"We have a small child trapped down what appears to be a disused well or sinkhole. Only her older sister is around. She says that the child's been trapped for up to two hours and appears to have stopped crying."
Gordon nodded and pressed the emergency alarm, causing an earsplitting siren to echo through out the villa. He really shouldn't have, but he took a few moments to enjoy the perverse pleasure over the effect that the sudden waking would have on the soundly sleeping others.
So he was, naturally, very surprised when Scott and Brains hurriedly entered from the balcony.
Holding hands.
Pushing that thought waaaaaay to the back of his mind, Gordon nodded towards the vidlink. "John'll brief you when you're airborne, Scott. We have a minor trapped down a well shaft or something similar."
Scott nodded and confidently strode over to place his back against the picture that Virgil had once painted whilst in a stroppy mood. Reaching up, he tugged the twin lamps forwards and with a slight whine of electric motors he rotated out of sight into Thunderbird One's launch bay.
Gordon swore he saw Scott wink at Brains as he disappeared, and Brains half wave back. He very firmly decided not to ask.
Over the course of the next minute and a half, and in various states of dress, the rest of the Tracy clan arrived in the lounge.
Jeff Tracy, with his open robe billowing out behind him like a cape, barreled in first and evicted Gordon from his chair and dropped into it, immediately getting a mission brief from his eldest son. Alan was only just behind him. Virgil trailed in about a half minute later, looking like his usual zombified morning self, cradling a mug of espresso from the machine in his room that Brains had rigged up to the emergency klaxon.
You could drop a pod from Thunderbird Two onto Virgil's toes before he had his wakeup caffeine and he wouldn't notice.
" -- the, ah, the topography charts we have for the area don't show a strata makeup suitable for the Mole, and I'd be worried about the vibration it would cause anyways, Mr Tracy," Brains was saying to Jeff. "I'd recommend using the Vertical Borer to dig down a parallel well, then cut across to the original shaft and coming through just below the, ah, that is, the trapped... child..." He trailed off as the villa shuddered slightly and a roar announced the departure of International Rescues' Scout craft. Brains stood gazing after it with a smile on his lips.
Nope, Gordon told hisself. you really, really don't want to ask...