John's least favourite part of any rescue was the time before it started. Occasionally minutes, usually hours, while Thunderbird One streaked across the Pacific and onwards, while Thunderbird Two roared behind as fast as it could, while the desperate people in need of rescue continued to call him. They were only making sure, needing reassurance, but behind the casual chat they were wondering where on earth International Rescue could be, why they were taking so long, and whether they were really coming. Very few ever asked the last three questions directly, but John knew they were there, behind the polite requests for updates.
Today was no different. He'd been calm and reassuring three times before Scott had reported that he was on final approach. Then there had been silence from him for five minutes or so, while he landed in the park next door to the burning skyscraper and set up Mobile Control, and then everything crackled into life.
"I don't think we can save this one, John. The fire's got too good a hold."
"I agree." He'd been watching local TV footage while he waited for Scott to arrive. In that time, the flames had spread all around the building and were now up to the fourteenth floor, smoke billowing from heat-shattered windows. Every so often, there was another crack of glass and a gout of flame from higher up. Local fire services were doing everything they could, but their equipment simply couldn't reach high enough for even the high pressure hoses to have any significant effect on the flames.
"I think Virgil needs to concentrate on the people on the roof," he said.
"Agreed. Can you find out numbers?"
"On it."
Modern cellphone technology made this so much simpler. John identified the nearest few masts, queried their databases, did some triangulation.
"Thirty-seven active cellphones up there, Scott."
"Understood. You coordinate that." With barely a breath in between, he started discussing the locations of the local emergency services with someone on the ground.
Not that thirty-seven phones meant thirty-seven people. But it did mean a lot more than twenty people - and, increasingly, it also meant less than a hundred. Which was fortunate, if Gordon and Alan were going to have to winch them off the roof.
He glanced at the output from the voice recognition software. Mostly they were calling loved ones, some reassuring, others, frankly, milking it for all it was worth. A couple were talking to local news stations. One enterprising soul was trying to sell his story as an exclusive to a glossy tabloid. And... oh crap. John hit the button to cut in on the call sitting in the local 911 operator's queue of multiple well-meaning people all reporting the same fire, even though there were fire and police and ambulance crews already there in their dozens.
"...please, can anybody hear me? I'm stuck, and nobody knows I'm here, and I'm on my own, and I'm scared and I don't know what -"
"International Rescue here," he said. "Tell me what your name is and where you are." She wasn't on the roof, that was clear from the phone mast data now he looked at it more closely.
"My name's Katie. Katie Smith. I'm on the seventeenth floor."
Way too close to the fire for comfort, and definitely his responsibility. The flames were at the fifteenth floor now. He needed to get her to the roof, where Thunderbird Two was now hovering, just starting to lower the rescue platform. John really couldn't blame Virgil for not wanting to set down on the building. It could be the last straw for the weakened structure.
"Okay, Katie. I want you to go to the stairwell - can you see the emergency signs pointing towards it?"
"I can't."
"They're green, with a man running. They should be lit. Look around."
"No, I... I can't go up stairs. I use a wheelchair. I know I should go to the emergency refuge but all the lights are out in there and nobody answered the emergency button and I had no phone signal in there. I'm not supposed to be up here at all but they dared me, and then the fire alarms went off and I knew not to get back in the elevator and I'm afraid to shut myself in the refuge..." She sounded very young and utterly terrified.
"I understand. Wait where you are."
"I don't want to die!"
"You're not going to die. I promise." It was said before he could stop himself. He never promised anything he couldn't deliver, the remnant of a heartbroken child's realisation that, although he'd been promised his mother was coming back, she wasn't. Not ever. Broken promises were lies. John didn't lie.
"Hang on, Katie," he said as reassuringly as he could. "I'll get someone to come for you." Then he muted his connection to her, and opened one to Gordon, who was manning the Thunderbird Two end of the winch and rescue platform.
"How's it going up there?"
"Thirty-five civilians loaded, ten to go." From his muffled voice, Gordon was wearing a breathing mask. The smoke must be thick even high in the air over the top of the tower. "Two more loads."
"About that. There's another civilian above the fire, five floors below you."
Gordon was too professional to swear in front of rescuees, but the sharp intake of breath was clear enough. "Tell them to get up here right now."
"It's a kid in a wheelchair."
"Understood." There was a brief pause, and the whine of Two's winch in the background. "Platform's on its way up. If you want to talk to Alan, now's a good time."
"For the next twenty seconds," said Alan.
"You were listening? Civilian in a wheelchair on the seventeenth floor - can you go down and get her?"
"As soon as the roof's clear."
He wasn't surprised that Alan had been listening in - he rather suspected Scott was, too, even while discussing safe distances and building stability with the local fire department. He himself listened all the time, to as many relevant communications as he could cope with, and watched a few more on voice recognition. Listening was fine. But you didn't distract someone who was dealing with multiple terrified civilians twenty-two floors up on the roof of a building which wasn't too far from collapse in thick smoke.
If there was thick smoke on the roof, how was Katie doing five floors below?
"Talk to me, Katie," he said, reopening the channel.
"It's getting hot in here. And my phone's nearly dead." There was desperate fear in her voice.
"Someone's coming for you, any minute now. Are you somewhere visible?"
"Yes."
"Stay there. Oh, and send me some pictures. One facing each way."
"I'm on two per cent battery."
"Do it anyway. Alan will be with you very soon."
"Okay..."
There was silence, and then three beeps, spaced enough that he could imagine her taking each picture, turning her chair round, taking the next...
Three. Not four.
"Katie?"
"This phone is unavailable. You have been redirected to voicemail. Please leave a message -"
John swore, only stopping when another comms light flashed.
"Stairwell's an inferno. I can't get down there."
He stared uselessly at the console. "I promised," he said dully. And now she's going to sit there and die knowing I lied to her.
"You know exactly where she is? And there's no fire there yet?"
John looked at the three photos Katie had sent before her phone died. Flames licking at the windows, but nothing inside the room. And clear, identifiable external views in every direction, together with a GPS stamp.
"Give me two minutes," he said. "I can get you her exact location. You have something in mind?"
"Something I've always wanted to try for real." John could hear the grin in Alan's voice.
"You're nuts," Gordon said, but he carried on checking Alan's equipment, and that was what mattered. Cable harness, quick release attachment, glass gun, and Brains' special backpack. "Good to go, Virgil."
"FAB," came over the radio, and Two eased out over the chasm between the buildings. "Good luck, Alan. Take care."
"I always do," he said. And he did. Mostly. As much care as was practical.
"What's going on up there?" That was Scott, who never liked other people making tactical decisions even when he'd specifically authorised them to do so. Alan held his breath.
"One more to get out. Can you have the firecrews suppress the flames on the east wall as much as possible?"
"On it."
Thank you, Virgil. Alan did his own final checks. "Ready," he said. "Gordon, I'm going to need most of the cable length."
"Understood. Good luck."
"See you at the bottom." He let the cable take his weight and stepped out of the hatch, gun in one hand, steadying himself against the cable with the other. The first ten feet were always reeled out fast, to minimise the chances of a random updraft slamming him against the edges of the hatch while he was vulnerable.
Two was thirty feet above him in a matter of seconds. Alan adored flying with all his heart, but even so, dangling underneath a giant plane wasn't his favourite activity. Even less so when he let himself notice that it was three hundred feet or more straight down to the street, visible occasionally through billows of black smoke. He'd have liked not to look down, but that wasn't an option. He needed to identify the correct window.
"Sixty feet of cable, Gordon," he said. "Nice and slow."
"You got it."
He couldn't hear the winch from down here, but he could feel the vibration through the cable, and he was dropping smoothly past the windows, central between the two buildings. Whatever Brains had done to the winch to control twisting was working like a dream. He was facing exactly the way he wanted to. Three floors down. Four. Nearly there... and the vibration stopped.
"Another five feet," he said.
More slowly this time, he dropped until he was at eye level with the centre of the windows on the seventeenth floor. Perfect.
"Okay, Virgil," he said. "Swing me."
This was the risky bit - or, at least the bit which simply might not work, if Virgil couldn't get him close enough to the windows, if the pendulum motion wasn't in exactly the right direction, or just if his timing wasn't good enough to end up inside the building. Alan took a deep, steadying breath and braced himself as well as he could while swinging on a hundred feet of steel cable, both hands locked on the glass gun, both eyes focused on the exact point he wanted to hit.
The cable jerked, pulling him away from the window, and he began to swing. Perfect direction, perfect height, and whatever Virgil was doing was going to land him exactly where he needed to be. Alan gathered himself, feet forwards as he shot towards the vast sheet of structural laminated glass, specially designed not to break if someone ran into it. Ten feet is optimal, he told himself. Don't fire too soon. Don't fire too late.
He reached the top of the backswing, reversed direction, and this time he was approaching the other window at a frightening speed. Either he got it right or it was going to hurt a lot. Exhale slowly, and let your instincts take over. Ready...now!
He was only vaguely aware of firing the gun. Never felt his feet hit the weakened window at all. One moment he was swinging in space, the next he was inside and fumbling desperately for the quick release before a hundred feet of swinging cable could drag him back out. And then the cable was gone and he was crouching on the floor, looking up at the kid in a wheelchair he'd been told to expect. A little girl, African American, dressed in a T-shirt and leggings, hair in perfect cornrows ending in beaded braids.
"Katie Smith, I presume?" he said.
She stared at him and burst into tears.
"Let's get you out of here." He glanced around as he spoke. Smoke wafted up at the edges of the room, and it was hot in here. Not a moment to waste.
"Can you walk at all? Can you hold on?" Not at all politically correct to ask, but he needed to know.
She flushed. "No. I can move, but..."
"No strength? That's okay. Put your arms round my neck and link your hands together, then just stay still and quiet." He lifted her out of the chair easily - she couldn't be more than twelve, and a short, skinny twelve at that.
"Alan, get out now." That was Scott, completely calm, and the hair stood up on the back of Alan's neck. That flat no-argument tone was his big brother's version of screaming panic.
He glanced up, fastening the first set of crossing straps which would hold Katie against him. There were flames inside the room now, licking up the walls on either side. As he watched, there was a deep rumbling crash. More flames, closer to the centre of the room, and part of the floor disappeared into a hellish void below. Two straps would have to be enough, and she'd have to manage without the secondary breathing mask or the fire retardant blanket.
"Coming out," he said for the people listening to the comms. For Katie, he added, "You might want to close your eyes." Heck, he wanted to close his eyes. He had practiced this a fair few times, but they had been from the peak of Tracy Island in good weather, not through a shattered window veiled in black smoke into a gusty canyon between skyscrapers.
No time to lose, or to attach the static line which would have opened the canopy faster than the basic ripcord method. There was another crash behind him and the whoosh of fire taking hold far too close for comfort. Alan settled the weight of the girl clinging to him, took two long strides towards the window, another two accelerating hard, and leapt out as far as he could, trying to get away from the blazing building and as close to the middle of the street as possible.
His first thought was how strong the wind was - it hadn't felt nearly this bad attached to a good solid cable. The second was that the ground was getting closer very, very fast. No time to wait for the optimum position. He yanked the ripcord.
Nothing. And then a mighty jolt as the canopy snapped open and swung him wildly towards the building on the other side of the street. Alan swore silently, grappling with the control lines. Their flight stabilised, and another gust tossed them back towards the flaming skyscraper. He controlled that too, and managed to centre them on the gap between the buildings. He was vaguely aware that Katie was whimpering. Not screaming, though. Good girl.
"Scott, I need a landing site!" he shouted.
"Straight down the street and look right. You'll see One. Nice big park, plenty of space." Scott's voice in his ear was utterly calm, and Alan managed to steady himself a bit, even if their flight was still wild. Now that he thought about it, there was something in the back of his mind about strong winds at the base of skyscrapers. Oh well. It wasn't as if he'd had a choice, even if he had remembered.
Over the junction and yes, there was an expanse of green, and One's red nosecone, and metal railings closer to him. Much better to land on than tarmac. Just stay high enough to clear the fence... and avoid the tree on the right, and another on the left... and all that was ahead of him was flat and green. He'd have liked a hundred feet of height to kill his forward speed. He had twenty. He hit the ground hard and running, and just about remembered to fall sideways rather than forwards to protect the girl clinging to his neck.
The next thing he was aware of was someone detaching straps and lifting the weight off him, and then Scott's voice.
"Alan, talk to me."
"I'm okay," he managed. He opened his eyes, squinting in the brightness - someone had taken his visor and breathing mask off, though he hadn't felt them do it. A hundred yards or so away, the skyscraper was now wreathed in flame from ground to roof, smoke billowing hundreds of feet above it. "Is Katie okay?"
"She's fine," said Scott, peering into his eyes. "I'd ask what that last thing you remember is, but since you know the name of the girl you rescued..."
"I remember landing," he said. Standard concussion question: how much time are you missing? It couldn't be more than a few seconds, but if it was, Scott would know.
"Good." Scott offered him a hand, and he pulled himself to his feet. There was a cheer from behind him. Alan turned round to find he had a substantial audience. He waved in appreciation, and cameras clicked. There would be a lot of frustration when they came to look at the pictures. Blurry, out-of focus, corrupted file formats, somehow only a few pixels wide instead of high resolution... Brains considered it a personal challenge to keep their camera-avoidance technology one step ahead of the cameras. Alan wasn't worried about featuring on the front page of tomorrow's papers, or on anyone's Facebook account.
There was a familiar engine roar, and the crowd turned away from him in unison. Thunderbird Two descended smoothly, touched down without a jolt. The side door opened, and Gordon stepped out at the head of the group of rescuees from the roof. There was much milling, and reuniting of families, and among the confusion of congratulations and questions of varying degrees of daftness someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was a man in a paramedic's uniform.
"The little girl who you rescued... she'd like to thank you in person, if you wouldn't mind."
"No problem," Alan said, handing back the last autograph book (today he was signing himself "Fred Flintstone") and followed the man to a hastily roped-off area alongside an ambulance. Katie sat on the edge of a stretcher, soot-stained, hairs standing out all over from her tight cornrow braids, and grinning widely.
"That was amazing," she said. "You were amazing. Thank you so much - you and your friend on the phone. I thought I was going to die up there... and then he promised someone was coming, and I knew he meant it. Tell him for me? Please?"
Alan just nodded. "I'll do that," he said.
Walking back to Thunderbird Two, he reopened his comms channel. "John? Did you hear that? Apparently someone else feels the same way you do about promises."
"I heard," John said. "Thanks for keeping that one for me."
"Promises should be kept," Alan said, and ducked under the rope cordon surrounding Thunderbird Two. Job done.
