Chapter Two

All things considered, it wasn't such a terrible landing. It wasn't even the worst he'd seen Virgil go through – that prize still belonged to those hideous few minutes on the runway at Tracy Island after the U.S.S. Sentinel had managed to cripple Thunderbird Two with a couple of well-placed missiles. Scott still ranked that experience as one of the top five worst moments of his life…and he hadn't even been on board.

They came in too fast, of course, and Virgil had no way to get the nose up for a proper flare, so when Two's five hundred ton bulk hit the runway, she did it with shattering force and a sound that boomed louder than the thunder above them. She should have broken up right there before the impact threw her back into the air in a nightmarish parody of a bouncing ball, her fuselage split into a thousand pieces. But she was constructed of cahelium, the strongest metal alloy yet known to man, and it was the runway that broke instead. The great green transport leaped skyward twice more, fell again, shuddered violently all through her frame as Earth's gravity finally captured her. Metal shrieked as she skidded sideways down what was left of the concrete, sparks arcing high in the air either side of her passage. The bright shower abruptly ceased when she careened off the end of the runway and into the grass and mud beyond, spinning with a force that nearly knocked the breath of out her passengers. Then she struck something very big and very hard to her right and it was all, finally, over.

The silence was deafening. It took Scott several seconds to realize they were down, and he was still alive. Then he was calling out to make sure the others were, too, while at the same time trying to force his jammed harness release to open. After several seconds of cursing, he saw a shadow in front of him and the glint of lightning off a dark blade, and Gordon had sliced through the webbing and freed him.

A quick roll call told him they were all accounted for – bruised and a little stunned, but with no more serious injuries than a case or two of muscle strain or whiplash. A little shaky with relief, Scott stumbled to Virgil's chair to congratulate him on pulling off a miracle, but their pilot was already issuing orders. "Gordon, Alan, check for fires. See if you can get down into the pod. Dammit, if I could only see what I was doing…"

Scott racked his brain for a solution. The flashlights were dead, and it was far too dangerous to light a match until they had verified that nothing flammable was damaged or leaking… "Alan, go get the night vision goggles from the equipment locker."

"Think they'll work?"

"It's worth a try."

He heard a grinding sound as Alan forced the cockpit hatch door to open on manual, and a couple of bangs and thuds as his brother negotiated his way through the pitch dark interior of Thunderbird Two by feel.

"What do you think happened, Scott?" Gordon said. "Some kind of EMP bomb?"

"That's the direction I was going," Scott admitted. "But I can't think why anyone would set one off over the middle of the Costa Rican jungle."

"Unless it was aimed at us."

"No luck with the goggles," came Alan's disappointed voice from the direction of the hatchway. "They're dead too."

"If it was an EMP bomb of some kind, nothing that requires power will work," Tin-Tin said. "But what about the glow sticks? They're not electrical or mechanical."

"Brilliant, Tin-Tin! Go down to the pod with Al and Gordo, bring back all you can carry."

"Right, Scott."

More banging, the sound of Gordon swearing. "Sorry, Tin-Tin."

"Watch your step," Alan said belatedly. "There's crap everywhere."

"Thanks for the timely warning," Gordon grunted. "Where were you just now?"

"Getting the crowbar from the tool locker. We're going to need it to get the doors open. I barely got out of the cockpit as it was."

"Scott," Virgil said finally into the darkness of the cockpit as the sounds of the others faded. "If it wasn't an EMP bomb…then what the hell is going on here?"

Scott fervently wished he had an answer.

It took a half hour for Tin-Tin, Alan and Gordon to pick their way through the chaos in the pod and locate the locker where the glow sticks were stored. Each one cast a bright greenish-white radiance that lasted for eight hours, and once they were distributed around Thunderbird Two's cabin it was possible to see each other again and take inventory of the situation. Virgil came back from a walk-through of his crashed Thunderbird without a word, and proceeded to spend several more minutes with the access doors open under the main cockpit control panel, checking wiring and connections.

It didn't make any difference. All her systems were still completely dead, and there was no obvious reason why.

"OK, let's table this for later," Scott said as his brother sat back on his heels at last with a deeply frustrated frown on his face. "We've got One sitting in that hangar back there, let's go see if her communications are operational."

"If..?" Alan shot him a quizzical look.

Scott didn't answer him. He didn't know how to explain it – nor did he really want to try – but he had a bad feeling in his gut that was steadily growing worse. "Gordon, I want you to stay here with Two, make sure she's not compromised. No, Virgil," he held up one hand to forestall the protest he could see coming, "you're coming with us. I leave you here, you'll have this all dismantled in five minutes flat, and I don't want you taking that risk until we have a better idea of what's going on here."

"Scott, what could possibly be – "

"Not negotiable, Virg." Scott shut him down, ignoring the glower as his brother's dark brows drew together ominously. He turned back to his sharpshooter. "Gordo, what do we have in the weapons locker that will function?"

Gordon met his eyes, and in that brief moment he knew that his younger brother, the only one who shared his experience of active military duty, also shared his feelings of unease. Always at his coolest under pressure, Gordon didn't comment or argue his assignment. He simply unsheathed his WASP issue Kabar, the blade eerily reflecting the green of the glowsticks. "We've got our knives, and our sidearms…and the shotguns. If we did get hit by an EMP pulse, then none of the firearms that require power will work…but standard projectile weapons should still be functional."

"OK," Scott said briskly, looking around at the others. "Let's get downstairs and saddle up."