HAYLEY returned to the office and found her personal mobile phone that had been locked away in Colonel Jennings' drawer. She looked through the contacts and immediately stopped when she saw Virgil's name. She wanted to dial it immediately but stopped. With Colonel Jennings having forbidden her to make any calls to anyone, especially Virgil, she'd not spoken to anyone outside the base for the past few days. But even so, she knew full well that Virgil wasn't going to be able to help her with this situation. She needed someone much more capable. She moved through the contacts and pressed the one marked 'Kayo'. She then waited anxiously for the phone to dial and then ring. "Please answer, Kayo."

Scott smirked as he watched Gordon straining heavily, filming the arm-wrestling between him and Kayo on his phone.

"Come on, Gordon," chuckled Kayo. "You're not even trying."

"I'm…not…trying?" strained Gordon. He was going red in the face and sweating.

Kayo eyed up Scott. "Waiting to film the winner, Scott?" she asked.

"Waiting to see you win," grinned Scott.

"Yeah? Not…gonna…happen…" said Gordon, determined to beat Kayo.

Just then Kayo felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. She reached in and pulled it out with her left hand.

Gordon saw his chance. "Distracted…" he tried to whisper. "Now I've got-" BAM! "OW!" Kayo had slammed his fist over onto the table. "Eeeyowowowow!"

Scott laughed as he finished recording.

"Delete that," Gordon said indignantly.

Scott ignored him. "Who's calling you, Kayo?" he asked.

Kayo frowned. "It's Hayley," she said.

Scott and Gordon looked at her. "Huh?" they said together.

Kayo held up a hand for silence as she answered. "Hayley?"

"Oh, Kayo. Thank heavens. I was hoping you'd answer."

"Hayley, we've not heard from you for ages," Kayo said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, but this is no time for a catch-up," said Hayley. "Kayo, I need your help, badly."

"What's up?"

"It's Colonel Jennings. She's been captured by some unknown mercenaries."

"I thought Colonel Jennings said that International Rescue wasn't to get involved with GDF business?"

"Kayo, I don't give a damn what she says! Her life is in danger and the leader issued a threat that if any GDF or International Rescue craft approaching, they'll kill her!"

Kayo now realised what Hayley was getting at. "Any other Thunderbird, yes," she said. "But they won't see Thunderbird Shadow. Okay, Hayley, where was she taken from?"

"From an Air Base in Algeria," Hayley replied. "Satellite has them in a hi-jacked GDF Flyer heading North."

"Okay, Hayley, listen to me," said Kayo as she headed across the lounge. "Call John and fill him in. He will be able to use Thunderbird 5 to locate the Flyer and guide me in. I'll get Colonel Jennings back. I promise."

"Thank you, Kayo," said Hayley. "This'll probably be the end of my career but-"

"Don't talk like that," Kayo cut her off. "If Jennings can't see that you've helped to save her life, then she isn't worth working for. Now I need to get suited up. Talk to John in the meantime and I'll be in touch."

"Okay…thank you."

Kayo sat down on one of the chairs that would normally go to Thunderbird 3. "Scott, fill your Dad in when he wakes up, please?"

"F-A-B," said Scott. "Good luck, and be careful."

"Always," said Kayo as she disappeared into the floor.

Gordon, still nursing his sore hand from where Kayo slammed it into the table, looked up at Scott. "You're not gonna delete that footage, are you?" he asked with gritted teeth.

Scott smirked slyly whilst keeping his expression hidden from his brother. "Nope," he muttered and walked off, leaving Gordon to pout quietly to himself.

The cliff-face above the villa began to revolve around, revealing Thunderbird Shadow out into the open on its yellow turntable platform. Once the rotation was completed, it swivelled round so that the nose was pointing up towards the sky instead of downwards. The wings extended out and the thrusters moved back a little to make the craft ready for launching.

5! 4! 3! 2! 1!

The thrusters fired and the clamp was released. Thunderbird Shadow dropped away from the cliff and turned around before rocketing away horizontally out to sea and away from Tracy Island.

"Thunderbird Shadow is GO!"

Virgil and Alan examined the exterior of the mysterious black capsule that they'd discovered.

"Can you s-see anything on it?" asked Brains.

"Nothing, Brains," replied Virgil.

"No markings at all," added Alan.

"Hmmm," said Brains. "How v-very peculiar."

John felt his personal communicator beep. He checked it and saw it was a text from Hayley. It read:

'Need to talk with you urgently and privately. This is between me, you and Kayo.'

John looked awkwardly at Virgil's hologram. He knew he couldn't mention Hayley's name otherwise Virgil would start asking. "Brains, can you cover this, please?" he asked. He showed Brains the message and made some gestures saying that Virgil couldn't know about it.

"Of c-course," said Brains.

John nodded and moved to an adjacent room where there was a secondary control point. He then pressed the call button. "Hello, Hayley?"

"John! Thank God."

"Are you okay?" asked John. "It's not like you to contact me privately?"

"Colonel Jennings has been kidnapped by mercenaries," Hayley said. "I've already got Kayo heading to try and get her back. But she said I needed to bring you in and get you to help."

"Okay…with what exactly?"

"The mercenaries hi-jacked Jennings' Flyer," said Hayley. "My people are tracking it, but I'll need to be there and I can't be seen guiding Kayo in. not after the fallout the other day."

"This needs to be kept hush-hush. Got it," said John. "I'll locate the Flyer and guide Kayo towards it."

"Thank you, John," said Hayley. "I'll owe you and Kayo big time if Jennings ever lets me out of here."

John wasn't sure what to make of that. "You'll be able to, Hayley," he said. "I'll be in touch."

Virgil ran a scan of the capsule. "Not picking up any life signs," he said. "Given how deep that dune was, I'd say it's been here for a while."

"It's clearly not R-Robert Ballard's capsule," said Brains. "You'd b-better carry on with the search."

"What do we do with this?" asked Alan.

"Well, like I said, no life signs," said Virgil. "I guess we'll just have to leave it here."

Together the brothers returned to Thunderbird 2 and took off to continue the search for Robert Ballard.

Brains however floated very still for a while, examining the scan made of the capsule and he'd noticed something very strange. "That c-cannot be right…" he muttered to himself.

Thunderbird Shadow was now flying over Tunisia making its way towards the designated intercept area.

"Okay, Thunderbird 5, I'm in the area," Kayo reported. "What have you got for me?"

"I've got a fix on a lone Flyer heading North-East towards Libya," John answered. "You'll need to make sure you can rescue Colonel Jennings before they cross over the border."

Kayo looked ahead. "I have a visual on the Flyer," she said. "Going to attempt to board."

"Be careful," warned John. "We don't know who is behind this. They could be dangerous."

"Don't worry, John. I'm not taking any chances," said Kayo as she accelerated Thunderbird Shadow towards the Flyer.

With Thunderbird Shadow in stealth-mode it was child's play for Kayo to come up behind the hi-jacked aircraft and land on top of it without anyone inside having any idea that she was there. Once secure, Kayo activated her nanotech suit with magnetic boots and climbed out onto the top of the fuselage. She then carefully made her way forwards to the cockpit and peered through the right-side window. What she saw made her stomach churn. Two GDF members were at the side stations, motionless. They were clearly dead. In the middle at the controls was a single mercenary. She didn't recognise him or what he was wearing. Using the heads-up display inside her helmet, she began to scan through the reinforced glass to try and identify him.

"John, I'm sending through the scan I'm making of this guy flying," Kayo said. "Can you ID him for me?"

"Hopefully his facial features will help identify him in the Worldwide Global Database," replied John. "Scan coming through now."

Suddenly the mercenary at the controls turned his head to the right. He let out an exclamation in French when he saw the helmet of a figure outside the window.

Realising she'd been spotted, Kayo quickly moved back up out of sight and onto the top of the cockpit. "Damn!" she cursed.

"Kayo, the scan's stopped coming through. What happened?"

"Sorry, Thunderbird 5. He looked in my direction. Hopefully he didn't see me properly."

"Oh…right," said John. "Well let's hope he thought he was seeing things."

The door at the rear of the cockpit opened to allow a tall muscular figure in an armoured white and black suit to walk in. "What is going on?" he demanded to the man at the controls.

"Out there!" squeaked the mercenary, pointing to where he'd seen the head. "Did you see it?"

"See what?"

"The head, Crossbones!" said the mercenary. "There was someone out there!"

Crossbones went over to the window and looked out. But there was nothing to be seen. He then looked at the instrument panel showing the aircraft and all the sensors operating on it. Nothing was there. Annoyed, he turned back to the mercenary. "Jean…I'm gonna kill you when we land!" he snarled before smacking him over the back of the head and heading back out of the cockpit, leaving the mercenary to quiver in his seat.

Thunderbird 2 was continuing its search pattern just inside the border between Algeria and Mauritania.

"This is the area Thunderbird 5 predicted the balloon had actually gone down," Virgil said to Alan.

"We should have checked."

"What's that?"

"When we detected that other capsule," said Alan. "We should have checked for signs of life before we dug it out."

Virgil sighed. "Agreed," he said. "We wasted precious minutes digging that capsule out. Time we could have used for tracking down Mr Ballard. Now his life is in greater danger now."

Brains saw the two brothers were getting frustrated and decided to cool the situation. "Virgil. Alan. Do n-not blame yourselves."

"Why not, Brains?" snapped Virgil. "We goofed up. Scanning for life was the first thing we should have done."

"You m-made a mistake, Virgil. It happens," Brains said.

"Yeah, a mistake we shouldn't have made!" added Alan.

"Let's just t-take a breath," Brains said. "You're right over the area where Mr B-Ballard's balloon went down. All you need to do is learn from what you did wrong and you'll get it right n-next time."

"Yeah…providing we haven't lost the chance to save him," Virgil muttered.

"There's always hope, Virgil," said Brains. "His capsule shouldn't have lost all its oxygen yet. But it will start to get low pretty soon."

A beep from the detector caught their attention. This time the object it showed was much larger than the one before.

"That has to be it!" said Alan.

They looked out of the windows and sure enough, they could just make out a shape buried under the sand. It wasn't much, but it was clearly yellow. There was also part of what looked like an orange balloon canopy on the other side.

"That's it!" said Virgil. "Brains, I think we found it."

"Mmhmm," said Brains. "And the next step?"

"Scan for life-signs," said Alan.

Virgil swore under his breath. He'd forgotten again.

The screen pinged again. "Confirmed!" said Alan triumphantly. "There's someone alive in there!"

"Excellent," said Brains. "Now all you have to do is get him out of there."

"Put her down, Virgil," said Alan. "I'll go say 'hello'."

Virgil didn't answer, but grunted a response as he set Thunderbird 2 down to land.

Kayo knew she could risk trying to get a second look at the pilot. Instead she began to crawl her way back towards Thunderbird Shadow, and the top-mounted entry hatch to the Flyer located underneath. "Okay…I'm switching to Plan B, Thunderbird 5. I'm going inside."

"F-A-B, Thunderbird Shadow. Keep radio chatter to the minimum. Contact me if you need to and I'll keep Hayley updated."

"Kayo?"

"Hayley?"

"Please save the Colonel."

"You got it," promised Kayo. She'd reached the hatch and with the unlock code which Hayley had provided earlier, managed to open it briefly, dive in and then close it behind her.

Jean noticed a warning light flash from the hatch sensor from the brief moment it was open. However it stopped again almost as quickly as it started.

"Crossbones-"

"Shut up, Jean! I don't want to hear another word out of you until we land!"

"But a hatch-"

"I said, SHUT UP, DAMN YOU!" thundered Crossbones, terrifying the mercenary into silence and causing him to start crying.

Crossbones entered the main transport bay of the Flyer where five other mercenaries were hanging out. On the floor was the captive Colonel Jennings. Her hands and feet were bound by white zip-ties and a piece of black tape over her mouth. Every so often one of them would kick her causing her to cry out in pain.

"Hey, stop her squirming!" ordered Crossbones.

The mercenaries stopped and stepped back.

"She's like a fish, no?" one of them said. "Maybe we should gut her here

"No! I want her alive," snapped Crossbones. "Are you mugs seriously all that could be given to me?"

The mercenaries fell silent.

Crossbones shook his head. "Christ. One saying he sees someone outside the plane. Now you think she's a fish! You all stupid or completely stupid?"

Nobody had an answer to that.

"I'd say you all are."

Crossbones spun round to the left just as a streak of blue darted out of the darkness from behind a crate and drop-kicked him into the side of the cargo bay. Taken by surprise, Crossbones fell over and wasn't able to recover instantly.

Equally startled, the other mercenaries hesitated which allowed Kayo to make moves on them. She darted forwards, punching out the one who'd wanted to harm Colonel Jennings and sending him to the floor. A second bellowed and charged at Kayo from behind only to get a hard elbow in the face, giving him a bloody nose. She then dived as the other three raised their machine-guns and began to fire. She rolled along the floor, tripping two of them up and creating her nanotech black shield out of her left arm which she used to deflect the bullets coming from the last one. One bullet went flying upwards through the open corridor leading to the cockpit, ricocheting off the ceiling and then floor before hitting poor Jean straight in the back of the head. As the last bits of life left him, he slumped forwards against the controls. The nose of the Flyer began to tilt downwards heading towards the ground.

The other mercenaries swore loudly in French as they tried to pull themselves together. Kayo took the last one out by punching him in the groyne. He squealed like a pig and fell to the floor.

The Flyer's automated systems seemed to detect that they were heading into a crash-dive and turned on the autopilot. A safety-precaution if the pilot became incapacitated.

With the mercenaries taken down, Kayo moved over to Colonel Jennings and rolled her over onto her back before peeling the tape off her mouth. "Colonel Jennings?"

"Y-Yes?" she answered. Her face was bruised from the beating she'd received. "Who the hell are you?"

"It's okay, I'm with International Rescue. I'm here to get you to safety."

Colonel Jennings was confused as Kayo pushed her into an upright position so she could attempt to cut the ties around her wrists. "International…Rescue?" she said. "But, LOOK OUT!"

Too late. Crossbones had recovered. He lunged forwards and kicked Kayo away, sending her crashing into a pile of equipment crates. They came crashing down on top of her and momentarily trapping her underneath.

"So Jean did see someone outside," sniffed Crossbones. "I don't know how you found us, girl, but you made a big mistake coming here!"

The other mercenaries were also recovering. They worked quickly to attach themselves with backpack air-brakes. Two then pulled up Colonel Jennings off the floor and tied her to the back of one of the others.

Whilst Kayo struggled to free herself from under the crate, Crossbones took out a small explosive device and placed it down beside her before pushing a button. An alarm sounded as the forward cargo bay door began to open. Air rushed inside, almost knocking those who were standing over, but thanks to special magnetic boots they were all wearing, they were able to stay put.

"He said you Thunderbirds might come," Crossbones said to Kayo. "Too bad you ain't going home again." He pushed a button on the device and left it on the floor close to where she could see it.

"You won't get away with this!" Kayo shouted back. "I will stop you."

Crossbones scoffed as he walked away. "Yeah? Good luck with that." He then signalled to the others. One by one they began to leap out of the open cargo door. The second had Colonel Jennings who let out a terrified scream as they went. After dropping a few feet, the air-brakes deployed allowing them to glide along.

Crossbones was the last to leave and followed behind the formation.

Kayo knew she had to escape quickly. The crates were heavier than the suit could manage due to how many there were. She therefore raised her right arm and fired a grapple into the nearby wall. Reeling it in, she was able to pull herself out. Jumping to her feet, she used the grapple again to propel herself out of the open door moments before the explosive went off. The explosion ripped through the interior of the Flyer but due to its tough construction wasn't damaged enough to fall out of the sky.

"Kayo, come in! What's happening?" John's anxious voice asked over the radio.

"I'm okay, John," Kayo replied. "But this rescue just got a whole lot more complicated!"

The oxygen inside the capsule was getting low. Ballard was slumped on the floor, close to passing out. "Can't…breathe…" he said hoarsely. "Need…air…" Suddenly he was jolted awake by a rumbling sound coming from outside. It sounded like a piece of heavy machinery. "Is that…can it be?"

Outside, Alan was using the Bulldozer-Pod to shift away more of the sand to reveal the yellow capsule of the Hot-Air Balloon. "This has to be it. Doesn't it, Brains?"

"Y-Yes, Alan. But my scans show a weak signal from inside," said Brains. "Virgil, as soon as the hatch is clear, open it so he can get f-fresh air."

"On it, Brains." Virgil waited whilst the Bulldozer-Pod shifted another load of sand. Now he could see the hatch that led into the capsule. Then he hurried forwards and tapped on the door. "THIS IS INTERNATIONAL RESCUE!" he called out. "CAN YOU HEAR ME IN THERE?! TAP HARD IF YOU CAN!"

Ballard could just about hear Virgil's voice through the thick walls of the capsule. "Oh, thank goodness!" he gasped. He grabbed a spanner and began hammering against the door. "I'M IN HERE!"

Virgil managed to find the emergency override on the outside of the hatch.

With a hiss and a clunk it opened and the explorer found himself being hit with fresh air. "AIR!"

"Mr Ballard?"

"Yes! Yes, that's me."

"Don't worry, you're safe now." Virgil held out a hand for the explorer to take hold of and be pulled out.

"International Rescue! You saved my life! Thank you."

Alan brought the Bulldozer-Pod back around and opened the canopy. "ARE YOU OKAY, MR BALLARD?" he called over.

"YES! FINE NOW, THANK YOU!" Ballard called back cheerfully.

"Brains, we got him," said Virgil. "He's safe."

"W-Wonderful!" said Brains. "Mr Ballard? Are you h-hurt in any way?"

"Only my pride," replied Ballard. He stepped out and looked round at his half-buried capsule. "But I'm guessing my journey is over." He hung his head sadly. "I came so far. My family and friends will be so disappointed if I can't finish."

Virgil walked around to inspect the capsule. "The capsule looks undamaged, sir," he said. "Do you know what caused you to come down?"

"The sandstorm ripped holes in the canopy and I lost the hot air I had in it. I expect it's ripped to shreds by now."

Alan, who had exited the Bulldozer-Pod to join them, then found the jet engine that provided the hot air round the back. "And the engine's clogged up with sand, too," he said.

Virgil found the half-buried canopy, still attached on the other side. He pulled it up and began to inspect it. "Only two tears in it, Mr Ballard," he said. "You know…I might have some material in Thunderbird 2 that could fix this up."

"And if we have anything to clean the engine of sand and a quick service, we could have you on your way again?" added Alan.

Ballard's eyes lit up. "Really?" he asked, sounding hopeful. "Could you really do that?"

"I don't see why not," replied Virgil. "I mean you're not in need of any urgent medical attention. We just needed to make sure you were alive." He paused, wondering whether to mention their delay having found the other mystery capsule. He decided not to.

"Well, what are we waiting for then?" asked Alan eagerly. "Let's get started!"

But Brains then spoke up, and not with good news. "If you're g-going to do this, you'd better do it very quickly."

"Why's that, Brains?" asked Virgil.

"Take a l-look to the East," Brains said simply.

The two brothers and Ballard looked in the direction of East. in the distance was a very large dusty brown cloud that stretched as far as could be seen in both directions.

"Oh, great…" said Virgil. "There's another sandstorm coming!"