pleased. According to his compass, sitting bang in the midst of Boise, Idaho, at the moment… which was a big improvement over Bangkok, anyhow.
So, on the outside, Gordon stayed calm and did his job. On the inside, he felt like road-kill; flattened and dry, with buzzards hopping up close and hungry. Thinking of TinTin helped some, almost as though she could reach in to touch and correct what was wrong. As if she could make him stronger, somehow.
Scott went aft to the head, stopping at the refrigerator on his way back. Came forward again with their last bottle of water and a couple of aspirin. They split the goods, Scott asking,
"You haven't picked up any strange new diseases, have you?"
…when Gordon tossed back the quarter-full drink bottle.
"No. Well… nothing penicillin and a few months of clean living won't cure. Kidding, Scott. It's a joke. I've just had the bandages peeled off, remember?"
"I don't know," Scott contended, eyeing the water as though he could see back-stroking germs in it. "That Dr. Bennett…"
"Isn't my type."
"You mean she's over 65, or secretly a man?"
Hah, very hah. Let a guy have a few (hundred) wild times on the swim circuit, and nobody would ever let him live it down, afterward. Fortunately, they'd arrived at the danger zone, so a change of subject was possible.
"Stick or basket, funny-man," he demanded, deftly switching to quarter-impeller over a bent, twisted 18-wheeler. It lay on its side by a cliff, halfway off the road, spilling a tangle of pine logs and chain. The road was a buckled grey ruin, strewn with smashed rock and crazily-angled trees. The driver was huddled atop the dented red cab; his face an upturned oval, his plaid shirt crusted with blood. He looked heavy and fairly immobile. Scott glanced back over at Gordon.
"Who's in better shape?" he asked, because the injured driver was going to take some maneuvering, both into the basket and out to the passenger cabin.
"I'll go," said Gordon. "You fly."
Scott started to argue about it, then nodded and sighed.
"I'll keep you out of the trees," he promised, hitting the intercom to tell their passenger what was going on.
Gordon gave his older brother a brief wave/ salute, and then left the cockpit. Just like at the Olympics, you had to push right past exhaustion, limits and pain. You had to keep going.
His yellow survival suit was sticky with tree sap, making him smell good; sort of pine-y fresh and rock dust-y. Not that the driver cared. When Gordon spun and swung his way down to the pale, wounded man, the guy struggled to stand up, but couldn't. Forty-five, fifty years old, maybe. Tall and rangy, with tobacco-stained teeth. Face peppered with gravel and windshield bits.
He lifted his less bloodied arm as though meaning to catch and steady the basket, but Gordon said,
"Stay out of the way, sir, please. You'll get knocked off the truck."
"Sorry…" the man hiss-mumbled. Fractured jaw, evidently. Wedding band on his puffy, scratched hand.
"No problem, sir. Just don't want to see you get any worse hurt."
Gordon steadied his basket using the same long, hook-ended gaffing pole that he'd brought to bear rescuing John and Dr. Bennett, and then Captain Dos Santos. Locked the big, mesh box into place against the semi-truck's crushed red beetle-shell cab. Then he helped the driver to rise and get in. Poor guy was shaking all over. Wheezing and grunting in an effort not to cry out. Something about his seamed blue eyes reminded Gordon of his former coach, Matthew Fox.
"Right… umph… There you go, coach. Up and over… easy, now. Have you inside in a minute, sir… right as rain."
Carefully, he eased the big, wounded driver to a crouching seat on the basket floor. Got him a blanket, too, from the equipment box. There was one the odds hadn't got. One who'd be returning to the people who loved him and stood waiting for news, back home.
"Ready to go for a ride?" Gordon asked him, after giving Scott the thumbs up.
"Rey-ee," the driver managed to grunt, too worn out to shiver anymore. The whole thing took less than fifteen minutes, and Scott was already headed for the coast at top speed, while Gordon got their newest passenger settled into the bunk beneath Jerri's.
"It's okay, folks," he told them, before turning to leave the cabin. "You're safe now."
At the time, he thought that was true.
XXX
Tracy Island-
John was doing about twenty things at once. Not unusual, and not beyond his capacity. The World Space Agency did nothing, if not turn out competent, icy-veined multi-taskers.
One of those things was to study Virgil's "earthquake machine" data for a means to shut the thing off. Another was to direct Scott, while dad remotely flew Thunderbird 1. Meanwhile, the subtle flare and dimming of a midair computer screen hammered a message into his subconscious that John had to shelve for a time.
He still had the specs on that upcoming moon-shot to finish reading up on, and the situation at Corporate to handle. Plus the press and World Government. Then there was Lady Penelope, who'd slipped off to use a newly-bought, pre-paid cell phone. Her voice was sexily breathless and playful.
"I've located them," she purred, backed by the muted and genteel sounds of a restaurant. "Never you mind just how."
And then she proceeded to reel off an address that came up on his screen as waterfront, and extremely low-rent. Figured.
"Got it, Pen. I can send three or four operatives or a swarm of detectives. Your choice. Quiet, or nuclear?"
"Quietly, if at all possible, darling. I've my cover and reputation to think of, after all. After that, dear, it's off to the tropics, to visit my good friend and benefactor, Eduardo Dos Santos. Shan't be terribly difficult to convince him that Lima simply bursts with romantic possibilities. N'est-ce pas, dear boy?"
Dear boy…? John blinked. She had three years on him, if that. Still, if "older woman of the world" was how she wanted to play this…
"Sure thing, grandma. Quiet, it is. Now, go spackle those wrinkles, squeeze that saggy a$$ into a cocktail dress, and see what you can get out of your buddy, Eduardo. Further instructions once you've reached Lima."
There was a moment of frosty, shocked silence. Then,
"You wretched, ill-bred, grubby little beast…! I cannot believe that I ever once contemplated…"
"That's okay. I get contemplated a lot. Doesn't go much further than that, usually, but I score pretty high in the slow-down-and-look category. Now, if you're done being shocked, I'll take care of your people. You head for Peru."
"I despise you," she snapped, breathing hard through her nose.
"It'll pass. Always does."
…And at least, over the phone, she couldn't slap him. For some reason, he had visions of that having happened a lot. Also had visions of his back being clawed and his neck bitten in a tangle of bed sheets, but that had no place here. Did it? She said,
"I shall ring from another phone once I've arrived in Lima… and... and Eduardo means nothing."
Then she hung up. The thing… unopened message, or whatever… in his subconscious was turning prickly and insistent. But then another screen pinged, this one with the results of that jury-rigged scan. John cleared his cerebral desktop and told his rambunctious physiology to calm the h3ll down. Then he pulled up the scan and 3-D projection.
"Sh-t," he muttered. "Double sh-t, backward."
Moving the earthquake machine, or attempting to cut off its power, would simply trigger another eruption. Worse, the device was programmed to release its generated plasma bursts in ever fiercer explosions. Literally, they'd seen nothing, yet.
"Gotta be a way," he told himself, staring at holographic, 3-dimensional doom. "Come on, genius… think."
XXX
Nova Scotia, at the ruined TA testing facility-
Virgil hated to do it, but he had to abandon the faithful Mole. For one thing, its force field was about to crash. For another, the drilling machine would be uniquely vulnerable to thundering groundswells and furious water. Like an empty beer can, it would simply be crushed.
As the filled helijets darted off like chattering dragonflies, their windows flashing back spears of red sunlight, Virgil helped Alan down-ramp and out of the Mole.
"There's another quake coming?" his younger brother panted, wincing as he limped along beside Virgil.
"Maybe. Not sure, yet… but it's better to be out in the open, away from anything that looks dangerous."
He'd brought along the med-kit and some field rations, just in case they were stuck for awhile. Dreadnought and Battleaxe had offered to take them aboard, but Thunderbird 2 was on her way, and Virgil preferred to wait. Both he and Alan were wearing survival suits, and though the kid was injured, it didn't seem life-threatening.
He couldn't take his eyes off the earthquake machine's squat, deflated octopus form. In the gathering darkness, a sort of blue phosphorescence clung to the device. Fifty yards away, it hummed like a tuning fork and spattered like bacon grease. Dreadnought's lights were just visible behind the scarred and shadowy point; its noises absorbed by crumbled stone, fallen trees and hissing dark water. Nice of them to stick around. Dangerous, too.
"Virgil?" Alan's voice at his side, muffled by cold air and helmets. He wasn't using the comm.
"Yeah?"
"Gordon and Scott are still coming, right?"
"That's what they tell me," Virgil replied. His body was as tense and coiled as though there was grass beneath his knuckles and an enemy lineman across the way, spitting insults and teeth. Just then, there was absolutely no music in Virgil's head. No music, at all.
"Think they'll get here before that thing goes off, again? Or, maybe it won't fire at all, huh? Maybe someone has to get near it, first."
"Maybe," Virgil agreed, never taking his eyes off the sparking device. He felt electrified, lifted out of himself and ready to fight. Then,
"Mole, Island Base. You copy?" It was John.
"Online and listening, Base. What can I do you for?"
"Thunderbird 2's about five minutes out. In the meantime, here's what I need you to do…"
