If you'd asked him eighteen months ago where he thought he'd be right now, he'd probably have said somewhere near a really good engineering school where he'd be doing research work and teaching, his beautiful wife in his bed every night and maybe even a newborn baby in his arms.

Things hadn't quite turned out that way, though.

Virgil sighed as he ran a hand through his hair and leaned forward onto the balcony railing. He still thought of her all the time. He couldn't help it. Couldn't help wondering what she'd done after the day he'd gone to her apartment to tell her he was leaving. He couldn't tell her why. He was breaking the heart of the woman he loved and he couldn't even tell her why.

He slammed the meat of his palm down on the railing and squeezed his eyes closed. All he could think about was how her eyes had looked up close, how her skin had smelled and tasted. How she could match wits with him better than even Scott. How she'd fight him on something and then turn around and make a concession he never thought she'd make.

The yin to his yang. The push to his pull.

The love of his life.

Not that he regretted being part of International Rescue. He loved his family being all together again, and filled his non-rescue hours with work he enjoyed. Inventing new machinery, using amazing technology, developing new forms of inter-vehicle and underground-to-surface communication methods with John. Or discovering different ways of fueling engines with Brains. Working with Scott on designs for aircraft. Maintaining and piloting the most beautiful machine he'd ever laid eyes on in Thunderbird Two. Saving lives. Being home.

And yet a part of him was missing. A part that none of his new activities, none of the times spent bantering with or just hanging out with his brothers, could fill. An empty space he'd hoped would close in time.

It hadn't yet.

He felt Scott behind him before his brother's hand found his shoulder and squeezed. Scott leaned on the railing in a perfect imitation of Virgil's posture, looked at him for a moment, then gazed out at the South Pacific.

The water sparkled in the tropical sun. The light breeze ruffled their hair.

Scott sighed.

He was the only one who knew how serious Virgil had been about Morgan. Long, blond hair, large eyes that were almost violet; a color Virgil had never been able to match on his painter's palette no matter how many times he'd tried. Scott had even been introduced to her once when he'd come to visit Virg at the Denver School of Advanced Technology where he and Morgan met in the Engineering Program.

Colorado was butt-cold a lot of the time, but Virg and Morgan had always found ways to keep each other warm. Now here on a tropical island, sometimes Virgil felt colder than he ever had in Denver.

Scott squeezed his brother's bicep, met his eyes, and seemed to be apologizing with the look he gave him. Then he walked away, leaving Virgil alone with his thoughts.

A place Virgil really didn't like to be anymore.

The blaring of the klaxon had him out of bed and on his feet in a hot second, hair sticking up every which way, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He glanced at the chronometer embedded in the wall and groaned when he realized he'd only been asleep for four-and-a-half hours.

He slept in his underwear, so he peeled them off and pulled a fresh pair out of his dresser drawer. Managing to get them on standing up was no small feat for a guy who equated mornings (or middles-of-the-night) with Hell.

Pants and socks, flight suit and boots were next, and he was out of his suite door still zipping the suit up over his chest when he realized he'd forgotten a shirt. Oh, well. He had a stash on Two he could dig into once she was in the air.

He and Gordon hit the elevator at the same time. Alan and Tin-Tin (together, huh? Alan, you dog...) raced up next and soon all four of them were in the office where their father waited behind his desk, the same deadly serious look on his face he always had when they got a call-out.

John looked out at them from his portrait on the wall. Scott was already backed up to his rotating wall, hands on the light fixtures. Virgil double-timed it to his painting as he heard their father order Alan and Gordon to the passenger elevator, and Tin-Tin to the lab to help Brains with structural blueprints.

They were going to Hong Kong, was the last thing Virgil heard before he was down the chute, the noise of the office disappearing and leaving only the smooth whisper of his slide filling his ears.

Normally he loved the ride he got to take to Thunderbird Two. At this very moment, however, all he really wanted to do was go back to sleep. So when the slide deposited him into Two's cockpit, he sort of jolted awake, then got mad at himself for having dozed enough to be jolted at all when he was headed out on a rescue.

The automatic coffee maker, triggered to start as soon as he'd activated the chute, was sending eye-opening aromas throughout the cockpit and Virgil breathed in deeply as he brought his 'bird to life. He could hardly wait for that cup of joe he knew was waiting for him, but first things first.

Alan and Gordon got strapped in behind him. He lowered two like a nesting bird over her pod. Just like that, International Rescue was going out again, all thoughts of personal issues, of sleep, of anything other than saving lives, put out of their minds.

"Estimated time of arrival one-point-six hours, Scott," Virgil reported as Two taxied out of her hangar onto the tarmac.

"F.A.B., Virgil. I should be there in about thirty-two minutes. I got the brief from John. Seems the new bridge between China and Hong Kong that was finally finished six months ago has started crumbling on the Hong Kong side."

That woke Virgil right up. "You're kidding! Ten years of delay over the material composition, the World Safety Council finally gives it the green light with Tracy Engineering's redesign, and now this? How the hell, Scott?"

"That's what I'd like to know."

Virgil could not believe this. He'd been part of the team who'd looked at the specs at the World Safety Council's request. He and...he and Morgan both had, along with five of his father's top engineering resources. Together they'd come up with the perfect, foolproof design for solidifying the ambitious project's pilings and segments between suspension towers.

There was no way the bridge could have started crumbling, not one part of it. Of that, Virgil was certain.

"Officials in Hong Kong think it's more the land that the bridge is attached to that's causing the problem," John reported.

"They were supposed to shore that up with quadritanium-reinforced concrete," Virgil said as he set the auto-pilot on Two and rose from his seat. "Dad's team participated in the final inspection eight months ago. If the materials hadn't been what was recommended, wouldn't they have noted it in their report?"

"Not if the exterior was dummied up with lacquer to make it look like quadritanium," Jeff interjected from back home.

"I'm trying to get hold of Dalum Rifkin as we speak," John replied. Virgil nodded his approval. As the head of Tracy Engineering's Structural Integrity Unit, Rifkin should be able to give them some answers here.

"They'd better be damn good ones," he muttered as he reached into one of the narrow lockers behind where Gordon was sitting and pulled out a shirt. He made short work of unzipping his flight suit and getting it on, thanking every god in existence for the millionth time they'd switched to these more practical uniforms after Scott had nearly lost an arm during a rescue thanks to those sashes his grandma had thought were so grand.

Women.

Women, indeed. Morgan and Virgil's work on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge had been the last thing they'd done together professionally before Jeff had approached Virgil with his offer of International Rescue. Not two weeks after the conclusion of Tracy Engineering's involvement in the bridge redesign, Virgil was standing in front of Morgan's apartment door with his hand raised, wanting to do anything but what he was about to.

He ran that same hand through his hair now, realized it was still sticking up everywhere and headed for the small bathroom in the back of Two's cockpit. He had to get himself presentable, shake off the last residues of sleep and put Morgan out of his goddamn mind, because he could not have personal problems affecting him when lives were at stake.

"I just got confirmation that there are an estimated four hundred people unaccounted for. The first two segments of the bridge fell away when the anchors to land lost their hold," John reported.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Virgil said as he wetted his hair down, ran a comb through it and quickly blew it dry.

"You done yet, there, Princess?" called Gordon from the cockpit.

"Shut up," Virgil groused as he emerged from the bathroom.

"Gordo, he hasn't had his coffee yet," Alan reminded him.

"Oh, yeah."

Virgil rolled his eyes, then dutifully reached for the double-sized traveling mug that was already filled with coffee made just the way he liked it. Plenty of cream, no sugar and hot as hell. The first sip burned his tongue. The second slid down the hatch nice and easy.

"I'm on scene," came Scott through the video feed from Thunderbird One. "Give me twenty minutes and I'll have a plan of action. Gordon, I'm pretty sure Four's going to get a workout on this one with all the vehicles that went into the Zhujiang River Estuary."

"I figured," Gordon said with a nod as he zipped up his flight suit and put his hat on his head. "I'll go back and get her ready, guys."

"ETA, Virgil."

"Forty-four minutes, Scott, and I'm cranking it at four thousand mph."

"All right. I've just landed. Be back with you in twenty."

"F.A.B."

Now all Virgil could do was sit and let Two get them close, then he'd take over piloting duties, probably drop Pod Four in the estuary and then have to just hover, what with the lack of anyplace to land in the immediate vicinity of the bridge. He could probably set down at the airport, but getting from there back to the danger zone would be a nightmare at best.

But he didn't have to worry about all that. Figuring out who went where and how the action was going to go down was Scott's job. And thank God, because Virgil wouldn't have wanted to be in his shoes on this one. Or on any one, for that matter.

Virgil scowled mightily as he took in the live video feed Scott was sending his way of the area where the bridge was anchored to Hong Kong Island. As he'd figured, he had to remain hovering nearby in Thunderbird Two after dropping Pod Four into the water so Gordon could go after survivors. Alan had gone with him.

Now Scott was using International Rescue's version of a steadicam to show the damage to his brother. "John managed to find three of the five engineers that worked on this with you, but he can't raise the other two, and he can't find Morgan. You, uh...wouldn't know how to contact her, would you, Virg?"

Virgil's spine stiffened. "No."

"Well, Brett Richards, Chaz Donnelly and Susan Chen are on their way from New York. In the meantime, I'm not sure how much you can tell from this feed."

"Between that, the telemetry John's sending me from Five and what I'm picking up from Two's scanners, I can tell enough to know they didn't use the quadritanium."

"What?" Scott asked in disbelief, the steadicam lowering to his side.

"Grab one of the smaller pieces, Scott. I need it to be tested."

"How do you perform a quadritanium test?" he asked. Virg could tell by the movement of the picture on his screen that Scott was picking his way over some of the crumbled metal and concrete. Then he stopped, seemed to bend down, and held a palm-sized piece of the silver metal in front of the camera lens.

"Perfect," Virgil said.

"I, uh, can walk you through a simple preliminary test, ah, Scott," Brains offered from Tracy Island.

"All right, just tell me what I need," Scott replied. "I'll head back to Mobile Control."

But Virgil knew it wasn't quadritanium, even without the test. Because there was no way in hell that metal, invented by Brains and the strongest known material on the face of the Earth, could've broken into pieces. Their tests on Tracy Island and in the remote northern regions of Western Australia had proven that even International Rescue's most powerful explosives did little more than leave scorch marks on a one-inch-thick slice of the stuff.

He doubted it could even have been titanium. Not with the kind of damage he'd seen over the feed. There was no way.

"John," Virgil said as he muted the channel Scott and Brains were going through the test on.

"I'm here."

"Find out who's at the helm of Johnson and DeBarge Metals these days. Morgan got Milton DeBarge's personal guarantee that he'd use our quadritanium formula only for this bridge's materials, and then he was supposed to get first dibs on it as soon as Brains got it patented. I want to know what that company's up to, what the hell it is they sent for this construction."

"You're saying they didn't send quadritanium."

"You're goddamn right they didn't. And there's going to be hell to pay."

"No kidding. If from no one else than Dad," John replied. "I'll get back to you quick as I can. I'm still trying to get the other two engineers that were on that team with you from Tracy Engineering, and I haven't been able to locate Dalum Rifkin. You told Scott you don't know how to contact Morgan?"

"That's right," Virgil replied, jaw setting.

"Help me out here, Virg. Don't make me jump through hoops to get her dad's location out of Tracy Engineering. Don't he and her mom run a vineyard in California or something?"

Virgil sighed. "Perfezione."

"Thanks."

Virgil remembered Morgan's parents well. He'd once spent a week at their place in Central California. They'd retired early from their jobs in the Silicon Valley and had purchased a small vineyard where to this day, as far as Virgil knew, they continued to make their signature Perfezione red and white wines.

They'd probably be in their mid-sixties now, he mused. Both highly intelligent, George and Lucia Diamont were always great fun to talk with, knowing as much as they did about technology. He remembered staying up long into the night several times on that visit, the four of them chatting about the latest feats of engineering, or how new technology could be utilized to strengthen current techniques. George had even shown Virgil a new computer simulation he was working on that helped test the tensile strength of construction materials simply by inputting measurements taken on-site.

It was technology Tracy Engineering later embraced once George had patented it, and were actively using in the International Rescue field to determine structural integrity prior to entering buildings of questionable solidity. It had saved Virgil's bacon twice already. Each time, it had filled his mind with thoughts of his beautiful former girlfriend. Each time it had left his heart aching.

And now this.

He actually hoped John would be able to find her. More than anything, he knew Morgan would want to know something had gone so wrong with this project. She'd want to know what happened as badly as he did, and she'd be the first person on-site to help investigate the causality.

And if Virgil came in as a civilian to assist in the investigation, he'd have to see her again. Work with her again. After ditching her so abruptly, he wasn't sure how she'd take that.

Hell, he wasn't sure how he'd take it.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

"Virgil?"

"Here, John."

"Hang on, guys," Scott broke through the channel. "Brains walked me through the test. You were right, Virg. This isn't even close to quadritanium. It's just steel. Plain old ordinary steel."

"Fuck!" Virgil seethed, not caring who could hear him back on the island.

"I also found out that Milton DeBarge was killed one month before Johnson and DeBarge started shipping to the Chinese construction companies," John chimed in.

"Killed?" Virgil repeated. "How?"

"I spoke with his widow, Lisa. She said he died in a small plane crash. The pilot and copilot died, too. Only his business partner, Colin Johnson, and Colin's admin Theresa survived. They were apparently coming back from a conference in Cincinnati. They went down in Tuscarora State Forest in Pennsylvania on their way back to New York. Mechanical problems, according to the FAA and NTSB's joint report."

"Jesus H," Virgil said. "I had no idea. How the hell did I not hear that through the alumni channels?"

"Virgil, I need you to pick up Pod Four, and then I want Gordon to winch you and Al down onto the bridge between the third and fourth set of towers. I'll need your expertise down there where you can get your eyes on the deck."

"Got it," Virgil replied.

"Alan, you'll be getting people off that bridge using the Bus Cage, Gordon will run the winch up to the pod. Make sure you put up the security wall to keep them away from Four."

"F.A.B., Scott. There aren't any more survivors down here anyway, so there's no point in us remaining in the water," Gordon replied.

"Understood," Alan chimed in.

"I'll be in position in..." Virgil checked his instrument panel, "one minute, forty-two seconds."

"F.A.B.," Gordon replied. "It'll take me three to nest the 'Bird."

"Got it," Virgil acknowledged.

"All right, when you come in, hover directly over the deck at the exact midpoint of the first standing section. If those girders are only made of steel, the strain on them from the first two segments collapsing is going to be bad."

"That's not all, Scott. If they didn't use the quadritanium for the three-dimensional grid that sits between the moisture barrier and the pavement, you could be looking at complete structural degradation. How's the evac going in the opposite direction?"

"It's another twelve miles until the opposite end meets mainland Hong Kong. We've had both Hong Kong and Chinese authorities close all parts of the bridge. They're getting people off it now, but it's slow going."

"And the people closest to the Hong Kong side will be the last ones to get anywhere," Alan added.

"John, were you able to get hold of Colin Johnson?"

"No, Virgil. In fact, Lisa DeBarge told me Johnson and DeBarge went out of business not two months after the final shipment they made here to Hong Kong. She got a settlement from her husband's life insurance company for his death, but never got the check Johnson promised her for buying DeBarge's half of the company from her two weeks after his death."

"That sonofabitch," Virgil breathed. "He took the money China and Hong Kong paid for quadritanium, manufactured the girders and 3D grid out of steel, and took off with the profits!"

"I've been listening in, boys," Jeff's voice wafted through the airwaves to them all. Boy, did he sound pissed. Virgil couldn't blame him. Integrity was Number One for Jeff Tracy in every business dealing, and shit like this didn't sit well with him. With any of them. "I'm going to start on the Johnson angle from my end to keep you freed up for the rescue."

"F.A.B.," Scott replied.

"We're secure in Pod Four," Gordon reported. "Closing hatch now."

"F.A.B., starting pickup routine," Virgil replied.

Thunderbird Two settled over her pod, her four VTOL jets boiling the sea beneath them as the gigantic 'bird hovered mere inches above it. The clamps clicked into place and Virgil rose into the air, making his way to the segment of bridge Scott needed them at.

"All right, we're in place," he reported as Gordon emerged from the rear of the cockpit. From the pod side, Alan closed the door between it and the cockpit as Gordon switched places with his older brother in the pilot's chair.

"Auto-hover should hold, there's no wind to speak of," Virgil advised.

Gordon nodded. "Got it. Alan, let me know when you've got the privacy wall in place and are ready with the Bus Cage."

"F.A.B."

Gordon watched as his brother pulled a few items out of one of the slim lockers behind him. "All right, I'm taking you down through the nose, I'm guessing."

"Yep," Virgil nodded, stepping into the harness he'd retrieved and looping the sides of it over his shoulders. Just as he was securing the final buckle at the three-way junction that rested just beneath his breastbone, John's voice came through his communicator.

"One more thing I need to tell you," he said as Virg descended the ladder from the floor of the cockpit into the hollow of his 'bird's nose.

"Go for it."

"I got hold of Mr. and Mrs. Diamont."

His hand froze on the handle of the trap door. He swallowed and latched it before raising his watch so he could see John's face. "And?"

"Virg..." John sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Their daughter went missing two months after you...moved Tracy Island."

Heart attack. He felt like he was having a heart attack. "What do you mean, missing?"

"She took a job overseas. To get away from..."

Virgil frowned at his brother's uncharacteristic hesitation. "Spit it out, John, I've got to get down to that deck!"

He saw John morph back into completely businesslike and steeled himself. "Mrs. Diamont said her daughter left Colorado to get away from heartbreak, that she took a job overseas at a Fortune 500 company not two weeks after."

Virgil didn't have to ask after what.

"Apparently she disappeared seven weeks later. Authorities haven't been able to find her. And Virgil...she was there."

Virgil felt his blood run cold. "Where?"

"There in Hong Kong. It was Jardine Engineering Corporation she'd taken the job with."

"Here?" Virg breathed in disbelief.

John nodded. "That's not all. After all this time, with the authorities not getting any leads as to Morgan's whereabouts, the Diamonts spent a good portion of their savings and came here to look for their daughter themselves."

"You mean they moved here?"

"Not permanently, no. But Mrs. Diamont indicated they weren't leaving unless and until they found Morgan. Virgil...they're on the bridge. They're on the goddamn bridge."

For a moment, Virgil honest to God thought he was going to black out from shock.

Alan had taken six loads of people from the segment of the bridge Two was hovering over up to Pod 4 in the Bus Cage. The Cage held twenty adult-sized individuals comfortably and twenty-six in a pinch, including the rescuer, and with the wall up in Pod Four to protect Thunderbird Four from unwanted prying, their holding area had reached capacity.

"Gordon," Scott said from Mobile Control, "you're cleared to land southwest of Pak Mong; there's an open area just big enough for you alongside the North Lantau Highway. Emergency crews are standing by to receive the passengers."

"F.A.B., Scott," Virgil heard Gordon reply. He looked up to watch his 'bird swing around and head for the coordinates he knew Scott had already fed remotely to her nav system, then looked back down over the edge of the bridge segment, where it'd been torn away as the first two segments fell into the water below.

He could tell he was looking at steel in the way the metal had twisted and shorn completely off. It disgusted him, made his gut churn to think of how many people on the packed bridge had met their deaths because of Colin Johnson's greed. He couldn't wait to get his hands on the bastard.

His inspection of the joint between Segment Three and Segment Four – as best as he could do with minimal equipment and access to it, anyway – revealed several large cracks in the road. They told him Segment Three wasn't long for this world, along with the now-abandoned vehicles sitting atop her.

"How's it looking, Virgil?"

"Segment Three's going to go," Virgil said. There was a loud crack and his eyes widened. He moved quickly onto Segment Four, running between more empty vehicles until he was almost to the mid-section. "I'd say any time now."

"Shit," Scott breathed. "Look, I need to know if there's any way to stop this domino effect. At the rate the authorities are evacuating from the mainland side and the rate Two's pulling people off nearer the island side, I need to know we're not going to see the entire structure go down in a handful of seconds."

"Hang on, let me get to the joint between Segments Four and Five."

"John," Scott said through the wide-open IR channel, "was Morgan's mother able to tell you where on the bridge she and her husband were?"

"No, Scott, but she said she could see Hong Kong Island pretty well. They'd just gotten on the bridge about ten minutes before it started to fall from the island side."

"That would probably put them around Segment Ten, is my guess," Virgil chimed in.

"John, I want you to call her back," Scott ordered.

"And tell her what?"

"Get her to gather people as close to the center of the deck on her segment as possible, and have her send someone to the segments either side of her to do the same."

"Weight distribution," Virgil nodded as he reached the next joint he wanted to check, "good thinking."

"Yes, the less stress near the joints, the better the chances they won't break," Scott confirmed. "You got eyes on that next joint, Virg?"

"Yeah. I'm noting at least three hairline fractures, not much else. But if Segment Three goes down, it'll yank on Four but good."

"Okay, Two's on her way back. Gordon said they were having some trouble with a few of the passengers wanting to return to the bridge to find their loved ones."

"I'm not surprised. This is a bitch of a place to be stuck," Virgil replied as he crossed onto Segment Four. "I see a few people on the far end of this segment. I'll group them onto Five for you, Gordon."

"F.A.B., Virgil, we'll start there."

"I got hold of Mrs. Diamont," John reported. "She said she could see Thunderbird Two earlier, that it was probably seven or eight segments southwest of where she is."

"All right, that puts the Diamonts somewhere between Segments Ten and Thirteen, I'd guess," Scott replied.

"She's gathering everyone in the center of the segment and has already sent people left and right to spread the word," John added. "How far from the island are the mainland evacuees?"

"Let me see," Scott said, voice trailing off. "According to the Chinese authorities I've been speaking with, everyone from Segment Fifteen all the way to the mainland had been running toward the mainland, so Gordon, you've got nothing to worry about beyond Fifteen."

"Understood. I'm over Segment Five now. Virgil has about a dozen people gathered here."

"Shit, the people from Six are running this way," Virgil growled. "Damn panicky victims."

"Can you get them to go back to their own segment?" Scott asked.

"Going to try," Virgil replied.

This was the part of rescues he hated the most, when people got into blind panics, started acting like crazed mobs, or...and he was hoping this wouldn't happen...were willing to hurt their rescuers because they thought they knew better than the expert trying to help them.

And then there were the Diamonts, and what they'd said about Morgan. Missing almost the entire time Virgil had been with International Rescue.

He forced the fear and panic deep down inside as he came upon the first scared victim running his way.

One hour later found Virgil all the way to Segment Twelve, helping corral people until Thunderbird Two could get overhead to clear them off. Segments Three and Four had already crumbled into the sea, and using the remote hover camera to have a look at Segment Five via his watch, he was estimating it wouldn't be long before that one went down, too.

Which could bring everything else down.

Virgil went to the other side of a large delivery truck so he could hide from the group of victims that Alan was currently herding into the Bus Cage. "Scott, I'm getting a little too close to the Diamonts for comfort. If they see me, they'll know exactly who I am and our secret will be out."

"I know, Virg, trust me. I've been talking to Dad about it. Do they know what Alan looks like, or Gordon?"

"I never showed them pictures of anyone in the family, but that's not to say they wouldn't have researched me, or all of us, on their own. Morgan and her folks know you, of course, and Morgan knew what the rest of you looked like, especially Alan. She followed his racing a little when we were together."

"Okay, I think we'll just keep going with Alan manning the Cage and Gordon flying, but you need to watch yourself, Virg, until Alan confirms he's got them on-board. John sent him photographs via communicator, so he's got his eyes open for them."

"F.A.B.," Virgil replied, and Scott's face winked out.

He crept along behind a row of vehicles, staying out of sight of the victims waiting to be loaded into the Bus Cage but watching carefully through the car windows to be sure Alan didn't need his help. Above all, if Al was in danger for any reason, or the lives of any of the stranded people were at stake, he would assist, in spite of the fact that it might out their identities.

Hopefully, even if the Diamonts did accidentally catch a glimpse of him, things would be blurry enough later on that they wouldn't be able to be sure who or what they'd seen, as often happened in the aftermath of a frightening situation.

Hopefully.

Twenty minutes later, and three more deck segments of the bridge had fallen away, the tall, white suspension towers and cables that ran from one tower to another, falling into the water with them. Virgil was monitoring each progressive segment as Alan and Gordon worked feverishly to evacuate people from the final sections. They'd reached capacity in the Bus Cage with thirty-one people left on Segment Fifteen.

Beyond that, Scott's mobile camera had confirmed foot-by-foot that there weren't any other visible victims in any of the vehicles or anywhere on the bridge until it got closer to mainland Hong Kong, where there were still five segments full of people practically trampling each other to get to solid land. But the local authorities had to cope with that, because Scott's team had their hands full.

"There are still six good segments between what's fallen and Number Fifteen," Scott told Virgil when he stopped on Segment Fourteen to assess the joint between it and Thirteen. "Alan still hasn't seen the Diamonts, so we've got to assume they're in the last group."

"No need to assume," John broke in. "I just spoke with Mrs. Diamont again and she's definitely in that final group. She's helping keep a couple of the kids from panicking, and her husband had to knock a guy out when he tried to jump over the side."

Virgil couldn't help but laugh. "George was a pretty big guy last time I saw him," he said.

"Gordon, once you've dropped this most recent group of people off, when you come back for the last ones, wait until Alan's got them all in the pod, then winch the harness down to Virgil and bring him up through the nose. It'll keep him away from the Diamonts."

"F.A.B., Scott. We have a little problem, though, going to be delayed here."

"What problem?" Scott asked, voice clipped.

"While Al was getting this group out of the pod, one jackass pulled a gun."

"What?" both Scott and Virgil barked.

"It's okay, Alan wrestled it away from him, but now the local police have corralled him for a statement and they're giving him the usual shit about not providing a name for the report."

"I've been monitoring, boys," came Jeff's voice through the airwaves. "I'll get on with them. Is it the Hong Kong locals?"

"Yes, sir," Gordon nodded.

"Alan wrestled the gun away?" Scott asked.

"Yeah, I saw the whole thing through the external camera. Don't worry, Scott, he came up from behind, he wasn't in any danger of being shot."

They all heard Scott sigh and knew Alan was probably going to get a talking-to for that one. Yes, they were meant to save lives, and okay, maybe Alan hadn't really been in danger when he disarmed the man. But they weren't cops, they were rescue personnel, and getting involved in crap like that put them all at risk – for precisely the reason Alan was now facing.

"Hey, guys, sorry about the delay, I'm back in the pod," Alan said.

"What'd you tell them?"

"My full name, date of birth and social security number," Alan said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "I told them unless they wanted more people to die they needed to stop giving me the third degree because they wouldn't be able to torture my identity out of me."

"We'll deal with this later," Scott said, not at all amused. "Gordon, get back over to that last group of people. Once they're off, International Rescue is finished with our job."

"I'd kind of like to hang around to work with the engineers from Tracy Engineering," Virgil said.

"I figured you would. Once we're through, we'll leave you behind to deal with that if you want."

"Thanks, Scott. Any problems with that, Dad?"

"None at all. I want to know exactly who was involved in this scam, and how they managed to pass off steel as quadritanium."

"Any word on the Colin Johnson front?" John asked.

"He's disappeared off the face of the Earth," Jeff replied. "Which is why Penny is now on the case."

"Ohhh, I don't envy Johnson when she gets her hands on him," Gordon stated with a chuckle.

"Mr. Tracy, boys?"

"Tin-Tin?" Scott said. "What's up?"

"Brains and I have been looking at the bridge designs. We managed to get into contact with Dalum Rifkin thanks to your father, and sent the schematics to him. Something looks off to him. Way off."

"What's looking off?" Virgil asked as he watched Thunderbird Two approach the bridge.

"Well, according to Mr. Rifkin, the design that was in place when Tracy Engineering helmed the investigation that you were part of, Virgil, called for the use of Double Gusset joints."

"Of course, they have to use those whenever tension is involved in keeping a bridge stable. This design is all about using tension to counter-balance the sheer length of it, and the segments were precisely sized to ensure maximum torque between the pillars, cables and deck."

"The problem, Virgil, is that the schematics Brains and I are working with, the ones we obtained from the Chinese government as being the official blueprints for that bridge, show that not only were no Double Gusset joints used, they didn't even use singles!"

"What?" Virgil breathed, eyes widening in disbelief. "Well, what the hell did they use?"

"Notched joints, end joints and lap joints in varying combinations."

"Oh, my God," Virgil said.

"Okay, for those of us who aren't engineers?" Scott asked.

"Double Gusset," Virgil explained, "is the strongest known joint configuration. Morgan and I were toying with what we called a Quadruple Reinforced Double Gusset during our senior year at DSAT, but never got any further than basic designs. The standard Double Gusset surrounds the crosspiece top and bottom, giving greater stability and strength to the deck where each segment is joined. Generally speaking, eliminating deck joints altogether is optimal, but in a bridge this size you can't get away from it. It's impossible to manufacture a deck this long as a single, solid piece."

"All right, so using the other types of joints, I'm assuming, means the deck is less stable."

Virgil nodded as he eyed Scott's face in his wristwatch. "And less strong. None of the types Tin-Tin's talking about will hold well enough when too much strain is put on the deck, or between two segments."

"Which explains why the segments are tearing away into the water one by one," John speculated.

"Got it in one. What did they change that for?"

"Money," Jeff said grimly. "It's always about money."

"Shit," Virgil said.

"Virg! Virgil, look out!" came Gordon's panicked voice.

Virgil heard the telltale tearing of metal and the cracking of asphalt to his right. Eyes large and round, he stepped out into the center of the edge of Segment Fourteen, only to watch Segment Ten fall away. "Shit!" he exclaimed.

"It's not stopping this time!" Gordon warned from his birds-eye view up in Two. "They're continuing to collapse!"

Virgil made a split-second decision and started running across Fourteen toward Segment Fifteen. "How far along is Al with the last of the people?"

"I just loaded all but five, we're on our way up to the pod now," Alan advised.

"The Diamonts?"

"Insisted on staying behind with the other three people I couldn't fit into the Bus Cage," Alan replied quietly.

"Virgil, get out of there!" Scott ordered.

"I am!" Virgil panted, legs carrying him in between the rows of vehicles as fast as they could.

The concerned voices of his family faded away as adrenaline coursed through his veins, as his head pounded with the rushing of blood in his ears in time to his rapid heartbeat. This was a familiar feeling, the same thing Virgil always experienced when the situation got hairy on a rescue.

As he ran, he ripped the uniform hat from his head and tossed it in the air, not caring where it landed. He managed to unzip his flight suit far enough that he could get his arms out of the sleeves. Slowly it rode down his torso, down, down as gravity took over, until at last he had to stop in order to get his legs out of it.

He was left in his civilian clothes and by the time he made it to the joint between Segments Fourteen and Fifteen, he could hear the bridge collapsing behind him. Five faces looked up in surprise when he yelled, "Run!" and waved his hand and arm toward Segment Sixteen. "Run, now!"

They did, for which he was eternally grateful. There was nothing worse at a danger zone than trying to convince people you were actually attempting to keep them alive rather than turning them into lemmings.

He recognized Morgan's parents immediately, but put it out of his mind. Right now there was a lot more at stake than coming face-to-face with people who might've become his in-laws if not for International Rescue.

Lucia half-turned to look back at him, stumbled and sprawled face-down onto the asphalt with a loud cry. George skidded to a stop, turned and went back to help his wife up. Seconds later, Virgil was on them, lifting her off the ground one-handed by the back of her blouse before George could even stoop to reach for her, the deafening crack of the bridge breaking apart a backdrop to the utter shock and confusion in the couple's eyes when they realized precisely who was helping them.

"No time!" Virgil yelled, waving toward the other three people who were three-quarters of the way to Segment Sixteen. "Go, go!"

The Diamonts swallowed whatever comments they were thinking of making, turned and ran. Virgil held Lucia's hand, pulling her as fast as he dared, while George stayed on their heels in the narrow space between the second and third vehicle-lined lanes on the east-bound side of the bridge.

The deck beneath their feet trembled, then shook violently. George was thrust forward into Virgil's back, but he managed to stay upright.

"We won't make it!" George yelled, grabbing Lucia's hand and urging her to move faster.

Virgil let go of Lucia and skidded to a halt to look at the bridge behind him. Or...at what was left of it. Segment Fourteen was gone. "Shit," he breathed, then turned and high-tailed it after the Diamonts. He lifted his watch so it was near his mouth. "Hurry, Gordo, it's nipping at my heels, man," he growled as quietly as he could through the huffing and puffing he was doing as each foot pounded the pavement one after the other.

"There isn't time to get the Bus Cage down there!" Gordon yelled through the watch face so Virg would be sure to hear him.

"Then emergency drop the dual harness!" Virgil hissed.

Thunderbird Two stopped over the nearer half of Segment Sixteen just as the first three victims reached that area. They stopped running and looked up when the hatch in the bottom of Two's nose slid open and two two-person harnesses came dropping out of it.

"Move!" Virgil bellowed as George and Lucia made it to Segment Sixteen.

The three people jumped back and the harnesses hit the roof of an electric car, cratering it and shattering the vehicle's windows.

"What's going on?" Lucia panted as Virgil finally reached them.

"They're winching you up in these," Virg replied, grabbing the harnesses from the roof of the car. He motioned to two women, who ran up to him. He secured them as fast as he could to the first dual harness. They were chest-to-chest, face-to-face, bound together and buckled tightly in about forty-five seconds.

"Oh, my God, it's almost on us," George breathed as he watched the approaching breakage.

"Lucia, get over here," Virgil said, holding out the second dual harness that hung from the end of the cable.

She did as asked and Virgil went about securing her. "George?" he said as he was buckling her final buckle.

"No, take this other fellow," George said, gesturing at the young man who'd been with the two women. He was maybe in his early twenties, and white as a sheet for how scared he was. He ran to the harness and Virgil began buckling him up face-to-face with Lucia.

"No, George!" Lucia cried out, reaching for her husband. He came up behind her, enveloped her in his arms from behind and kissed her cheek. "I'm not leaving you!"

"I'll be okay, honey," he murmured into her ear, eyes on Virgil as he finished strapping the young man into the harness.

Virgil looked up, saw Alan peeking over the edge of the hatch and gave him the thumbs-up. Slowly the cable began to retract. Higher and higher the four rescuees went into the air. Closer and closer Virgil and George came to being dropped into the water below with tons of debris that would kill them as it went down with them.

Panicked, George eyed Virgil. "What can we do? Keep running?"

Virgil shook his head as he eyed the approaching danger. "It's moving too fast." He looked all around, then heard a very loud whistle and knew it had to have come from Alan. Only Al could make a whistle pierce through Thunderbird Two's engines and the sounds of a humongous bridge collapsing. He looked up just as a small yellow square was dropped through the nose hatch.

As it fell, it began to inflate. By the time it landed on the roof of a nearby SUV, it was a fully inflated four-person life raft. Not much defense against tons of falling steel, concrete and vehicles, but better than nothing.

Virgil grabbed one end of it. George grabbed the other. Together they ran toward where the bridge was crumbling away. They stopped about ten feet shy of the edge – which crept nearer and nearer – and looked at each other.

"Running leap?" George asked.

Virgil nodded. "We'll use the raft as a parachute."

"You do realize I'm too old for acrobatics," George deadpanned, then hiked up his end of the raft, raised it over his head in time with Virgil, and ran for the edge.

As the pair sailed into the air, struggling to hold the raft overhead and keep hold of it via the handles dotting its rim, Virgil thought for sure there was no way they were going to survive the impact.

He shivered in spite of himself, gratefully accepting the warm blanket from a medic as he watched George and Lucia reunite. A gash just above Virgil's left eyebrow had been looked after, but the rest of his injuries were nothing more severe than hits that would leave some colorful bruises behind. Christ, he thought, we landed in the only one square meter of water that wasn't filled with debris.

If they'd landed a couple inches to the left...or to the right...their legs could've been broken. Their necks could've been broken. Virgil knew they were lucky, and George nearly crushed him in a bear hug as soon as a local boat pulled them out of the water...so Virg figured George knew it, too.

Scott remained at Mobile Control, because of course there was too much danger of the Diamonts recognizing him and putting two and two together. Virgil knew it must be grating Scott's nerves raw to not be able to get close to him after what had happened, but at least he was keeping busy finishing up with the locals.

For Virgil's part, he kept watching as George and Lucia held each other, then whispered to each other, then finally looked his way. Virgil met them halfway along the road even as the sounds of the bridge still breaking apart reached their ears. He was careful with George's left hand, on which the pinkie finger had been broken and set on-scene by a medic, but other than that some minor cuts and bruising all over his body were the worst George had fared in their ordeal.

George stuck his hand out. Virgil grasped it and George gave him a firm handshake. "Thank you, son," he said.

Lucia hugged the stuffing out of him. "I'm so glad to see you," she whispered into his soaking wet shirt. "Thank you for saving George."

"We saved each other," Virgil replied, his one-armed hug enveloping her in the blanket.

At last Lucia stepped away. Her eyes met her husband's. He nodded once, and she looked back at Virgil. "I don't know why you're here, and I don't care," she said. "But now that you are, you've got to help us."

Virgil swallowed. He had to make this look good, because he knew what was coming next...something he wasn't supposed to know about.

Lucia glanced at George again, then took a deep, shaky breath. "Morgan's been missing for a year, Virgil," she whispered.

His eyes widened. He didn't have to fake how the words made him feel, because he'd had to quash the reaction he'd wanted to have when John had told him the very same thing. "A year?" he asked. George and Lucia nodded. "What happened?"

Two hours later found Virgil seated in the small apartment the Diamonts had rented on busy Johnston Road, Wan Chai, on Hong Kong Island. He'd managed to check in with both Scott and their father and let them know he was going to talk to the Diamonts about Morgan. He asked them to advise when Tracy Engineering's team started to arrive so he could lend a hand with the investigation into the bridge collapse.

Gordon managed to slip Virgil's wallet to him as George and Lucia were arranging for transportation from the scene of the collapse back to their flat. Gordon cheekily did so under the pretense of wanting to "check on the guy who saved himself for us."

Everyone wished him good luck with the Diamonts, but Virgil didn't want luck. He wanted to know what had happened to Morgan. A quick stop at a local clothing store and a five-minute shower later, the three were seated on the couch and love seat in the apartment living room, cups of hot tea in hand and tears filling both parents' eyes.

"It's none of our business why things didn't work out between you and our daughter," Lucia began, and Virgil swallowed hard over the lump in his throat. "Morgan only said you had to leave Colorado to work with your father, and that the two of you broke up." She sighed as she leaned back into her husband's side. "She was heartbroken, Virgil, that's all I know, and said she just couldn't stay in Denver."

Lucia opened her mouth to continue, but clamped it quickly shut again, trembling with the effort of keeping her composure. George picked up the tale. "She took a job with Jardine Engineering here in Hong Kong and moved about two weeks after you left. Everything was going well for her.

"They would have," Virgil whispered, then took a sip of his tea to cover up the tremor in his own voice.

Lucia smiled. "You two were quite the pair," she said, then took a sip of her own tea.

"It wasn't until two months later that everything went to hell," George continued. "Morgan called us every Saturday morning at eleven local time after she finished shopping at the open air market on Boat Street."

"She'd managed to get a little studio apartment in the building right across the street from Jardine on King's Road," Lucia added. "And Boat Street was only a couple blocks away, so she'd get her meats and vegetables and fruits, come home and phone us. It'd been that way for about a month and then one Saturday..." Lucia's voice trailed off. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she nearly dropped her teacup.

George grabbed it for her, set both hers and his down on the table in front of them and gathered her close, smoothing down her hair as he choked back his own emotions. After a few seconds he looked right at Virgil. "One Saturday she didn't call," he said. "Of course, it was Saturday morning here, but back home it was always seven the night before, a Friday night. So for us, Friday night came and went with no word from her."

"We tried her cell phone around eight-thirty our time," Lucia said, sniffling, pulling out a tissue from her pocket and swiping at her nose. "It went straight to voice mail. Eventually after about a month, the cell phone company turned her phone off completely for nonpayment of the bill. By the time we found that out, they'd already reissued the number to a new customer."

"When the next month rolled around and she didn't pay her rent, her landlord contacted us, and we wired him money to store everything she had in her apartment," George said. "The local authorities still had no leads at that point except for a single witness who claimed he saw her at the open air market at ten-fifteen local time that morning."

"We've spent the last year calling the Hong Kong Police Force every single day. Three months ago they informed us the case had gone cold. That there was nothing else to follow up on." Lucia looked at her husband. "Not good enough. So we decided we had to come here for ourselves to find her."

"She wouldn't have dropped out of sight," George said with conviction. "Not without a word to us, not without a word to Jardine or her landlord. She was doing too well, was too responsible for that kind of crap."

Lucia rose to her feet, walked around the table and sat down next to Virgil, who put his now-empty teacup and saucer down and turned to face her. She leaned forward and drew him into her arms, holding him tightly.

Virgil was holding her back just as tightly. His heart ached, wondering if Morgan was dead, refusing to believe she was, trying to handle the shock of the Diamonts' tale, wracking his brain to think of where Morgan could be.

"Help us find her, Virgil," Lucia said as she backed away, hands reaching down to take his larger ones and squeeze them. "Please help us."

Virg looked over at George and then back to Lucia. There was no way in hell he could refuse these people now. Especially not when every fiber of his being was crying out to find the woman he loved.

Find her and this time, not let her go.

"I'm going to do everything I can," he vowed, meaning every single word. "I promise you that."

He found himself being hugged by two grateful parents, and praying with all his might that what he and the combined forces of Jeff Tracy the billionaire and International Rescue found wouldn't break all three of their hearts for good.

Jeff Tracy spent millions of dollars per year, and put his sons' lives on the line day in and day out, to save the lives of complete strangers. So when it was someone the family knew, someone connected to them in some way, it made things even more urgent to Jeff and his boys. And once Virgil finished retelling the tale the Diamonts had woven, from the large screen at the end of the third-floor conference room on Tracy Island, his entire family was galvanized into action.

From Thunderbird Five, John contacted Lady Penelope and six of International Rescue's other agents to put them on the case of Morgan Diamont.

Jeff started hitting up every contact he had in Hong Kong – or anywhere in that region of the world – along with his U.S. contacts who'd be very interested indeed in a United States citizen having disappeared in a foreign country. Jeff himself was very interested in reaming various military and government personnel a new one for basically ignoring the Diamonts' year-long pleas for help, something the distraught parents had said they'd done repeatedly.

Scott started connecting with Jardine, where Morgan had been working, to see what he could find out about her job, her personal life, her performance and what she'd said to coworkers in the days and weeks leading up to her disappearance.

Tin-Tin went after Morgan's cell phone, land line and work phone records.

Gordon was tasked with getting access to Morgan's multiple email addresses.

Virgil was going to hit the open air market the next day with the most recent photo of Morgan the Diamonts had to see if he could find anyone who remembered anything. After an entire year, chances were slim, but even slim chances were better than none at all. After that, he'd head to Morgan's former landlord to have a talk about whether she'd done or said anything, given any indication of anything being wrong or off-kilter, before she disappeared.

He asked the Diamonts to document everything they'd done, every single person they'd spoken to, including contact information, since finding out about Morgan's disappearance. Alan would be taking all of that and following up on every single aspect of the private investigation they'd run to date.

That left Grandma, whose job was mainly to keep everyone on Tracy Island awake and fed when they were on something like this. It left Brains, who would be culling the phone records and emails for clues as to what could've happened to Morgan. And it left Kyrano who, as last man in the conference room, was worrying Virgil a little for how silent and still he was, seated in the chair he'd taken when the emergency meeting had been called.

Virgil looked at his friend's knitted brow and found himself frowning in response. It simply wasn't like Kyrano to not look placid, face free of worry lines, forehead smooth, eyes serene. Everything about the Malaysian man was not right at this very moment.

"Kyrano?" The older man looked up at the screen. Virgil's eyes widened at the look on his face. "What's the matter?"

"Approximately one year ago the Hood was wounded in a gunfight in Hong Kong," Kyrano stated matter-of-factly. "He was shot in the shoulder."

"Yes, I remember we got the repor—" Virgil cut himself off abruptly. He leaned closer to the video phone he was using for the call. "What are you saying?" he whispered.

Kyrano swallowed hard, but never took his eyes from Virgil's. "He is known to trade in human slave rings. He has made a great deal of money off the black market for both slaves and weapons."

Virgil felt his mouth go dry. "You think he kidnapped Morgan?"

"It's a possibility we can't ignore, Virgil. Not when he was known to have been there around the time she went missing."

"But how the hell would we know what he did with her? Kept her? Sold her? How would we find that out?"

"I suggest perhaps you start with your Malay agent, and I'll work on the contacts I still have in my native country."

Kyrano rose to his feet and pushed the chair back into place. He was about to head out of the conference room when Virgil's voice stopped him. "Wait."

Kyrano slowly turned toward the video screen, but this time wouldn't meet Virgil's eyes.

"There's more you're not telling me." Kyrano's lack of reply only fueled Virgil's fire. "Dammit, Kyrano, why the hell do you want us to engage our Malay agent, and what good are your Malay contacts going to do us where Morgan's disappearance is concerned even if the Hood is involved?"

He watched as Kyrano seemed to wrestle with something massive, something that made tears fill his eyes, made him swallow reflexively over and over again. Made him tremble slightly when he at last raised his eyes to meet Virgil's.

"The Hood," Kyrano said, voice so quiet Virgil could barely make the words out. "The Hood and my half-brother, they're..." He stopped, took a deep breath, and steeled himself. "They're one and the same man."

"What?" Virgil breathed in disbelief. "The Hood...the half-brother who's been after you for years...is the Hood?"

Kyrano nodded and sank back down into the chair.

"Oh, my God," Virgil breathed. "Oh, my God."

To say that Kyrano's admission caused a frenzy on Tracy Island would be the understatement of the year. Kyrano himself sought Jeff out and told him the secret he'd been harboring as long as he'd known the man.

Then Kyrano had to tell his daughter.

After that it was another emergency meeting in the conference room, where Kyrano told them all. As Jeff always did, rather than focusing on why Kyrano had kept the secret –they all pretty well understood that part of it anyway – he used this new information to get as much out of his old friend as he could about his half-brother.

Which they then used to try and pinpoint where the bastard might be just in case he was the one who'd kidnapped Morgan.

Even so, it was still a long shot that the Hood was involved in her disappearance at all. It could've been anything in the world, from Morgan choosing to disappear of her own free will, something her parents and Virgil refused to believe was in character for her, to her being murdered and her body simply not yet found. This was yet another scenario that the Diamonts and Virgil wouldn't entertain.

Everyone still had their same assignments, but Virgil added a new one to his list: sketching a mugshot-like composite of the Hood from Kyrano's memory of the man the last time he'd seen his true face two decades earlier. It might not help much in their search, but Jeff fully intended for Penny to quietly leak the sketch to Interpol and every other agency the world 'round.

Because whether or not the Hood had Morgan, the fact was that he was a thieving, murdering sonofabitch who had been stuck in Jeff Tracy's craw for years. And who'd come near to killing his own half-brother and half-niece more times than they could count, even after the Kyranos had sought sanctuary with the Tracys on their island. That in and of itself was reason enough for Jeff.

Virgil watched the older men's eyes meet. Without a word, Jeff walked out of the conference room, leaving Virgil to do his best to recreate one Belah Gaat...the name they had never before known was the true identity of the Hood. Virg was well aware that for his father, this wasn't over by any stretch of the imagination; that he'd be having a good, long talk – or probably series of talks – with Kyrano once Morgan had been found and there was time to delve more deeply into this new angle to his life no one had known about.

So Virgil and Kyrano got down to business. Within an hour, Virgil had drawn a bald-headed Asian with a grim, sour countenance and eyes that made his skin crawl. That the sketch made Kyrano actually go white as a sheet when it was finished was proof enough for Virgil of how very close it was to the real thing.

Just as Virgil was about to convert the drawing to a digital format, Scott raced into the conference room with Jeff on his heels. "We've got something," he panted, raising a printout into the air and shaking it for emphasis. "Virg, we've got something."

Three of International Rescue's agents, including Lady Penelope, plus one of Kyrano's contacts, one of Jeff's military friends stationed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and one of the people the Diamonts had already spoken to in their enquiry into Morgan's disappearance. These were the individuals who provided bits and pieces of information that Scott managed to put together into a somewhat coherent picture.

A picture that led them to believe more strongly than ever that none other than the Hood was behind Morgan's disappearance. Because she hadn't been the only one to go missing in a twenty-day time span in the Hong Kong area.

Four more women and two teenage girls were also missing from that time period. Virgil was tasked with talking to each of their families and Morgan's former landlord. The Diamonts would take over canvassing the open air market, and the rest of the Tracy clan would keep going with their work on this case.

This case, which had outed the most closely-guarded secret ever kept from them. Which had thrust their quiet, trusted Malaysian friend into an uncomfortable spotlight. Which had caused no small amount of angst for Tin-Tin.

But now they felt they were truly on the path to finding Morgan Diamont.

At four in the morning Hong Kong time, Virgil collapsed onto the couch in his hotel suite, completely spent. He needed to get a few hours' sleep if he intended to be coherent enough to handle all the meetings he was going to have later that day.

He leaned back into the pillows and overstuffed cushions and ran a hand through his hair. In his other hand was a photo of Morgan taken the day she'd left for Hong Kong. She wasn't smiling. Wasn't happy.

And it was his fault.

Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing her workout clothes, sweat making her skin shine as she answered her door.

For a moment he simply stared. She was so beautiful. So perfect. He could almost taste her skin, feel her moving beneath him as she smiled, large eyes so trusting that he would never break her heart.

The thing he was there precisely to do.

He swallowed hard. "Morgan."

"Come on in, Virg," she said, turning and grabbing a bottle of water off the small table near the front door. She chugged half of it down in one go. "You interrupted my workout, so if you're not here to finish it in some other way," she said with a waggle of her eyebrows, "you'd better have a damn good reason."

"I do," he said, heart in his throat, voice rasping out over top of it. She looked at him again, a slight frown creasing her brow. "Come sit down." He gestured toward the sofa.

She did, her frown deepening. "What's wrong?"

He handled it badly. At first he couldn't get a single word out of his mouth and then all at once he told her. Told her he was leaving Colorado. Leaving the U.S. Leaving her.

She hadn't begged him not to go. It wasn't Morgan's style. She had cried. Cried hard. Held him tightly as he'd clung to her, trying to burn every inch of her, every sound she made, the way she smelled into his memory.

He couldn't tell her. And she couldn't come with him. Not now, not when secrecy was the most important thing to the success of getting International Rescue off the ground.

"I love you," he had whispered in her ear.

"Then why are you leaving me?" she had asked.

A fair question.

An unfair answer.

"I don't have a choice."

He left her there in the middle of her living room, tears still rolling down her cheeks from those strange, violet eyes he never could stop looking into when she was near. He closed the door behind him, then sagged back into it when he heard her cry out and start sobbing in earnest.

Virgil didn't make it through that day with dry eyes. As much as tears fell from them unbidden, so too did his heart weep as it shattered.

Virgil sat bolt upright on the couch, nearly falling off. Sweat streamed down from his sideburns, soaking his neck, rivulets of it sliding down his pecs, his abs, the curvatures of muscle along his back. And on his cheeks, tears.

He swiped angrily at his face, got to his feet and stomped to the bathroom. He turned on the tap, cupped cold water in his hands and splashed his face and neck repeatedly until he'd made a complete mess of the entire sink and floor.

Guilt. That's all he could get himself to feel. Because if he hadn't left Morgan to join his father and brothers on Tracy Island...if he hadn't left the life he'd created for himself in Denver with her...she never would've taken the job at Jardine. She never would've gone to Hong Kong except maybe with him as consultants on the bridge project again.

She never would've been alone in that open air market.

She never would've been kidnapped.

His stomach dropped like a stone. The Hood. If the Hood truly had been the one to take her, Virgil knew she hardly stood a chance. They had enough on him from their own intel and Kyrano's newly-discovered information to know he was a ruthless bastard.

Virgil looked at himself in the mirror, hands supporting the full brunt of his weight on the counter around the sink, tap water still running. Stared into his own bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes. Glared at the haunted man looking back at him.

Hated that man an awful lot right now.

Halfway through the following day, Virgil grew more and more frustrated as each conversation he had with each missing woman's or teenager's family yielded nothing. There were no similarities among them save that Morgan and a seventeen-year old girl both had blonde hair, and it wasn't even the same shade of blonde.

The other teenager was Chinese and the remaining women were a redhead, one with hair very much the chestnut color of Virgil's and one from India, with short-cropped jet-black hair. The redhead was an Irish transplant, and the teenage blonde had been vacationing in Hong Kong with her parents and two brothers.

None of their disappearances bore any resemblance to each other, either. While Morgan seemed to have disappeared from a crowded open air market, the last place the Chinese teen was seen was in a small jewelry store, while the blonde teen had gone to use the restroom at a restaurant in Mongkok and had never returned.

One of the women simply disappeared from her motel room, another from her apartment and still another from the beach at Repulse Bay. All that was left now was for Virgil to talk to the landlord Morgan had been renting her apartment from, but try as he might he couldn't get hold of the man either by phone or by threatening to break his door down.

Dejected, he returned to his motel room just as the vidphone mounted on the room's small desk signaled an incoming call. He dropped into the desk chair and opened the line.

An unfamiliar face appeared before him. The man resembled Kyrano somewhat in terms of coloring and stature, so Virgil immediately identified him as being someone from the same part of the world. "Can I help you?" Virgil asked.

"You are Virgil Tracy?" the man responded, his accent once again sounding very much like Kyrano's.

"I am," Virg nodded. "And you are?"

The man looked quickly to his left and right and then behind him. "My name is Wuji," he whispered. "I must be quick. Listen to me carefully."

Virgil opened his mouth to demand more of an explanation than that, but the man's whispers barreled right over anything he might've said.

"My sources tell me you seek a blonde American who disappeared from Hong Kong thirteen months ago."

"Yes," Virgil breathed, eyes widening. "Her name is Morgan Diamont." He sat forward eagerly on the chair. "Do you know where she is?"

Wuji looked 'round himself again as though afraid he was being watched or overheard. "Thirteen months ago I was working as a laborer on the docks at Port Dickson. Do you know it?"

"No. Where is it?"

"The state of Negeri Sembilan, the Malay Peninsula. It is about an hour from Kuala Lumpur. A yacht called Shokan Valikhanov III sailed into port that day from Kazakhstan. I saw the captain and a man who resembled this picture that has been circulated throughout the world."

With this, Wuji held up a hard copy of the sketch Virgil had made of Belah Gaat. "Did you see Morgan?" Virgil asked, leaning close to the vidphone screen. "Tell me!"

"I saw four women. One of them was a blonde."

"Oh, my God," Virgil breathed. "Where'd he take them?"

"I know only that the women were carried off the yacht on stretchers. I overheard the captain of the vessel tell the dock master that the women had been overcome by seasickness, and were sedated and being taken to a medical facility for care."

"What kind of vehicle did they get into?"

"I'm sorry, I could not see the vehicles from my position mooring the yacht. But sir, have you a photograph of this Morgan which you seek?"

Virgil nodded and grabbed the photo he'd been using all day to show to people off the desk where he'd dropped it when answering the phone. He flipped it around and put it close to the vidphone's camera. "This is her. This is Morgan. Is this one of the women you saw?"

Wuji nodded vigorously. "Yes, I believe that is her. It's hard to tell, her eyes were closed and she was fully covered save her face. But the hair, it's wavy like this woman's was."

"You know nothing else? Nothing at all? Their destination after arriving in Port Dickson, the names of the captain or the bald man, nothing?"

"No, I'm afraid—I must go. I must go! I'm sorry!"

Before Virgil could say another word the line was cut. He tried to dial it back but it simply rang and rang without being answered. "Shit!" he swore, slapping Morgan's photo down on the desk.

He quickly dialed up his father's office line on Tracy Island, coding it to a secure channel with a special prefix. Without preamble he told Jeff what'd happened, which started a whole new frenzy of calls to Lady Penelope, IR agents, officials in Malaysia, Kyrano's own contacts and new assignments for all the Tracys.

"Dad, I'm going to Malaysia," Virgil announced when the furor had died down a bit.

"The hell you are," Scott countered, moving quickly into view next to their dad. "Not alone, you're not."

Jeff looked up at Scott's determined face, then forward at Virgil's equally determined one on the screen. "Nobody's going anywhere until we have more facts. I'm not sending you into the Hood's back yard without even knowing where his base of operations is, or whether Morgan's still with him. Don't forget, she could've been sold on the black market."

"And if she was, then someone there has to have seen something. Has to know something!" Virgil slammed his fist down on the desk. "Dammit, Dad, I left this woman to join International Rescue. Well, now she's the one who needs rescuing and I'm not just going to sit here with my thumb up my ass and wait it out!"

Jeff's voice was calm and even. "Son, nobody's asking you to sit this out. But you also can't go off half-cocked to a foreign country without anything more than a phone call from someone none of us has ever heard of telling you he saw Morgan thirteen months ago. Even if any trace had been left behind, it won't be there now. You know that as well as I do."

Virgil fairly trembled with his pent-up rage, frustration and guilt.

"Hey," Scott said so quietly that Virgil almost didn't hear him. He locked eyes with his older brother as Jeff scooted his chair back and out of the way. "We'll find her, Virgil. You have my word on that."

Virg looked away, struggling to get himself back under control.

"Dad, I suggest at the very least we ought to get the Thunderbirds to Malaysia. We've got everyone we know, every contact and agent we have, searching for information. If something comes up, I want to be right there to act on it, whether it's as International Rescue or not."

Virgil closed his eyes briefly in gratitude for Scott's foresight and willingness to stick his neck out for him.

"Scott, if we get a call for help—"

"Dad," Scott interrupted, turning and giving his father a meaningful look, "we already have one."

Chest tightening as he watched a myriad of emotions play across Jeff's face, Virgil waited, holding his breath like he knew Scott must be. "Please, Father," Virg finally said. "Please let us at least find somewhere out-of-the-way to set up a mobile base. I'll never ask for anything ever again, but I have to know what happened to her."

"Dad!" shouted Alan's excited voice as he came pounding into the office. "Scott! I've got something from Agent Eighty-Seven in Kuala Lumpur!"

"What is it?" Virgil asked.

"We know the last place Morgan was spotted, and Eighty-Seven tells me it's a high-traffic area for slaves coming into and leaving the country. Morgan wasn't placed on the international ship that day from Johor Bahru! She was placed on the smaller local freighter that was departing for Kuching!"

"Do...what now?" Scott asked.

"Malaysia consists of the peninsula, north, and the southern part where Tin-Tin's from," Alan babbled. "Sarawak, remember?"

Scott nodded.

"I get it," Jeff said. "Kuching's in southern Malaysia and that's where Morgan's ship was bound, rather than...where was the other ship going?"

"Southern Indonesia," Alan replied.

"Dad," Virgil said, feeling hope rise within him. "We've got the intel now. We know Morgan was put on a ship and we know what its destination was. If nothing else, I should be on the ground trying to find out what happened to her from there. Please, Father."

Virgil had never begged for anything but the occasional prayers to the sky when one of his brothers was hurt. But he was begging now. And he'd keep on begging for as long as it took, because the truth was that Morgan was worth it.

"All right, all right." Jeff eyed all three of his sons. "Alan, you and Gordon take Kyrano in Thunderbird Two. I want Tin-Tin on-hand from here. We need all the native Malay speakers we can get, but I'm not sending her into her half-uncle's clutches."

"Yes, sir!" Alan crowed. Virgil could hear him calling Gordon from his communicator as he ran out of the room.

"Scott, you get One to Hong Kong, pick Virgil up and head for Kuching. Discretion, boys. I don't think I need to tell you the dangerous territory we're flying into."

Jeff's eldest nodded in acknowledgement of the directive, then glanced at the vidphone screen. "I'll send you the coordinates once I determine the safest landing point."

"F.A.B., Scott," Virgil replied, suddenly feeling like his legs were turning to Jell-O.

"I'll get on with the local authorities and explain the situation so they're not surprised when International Rescue shows up."

"Right, Dad," Scott said and was soon around on his wall headed for his 'bird, leaving Jeff looking into the eyes of his second son.

"You know, I had no idea you cared so much about the girl you left to join International Rescue," he said quietly. "If I'd known, I might not have asked."

Virgil took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "I made the decision, Father. I wanted this. I loved the idea and I still do."

"But you love Morgan more."

"I never should've left her," Virgil admitted. "And I'm never going to again. Once we find her, Dad..."

"I know, son. I felt the same way about your mother." Jeff smiled wryly. "I still do."

With that, Jeff cut the call off and Virgil slumped back into his chair. Every last bit of energy just drained from his body, and before he was even aware of how exhausted he was, he drifted off to sleep right there.

He came to consciousness slowly, vaguely aware of a buzzing sound and then a ringing sound and then a combination of both that was more obnoxious than the klaxon back home.

Back home, where International Rescue wasn't taking any calls right now due to—

His eyes flew open.

Morgan!

He sat straight up, the muscles of his back protesting the sudden movement out of what he realized had been a stupidly awkward slump in the desk chair.

The buzzing and ringing both continued. The first was his wristwatch. The second was the vidphone before him.

"Virgil here," he said into the watch even as he keyed the vidphone on.

"Virgil, for the love of—I've been trying to get you for nearly twenty minutes, what the hell's going on?"

"Son!" Jeff said from the vidphone. "Scott couldn't get hold of you, what-?"

Now fully awake and coherent whether he wanted to be or not, Virgil interrupted, speaking to both men simultaneously. "I fell asleep in the chair after we hung up," he admitted sheepishly. "Guess I was more tired than I realized."

"Jesus Christ," Scott groused. "I'm sending you the coordinates where I'll be landing in eight minutes."

"Okay, Scott." Virgil looked up at his father. "Sorry, Dad."

"My hair's going to be completely white by the time you two get done with me," Jeff growled, but Virgil knew in spite of his stern countenance, their father was more relieved than he was angry. "Tracy Island out."

"Virg."

He blinked down at his brother's face in the watch.

"Hurry it up!"

"Right," Virgil replied, used to hearing those words from his field commander. He looked at the coordinates that fed across the watch face after Scott's feed winked out, and double-clicked them on the touch screen that covered it. When that action opened a map showing him where the coordinates were, he groaned.

No wonder Scott had told him to hurry up. There was no way he was going to make that location in eight minutes!

Virgil rented the fastest car he could find on such short notice and made like Alan in one of his race cars along Quarry Bay Street. Luckily the spot Scott had landed was only a twenty-minute drive, more or less. Not many cars traveled this route past Tai Tam Country Park, leaving the road open enough that Virgil made it to the intersection with Mount Parker Road – and the irony of the name wasn't lost on him at all – in eighteen minutes flat.

He turned left and went just a bit more than halfway along the road before bringing the car to a screeching halt. His watch beeped.

"I see where you are," Scott said as soon as Virgil answered. "Just head down that hill and you'll find me tucked into the side of the next foothill."

"F.A.B.," Virgil replied.

Sure enough, a bit of slipping and sliding down one foothill, and rounding the edge of the next one to the west brought him face-to-nose cone with Thunderbird One, a very worried-looking Scott Tracy's face peering out of her side viewing window.

Virgil heard Scott open the hatch and lower the ladder. Within minutes he was in the cockpit and strapped into the jumpseat near Scott's right leg.

"Thunderbird One to Base," Scott said, the viewscreen before him blinking to life.

Their father's face filled the screen. "Base here, go ahead, Scott."

"I have Virgil, we're taking off for southern Malaysia now."

"All right, son." Jeff glanced down at Virgil but then right back up at Scott. "You should know, both of you, that an old friend of Kyrano's has given him a new piece of information. We're still trying to verify it, but—"

"Dad?" Virgil interrupted.

Jeff swallowed hard. "A redheaded woman stumbled into a jungle village two weeks ago not far as the crow flies from the Kapit region of southern Malaysia."

"Redheaded woman," Virgil breathed. "Like the one kidnapped from Hong Kong three weeks before Morgan?"

"Exactly," Jeff nodded. "She's been uncommunicative and was sent to a psychological disorder treatment facility in Kuala Lumpur. It was while canvassing local hospitals for anyone matching the description of any of the Hong Kong kidnap victims that Kyrano's friend Han discovered this woman. So far he's had no luck getting her to talk, but while she's thinner and less healthy-looking than the last photo we have of her, we're pretty convinced it's Kerith MacBride. Penny's trying to get in contact with her family in Ireland now."

"Jesus, Scott, could she have escaped?" Virgil asked.

"Don't know," Scott replied, eyeing the coordinates Jeff was sending to Thunderbird One, "but since this intel says she was found close to Belaga, that's probably where we should be heading."

"You should also contact Kyrano in Two, see what he knows about that area."

"Will do once we're in the air, Father. Thunderbird One out."

"My God," Virgil breathed as Scott brought his baby's VTOL to life. He barely noticed as they lifted off, wings extended, and Scott pointed One's nose south. "Maybe there really is hope."

Scott contacted Thunderbird Two and discovered there wasn't anywhere to land in the vicinity of the village he and Two's occupants were looking at on a satellite map. "Looks like I'll just have to fashion my own sort of clearing," Scott scowled. "With apologies to the rainforest."

"I think in this case it'll understand," Gordon offered from Two's pilot seat.

"Scott, you must be very careful," Kyrano warned. "Sarawak has been my half-brother's home since he was born. He knows every inch of her jungles, every village hidden far from civilized eyes."

Scott nodded. "Don't worry, Kyrano. One will be cloaked and we'll have a spot cleared for Two by the time you arrive."

With that, the channel was closed.

Neither Virgil nor Scott spoke the rest of the thirty-five minutes it took to reach the deep, untouched jungles of Sarawak.

Fifty minutes later and Thunderbird One had blasted a clearing large enough for both it and its sister ship to land, courtesy some well-placed good, old-fashioned Brains inventions - something like missiles that incinerated vegetation within a five-by-five foot area one little missile at a time. Dicetyline spray kept from turning the entire jungle into one massive bonfire. Virg listened as Scott reported to their father that scans of the area revealed no human life signs within an eighty-three mile radius from the newly-created landing zone, so Scott told him he felt confident in the safety of their 'birds for the duration.

The problem, as Jeff had so clearly pointed out, was that they didn't know for the duration of what.

Two was bringing with her four of Brains' latest inventions which hadn't actually been cleared for use on rescues as yet, but thus far had field tested spectacularly, leaving Jeff to authorize their inclusion on this trip.

The Low-Altitude Birds, or LABs for short, were green and gray camo-painted one-man personal fliers six feet long, with a wingspan of six feet. Each flier had a small VTOL rocket in its belly to allow for vertical takeoffs and landings, and each could reach a maximum speed of eighty miles per hour. They were armed with a small-caliber machine gun turret just under the nose, and could comfortably seat anyone as tall as Scott – and since he was the tallest Tracy (just by a hair over John), that was all the height they needed in the cockpit.

Designed for occasions such as the one they were faced with now – having no quick method to transport themselves by land, and no way for the Thunderbirds to land due to heavy ground cover or lack of cleared space due to disaster – the LABs allowed International Rescue personnel to literally go where no one and nothing else could. It was much faster than trying to pick through rubble or hack through a rainforest on foot, and had been something Brains and Tin-Tin developed together, after a Chilean earthquake rescue ended in disaster because Scott, Virgil, Gordon and John couldn't get from where they had been forced to land the 'birds to the center of the Danger Zone in time to save three hundred and twelve victims.

Virgil was itching for Two to arrive, fully intending to grab one of the LABs and start flying through the jungle toward the small village the Irish woman had stumbled into. Scott was having some luck convincing him that wasn't exactly an optimal solution given that he didn't speak whatever dialect of Malay those villagers spoke, but Virgil had grown frustrated with waiting for Two to arrive.

"Now you know," Scott pointed out, "why I always tell you to hurry it up. Sucks to have to wait for the equipment, now, doesn't it?"

Virgil threw a look up that could've melted the polar ice caps in a nanosecond, but knew logically his brother was right. Still didn't make the waiting any easier.

Dammit.

Forty-five minutes later Thunderbird Two was finally on-scene. Just as her VTOLs ignited for landing, Jeff broke through the channel Scott and Gordon had been talking on.

"Boys, listen to me and listen good. Han, the friend of Kyrano's I told you about, has just contacted me with information he got from the Irish woman."

"What?" Scott said. "I thought she wasn't able to speak?"

"Her doctors are saying she was in a state of shock," Jeff replied. "Apparently as soon as Han asked her if she knew where Morgan was, she flipped her lid on him, started screaming about masters and temples and slaves and fire. Something about an abyss and the jungle. There was a lot more, but it took them about forty minutes to calm her enough to get anything useful."

"Well?" Virgil asked when Jeff had the audacity to pause for a breath. "What'd she say? Where's Morgan?"

Jeff didn't comment, but his look said he wasn't particularly pleased by the interruption. "Han managed to find out that she is Kerith MacBride, and that she was abducted from Hong Kong. She spent ten months at a place she called 'the temple' with Morgan, the girl from India and the chestnut-haired woman." Jeff swallowed as he looked Virgil right in the eyes. "There were hundreds of slaves, both male and female, if she's to be believed."

Virgil jumped to his feet. "So she escaped what, four months ago?" Off his father's nod, he asked, "Was Morgan still alive when she left?"

"Yes, son, she was," Jeff confirmed and Virgil breathed a sigh of relief, rubbing a hand down his face. "She was the one who helped Kerith escape. Told her to go tell someone where they were, that she would stay behind and try to throw the Master off the trail."

"The Master?" Scott repeated. "The Hood."

Jeff nodded. "Unfortunately when Han showed her a digital rendering of Virgil's sketch of the Hood, Kerith went completely catatonic again. That was twenty minutes ago, with no further progress getting her to talk."

"Dammit!" Virgil yelled as Scott opened One's exit hatch. "Did we get any indication of where this temple is?"

"I believe I may be able to help you with that," a soft voice interjected.

Virgil looked down through the hatch. There stood Kyrano, flanked by Gordon and Alan. Both Virgil and Scott quickly climbed down to the ground, with Scott closing One up tight and engaging her deflection device so she'd remain undetected. He looked up to find he couldn't see Thunderbird Two and gave Gordon a small nod of acknowledgement for having done the same to her.

"This temple, is that the Hood's base?"

Kyrano looked at Virgil and nodded once. "I believe so. I have heard rumors over the years that he converted an ancient temple that was built over what is referred to in the Western world as one of the Seven Gateways to Hell."

"Gateways to Hell?" Alan repeated. "Seriously?"

"Very seriously, Alan," Kyrano confirmed. "And if indeed that is what he's done, I may have some idea of a location."

"Well, we've only got four LABs, and this undergrowth's too thick for anyone to make it very far by foot," Scott said. "Kyrano, you stay locked up tight in Thunderbird Two, use her navigational array to guide us remotely."

"Shouldn't he come along?" Gordon asked. "Given that he knows this place better than we do."

"No way, I'm not sending Kyrano into his half-brother's stomping grounds. Dad would never allow it," Scott replied.

"I should go," Kyrano stated, leveling his eyes at Scott. "If he's using any means other than traditional weaponry to defend this temple of his, I may be the only way we have of getting in there."

Scott opened his mouth to say "No way in hell," but was cut off by the sound of his communicator beeping an incoming call. "Scott here," he said, raising it to his face. Jeff appeared.

"I've notified Interpol and Sarawak authorities that we may have a location on the Hood," he informed them. "But they just don't have any way of making it that far into the jungle except by helijet or boat, so you've got to give us a better location where they can drop troopers. Boys, half the world's law enforcement agencies are headed your way. That man's wanted in nearly every region of the globe. You have to get in and get out before they arrive."

"Are you kidding me?" Scott asked. "Well, how long does that leave us?"

"Mobilization is occurring as we speak. I had to bring them in, Scott. I couldn't let you boys face this completely on your own. But I want International Rescue involved as little as possible. Otherwise the damage to the secrecy of our organization could be irreparable."

"I understand, Father. Kyrano, get back to Two, lock her and cloak her after we get the LABs in the air, and get on those nav systems to give us a steer. How long, Father?"

Kyrano and Gordon headed for Two as Jeff replied, "I'd say maybe a couple hours at the most, but it could be as little as an hour."

"Jesus," Virgil breathed. "We've got to find that temple!"

Fifteen minutes later found Gordon, Alan, Virgil and Scott in the LABs with Kyrano steering them toward what he continued to call a Gateway to Hell. Jeff walked the fine line between complete dishonesty and gentle misinformation with the authorities in question, while Penelope was on her way to Tracy Island with Parker to help Jeff should the need for severe damage control be required.

From Thunderbird Five, John was monitoring ahead to the location where Kyrano insisted the temple would have to be, and had managed to find a blip in the satellite readings only six minutes earlier which led him to believe something large was using the same kind of cloaking technology as the 'birds utilized. He was currently fine-tuning and altering the space station's massive sensor array, with Brains assisting remotely, to see if he could break through the device's shielding and give his brothers some idea of the kind of opposition they were facing.

No one knew if the Hood was even in the temple. In actual fact, no one really knew if there was a temple there at all, and even if there was, whether Morgan Diamont was anywhere near it.

Their faces were grim as they proceeded along the canopy of the rainforest, little being said while they listened for any new information from anyone. They were all armed with both laser and machine pistols. But other than that, there wasn't much they could carry on the LABs due to the weight restrictions for such light aircraft.

Virgil thought of nothing but locating Morgan and shooting the Hood right between the eyes if it came right down to it, consequences with worldwide authorities be damned. He couldn't fathom what one of the Hood's slaves had to go through, especially a woman as beautiful as Morgan.

Of course, he reasoned, that was probably why the bastard had kept her rather than sell her. He didn't know which fate would have been worse, but forced himself not to think too much about the horrors she must have seen in the last year.

The one thing he couldn't get out of his head, though, was whether or not she'd still be the same Morgan he'd left in Denver. The spunk, the intelligence. The go-get-'em attitude, the fearlessness and creativity. The woman could don a heavy duty protective suit and walk right into the midst of a smelting factory to test lava-hot liquid metals, then turn right around and slide into an evening gown for one of Denver's many high society affairs.

She'd gone fishing with him, mountain climbing and camping. Anything he wanted to do, she was right by his side every step of the way. She'd even posed for a nude portrait he was hard-pressed to get finished without ravishing her every fifteen minutes. It was something he'd kept hidden in one of his bedroom suite closets on Tracy Island, completely covered because he couldn't handle looking at it.

No one had seen it but him and her. And now he was on his way to a woman who might no longer be the one he'd painted so lovingly, so carefully. She might no longer be the woman he'd fallen in love with and left heartbroken.

Even if she was, she might be as likely to kick the shit out of him as open her arms to him in welcome when she got eyes on him. Either way, they were scenarios he couldn't allow himself to let play through in his mind.

"You don't know what we'll find, Virgil," had been Scott's last words to him four minutes earlier.

"I know, Scott," he'd said. "That's the problem."

Kyrano's voice broke through his morose thoughts, the small video screen to the right of the LAB's console showing his face. "You should be nearing the edge of the clearing John spoke of detecting in one and one-half minutes," Kyrano reported From the direction Kyrano's eyes were focused in, Virgil could tell he was looking at Two's largest nav screen.

"Thanks, Kyrano," Scott replied. "All right, everyone slow to fifty and prepare VTOLs for landing. John?"

"Here, Scott. I think Brains and I nearly have it, but if you're that close already there's no way we'll be able to—wait, hang on." They listened as John hurriedly discussed something Virgil couldn't wrap his head around with Brains on another screen. When John reappeared on their viewscreens, he had his Oh, Shit face on and Virgil's blood ran cold.

"Well, guys, we got through, but you're not going to like this."

"Report, John, we're hovering just a klick back from the edge of the clearing!" Scott barked.

"I can't get an exact count without more time, but you're looking at a couple hundred people in that place if I'm not mistaken."

"A couple hundred?" Gordon asked. "Are you kidding me?"

"Unfortunately, no," John replied. "But your best bet for entry is the southern-facing wall. I'm reading the lowest concentration of heat signatures there."

"Shit," Scott swore. "Stay here, I'm going to skirt around to the south along the canopy and see what we're looking at."

They waited. Nearly a minute later, Scott's voice was heard. "We've got a heavy wooden set of double doors here, and I've been spotted. It's now or never!"

"Scott!" Jeff barked. "Don't go in, you don't have enough intel!" The airwaves were silent. Virgil held his breath. "Scott!" Jeff yelled.

"He's right, guys," Scott's voice responded at last, reluctantly. "If they have heavy artillery, we don't stand a chance."

"I'm not leaving her there, Scott!" Virgil said, firmly but not very loudly at all. Because he'd already made up his mind what he was going to do. He fired his LAB's VTOL and had already touched down by the time his field commander and closest brother realized what he'd done.

"Shit! Virgil, get back in the air! Virgil!"

But Virgil was out of the cockpit already, both weapons drawn, and picking off guards one by one as he ran from the eastern side of the temple around to the south-facing front. When he heard three other VTOL rockets firing, he knew his brothers were on their way to back him up.

Six guards stationed at the southern doors, the entirety of the complement he could see, were taken care of with his two weapons by the time the three of them joined him outside the front wooden doors. "I'm going to kick your fucking ass," Scott hissed when they did.

Virgil ignored him. At this point he didn't give a flying fuck if he got kicked out of IR or out of the family. Morgan was inside these stone walls, he could feel it. A sudden explosion from the opposite side of the temple shook the entire building, making them nearly lose their footing at the top of its long front flight of steps . That's when they saw and heard four jets fly overhead.

"Who the hell was that?" Scott asked.

"You've got Malay, Indonesian, Chinese and Cambodian armies on scene!" Jeff yelled through every one of their wristwatches. "They're intent on destroying that place! We're trying to get through to their commanding officers to let them know about the sheer number of people on-site but they've closed their ears down!"

"Jesus Christ, no," Gordon breathed. "We've got to get them out of here before this place goes up!"

They heard another set of five jets, a slightly different whine to their engines, this time off in the distance. "We've got maybe a minute," Scott said as he and his brothers pulled the gigantic double wooden doors open. "Hurry!"

Scott went left in the massive hall they ran into.

Alan went right.

Gordon and Virgil ran straight ahead.

And there were people everywhere. Some wore uniforms, some lab coats. Some looked military-like while others wore nothing but scraps of brightly-colored silk around their waists. Men. Women. Children. All ages. Multiple races. Like a small international city.

"Come on!" Gordon shouted, waving his arms up the middle as Scott and Al did the same thing from each of their respective sides. "Out the front doors, now!"

Virgil scanned the faces, looking first and foremost for anyone blonde. But there wasn't a single blonde head to be seen and in the chaos he was very nearly trampled by the sheer horde of screaming human beings desperate to escape.

They heard even more jets fly overhead and the temple was hit again, causing rock and statues, art and furniture, anything and everything to fall and be tossed around like mere child's toys.

Virgil couldn't see his brothers anymore. He kept pressing forward against the swarm of bodies, eyes looking over all the faces and still finding no sign of Morgan.

He could think of nothing but her face.

He could think of nothing but searching every inch of the temple for her even if it meant his death.

Nothing else mattered anymore. Nothing but that.

His watch was beeping.

He ignored it.

The running people started thinning out.

He kept moving forward across a room that was easily as large as two football fields combined.

"Virgil!" he heard Scott yell.

Another flyover.

More artillery.

Gigantic stones that formed the walls and ceiling were crumbling, falling away. Debris and dust rained down on him as he darted forward, ignoring a dais behind a beaded curtain, eternal flames burning in a circle around it. Ignoring the chunk of masonry that glanced off his right shoulder.

Movement from a hallway straight ahead at the opposite end of the room from the double doors. Air too filled with dust to be able to see clearly. He peered into the distance, trying to see who it was.

Then he saw it was multiple someones.

Closer.

They were women.

Closer.

Wearing silk around their waists, nothing covering their breasts.

Closer....

Closer...

"Morgan," he breathed.

The sounds of jets stopped.

No more explosions.

Time stopped. At least for Virgil it did.

Then suddenly he was in motion, slamming into her and the women with her, shoving them all down to the floor just as a three guards came out of the same hallway shooting.

More gunfire, and then the fight stopped. The bullets were gone. The guns were silent. He heard the voices of his brothers growing nearer, their footfalls echoing in the partially destroyed main room.

Virgil lifted his head, looked directly into Morgan's eyes and knew in an instant she was still herself when she looked firmly, lovingly, back at him. "Sorry I'm late," he whispered, not knowing what else to say.

She began to cry. He rose to his feet and lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his body so tightly, vowing over and over again silently to never let her go.

"We've got to get these girls out to the local authorities," Scott said. "Dad says they're only ten clicks due east of this location."

"No," Virgil said over his shoulder. "This one's personal, Scott."

Scott came round so he was standing in front of them, and gestured at the woman Virgil held in his arms. Scott frowned, craned his neck to try and see Morgan's face but couldn't, buried as it was in Virgil's neck. His eyes were asking the question, so Virgil nodded. Scott smiled and nodded back.

Virgil was vaguely aware of his brothers getting the other women who'd been with Morgan gathered together. Soon they were all running out the south-facing doors, only to find Thunderbird Two hovering over head, Bus Cage lowered nearly to the ground waiting for them.

"Who the hell's flying her?" Gordon asked incredulously.

"I'm helping Kyrano," came John's voice from Gordon's watch communicator.

Gordon and Alan laughed.

Scott just shook his head as he helped the slave girls into the Bus Cage.

There wasn't another soul in sight, every other escapee having disappeared into the jungle.

"Dad got the military to ease up for ten minutes. We've got two of those minutes left!" Scott barked as he ushered Virgil, with Morgan in his arms, into the Cage.

Virgil didn't care that three of his four brothers were standing right there, nor that Base and Thunderbird Five were undoubtedly listening in via their communicators. "I love you," he whispered into Morgan's ear. She looked up at him and smiled, then buried her face against his shoulder once more.

He had her back.

He had her back!

Virgil nosed into her hair and said, "I'm never leaving you again." He swallowed hard as her arms tightened around his neck, as the Bus Cage brought them closer and closer to Thunderbird Two's belly. "I promise you that."

It was a promise Virgil Tracy would keep.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, here at the tail-end of my show I just have to let you know of a few breaking news stories we've gotten since the evening news broadcast just three hours ago.

First and foremost is that more information is coming in about the spectacular rescue of nearly one hundred men, women and children from the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge just off Hong Kong Island two weeks ago. Eyewitness accounts tell of the bravery and amazing machinery that saved even more peoples' lives from being lost than already had been by the time the call was put out to International Rescue. I'll have a more thorough report, including interviews with several of the victims whose lives were saved, tomorrow evening.

On a related note, this station has just received word that Colin Johnson, the only surviving partner of now-defunct Johnson and DeBarge Metals, has been found hiding out in rural France. He was arrested by French authorities yesterday morning, and is currently awaiting extradition to whichever country among the United States, Hong Kong and China wins the battle to sic their justice systems on him first. The charges against him include everything from fraud in the types of metals he shipped for construction of the bridge that collapsed to multiple counts of murder for the lives lost that fateful day.

On a very related note, sources within the heretofore quiet and unassuming country of Malaysia tell us that just one day after the phenomenal bridge rescue, none other than International Rescue was seen briefly near the location where we now know master world criminal the Hood's secret base of operations was located.

Deep in the jungles of the state of Sarawak, what's being described as a temple was largely destroyed by fighter jets from several surrounding countries, but people who worked at the base or had been imprisoned there are telling us that men dressed in blue flight suits and blue hats got each and every one of them to safety before the building was completely destroyed. Indeed, some high-placed government officials from Cambodia are telling us it's International Rescue themselves who pinpointed the spot where the Hood could be found to begin with, but I haven't been able to confirm that as yet.

Ladies and Gentlemen, while I cannot unfortunately relay to you for certain whether or not the Hood himself was killed in the attack, I can tell you that he's not believed to be in custody. But, thanks to an anonymous artist's sketch which has now been circulated the world round, which we're showing you right here on your television screens, if he did escape, I know it won't be long before you help authorities find him and he's made to pay for all the wrong he's done for more than two decades now.

I'd bet my nightly talk show that we have International Rescue and International Rescue alone to thank for bringing us one step closer to putting that madman behind bars. These brave men, who as you know once saved the lives of both me and my cameraman Joe, are doing an awful lot more than anonymously rescuing trapped people from the brink of disaster. They're saving the world from a future filled with the kinds of evils the Hood has made it his business to perpetrate upon us all.

And now, viewers, in a completely unrelated news story from the world of the rich and famous, NTBS has learned that Virgil Tracy, son of billionaire and former astronaut Jeff Tracy, has just become engaged to Morgan Diamont, daughter of George and Lucia Diamont, manufacturers of Perfezione red and white wines based in Central California. Sorry, ladies, it looks like a Tracy bachelor is off the market.

That's all from me for now. Stay safe out there, be kind to one another, and when you look up at the stars tonight, you might want to thank them that an organization like International Rescue never seems to give up on the people of Earth...no matter what the cost.

This is Ned Cook, signing off."