Chapter 2 – my first rescue

Needless to say we had all lost our cash.

Scott stayed a couple more days but, like me, he's the type that bores easily so he put on a turn of speed and bought his ticket out. I had to hand it to him, I suppose. The guy is one fit old guy.

John went next. Virj would have probably beaten him to it, but he twisted his knee New Year's Eve and he really struggled after that. I discovered, if I didn't know already, that Marines are not especially sympathetic, even about injuries. I thought I would beat Gordon home, but somewhere along the way he got over his terror of the tower, and despite all the problems he's had with his own injuries he's still one pretty fit dude. I did finally break the four minutes on the assault course and finished a day before the big fella, but I hung around to encourage him.

Did I stay out of trouble the rest of the time? Well, let's just say I got to know the perimeter fence on an intimate basis.

By then, of course, it was back to Harvard for the duration. Having got in shape I made sure I stayed that way. Besides, working out turned out to be a babe magnet, and what can I say? I know Tin-Tin likes to think I save myself all for her, but a guy can't be a monk for a whole semester. Besides, whenever Johnny drops in to see his PhD supervisor he crashes with me, and then we really party. He has a reputation to keep up.

I digress.

When I next went home in the spring, Scott let me try out the GPX simulator, and then took me up in One for the first time.

Now that was cool.

At the start of the last long vacation I flew her solo, and though he complained long and hard that I wasn't handling her right, that's just him. Way over-protective of his bird.

It was just then that IR was taking its first faltering steps into the rescue business. We haven't exactly been international to date, just feeling our way, testing the water. Baby steps, you might say. Father has made contacts with a few friendly governments, negotiating landing rights. Some of them are in places with very little rescue infrastructure of their own, and others span awkward, out of the way territories. These governments are grateful when we help out. But father is still being cautious. IR is still pretty much under wraps – we've done nothing in the developed countries. In a way, I'm glad. I want to be there when we go truly global.

First off, though, father wouldn't let me join any of the rescues - on Scott's advice, needless to say. To be fair, they were pretty tame affairs to start with, and the other guys probably didn't need me along that badly. But there were a couple towards the middle of the vacation when they came back exhausted. An extra pair of hands would have helped.

But no, Scott wouldn't even recommend giving me a shot until I could do everything just the way he wanted. Much of it was pretty tedious, practicing maneuvres a child could have done, over and over until they went from 'not right' to 'right' – Scott's vocabulary, not mine. I couldn't see any difference to be honest.

By the time we got more than half-way through the vacation I did start to pester father about it. I needed to see some real action, otherwise I could see I was going to forget a lot of this stuff during my sophomore year. Eventually he saw it from my point of view, and promised I could go out to the next major incident. He gave instructions to Scott to 'let me get my hands dirty' and get as much experience as I could.

I began to get excited. I'd stood over Hiram's or John's shoulders a few times now, seeing how the operation went from this end. But it wasn't a substitute for the real thing.

I didn't have long to wait.

When the klaxon went off I was in the pool with Tin-Tin. Not helpful, but there you go. You can't legislate for people getting into trouble at inconvenient times. I could feel the rumbling of hydraulics under me as I hauled myself out and grabbed a couple of towels. I hightailed it towards Ops, trailing water, hoping that I might get to ride shotgun in One, but Scott was gone, the merest breath of air from the swinging of a door by the time I got there. Still, I didn't need a second bidding from father and I was headed for Two, brushing water out of my eyes as I went.

Everyone else must have been in the house when the call came in, because Two was already occupied and waiting to go.

Gordon eyed me cheerfully and nudged John as I arrived still dripping and half-naked. "Look what's arrived. We won't need the tender – we'll just drop Alan and he can put the fire out for us."

"Very funny," I retorted, struggling to dry off and find a uniform as Virgil settled the big bird over one of the pods. I felt, rather than heard, the added roar of One's rockets at that moment, and felt just a tinge of jealousy.

But that soon dissipated as we taxied down to the launch pad, the hydraulics jacked Two into position and Virgil fired up the thrusters.

It never ceases to amaze me that Two gets off the ground, and indeed, there is always that theme-park moment, a split-second when you feel she'll never overcome the inertia and will simply crash back down to earth. But then she lifts somehow.

Nothing like the excitement of One, of course. The acceleration is slow in comparison, no really excessive G forces, no need for anti-grav straining maneuvres –something I was getting pretty decent at. Women think thatlabouris rough. Oh, please. They should try the abdominal thrusts needed to combat eight Gs and see what that feels like. No need for a pressure suit either, mind – I suppose that's the upside. But why Virgil says he's happiest in Two is something I'll never understand.

"So what gives?" I asked

Apparently a plastics factory was on fire in one of our 'friendlies'.

Half an hour later and Scott was feeding back pictures. It looked like the mother of all fires. Some of the materials had exploded and kicked up burning ashes, resulting in half a dozen blazing buildings around the site. Access was limited – the site backed onto heavy forest and there was a huge perimeter fence preventing trapped workers from exiting that way. Some of the trees behind one end of the complex had already caught light.

Back at base, Brains and father were clearly poring over the images too, and a three-way stream of conversation ensued. I was struck by how much harder it was to keep track of what was going on that it was at home. On the base, there's a lot of listening, mostly to Scott and Virj exchanging intel, and then once in a while Brains will feed in some technical information, or Dad will jump in with a suggestion or order. But the background in Ops is mostly quiet and you have time to think.

Here on Two, I was trying to take in what Scott was saying, what Virgil was saying, what Dad and Brains were saying, and filter out most of what Johnny and Gordon were saying…it suddenly occurred to me there was a helluva lot more multi-tasking involved than I realised. The internal speaker system built into the birds has poorer frequency resolution that the home system – sometimes it's even hard just to work out who it is that's doing the talking.

But I'd got the gist of what needed to be done and I was almost dancing with impatience by the time Virgil put his bird down in the danger zone. He's so cautious – it takes him for ever to satisfy himself that the landing site is safe, when it's darned obvious that it's clear below and Scott's already told him so nine times. But we got there in the end. Gordo and I headed for the fire 'dozer' – I'd practiced operating it a dozen times now. Just not on a real fire.

Gordon stuck by Dad's instructions to let me help out properly, and he let me drive, contenting himself with 'directing operations', pointing me in this direction and that. We worked for almost an hour, clearing piles of hot rubble and burning infrastructure so that the other guys could get through with cutting gear. It was hotter than I imagined – the cab is well insulated, but the temperature outside was soaring. I couldn't believe anything could survive the inferno.

But there was a sudden shot of adrenaline for us all as we reached an almost intact building and the other three pulled out a bunch of live ones that the local fire service hadn't been able to reach. Distantly, I saw them go to work with the resuscitation gear.

We backed up away from the burning buildings. Almost immediately a wall of flame sprang back up. I guessed we would let things burn themselves out now.

Some of the survivors were gesticulating back towards the fire. I saw our guys looking back in the direction they were pointing. They put their heads together with the site manager. More gesticulation.

Scott headed in our direction, poked his head into the cab, shouting over the roar of the fires and the engine noise.

"We think we've got two more people trapped in a building at the back of the complex. The people we just pulled out think they may have made it onto the roof. They must be pretty well surrounded – we might have to go over the top." He knew as well as the rest of us that taking Two in across a burning building, risking possible damage from explosions beneath, wasn't anyone's favorite option, but he'd do it as a last resort. "Alan – I need you back in Two with Virgil and John – Gordon and I will see if we can get through on the ground."

I nodded, and headed for Two at a run. Behind me, Gordon began expertly to shift hot rubble again.

Back in Two Virj had already disappeared towards the cockpit as John and I headed for the hold and opened up the platform hatch in readiness.

We lifted up, watching the ground disappearing precipitously below us under the open hatchway. John fixed his safety clip to the rail, gestured for me to do the same.

Virgil's voice came across the intercom momentarily. "We've got two workers, Scott, just like they said – I can see them on the roof."

Scott cut in, though he sounded a million miles away and I struggled to pick up what he was saying. "We're through, but the situation doesn't look good down here. Most of the ground floor is ablaze now – that place is going to go down in minutes. To cap it all, the dozer has chosen this moment to stall on us, guys."

"Can you get it started again?"

"Gordon's trying. We think we may be hooked on some metal work."

There was some conversation I couldn't make out, then Scott's voice again, urgent now. "We're going to have to abandon her…she's on fire herself now." We heard him coughing.

"Get your breathing gear back on," Virgil told him sternly. "You and Gordon turn around and get out of there on foot – I have the targets in sight. We'll handle it from here, Scott."

There was a slight hesitation. "That's a negative – we've got a wall of flame building up behind us again. John, Alan – drop the platform into the clear patch in front of the building and Gordon and I will hitch a lift and then deal with the casualties."

"F.A.B," John answered promptly.

"How're we doing this?" I yelled at John over the noise of the engines.

John gestured from the other side of the open gap. "I'll guide us in. We can't go down too close because of the buildings but I think the cable will stretch it. Get ready with the release mechanism, will you?"

It was getting increasingly hard to hear – or shout - across the roar of Two's engines, so I just gave him a thumbs up.

Virj put the big bird into a high hover over the clearing between the fires. But even at this height, smoke was drifting up into the cabin now, choking us and getting into our eyes. John shouted instructions into the internal com-link, trying to guide Virgil to the right spot. We could make out the burning dozer below us. Two was beginning to buck now, buffeted by thermals from the rising hot air.

John shouted and gestured to me – I assumed to drop the hoist - so I slammed the release mechanism down.

A voice - Gordon's, I think - crackled across the radio. I could just make it out. "Make it fast guys. It's getting kinda hot down here. We've only got a small space to work with."

"Speed it up," John yelled at me.

I lifted the safeties on the brake up one notch to speed the descent, then jammed them back into position. At least I thought I did. I don't recall doing a visual, because at the same moment, Scott's voice cut in. "Alan – she's drifting. You're right over us."

I swung around, surprised. Looking after the positioning was John's end of the operation. But the instinct to follow orders was stronger than it had been, and I'd taken two paces back towards the hatch when John waved me back. "He means me," he yelled.

At which point all hell broke loose.

There was an odd rushing sound behind me, and the hoist disengaged its couplings, sending four tons of platform hurtling towards the ground and my two brothers standing directly beneath us.

I couldn't physically see the platform falling. But I could see and hear the chain unravelling, sparks flying from the metal as it rattled from its moorings. There was a startling explosion as the entire mechanism shorted out, the smell of acrid smoke adding to the smoke from below. Every fiber of my being screamed at me to do something, not just watch what was inevitably going to happen, and yet I was rooted to the spot.

They say your life flashes in front of you when you're about to lose it. I don't know about that, but I can tell you for sure that your brothers' lives do when you're about to kill them.

Scenes like picture postcards.

Tiny snippets.

Scott taking me by the hand, or reading to me, or helping me with my homework when Dad wasn't about.

Gordon jumping out at me from the shadows to spook me, going one-on-one with me in the back yard, telling me my first blue joke, and me pretending I understood it.

And they were both born survivors. They were indestructible.

Gordon's horrific hydrofoil accident, and the fact they told us he'd die, likely as not. My best friend. But he defied all the doctors and survived. Not just survived, but walked and ran, and trained for this.

Scott, spending months at a time in a war zone. The quiet hints from John – never from Scott himself - about the dangers he'd faced. And then the awful freeway pile-up that he had miraculously walked away from with barely a scratch. I had sworn then that I would never again tease him about those European tanks he prefers to drive.

Now I would never get the chance.

In that moment of frozen time I knew I had killed them both.

I stood, literally shocked into petrifaction, unable to move.

I remember when I was a kid watching uselessly as a dog off a leash had darted straight out in front of a truck. It was like that. Everything had gone into slow motion. I saw the look on the owner's face. I saw the dog-walker on the opposite sidewalk whose bitch was the trigger for the sudden blind lunge. I saw the passers-by pull up to stare. I saw the look of horror on the driver's face. There was this terrible feeling of inevitability about it. I had known that dog was going to die, and I didn't want it to, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

I had never wanted to feel that helpless again.

My brain went into melt-down. I knew I should be doing something. I just couldn't think what the hell it was.

But opposite me John, the quietest of us all, the least reactive of us all, the unlikeliest of rescuers, John burst into life, wrenched off his safety lead and in the barest split second had pushed me aside, covered the five yards to the secondary emergency brake and slammed it home.

That's what I should have been doing.

…

They hadn't died, of course, though they'd come darned close. Scott dove into Gordon and knocked him clear. He'd ended up sprawled out flat with the platform coming to a jerking halt about four feet above him.

Gordon, who broke his nose in the hydrofoil accident, has never had it reset. He says he likes it that way. It nearly got rearranged by default that day. The sudden jerk on the hoist knocked one of the chains loose and it whipped up within an inch of his face.

Back in Two I didn't know all this. I thought they were probably crushed to death beneath the heavy platform. I heard someone's voice chanting a pleading blasphemy over and over. Then I realised it was my own. I groaned. "Johnny…?"

I didn't dare look. He peered out, with difficulty.

I heard Dad's voice across the radio, demanding to know what had happened. No-one answered him.

"They're okay," John confirmed.

I looked at him, not quite comprehending.

He raised his voice and nodded reassuringly. "They're up, both of them. They're okay."

I don't know what I expected next.

But after twenty seconds or so, a voice said very calmly over the radio, "If you guys have finished fooling around up there, we have a rescue to complete."

…

With the hoist mechanism shot to pieces the only thing we could do was to use Two's own elevation to raise and lower the platform. It must have made for a hair-raising piece of flying on Virgil's part. But we got there in the end, picking up first my brothers then the two casualties, just moments before the building collapsed, air-lifting them to safety. The trickiest bit was to land Two with the platform still dangling underneath her but somehow we managed that too.

We disembarked to re-group, though I'd rather not have done.

Scott just raised an eyebrow at John. "Were you having fun?"

"It was my fault," I blurted out. John had saved their lives. I couldn't let him take the blame. "It was John you saw directing Virgil, not me. I was supposed to be looking after the hoist. I didn't do a visual check on the safety."

I braced myself for the inevitable. Sure enough, Gordon, still shaken and on the cusp of tears, let fly with a stream of invective, most of it comparing me to less salubrious parts of the male anatomy or detailing ways in which I could use said parts to entertain myself. I know for a fact he learned a few of these phrases from Dad, but some of them were really quite inventive. Maybe they were standard issue at WASP, or maybe he'd learned more than I thought from the gunner sergeant.

In between, I apologised like a thousand times.

Scott eyed Gordon up and jerked his head briefly. "We're still on the job, kid," he snapped quickly. "We have a forest fire to put out. Get it together now, or leave the scene."

Gordon stopped short, apparently taken aback. Me too – if it comes to a real show-down, Scott inevitably takes Gordon's side.

He looked at me sternly. "And try to stop shaking, kid."

I took a very deep breath.

By the time the ambulance crew had come for the two factory workers, we may have looked halfway like a bunch of pros again.

…

I wasn't looking forward to the debriefing that night. I'd sat in on these before, of course. Sometimes they were just dandy. Sometimes they weren't. I just hadn't personally been on the receiving end of Dad's tongue after a long, tiring job, and I wasn't looking forward to it. Actually, I was feeling slightly nauseous.

Before we went in, Scott caught my eye and gave me the faintest shake of the head. I knew what it meant. It meant Keep quiet, kid, and I'll cover your back. He'd done it for all of us so many times before. Sometimes, if I'm truthful, by taking the blame for things we'd done.

I felt just a little less queasy.

Dad was calm when we entered the office. That isn't always a good sign, though. Hiram was already there, prancing nervously as he does when he's flustered.

"Okay, boys." Father looked up. "I know how it looked at this end. How did it look at yours?"

"Pretty straightforward, sir," Scott put in quickly. "Casualties. But no fatalities. And we stopped the fire spreading further. Given what we were facing, I'd have to say this was a pretty successful rescue."

I looked at him. If this one was straightforward I'd hate to see the rescue from hell.

Beside me, John grunted something in assent.

"So no issues – nothing we can learn from this one?"

Virgil took the bait. "It all went down pretty quietly, Dad."

"No problems at all?" Dad's voice hinted at sarcasm.

"I wouldn't say that," Scott qualified.

Here it came.

"We burned out the dozer. The mechanism jammed up with debris."

Hackenbacker jumped in eagerly. "W-w-well, as it h-h-happens, Virgil and I have been working on an upgraded d-d-design. We've called her the F-f-firefly, and she should be able to deal with just the kinds of p-p-problems you encountered yesterday."

"Great stuff," Scott nodded approvingly, though I suspected that even though I'd heard nothing about this he probably already knew about the new machine. There's not much that slips past him. "Can I take a look at the plans later?"

"Sure, S-S-Scott."

"Anything else?" Dad asked.

"We need high viz gear," Scott continued.

The rest of us looked at him, puzzled.

He shrugged. "I've discovered I can't tell our blonds apart at a distance. I may actually have to take back everything I said about John getting a haircut. "

"Thought about just getting your eyes tested?" Gordon enquired testily.

"My vision's twenty-twenty, thanks. But short of all of you fair types dyeing your hair a different colour, I don't see anything for it. We need something like colour-coded jackets."

"No use if we're working in hot conditions," Virgil pointed out. "We tend to throw them off."

"Okay – a vest or a sash or something that we can just throw on over whatever we're wearing."

"John – can you put in an order for something?" Dad said faintly.

"Bags orange," Gordon said promptly.

"It'll clash with your dash of ginger," Virgil told him sourly.

"Won't it ever?" Gordon said. He sounded obtusely pleased by the idea. He was still well out of sorts.

Scott shot Virgil the sort of look that said Humor him – anything to keep him quiet.

"So apart from the fact that you've ruined one of our most expensive pieces of equipment, and that after all this time you can't actually tell your brothers apart, is there anything else we need to look at?" Dad enquired mildly of Scott.

Scott knows the danger signs as well as the rest of us, but he was still calling Dad's bluff.

"Well, there's the lock on the winch in Two," he said matter-of-factly. "Hiram, you need to check out the braking mechanism asap before we have a serious accident with that thing."

Gordon made a very small choking noise.

"W-w-well, Scott, I can tell you that it was all in p-p-proper w-w-working order when you left this morning."

"Well, now it isn't." That was an understatement. "We need an extra fail-safe installed. Something that detects if the chain is running too fast and kicks in automatically would do the trick."

Brains considered this. "Y-y-yes, I suppose it would be easy enough to run a sensor fiber along the length of the cable. I'll g-g-get on and design something."

I felt more than a touch guilty.

"Otherwise, the rescue went pretty smoothly, sir," Scott continued. Virgil just nodded in agreement.

Father looked from one to the other of them.

Eventually he tapped his pen on the table.

"Okay, full report on my desk by noon tomorrow, Scott. Dismissed, everyone."

There are times when I'm glad I'm not the field commander. Dad insists on written records of every rescue. Exactly where his audit trail is supposed to lead, I'm not very clear.

We turned to leave.

"Gordon, Alan, a moment."

Beside me there was the faintest hesitation in Scott's stride, but he picked it up again. Dad knows most of his tricks and he has a few of his counter-measures of his own up his sleeve. There was nothing big brother could do for me now.

Gordon and I swung back. I tried to catch his eye but he was having none of it. His colour was high – so was mine, I guess. The price of a fair complexion.

Dad waited until the door was shut. We stood in front of his desk. He didn't look up, but busied himself scribbling notes on his jotter. Why he does this is anybody's guess, but it sure has the effect of making us nervous.

"Anything you two would like to tell me? Gordon?"

I could have been ten years old again, called to father's study for misbehaviour at the dinner table.

Gordon was tight-lipped. I waited to see what he would say. It isn't good policy to contradict your brother on these occasions – solidarity is what's needed. Wherever he was going, that's where I was headed too.

"No, sir," he said eventually.

Dad looked up, straight at me. "Alan? Do you have anything to say?"

"No, sir," I mumbled quickly.

Dad continued to stare. Then suddenly he looked down again. "Then you're both dismissed." His voice was cold.

We moved toward the door. I reached the handle, turned it, stepped back to let Gordon through. I thought about the coldness in Dad's tone. I thought about the fact I'd as near as dammit killed my brothers earlier in the day.

And I thought about the fact that if I owned up this would probably be the last time I ever went out with them again.

Conscience is a damned nuisance thing.

I sighed heavily, and turned back around.

"Actually, sir, there is something."

…

Scott glanced up at me. "You got a secure line?"

"Yip."

"Tested it?"

I gave it another yank.

"It's solid."

The previous day his continual checking would have rankled me. Today, it was somehow comforting. I was doing it right. I grabbed the next handhold, hoisted myself up onto the ledge. A few moments later he swung himself up beside me and we rested, looking out to sea, perched on our precarious little ledge with a two hundred foot sheer drop below us.

"So how'd it go?" he asked conversationally.

I knew exactly what he meant.

"Better than expected, I suppose. I mean, sure he chewed me out. No more than I deserved. He said he guessed I'd learned something. Actually, he said to tell you that he learned something too."

"What's that?"

"To trust his field commander when he tells him someone isn't ready to make the team."

He looked at me sideways. "He said that?"

"What I don't understand is why you're taking it so well."

"It was partly my fault. I distracted you at a critical moment."

"It shouldn't have stopped me making the visual. You guys have to deal with distractions all the time. You don't make mistakes."

"Sure we do. And it could have been a malfunction, anyway. We don't know for sure."

"I do. I got careless. You have poor old Brains redesigning gear that works perfectly well."

"You're missing the point. We can't completely design away human error but we'll minimise it as much as we can. Putting an extra safety sensor on the winch will mean that what happened yesterday can't happen again – no matter whose fault it is, no matter what the circumstances. Same time, you have to realise that the reason we keep on drilling over and over is so that all of our standard procedures become automatic. We can't miss safety checks."

I nodded. "So I guess I'm definitely off the team?"

"For now, yes. You need more practice."

I nodded. I'd known it was coming – that's why he'd brought me climbing, to soften the blow a little – but it was still hard to take.

"Just be patient," he continued. "You're almost there."

I don't consider patience a virtue, I'll admit. But I was beginning to understand I was going to need it in spades.

"I wish I could do this full time," I groaned. "Harvard is going to take for ever. Why didn't I just skip college like Gordon?"

"Gordon isn't exactly academic," he reminded me.

True. But it's probably hard to keep up your grade average when you spend as many hours as he spent in a swimming pool. He did well just to graduate high school, to be fair to him.

Scott continued. "But if you'd done him a serious mischief yesterday he'd have had find a whole new career. We all live with that hanging over our heads." He grinned easily. "Like the rescue platform. Next time you're up there I'll remember to stand further back…So go get your college diploma. It's your backstop. We'll be here when you're done, and if you work real hard in the next couple of weeks we'll have you back on the team next time you're home."

That cheered me, I guess.

…

So here I am, back in Cambridge, feeling that nothing will ever be quite as exciting as being on a certain pacific island waiting for a bell to ring. But it's given me the spur I need to sign up for extra classes this semester. If Scott and John can get through accelerated programs, so can I. I'm going to be joining them sooner than they think.

Ah, well.

I roll back the plans for a neat little remote controlled rocket I've got at the design stage. If I've done my calculations right, I figure I might just break the record for an unmanned small rocket flight.

She's going to create quite a stir when I fire her up from the quad…