Scott awoke, like always, before dawn. He lay there for a few minutes, staring in frustration at the ceiling – wondering how his brain always knew when to kick in, no matter what time zone he happened to be sleeping in.
It was useless, of course. Once he was awake, he might as well get up. He lifted his head slowly, pleased to find that at least it felt a lot better than it had a few hours earlier. The stabbing pain had subsided to a dull ache that he could handle with no problem. He decided he could handle taking a walk around.
Scott didn't like hospitals. He always had to steel himself to walk into one, although he wasn't sure he really understood why. There was something about all those white walls and the endless maze of identical corridors that would close in on him without warning, filling him with an urgent, claustrophobic need for fresh air and open skies. Even when it was one of his own family in there, he frequently spent at least part of visiting hours on a bench in the gardens outside.
The pretty young nurse at the central station called out as she approached. "Mr. Tracy, you shouldn't be out of bed."
"I can't sleep," he said as he approached, smiling ruefully. "It's a problem I have. I don't suppose you have any coffee?"
"Now, Mr. Tracy…"
He leaned his arms on the counter in front of her, unconsciously turning on the charm that had made him very popular on campus, years ago. "Please?"
She hesitated. It was very hard to look at him and say no. "Okay," she smiled. "One cup."
He grinned. She went to get it for him.
Left alone, he turned around, taking in his surroundings. All those white walls… A movement caught his eye – someone had entered a room about halfway down one of the corridors that branched off from the central hub. Needing the distraction, he decided to check it out.
When he got there, he found himself at the observation window of a recovery room much like the one his brother had occupied right after his surgery. In the bed was a fair, bearded man in his mid-thirties with a bandaged head injury, hooked up to monitors just like Alan had been. Something stirred in his memory – he wasn't sure, but he could have sworn he'd seen this man before, somewhere.
Then a young woman came into the room from the adjoining bathroom, and he understood. He recognized her immediately, even though she looked quite different from when they had met only a few hours before. Her long, honey blonde hair had been matted and darkened with salt water then, but he'd know those sea green eyes anywhere. She was the woman who had helped him on the Spirit of Nantucket. And she wasn't just pretty, she was downright beautiful.
Unobserved, he watched her through the glass as she sat at the man's bedside. Scott remembered him now – he had been one of the other survivors of the capsized yacht. She took his hand, leaning in, talking to him softly. Scott felt something odd stir in his gut…and realized, to his surprise, that it was jealousy.
Tracy, you are way out of line, he told himself firmly. Come on, get your ass out of here before she sees you.
But he couldn't move, his feet somehow rooted to the spot, gazing at her.
"Mr. Tracy, you need to go back to your room." The nurse had found him. She pressed a mug of coffee into his hand. "Here, you can take this with you. Come on, please, before you get me into trouble."
Very reluctantly, he allowed her to lead him away from the observation window and back toward his room. It was for the best, he told himself. Complications like that, he didn't need. His life was difficult enough already.
Behind him, Tally Somerville caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked around at the observation window – but by then Scott and the nurse were gone.
It was too late, Virgil thought desperately – he wasn't going to make it. The ropes were slipping and Thunderbird One's fuselage was sinking fast – and no matter what he tried he couldn't get the hatch open. Somehow everyone else had disappeared, and he was all alone, diving again and again into the glassy green water until his chest felt like it was going to explode. But there was nothing he could do. The last rope slithered away and he watched, horrified and helpless, as the silver rocket plane slipped away from him into the murky depths – taking his brother with her.
A loud beeping sound stabbed at his ears. He swung around, the water suddenly becoming an animate object, clutching at his arms and legs. What…?
He jerked awake with a start, breathing hard, covered with cold sweat. It took a moment for the hotel bedroom to swim into focus around him. Relief flooded into him – it had all been just a bad dream.
The grabbing feeling he'd experienced had been the sheets, he realized, which had become wound tightly around him as he tossed and turned. It took Virgil a minute to disentangle himself. Daylight was streaming in through a crack in the curtains. He could hear Elizabeth in the next room, talking quietly on the phone, and he realized that it had been the sound of her pager going off that had awakened him.
He lay back on the bed, the dream still trailing cold fingers through his insides. He and his brothers had all learned to live with the nightmares – they were a hazard of the job. They came up against death and devastation every time they went out on a rescue, and it was near impossible, sometimes, to leave it behind them. Sometimes it helped to talk about it. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it would take days for the really bad ones to go away.
"Hi." Elizabeth was standing in the doorway, wearing a hotel bathrobe. "I didn't know you were awake."
Virgil sat up, reaching out to her. She came forward into his arms, letting him pull her down and wrap her tightly against him, not knowing that he needed the warmth of her body to melt the last of the nightmare's ice. "What is it?" she asked softly, puzzled.
He didn't answer her for a long moment, holding her, face buried in her thick golden brown hair. "It's nothing," he said at last. "Was that the hospital?"
"Yes. They wanted to tell me that Alan came through the night very well. Nobody can find Scott, which I suppose is a good thing."
He grinned. "I suppose." Privately, he would have taken bets on where Scott was – at least halfway to the tiny Pacific island where Brains and Gordon were working on Thunderbird One. He wondered if his elder brother had tried to call him in his room earlier…and if so, what he'd thought when he couldn't reach him, especially since none of his family knew anything of his romantic involvement with Elizabeth Grant.
"I'm starving. What do you want for breakfast?" Elizabeth reached over him for the phone to call room service. Virgil took advantage of the situation, parting her robe and sliding his hands inside. "Mmmm. That's not fair," she murmured, but he wasn't listening.
Tally stifled a yawn as she came out of her brother's hospital room. She hadn't gotten much sleep since they had arrived via helijet from the Colin Powell the night before. Michael's condition had taken a turn for the worse not long after the International Rescue team had left them and the other survivors aboard the aircraft carrier, and the Navy medics had made the decision that he needed to be airlifted to Sydney for immediate surgery.
He'd come through it well, and she'd spent what was left of the night with him in the recovery room. Satisfied with his progress, the doctors had moved him to a room early that morning, and Tally finally felt that she could leave him long enough to get a cup of coffee.
In the caféteria, every conversation she passed by seemed to be about the Southern Oceans Race yacht rescue. Tally couldn't help but smile as she listened to some of the accounts, whose sheer drama put the reality of the experience to shame.
As she got into the checkout line behind two nurses, she heard one of them say, "I wish you'd seen it – International Rescue called and told us to clear the parking lot. I never saw such a plane – great big green thing, landed on rockets. Made a lovely mess of the tarmac."
Tally's head came up. Thunderbird Two, she thought. It had to be.
"Wow," she said, managing to sound suitably impressed. "International Rescue was here?"
The nurse turned round, eager to include Tally in her gossip. "Oh, yes. They brought one of the victims in," she said. "A young man with broken ribs and a punctured lung."
Tally felt an excited shiver run up her spine. A reporter didn't often get lucky breaks like this. She knew first hand that International Rescue had left all the survivors on the carrier – so the one they'd brought to the hospital had to be their own operative, the man who was trapped by the grabs against the hull. What had Scott called him? Alan. "Is he going to be all right?" she asked, carefully keeping the recognition out of her voice.
"Oh, yes. Went through surgery yesterday, came out fine. He'll be here at least a week, though."
Tally paid for her coffee and headed straight for the nearest vidphone.
A young blonde woman answered on the other end. "WNN Assignment desk. Oh, hi, Tally."
"Hey, Shelley. Is Joss around?"
"He's down in Photo. Hold on, I'll switch you through."
Tally waited, sipping her coffee. She smiled politely at the trio of people passing her – a good-looking man in his fifties, a pretty young Eurasian woman, and a beautiful blonde woman with luminous blue eyes.
"Tally, where are you?" Joss's ruggedly handsome face appeared on the screen.
"Sydney," she said.
"Sydney, Australia?"
"Yes, Sydney, Australia," she smiled, flexing stiff neck muscles. "Mike needed an operation. They flew us here from the carrier last night."
"Jesus, Tally – is he going to be okay?"
"I hope so," she said. "I'm going to have to be here a few more days, though."
"Okay, I'll tell Mason. Just keep in touch.
"How is Mason?" she asked. "Still pissed at me?"
"With a vengeance. He really wants that rescue story. Rescues are getting huge numbers right now."
She smiled. "Well, you can tell him that he's in luck, because I'm working on the mother of all rescue stories. I promise you it's going to knock his socks off."
"Tally, what are you talking about?" She was frustrating him again, she could tell by the way he ran his hand through his shaggy blond hair.
She looked up and down the corridor before she spoke. "I'm going after International Rescue," she said. "I'm going to be the first to tell the world who they really are."
Getting Thunderbird One home was going to be a long, frustrating process.
Scott and Tin-Tin took off from Sydney in the Tracy jet at six a.m., arriving at the coordinates Virgil had given them an hour and fifteen minutes later. As they circled above the tiny South Pacific island, their trained eyes picked out the camo net in the shallow water just off shore, concealing the floating Thunderbird's one hundred fifteen foot long fuselage from prying eyes. They couldn't see her, but they knew Thunderbird Four was also there, tethered to her much larger sister. The only visible vehicle was the blue and white Tracy seaplane, floating close to shore. Nobody was moving yet in the base camp under the palms on the narrow strip of white sand.
Scott handed over the controls to Tin-Tin and moved to the rear of the plane, strapping on a parachute. He attached a metal supply container to a snap hook on his belt.
"See you back home," he said. "Keep an eye on Alan for me."
The words were light, but she knew how deeply he felt them. "Don't worry, Scott," she smiled. "As soon as Mrs. Tracy arrives from the mainland, she will take care of him for both of us!"
Scott grinned. "If we could market that apple pie, we'd make a fortune."
Tin-Tin's laugh was still in his ears as he launched himself out through the cabin door into the open sky.
Gordon must have set proximity detectors surrounding their camp, because moments after Scott pulled the ripcord that unfurled his parachute, his brother was out of his tent and staring up at him. Scott landed on the beach in a spray of sand, and Gordon ran to meet him, helping to drag in the yards of nylon that had landed partially in the clear blue water. The two brothers exchanged a bear hug. "Thanks," Scott said. "Virgil tells me you pulled me out back there."
Gordon grinned. "I dunno why I keep doing things like that. I'm never going to move up the chain of command this way."
They walked back together toward the little base camp. "You look like hell, incidentally," Scott said.
"Thanks," Gordon retorted. "I bet you slept in a bed last night. Some of us haven't seen civilization in days."
"I brought breakfast." Scott indicated the supply container. Gordon's face lit up.
"Okay," he said, "You can stay."
By the time Brains stumbled, yawning, out of one of the tents, Scott had breakfast almost ready. "Do I, uh-uh, smell eggs?" the scientist asked, cleaning his glasses on his shirt. He put them on and focused on the new arrival. "Oh, hi, uh, Scott."
"Hey, Brains," Scott greeted him. "Least I could do. How's Thunderbird One?"
"She'll be a-a-all right," Brains said, taking the offered plate of eggs and bacon. "I-I've finished the preliminary ah-ah, diagnostics, and she's safe to ah, move, but we'll have to tow her home."
"Okay." Scott hid his frustration with an effort. "So that's what we'll do. How soon can we get underway?"
"Ah, right a-after, ah, breakfast," Brains smiled, spearing a big forkful of eggs.
It took nearly two hours to pack up base camp, load all the equipment and reattach Thunderbird Four's tow cables to Thunderbird One. Scott fussed over the process like an overanxious mother hen, sick with guilt at the sight of his beloved Thunderbird missing chunks of her wing and tail sections. It didn't help that Brains repeatedly reassured him that the damage was superficial and would be easily repaired once they reached home.
At long last everything was ready. Scott argued with Gordon that since he had had a rest, he should take over Thunderbird Four while his brother rode with Brains in the seaplane. But Gordon wouldn't have any of it. Scott had never towed anything with the submersible, let alone a one hundred forty ton rocket plane, and this wasn't the time for first attempts. What if the flotation collars gave out and he had to dive after Thunderbird One in the ocean? Grumbling, knowing he was right, Scott gave in at last and reluctantly took the pilot's seat in the seaplane – which Brains was more than glad to relinquish.
"Thunderbird Four from seaplane. Ready for take-off."
"F.A.B., Scott," Gordon's voice came back. "Moving out now."
Scott fired the engines. The seaplane skimmed forward over the glass-smooth water, rapidly picking up speed. The air currents caught her wings and she surged up into the sky, climbing swiftly. Scott's spirits lifted with her. He never tired of that magic moment when he became, once again, part of the sky instead of a creature bound to the earth.
"Seaplane from Thunderbird Two, is that you, Scott?" It was Virgil's voice. Surprised, Scott banked the seaplane, searching the sky until he saw the great green Thunderbird approaching from the west.
"Hey, Virg. About time you showed up. Sleep well?"
He could hear his brother's grin. "Like a petrified log. Sorry I didn't get your message this morning."
"Ah, well, who needs you? I found something else with wings."
"So I see." Thunderbird Two began to descend in a slow, sweeping arc. "Going in to pick up Pod 4 now."
"F.A.B." Scott made a circle of the island, coming back directly over Thunderbird Four. The submarine was making slow but steady headway, plowing through the calm water with Thunderbird One in tow. If the weather held they should make it home in a little over three hours.
He settled in for the flight. Behind him, Thunderbird Two swooped down toward the water like an enormous bird of prey. Her landing jets fired, Virgil swinging her into position and lowering her down over the floating pod with the precision of long practice. The electromagnetic seals thunked into place and she lifted back into the sky, whole again. Virgil banked her gracefully eastward into the morning sun, following his brothers home.
The young guard behind the security desk smiled at Tally as she came in through the front doors of the Sydney bureau of the World News Network. "Good morning, Miss. ID, please."
"I'm Tally Somerville from the New York office," she said. "There should be a pass waiting for me."
The guard checked his computer screen. "Ah, yes, Ms. Somerville." He clicked a couple of keys, pulled the temporary pass from the printer. He checked the picture against her face. "Here you are. Make sure you wear this at all times when you're in the building."
"Thanks," Tally smiled. She went through the metal detector and the guard buzzed her through the main doors.
Upstairs in the news bureau, a familiar face greeted her. "Tally! How the hell are you, kiddo?"
"Graham!" Tally hugged her old friend, veteran WNN reporter Graham Hamilton. Graham was a big grizzly bear of a man with a deep, growly voice, intimidating to those who didn't know that his demeanor hid a heart as big as the continent of Australia. "How are you?"
"Let's see… Long hours, crappy pay, no life… Pretty good, I'd say. How about you? When are you and Richard going to set that wedding date?"
The pain sucker-punched her in the gut. He didn't know, she realized. "There isn't going to be a wedding. Richard and I broke up two months ago."
He studied her suddenly pale face, steering her quickly into his office. He gestured for her to sit opposite him at the paper-strewn desk. "I don't believe it," he said, genuinely astonished. "I thought…"
"So did I," Tally said quietly. "Apparently we were both wrong."
"What happened, kiddo?"
She hesitated for a long moment, staring at her hands. The memory, still too fresh, was making her feel sick to her stomach. "He…met someone else."
"Oh, no. After four years?"
She nodded slowly. "One minute I'm picking out wedding invitations…the next I'm getting calls from the New York Times society editor asking me for a comment on a tip that my so-called fiance is apparently intending to marry someone else."
"Son of a bitch," Graham said, shaking his head. "He didn't even tell you himself?"
"No. They met in the Hamptons last summer when I was on assignment in Hong Kong. They've been seeing each other ever since."
"Behind your back, eh? Classy guy," Graham snorted.
"Yep. I should have known something was wrong. I was just working too hard to see it, I guess."
"Still, kiddo, finding out from the New York Times is a little rough."
"Yeah. Public humiliation – my favorite thing. That was his mother's doing – she and my mother can't stand each other, which figures. Always trying to outdo each other on the party circuit. She couldn't wait to deliver the bad news."
"How did your family take it?"
"How do you think?" Tally said, the bitterness creeping into her voice now. "My mother thinks it's all my fault – I should have been standing guard over him, instead of being gone on assignment. She thinks of men as things that can be stolen…like Richard was a car, or a piece of jewelry, for God's sake."
"So that's why you went on that yacht race with Michael," Graham said, understanding now. "To get away."
"Partly," she said. "It sure came along at a good time. But I've been having such trouble getting a break from that asshole Mason. I thought maybe this would be a good enough story that he'd finally cut me some slack."
"Well, Mason can be an asshole, all right…but he's not usually an unfair man," Graham said. "You two don't get along?"
She looked at him for a moment, deciding whether to tell him the truth. "Not nearly as well as he'd like," she said, carefully. "If you see what I mean."
It took him a second, but then comprehension dawned. "Wait a minute…he hit on you?"
She nodded. "Oh, yes. Not too subtly, either."
"And you turned him down, of course."
"Yes. And he's treated me like a copy clerk ever since."
"And you haven't done anything about it?" Graham was outraged.
"Oh, come on, Graham, what can I do? He's a man, and he's got thirty years in the business. I open my mouth and no news network in the Western hemisphere will touch me with a ten-foot pole. I've just got to keep plugging away and hope he gets over it. Either that or come up with a story so big his ratings Jones gets the better of him."
"I'm so sorry, kiddo," he said. "You understand, I want to kill him."
"Get in line," she said, smiling despite herself.
Graham pulled open a desk drawer and came up with a bottle of Scotch and two glasses. He blew the dust off one and handed it to Tally. "Here…hold this."
She laughed as he poured. "Graham, you are such a cliché."
"Aren't I, though?" He reached over and clinked his glass against hers. "To better days."
"Oh, yeah," she said determinedly, knocking back half of the golden liquid in one swallow.
"Speaking of which, you said you needed some help," he said, settling back in his chair. "What's the story?"
"I know I don't need to say this, but this is strictly between us," she said.
"That big, huh?"
She nodded. "I'm going after International Rescue."
There was silence for a moment. Then he gave a short laugh. "Can't be done, kiddo. I know. It's been tried at least a dozen times."
"I've met them, Graham – they rescued Mike and me from the Spirit of Nantucket. I can identify at least three of them, and I know where one of them is right now."
He paused, looking hard at her. "You're serious. You're really going to try this."
Her chin came up defiantly. "I've got to, Graham. It's my chance – I know it. After all the shit I've been through this past couple of years, this one finally landed right in my lap. I'd be a fool not to give it my best shot."
"And Mason would be a fool not to air it," he said slowly, nodding. "Not to mention the shitload of awards you'd probably win. Well, you know I'm in your corner. I don't know how much help I can be, but whatever you need…"
"Thanks, Graham," she smiled. "I knew I could count on you."
He clinked glasses with her again. "Well, kiddo, I've got to admit, if anybody could get an exclusive with International Rescue, it would be you."
Tally laughed.