Dad sent three of his sons out on this rescue. Only two of us are going home.
And the choice of which two is going to be mine.
That realization sits heavy on my heart, tightening my chest into a painful knot.
A never-ending torrent of water pounds against The Dam's shallow scoop. I can hear the vehicle's engines roaring as they counter the pressure. There's a sour note to them, and the underlying rattle is growing louder. The gears are worn, the bearings almost gone. None of us expected to keep The Dam in place so long its first time out. It says a lot for Brains' genius, and Virgil's solid engineering, that it's lasted until now.
The thought of Virgil drags my eyes away from the redlining readouts on the dash to the window on my left. My brother isn't in view. He's behind me somewhere, stuck on a rock ledge with a broken leg… or worse. If The Dam shifts more than a few feet to the right, the wall of water will hit him and it'll be over almost before he knows it. If I move to the left, Scott's perch on the other side of the gorge will take the torrent's full force instead. Backing up slowly, feeling my way across the unstable valley floor, I might be able to get to one of my brothers or the other. Not both. I reckon I've got maybe three minutes before my motors burn out and I can't protect either one of them.
I'd not give much for my own chances after that. Tumbling downstream, or falling through the thin shell of this riverbed into the vast cave system that undermines it… neither is an attractive option. This cousin of the Firefly might be amphibious, and stronger than it looks, but it's not close to rugged enough for that. I wonder, by that point, whether I'd even care.
For the first time, I find myself wishing we'd missed a call, that our electronic ears hadn't been overhead when a thunderstorm in the hills sent the flash flood sweeping through this gorge. The thought is uncharitable. It disgusts me. But the way the sides of the canyon are riddled with iron ore, the only way to get a radio signal out was straight up.
If John hadn't heard the hikers' S-O-S, the half-dozen men and women would have been washed away as they tried to climb to safety. I'd have read about them, and felt a vague sense of regret, perhaps just a little guilt that we weren't there. Then I'd have shrugged and put it behind me, never sparing the matter another thought.
If it hadn't been for that chance line of sight, I would never have been in The Dam, diverting the rush of storm water so Virge could reach and stabilize the victims. I wouldn't be sitting here counting the seconds until my engines burn out.
If the gorge had been wide enough for Thunderbird Two we needn't have involved the locals. Scott wouldn't have climbed the opposite wall, getting enough height above the valley floor to signal their rescue helicopter and talk the winch man down.
If the local mountain rescue folks had a bigger 'copter, Virgil could have been winched to safety with the rescuees rather than left to scramble down the cliff-side. He wouldn't have worried about giving me time to get clear. He wouldn't have hurried… he might not have fallen.
If… if… if…
If I close my eyes, maybe I can pretend that I'm not sitting here, trying to choose between my brothers.
I can't close my eyes to this. I won't. I owe them both more than that.
"Alan, get moving." Scott sounds calm, but years at Mobile Control have made my eldest brother good at lying with his voice. He knows he's trapped, his escape route cut off when The Dam was shunted by the water pressure a few minutes back. "Get Virgil out of here."
"Don't you dare." Virgil is hoarse, voice tight with pain. He gasps, his breaths faltering into a series of uneven pants. Silently, I reassess his condition, adding broken ribs to the fractured leg he's already admitted to. Despite that, he's resolute. If I sacrifice Scott to save him, well… maybe one day he'll be able to forgive me, when we're both old men and the pain begins to fade. There's no chance he'll ever forgive himself.
Scott knows it too.
"Virge…"
Scott trails off and neither man says anything more. Despite that, and for the first time in my life, I can actually feel the communication between my two closest brothers. I know there are things being said that go beyond words.
There's a screech of agonized metal. One of the outer panels in the Dam's scoop tears, letting a jet of water through to pound against the windscreen in front of me. I've been pushed back another few inches, but I grit my teeth and keep the throttle hard against its stops, fighting to hold the vehicle in place. Scenarios play out in front of my mind's eye. Shift this way and Scott dies. Move the other and Virgil's music is silenced forever. Wait for my engines to fail and lose everything.
We all went into International Rescue with our eyes open, knowing that we might lose someone. Even in my worst nightmares though, I never thought I would come to this – frozen in indecision, with the lives of my brothers in my hands and no choice the right one.
I'd give anything for this flood water simply to be gone. I long for it to just sink into the ground in front of me, rather than filling my world with its thunder.
"Alan!" Scott's losing his calm now. He's seen the scoop distorting, its extendable panels warped so the water flow no longer follows a smooth hyperbola around the cabin. The Dam shunts back another foot or so and Scott's voice rises in pitch. "Get out of there!"
Even given the situation, there's more anxiety in his command than I expect. My eyes flick to the ground scanner, wondering if his vantage point has given him a better view of our predicament than even I have. If I've already been pushed onto a fault in the riverbed...
I grimace. With a mere crust of rock beneath me and the cavernous void directly below, I'm not sure I can get The Dam to safety however I move it. That's been true for a while now though, and there's nothing on the screen to explain Scott's fresh alarm. Maybe he thinks I'm going to choose him over Virgil. Maybe he's seen something else to agitate him. In the few seconds left to me, I pause and take stock, trying to assess the situation through Scott's sharp eyes. And that's when I see it… the option that my brother must have recognized and is praying I'll overlook.
I wanted the water gone. I said I'd give anything to get rid of it.
I meant it.
I don't hesitate. There's no time for doubt or regret. One hand reaches above my head for the engineering panel, taking the safety stops off the motors. The other tightens around the suddenly freed throttle, pushing every gauge into the red and triggering a dozen strident alarms.
The Dam edges forward, fighting for each millimeter. Behind me the overloaded engines are screaming. It takes them perhaps ten seconds to build to a crescendo. Long enough for my brothers to realize what I'm planning.
"Alan! No!"
"Power down!"
Their desperate pleas are the last thing I hear before the scream dies in a blast of sound and flame.
The seat slams into my back, my head whiplashing against its rest. Shards of window are scattered over and around me, the cabin a ruin. Water pours in, swirling as it escapes through cracks in the metal walls. Choking spray fills the air. The Dam has tumbled, thrown into the air and then onto its side by the force of its exploding engines, and through the broken windscreen I see a dark crevice in front of me. The floodwater is already blasting at its edges, widening the fissure I've put in the fragile riverbed. A newborn waterfall descends into the depths.
My breath catches in my throat, as much from relief and the sheer majesty of the sight as from the pain flooding my body.
My wrist-com bursts into life, and even above the ringing of my ears and the rush of water, I can hear my brothers calling my name. The wreckage tips nose-down, and I hang forward in my seat harness looking into the deep dark. The Dam falls through a tunnel of grey-blue, carried over the edge by the storm-driven torrent as it drains into the immense cavern below.
And as the blackness engulfs me, I'm smiling.
Dad sent three of his sons out on this rescue. Only two of us are going home.
But I'm the one who got to choose which two.
