Standard Disclaimers: Thunderbirds don't belong to me, they belong to whoever the Andersons have assigned the rights to. But I don't make any money off this, so please don't sue me.

BEGINNINGS: REASONS

International Rescue had its beginnings in anguish and grief. I should know, I was there. I was eleven years old and my mother had decided to take me shopping for some new school shoes. My brothers are all younger than I am. At the time, Virgil was seven, John was five and Gordon was three years old, so she left them home with Grandma to babysit. She brought along Alan, my brother the toddler, in his stroller and my job was to push Alan.

It's a good thing that the stroller was pretty sturdy. I called it the tank because it was big, gray and sturdy. Alan loved being in it, especially when I was pushing, because we'd go fast. He was a little over a year old, with blond hair and blue eyes. He was also completely fearless. I'd run that stroller down the sidewalk at top speed and Alan would just beg for more. Of course, Mom got pretty nervous and made me slow down. We had gone to Topeka, to Hansen's Department Store. Alan was fussy, so Mom let me run him down an empty aisle downstairs to calm him down. Eventually he fell asleep and Mom was able to buy my shoes. She packed the shoes, Alan and me onto the Monorail for the airport. We lived in such a rural part of Kansas that we used Mom's small airplane like a car in any other family. Mom used a stretch of barren field as an airstrip back at the farmhouse. Dad often joked that Mom had more flight time than he did, she took us on so many errands in that plane.

When we got to the airport, they were talking about closing it due to bad weather. They said that a blizzard was coming in and expected it to shut things down for days. Mom looked worried when they told her that, but decided to try for home anyway. She said she was worried about Grandma, stuck in a house with three active little boys and thought she should try to get back, since Dad was out of town.

I was okay either way. I liked flying with Mom. Of course, she would never do barrel rolls or other aerobatics like Dad always did when he took us up, but it was still fun flying with her. She'd point out houses and farms and landmarks she thought I should know. One trip, she let me navigate and figure out the right vectors for home. And once she let me take the yoke and fly the plane while she supervised. That was the best of all. She was a tall woman, about Dad's height with red hair that she wore in a long braid down her back. She had brown eyes and her favorite color was green. She hated Brussels sprouts and loved chocolate, especially Grandma's brownies.

She told me she had been a pilot in the Air Force when she met Dad, but she had to retire when she had all of us kids. Sometimes, she looked wistful when she talked about flying jets and not little single-engine airplanes like the one we had.

When Mom flew us from place to place, I had a chance to talk to her about things, like school or what I wanted to do when I grew up. It was a given that I'd be a pilot like my Mom and Dad, maybe even an astronaut. Mom would always say solemnly that if I decided to be a pilot, she'd be proud to have me fly her anywhere in my jet plane.

The sky was dark gray with cloud cover when Mom got the Tower's okay to take off. The takeoff was smooth but about five hundred feet up we hit turbulence that bounced us all around. Alan woke up and began to cry, but I trusted Mom to fly us safely home and didn't worry about it. I tried playing with Alan to keep him from distracting Mom, (another of my jobs when Mom was flying) and eventually he fell asleep.

We were about half an hour out, over open country, when the snow began to fall and the winds picked up. Mom glanced at me and Alan to make sure we were both buckled in. Alan sat in his baby seat behind me and I had my seatbelt on, so she smiled at me and looked back out the windshield.

"Don't worry, Scott, we'll be home soon," Mom said reassuringly.

"I'm not scared, Mom," I answered. I never minded the bumps.

"Good," she said, frowning at her instruments. "Honey, take care of Alan if he cries, would you? He's so young, he doesn't understand why he's being bounced around."

"I'll watch out for him, Mom, like I always do," I said proudly.

She smiled, eyes still focused on the weather outside. "You're a good big brother, Scott. I trust you to take care of your little brothers," she said.

Just then, she had to focus on her piloting. The windshield had whited out with snow and blowing wind so that you couldn't see anything. The turbulence had gotten worse and I could see she was fighting to keep us level. The floor dropped away and I was suddenly weightless; I could feel my body against the straps. Then, just as suddenly I was thumped back into my seat. Alan started crying again. I could hear cussing under her breath, words Grandma didn't approve of, as she struggled with the plane. She activated her headset and made a call to the Topeka Tower giving a mayday and our bearing. Then I knew that something was really wrong because Mom looked scared.

She glanced at me with a tense smile. "I'm going to have to put her down, Scott, so it's going to get even bumpier. I want you to bend over at the waist and hold your ankles and put your feet flat on the floor, okay?"

I nodded. "You mean crash position?" Mom nodded back and said, "I don't think we'll crash, Hon, but we may come down kind of hard so it's better to be prepared."

I was starting to feel scared and did as she asked. The plane bumped and leaped around us. Soon we were out of the clouds I could see the snowy ground coming up fast. There was a loud crashing sound, and the windshield shattered and scattered glass all over us as the plane skidded along the snowy ground, then hit some trees. The plane flipped over and came to a stop. The plane's engine had stopped and big tree branches were pushing through the holes in the windshield.

It was very quiet, even Alan had stopped crying. I was hanging upside down from the seat straps. I had a couple of cuts on my arms and a sore neck but nothing else was hurt. I reached over and shook Mom's shoulder. "Mom? Are you okay?" I asked.

She just hung there in her straps with her eyes closed, her hands clenched on the yoke and blood dripping out of a cut in her head. I released my seatbelt and dropped three or four feet to what used to be the ceiling of the cockpit. Then I heard Alan whimpering and went over to where he was hanging upside down in his baby seat. He looked funny, with his blonde curls all fuzzed out around his head, but he didn't look happy either. I unstrapped him and pulled him down, holding him in my arms. Then I undid his baby seat, so he'd have something to sit in that would protect him from the glass. I gave him his pacifier and he seemed happy, so I went back to Mom.

I was afraid to move her because the first aid I learned in Boy Scouts said not to, but the snow was coming in through the busted windshield. Mom had bought three new blankets at the store, so I opened the packages and made a cushion under her then released her straps and tried to ease her down onto the nest I'd made. I covered her up with the last blanket, then pulled Alan and I underneath it with her to stay warm.

She kind of woke up then and looked at me and smiled. "Hey…Scott," she said. "Are you okay? How's Alan?"

"We're fine, Mom," I answered and fought down the urge to burst into tears now that Mom was awake. "Are you okay?"

She frowned and thought for a moment. "Scott, I think maybe I'm hurt. I can't feel my arms or my legs." My eyes widened and I looked up at her seat overhead, wondering if I hurt her when I undid her seat belt. Her eyes followed mine. "No, Honey, I don't think you did anything wrong. I think it was the crash." She met my eyes with a very serious expression in her face. "Scott, I may not be able to help you much; you'll need to be my hands and feet. Can you do that?"

I nodded vigorously. "Good," she said. "Can you find the emergency box? There should be a space blanket inside and some flares."

I dug around in the wreckage that was the rear of the plan and found it. I opened it and pulled out a small silver packet, then unfolded it into a large sheet of silver.

"Good, Scotty," she said, her eyes closing then reopening with difficulty. "Spread the blanket over all three of us. It will help keep the snow off and keep us warm."

I spread it and held it down on the corners with any heavy bits of metal or wood I could scavenge. The wind was picking up and the snow was blowing through the holes in the plane. Her eyes closed, Mom kept talking. "Scott, stay here in the plane until the weather clears up. There's more shelter here than anywhere else. When it clears, set off the flares outside so that they can see us. No matter what, stay with the plane so they can find you…."

"Don't you mean us, Mom? Find us?" I asked, suddenly getting scared again.

Mom's eyes opened a little bit. "Scotty, I'm not feeling too good right now. You might have to take care of Alan for me. And when you get home, I want you to watch over your brothers. Would you do that?"

"Yeah, Mom, you know I'm a good big brother," I protested. "But you'll be home, too."

She smiled again and went to sleep. I tucked the blankets around her, then pulled Alan out of his baby seat and put him in the middle between us where he'd be warmest and snuggled in next to him to wait out the storm.