WEATHERING THE STORM by TIYLAYA RATED FRT

When an unexpected storm shipwrecks a holidaying Jeff Tracy and three of his young sons, they're thrown into a situation far more dangerous and complex than anyone initially realises.

This story is a work of fan fiction based on the 1960s television series Thunderbirds, created by Gerry Anderson for ITC Entertainment. Characters and scenarios are used without permission and for the pleasure they provide, without any attempt to profit. Many thanks to quiller for her helpful and thorough beta, and for pointing out why the geography of San Fernando didn't make sense. Any remaining mistakes are, of course, entirely my own.

Chapter 1

The rain tasted of salt, mingling with the icy spray that was freezing Scott's cheeks. The air and sky and sea seemed to have become one roaring, hungry beast. The whole world was made up of water, and Scott blinked hard, trying to see through the torrent bombarding his eyes and face.

"Swing it out, Scott!" His father's voice was a distant murmur of the wind, but even so he could hear the strain in it. Fear threatened to freeze Scott's limbs. For the sake of his brothers, he forced the emotion down deep inside and hauled on his rope. The emergency dinghy swung out over the turbulent water, waves striking it even before it was lowered from the deck.

"Hold it there!" The words were almost indistinguishable above the flap of torn sails and the creak of the rigging. Again, Scott reacted to his Dad's command instinctively, straining to tighten his grip on the rope and looping it around the anchor point on the deck rail. His hands remembered the knots before his brain did, the last two weeks on the Santa Anna, the lessons and drills from his father, paying off in this thundering, lightning-lit nightmare.

A movement caught his eye, picked out by the flickering light of the storm. He looked upwards along a deck that should have been horizontal and was anything but. The door to the cabin had opened, swinging wide as gravity caught it. Silhouetted against the light, Virgil wedged himself in the doorway, a white-faced Gordon held tight in his arms as they tried to remain steady on the tilting and tossing deck. Virgil had managed to get a life-jacket onto the younger child, Scott noted with relief, and had pulled one over his own head, although the straps meant to secure it hung loose from his waist.

Scott squinted through the pouring rain, barely able to make out the blurred form of his father at the other end of the deck. A dimly-seen arm waved. The gesture could have meant anything, and Jeff Tracy's words were swept away by the gusting wind, but Scott was pretty sure of his father's intention. He was a lot closer to his brothers than their Dad was. Leaving the dinghy hanging behind him, he fought his way toward the cabin, clinging to the rail and to the ropes his father had hastily rigged. There hadn't been much time for elaborate preparations when this squall blew in out of the clear evening sky.

Virgil lost his grip on the doorframe while Scott was still over a yard away, tossed by the rolling vessel. Scott held onto the deck rail one-handed, clinging for dear life – not his own, but two more precious to him. His other arm reached out blindly, and, as his brother had known he would, Virgil found it. Scott let out a sound halfway between a groan and a scream as he took the weight on aching muscles, hauling Virgil in, not resting until his younger brother was able to take his own one-handed grip on the rail next to Scott, Gordon held firmly between them.

All three were already soaked to the skin, and Gordon was shuddering violently as they worked their way down towards the half-deployed dinghy. Dad met them beside it, his own rope now firmly tied off. He swept the three of them into his arms, pulling them down into a tight huddle against the deck. He was shouting to be heard, and even with their heads together, their father's broad shoulders protecting them from the worst of the wind, they could barely hear him.

"The boat's sinking, boys!" he shouted, as if the pronounced list and the waves now lapping over the deck plates wasn't evidence enough. "This shouldn't be happening, but it is. I can tell you, your Uncle Jim is going to get a punch to the jaw when I see him next! He promised us fine weather all the way." Jeff Tracy's humour was forced: an attempt to reassure his sons that didn't fool the elder two and passed straight by the terrified youngest. Their father's voice turned deadly serious. "We're going to have to abandon ship! Gordon, Virgil, do what your brother and I tell you! Scott, I need you to get up into the dinghy and help your brothers aboard!"

There was no time for argument, and the remorseless pounding of the rain had driven any thought of it out of Scott's head. He broke the huddle. Clinging to the rope securing the prow of the dinghy, he stepped up onto the deck rail. He was dimly aware of his father holding tight to his ankles, his younger brothers clinging in turn to their only solid rock in this terrifying world. He shook off the hold on one foot, extending that leg and leaning forward until his weight tipped him into the shallow well of the lifeboat. Ropes were slung around the perimeter of the tiny craft, looping through reinforced anchor points in its thick plastic hull. He twisted one around his wrist, and held tight to the swaying boat. Running his other hand over his face, he swept his limp hair and the water streaming down it back from his face and cautiously poked his head above the walls of the dinghy. His father's terrified eyes met his immediately and softened into relief.

Conversation was impossible and words unnecessary. One arm still looped under the anchor ropes and spreading his feet wide to steady himself, Scott reached out. His father handed Gordon up to him as if the six-year-old was a mere baby. The small boy was rigid with terror, passive as he was handed from one protective embrace to another. Scott held him tight, pressing his brother's face against his soaking shirt and trying to still his shivers. There was no time for comfort now though. Dropping Gordon into the bottom of the boat, Scott stood astride him, holding his frightened little brother firmly between his calves. He reached out with his arms to pull Virgil aboard, the larger child stepping up onto the rail as Scott had, but needing both a boost from his father and the steadying hands of his eldest brother to make the leap up into the lifeboat. Virgil squeezed Scott's hand before dropping into the boat, both seeking comfort and giving it.

A wave, larger than any that had gone before, rocked yacht and lifeboat both. Virgil and Gordon both screamed. Scott dropped back into the boat, unbalanced and landing hard on his rear. Suddenly fully exposed to the wind and rain, Gordon scrambled up Scott's legs, throwing himself into his brother's arms. He clung to the little boy automatically, his eyes following Virgil instead as the eleven-year-old grabbed for the dinghy walls and managed to take a firm grasp on one of the ropes there.

They could hear Dad shouting, and there was a lurch as the front rope loosened. The deck of the lifeboat tilted at a newly crazy angle, its prow now angled sharply down towards the tossing waves. Gordon screamed again, and Scott scrambled for a hold, concentrating on keeping them in the boat. Another lurch and the stern dropped back through level and past it, throwing them forward before their father arrested the motion. He tied the stern line off once more, moving back to the first rope, having to let them down by stages, unable to manage the weight of dinghy and all three boys on one rope alone.

They were riding the turbulent waves now. The sailing yacht Santa Anna was sitting low in the draft, heavy with water flooding her lower decks. Virgil stood in the dinghy, his chest level with the yacht's deck rail, reaching out one hand to his father and calling for Jeff to jump. Scott scrambled to the port side of the lifeboat and towards the rear. One arm still held Gordon tight against him, the other hand fiddled with the rope securing the stern of the dinghy to the Santa Anna's deck, as he yelled at his father to take Virgil's hand and jump into the boat. His words were swept away by the wind and drowned by the rain and waves. Even so, Jeff Tracy moved to the front rope, taking the strain of it with a loop around his wrist and offering his other hand to Virgil.

Their father was nearly aboard when the yacht, the proud Santa Anna that had gleamed in the morning light and danced across the waves like a seabird, abruptly tilted, lurched, and broke up in a cloud of flying splinters and debris. Her boom, breaking free of its ropes, swung one final time across the yacht's breadth and past it, not far above the splintering deck. Kneeling in the stern of the lifeboat, Gordon held tightly to him, Scott could only watch in horror as it caught Virgil at chest-height, sweeping him out into thin air, and carrying him away with it as it tore free and vanished into the dark night. His father had vanished too, tumbling backwards into the wreckage. Terrified, shocked beyond coherence, Scott screamed for Virgil, for his Dad, for anyone. The rope securing the dinghy to the ship's rail was torn from his hand, dragged at speed down into the dark water. For a few seconds he thought the dinghy would follow it, and he closed his eyes, wrapping himself around Gordon, waiting for the pounding pressure, the darkness and pain, to surround them.

It didn't.

He counted to ten, twenty, before opening his eyes, confused and dazed to find the dinghy still bobbing on the surface, carrying Gordon and him further from the wreckage of the Santa Anna with each wave. He shouted again for his father and brother, unable to hear the words himself as the wind tore them from his throat. Scanning the dark water desperately, he squinted in the brief, jagged bursts of lightning, effectively blind between them. He shouted until his throat was raw, and then until he felt himself hyperventilating. He had no idea how much time passed before he blinked, realising that he could no longer see even the shards of the sunken vessel, only the walls of water that surrounded them and tossed them like a floating cork.

Waves were crashing around the dinghy and over it, drenching the two frightened children. Gordon was still clinging to his brother's chest. The boy's wracking sobs shook his body and sent a tremor into Scott's tear-tightened ribcage. Numbly, Scott held Gordon against him, whispering false reassurances that his little brother certainly couldn't hear but might just feel. Shifting so the small boy was secure in the narrow gap between Scott's body and the dinghy wall he was clinging to, Scott held on through the long, cold night.

The storm blew out with the dawn. Exhausted, cold and hurting, Virgil could scarcely believe it when he realised that the gusts were growing weaker, the waves less violent. He knew he was drifting in and out, but even so it seemed strange just how abruptly the sky went from angry darkness to a few wispy clouds in the grey dawn light.

His legs hung limp in the cold water, long since numb from the chill of it. His chest was an aching pit of misery, and he knew it didn't help that all his weight was thrown across it. He shifted without thinking and the ache exploded into a sharp pain that left him breathless. His grip on the wooden spar supporting him weakened and he slipped backwards, lower in the water. Desperation and terror overrode the pain and he pulled himself back up, leaning forwards once again across the boom that had knocked him into the water and was now all that kept him above it.

He remembered a glimpse of Scott's horrified expression, seeing the spar sweeping through the night towards him, and then the pain exploding in his chest as it struck. After that the night was confusing turbulence, broken into a series of scenes burnt crystal clear into his memory by the lightning flashes that illuminated them. He remembered not being able to breathe, his chest tightening in shock. He remembered the moment the water closed over his head, the instinctive breath he'd drawn past the pain and the sheer chance that meant he'd bobbed to the surface at that moment rather than sucked the choking water into his burning lungs. He didn't know how he'd found himself clinging to the same boom for dear life, his unsecured life-jacket floating in the water under his chin and behind him, threatening to slip over his head. He remembered fiddling with the ties one-handed, and then forgetting about them entirely as his fingers brushed a limp form in the water.

His father must have dived after him, there was no other explanation for how he'd ended up drifting so close, but the flashing light was enough to show Virgil red streaks and dark bruises on Jeff Tracy's pale face. He wasn’t sure how he'd got the tall man up and across the boom, hauling the unconscious figure towards him, and ending up rolling with the boom, water closing over his head as his motion carried him beneath it. A raw determination to survive had driven him back to the surface and he'd found himself thrown against the now-laden boom, floating in the water beside it, clinging to it and to his father, trying to keep the taller man's head out of the water. He cried with his desperate hope that the slight rise and fall of his father's chest that he glimpsed in the flashes of light was real rather than merely a child's fantasy. That hope had carried him through the night.

A moment of panic assailed him now and he glanced to his right, not breathing until he saw his father still slumped across the twelve-inch thick wooden log. He'd been worried that his movement might have rolled the boom, slipping his father back into the deep water, or just plunging his face below its surface. He'd been lucky, and he reached out cautiously, stroking a few strands of hair back from Dad's bruised forehead, able for the first time to see the blood seeping sluggishly from a wound above his hairline. Virgil winced, swallowing past the salt-dry ache in his throat. Dad hadn't moved through the long hours of the storm and that wasn't good. Virgil needed to find him help. He looked around him in the ever-growing light, trying to make out any shapes on the horizon that might offer help and comfort. Somewhere out there, Scott and Gordon had the dinghy; surely they couldn't be too far away? Virgil scanned in every direction, twisting painfully to see behind him. Featureless water surrounded him, flat and empty as far as the eye could see. He slumped against the boom, disappointment and desperation making him shake. Inching cautiously along it, he rested first a hand and then a tear-stained cheek on Dad's back. For the first time, with the fury of the storm expended and the silence of the open water ringing in his ears, he could hear the slow, steady thud of his father's heartbeat.

Relieved tears mingled with the sea-water soaking Jeff's back. The boom bobbed through the now-gentle surface waves and Virgil clung to it, frightened and feeling very alone with only his Dad's unconscious body for company.

Auguste Villacana was a tall man. He exuded an air of confidence and a pleasant façade that almost hid the cold steel beneath. He considered outward displays of strong emotion a failing on his part, keeping his voice calm and his expression no more than slightly interested regardless of whether he was commenting on a picture in the local art gallery, or orchestrating a straying servant's excruciatingly slow torture.

He stood on the gunwale of his hundred-foot motor yacht, his dark-blonde hair rippled by the slipstream. Behind him, in the wheelhouse, he could hear his captain ordering a new course, following Villacana's instruction to take him into the heart of the target zone. They'd left the sheltered harbour on San Fernando at noon, the streamlined hull of the motorboat cutting through the last few choppy waves drifting in from the storm. A storm that had raged on the horizon through the long night, its outer fringes pelting the plate-glass windows of his home with near-horizontal rain. A storm whose beginning and end, whose centre and size, Villacana himself had dictated.

His feet firmly planted on the deck, Villacana raised his face to the wind, breathing in the ozone-tainted breeze and with it the intoxicating scent of power. A mass of seaweed drifted past, the thick, heavy strands torn from the ocean bed by the storm's fury. Already Villacana had seen the limp forms of drowned seabirds, and the thick muddy colour of the water, mute testimony of the power that was his at the flick of a switch. His four-man crew had looked at the debris with frightened eyes and crossed themselves, clinging to their superstitions and offering a sacrifice of weak lager to the turbulent water as soon as San Fernando faded from view behind them. His captain thought him mad for wanting to set to sea mere hours after witnessing the force of the sea god's anger. Islander peasants, one and all. Fools. They didn't suspect that the deity they feared was standing on the deck, watching their petty ritual with contempt. Villacana played with the thought of calling the storm again, sending these men to the watery grave they feared. He dismissed the thought with no more than a flash of irritation across his face. Such a paltry pleasure was not worth the cost of the yacht, and certainly inconsequential beside his own presence on the water.

Coming out here was an indulgence, he knew, but hardly a dangerous one. His watching crewmen didn't suspect that he'd ventured out to inspect the results of his own test. No one, not even the controllers he had usurped, could trace this back to him or suspect what was yet to come. Standing in the afternoon sun, eyes scanning the now-tranquil surface of the water, Villacana revelled in his unique knowledge, the memory of the storm that had gone, and the thought of those yet to come.

A man shouted, shattering his quiet reverie, and Villacana turned towards the sailor standing lookout in the prow. The captain had set him there to watch for large debris, a precaution rather typical of the over-cautious man. Stepping from the port side of the boat to the starboard, Villacana followed the man's pointing arm. His forehead creased in a slight frown as his eyes scanned towards the horizon, the only manifestation of his inward cursing.

Villacana raised an imperious hand, summoning his yacht's captain to his side. "Sail on," he ordered briskly.

He half-expected the man's frown, and the shake of his head. Even the flash of anger in Villacana's eyes didn't sway the man, although the rest of his crew shied away.

"Sir, I'm sorry," he said apologetically. "It's a shipwreck, sir. Recent. We're obliged to stop. I have no choice."

Villacana considered forcing the point, and let it go with a slight inclination of his head and no sign of the fury he buried deep inside. Now wasn't the time to teach the newest of his employees obedience. There would be time for that back on San Fernando, and besides, a wrecked boat out here was not a feature of Villacana's plan. Any such deviation needed investigation more urgently than he needed to assert his authority.

The motorboat slowed as she approached, settling to wallow more lugubriously through the waves. Debris bounced off her hull with sharp pings. Only shards of fibreglass and splintered wooden-decking littered the water, but the few remains were enough to indicate the size and shape of the vessel they had come from. She had hardly been a big ship, but she was no dinghy either. A pleasure boat, like Villacana's own? Some rich man's folly, or perhaps a family's pride and joy. Whatever it was, she was gone now, torn to shreds by the storm's fury. The bulk of her had vanished beneath the waves, leaving only this trail of litter to mar the smooth ocean.

Villacana's internal stream of profanity crescendoed. This was no local fishing rig. The sunken vessel came from a world of affluence and power far from the quiet island state where she had met her fate. He felt no grief, no pang of compunction about the lives he'd sacrificed to his ambition. He only felt anger and frustration. A vessel like this would be missed. It would draw in search planes like hornets, and petty officials would swarm across the islands in a futile hunt. That could ruin everything, and Villacana couldn't risk that, not now.

"Man in the water!"

The relief he felt when another crewman cried out, pointing to a floating, huddled shape bobbing on the waves, had nothing to do with the life of the pale-skinned man they pulled aboard, or even the shivering, semi-conscious child that seemed to be tangled around him and the wooden spar that had saved them. He watched with cold eyes as one of his crewmen wrapped the boy in a blanket, cutting through the cords tying his life-jacket to the sunken ship's boom. He turned away before finding out whether the adult was alive or dead; it made little difference.

"Full speed to Dominga," he snapped at his captain,

The man blinked at him, still lost in the tragedy of the sunken ship. It took him several seconds to protest. The state capital on the island of Dominga was well over two hundred miles away, far from the closest port.

Villacana forced a serpent's smile onto his lips. "They need help. Dominga has the best medical facilities. Set course, captain."

The fool finally responded, more to the shiver of anger in Villacana's voice than to his words. He started shouting orders to the men, and Villacana was satisfied to feel the engine throb to life below his feet, and the boat begin to turn across the wind. He strode past the wheelhouse, following the two sailors carrying the shipwrecked man and his young companion – a son perhaps? – below decks. The boy had long-since passed out, deeply unconscious. The man, tall, dark-haired and well-muscled, stirred when they laid him on one of the crew's beds, his head tossing as he began to mutter meaningless names. He was still alive, Villacana realised with a certain irritation. Still, no need for that to be a problem, provided he could be kept quiet.

Villacana ordered his crew out of the room before calmly loosening the clamp that held a desk-lamp to the bed-frame. Hefting the heavy base in his hands, he swung it calmly and with precision, feeling no shame or guilt as he brought it crashing down on the man's left temple. To his satisfaction, the tension drained from the dripping man's body, and it slumped limply back against the thin mattress.

Nodding to himself, Villacana left the cabin and headed towards the engine room. Already the programmes and hardware he needed were running through his mind. He'd have to get the timing right, giving his yacht 'engine trouble' as soon as they came across one of the fishing vessels that littered these waters. The boat would be 'forced' to turn to home, leaving the fishermen to carry their passengers into Dominga, together with a healthy bribe and a story that placed their rescue a hundred miles to the east rather than twice that southwards of the capital island. Unconscious, neither man nor boy would remember the large motor-yacht that had pulled them from the water, or the time it took them to reach shore. With luck, their miraculous survival would be enough to call off any search. Even if it wasn't, the fishermen's story would send the helicopters and coastguard vessels far afield, leaving San Fernando and its secrets unmolested.

Villacana slipped into the engine room, easily evading the one bored crewman who would rather be joining the excitement on deck than stuck down here. Finding a corner, he fell back on the skills that had made him rich, and ultimately given him the power of a god. No one and nothing, least of all a waterlogged tourist and his brat, were going to stand in the way of his apotheosis.

Chapter 2

Scott wasn't sure whether the rocking motion of the boat had finally sent him to sleep, or whether he'd simply passed out.

Sleep hadn't been an option while the storm raged on, the noise and darkness and constant motion pounding against his numb form. Thought and emotion hadn't been options either. He'd concentrated solely on holding onto the lifeboat and onto his little brother. Gordon's sobs had gradually faded into an exhausted shuddering, and then even that had subsided. Scott had held the younger boy against his chest, willing the little heat he had left to pass through their sodden clothes. In the brief lightning flashes, he'd watched Gordon's eyes grow heavy, and he'd felt the child's grip on his shirt-front slacken. Terrified, Scott had squeezed more tightly still against the wall of the boat, wrapping his arms and legs around Gordon's, and doing all he could to shelter him from the chill of the wind.

It wasn't until the first faint hints of morning shot the sky through with salmon-pink streaks that, with startling abruptness, the rain eased, and the towering waves no longer threatened to capsize them with each passing moment. Scott yielded to his own weakness. His hands stayed twined around the ropes, the muscles in his wrist and fingers cramped into place. The rest of him slumped down into the bottom of the boat, half on top of his little brother.

"Scotty?"

It was broad sunlight when Gordon shook him awake. Even before Scott opened his eyes, he was lifting his face towards the warmth. He ached all over. His hands were at once numb and incredibly painful. He couldn't feel his fingertips, only that they had been plunged into a fire somewhere. His eyes opened and he stared blearily at his own hands. They seemed to belong to someone else, still holding the safety ropes on the dinghy walls in a cramped death-grip. Gordon was calling his name, squirming out from under him. The younger boy followed Scott's eyes and frowned. His small hands moved to Scott's, prising his fingers away from the rope one by one. The first two fingers were the worst, even Gordon's gentlest tug sending shooting pains through Scott's wrists. After that, his muscles seemed to get the idea. He managed to force his fist to unclench and fell backwards into the boat, groaning quietly.

"Scott!"

Gordon's eyes were wide and worried as he scrambled to his brother's side. He shook Scott's shoulder with one hand, calling his name again, and Scott mustered the energy to sit upright. He held open his arms and Gordon scrambled into them, holding him tightly. Both boys were shivering, their clothes no longer sodden after a morning under the bright sun, but still cold and damp. Scott buried his face in Gordon's hair and hugged him tight, relieved beyond measure to find his brother awake and apparently reasonably alert. He thanked God that the late-afternoon sun in this part of the world was as warm as the storm had been cold. After their brush with hypothermia in the early hours of the morning, he hadn't been sure that either of them would wake at all.

A long moment passed before Gordon squirmed free, splashing through the three inches of water in the bottom of the boat. Scott watched him and then looked beyond him. The stern of the eight by five foot dinghy was dominated by a large box, a built-in waterproof trunk that also served as an anchor point for a gasoline-powered motor that could be lowered over the side behind it. The previous night, in the darkness and torrential rain, it had been a struggle enough to stay in the boat. Their supplies would have been ripped away by the wind the second the locker was opened, and trying the motor would have been like using a hand-held fan to steer oneself through a tornado. Now though, even through his shock, Scott could recognise that the emergency supply cabinet had definite potential.

"Scotty, are you all right?"

He staggered to his feet, using Gordon for balance as the younger boy came to his side. Scott's fingers were still aching fiercely, but he managed to fumble with the catches on the emergency locker, pushing it open with a shove of his shoulder. The thick-walled plastic box was divided into two compartments, the starboard third holding the compact outboard motor and its accessories while the larger compartment to the left was full almost to the brim with neat, vacuum-packed supplies. The first thing his eyes fell on was a two litre bottle of water, and instantly his parched throat made itself known, begging him for relief. Gordon had fallen silent, standing on tip-toes to see over the cabinet's side as he stared down at their newly discovered hoard. Scott grabbed the water and wrenched the top loose with his teeth when his fingers wouldn't obey him. He held the heavy bottle to Gordon's lips, knowing that the tired six-year-old wouldn't manage it alone.

"Sip it, Gordon," he whispered. His voice emerged as a croak, and it was only then that he realised he hadn't responded aloud to his brother's calls or entreaties. He seemed to be moving through a daze. He forced himself to concentrate, letting the water trickle into Gordon's mouth, careful not to let him gulp or choke.

Gordon had swallowed several cupfuls and was sighing with relief before Scott allowed himself to take a swig from the bottle. The first trickle of water against his raw throat felt like a river of fire. The second quenched it, soothing and relieving the salt-abraded tissues. He was desperate for more, but he stopped himself nonetheless, and recapped the bottle, saving the water for later. He had no idea how long they had been adrift - more than twelve hours certainly, probably not quite twenty-four - and it was no wonder they were dehydrated. Scott's body craved more to drink but, his head ringing and his mind still numb, he ignored it.

His only rational thought was for the younger boy in his care. There was no telling how long they might spend afloat, or how long it would be before they were rescued. The lifeboat's beacon would have started transmitting the moment the lifeboat was launched. In theory they should have been pulled from the water within a few hours at most. It troubled Scott that they hadn't been. It suggested that something had gone wrong. In fact the mere existence of the storm meant something was very wrong with the world. Given that, who knew when the authorities would even begin to look for one yacht lost in the turbulent ocean? His eyes swept the vast, unbroken vista of water and a small, desperate voice inside him told him he should have thought 'whether' rather than 'when'. He refused to listen. He had to keep believing it would happen, and make sure his little brother was still alive when it did. Better to endure a headache now, if it spared the water to give Gordon a few extra hours when he needed them.

"Scotty, what's happening? Why…?"

"It's okay, Gordy. I'll look after you."

He had to keep Gordon alive because the little boy had his whole life ahead of him and didn't deserve to lose it to the ocean he'd always loved.

Because, back home, Mom and John and Allie would be waiting for news. They'd need Gordon if they were going to get through this.

He had to keep Gordon alive, above all, because it was the last thing Dad had asked of him, and the first thing Virgil would expect him to do. He was not going to let them down.

"Come on, let's see if we can get you dry." His voice sounded distant and alien to his own ears.

Saving his little brother was the only way Scott could cling to sanity himself.

Dropping the sealed bottle back into the emergency locker, Scott reached instead for the thin blankets tucked in there. They were small, barely long enough to cover Scott if he stretched out, but they were dry. He coaxed his little brother out of his damp clothes, overriding the child's protest to insist that everything, underwear included, come off. Wrapping Gordon in the first of the dry blankets, he tucked it into a makeshift toga, trying to keep the ends from trailing into the ankle-deep water in the bottom of the dinghy. Gordon, tired and querulous, submitted with ill-grace, complaining that the blanket was uncomfortable and scratchy. Scott just pointed to his little brother's soggy clothing, hanging over the lip of the emergency box to dry in the sun, and asked whether he'd rather put that back on.

He stripped off himself without hesitation, stretching his shirt and pants over the thick side-walls of the dinghy, knotting one sleeve and one leg into the safety ropes for fear of losing them over the side. Gordon was right, the fabric of the blanket was harsh, and it added to the salt drying on his skin to make him itch all over. Despite that, he felt warmer almost at once, and still more so when his body heat began to fill the air gap between his skin and the coarse fabric. Relieved, he closed the emergency locker, making sure that Gordon's drying clothes were caught securely between sides and lid.

Gordon had moved to the prow of the boat, holding tight to the safety line and looking warily down into the blue depths that had fascinated and intrigued him just twenty-four hours before. The younger boy had regained a little of his colour, and actually looked flushed as he raised his face to the sun and the cooling breeze. He was almost lost in the grey fabric swathing him, his eyes very wide, tear-reddened and outlined by shadows. Tufts of copper hair strayed in every direction, twisted into knots and crusted with salt residue.

"Gordon," Scott called quietly, beckoning his brother towards him. Gordon didn't turn, and Scott moved to join him instead, wrapping an arm around his shoulder as they stared down at the dark water. "Gordy, are you okay?"

It was a stupid question. He knew that the moment he asked it, and the look his little brother gave him confirmed it. Gordon shook his head, biting his lip. He looked down, refusing to meet Scott's eyes.

"Where's Daddy and Virgil?" he asked quietly.

Scott's arm tightened around his brother's shoulders. Gordon wouldn't remember much of last night. Scott had not been letting himself remember.

"They stayed with the ship, Gordy. They couldn't come with us. They wanted to, but they just couldn't."

Scott felt his throat tighten around the words. The fact that Dad was gone was a tearing, devastating blow, leaving a hole in his heart that he didn't think could ever heal. Painful as it was though, that wasn't what had left his world in tatters. Dad had been an astronaut for most of Scott's life. The eldest Tracy son had been Gordon's age when he found Mom crying one night and first realised that when Daddy went away, there was a chance that he might not come back. At thirteen, having watched his father fall back into the dark water, amidst the storm-battered wreckage of their sailing yacht, Scott had no illusions that his father could have survived.

What was tearing Scott apart, twisting his thoughts into a Gordian knot, shaking the foundations of his world and leaving him dazed and empty, was a more shocking loss. As far back as he could remember, Virgil had been part of his life. He could remember the wonder on his little brother's face as Mom put baby John into his arms. It was Virgil he'd run home to, his first day at school, eager to share the stories and the thrill of it. It was Virgil he'd taught to read, the two of them too intent over the book to notice their enthralled parents watching. It was Virgil who gave him someone to talk to when Mom was busy with the babies, who walked with him to school, who raced him on their bikes, who listened to Scott's hopes and dreams, and shyly shared his own ambitions. It was Virgil who, eyes wide with terror, had reached out toward Scott as the boom swept him out of the boat and into the storm.

Scott shuddered, and his mind shut down with the strain of it. Quite simply, Scott Tracy couldn't conceive of a world without his brother in it.

Gordon's lip was trembling. He twisted under Scott's arm, looking up at his big brother now, and one hand lifted to wipe away the tear rolling down Scott's cheek. He looked confused, and very frightened.

"I want to go back to the ship, Scott. I liked the Santa Anna. I don't like this boat, it's too little." He raised a foot, watching the water drip from the end of his toes. "And too wet."

Scott gathered his blanket around him before squatting a little to put his eyes level with his brother's. "We can't go back, Gordy. I wish we could." He squeezed his eyes shut momentarily. "God, I wish we could. But Daddy told me to take you somewhere warm and dry, and he told you to be good and listen to me, didn't he? We'll be okay, Gordy. I'll get you home, and then Mom can get you all warm and comfy."

Gordon stared at him uncertainly. He looked down at his fingers, their tips still damp with Scott's tears. When he looked up again, it was with a far older expression than Scott could recall ever seeing on Gordon's mischievous face.

"Are Virge and Daddy going to come home too, Scotty?" he asked in a whisper.

Scott took his brother in his arms, hugging him tightly. "I don't know, Gordy," he lied. He shook his head. They couldn't linger on this. They needed to concentrate on the here and now, not what had gone. He gave the boy another squeeze and released him, looking around him briskly and taking stock. "Let's get some of this water out of the boat, okay? And then we can see if there's any food in the box."

Detective Inspector Charleston Travis took a deep breath as he stepped out of the dimly-lit wooden building and into the gathering twilight. He'd intended to clear the odour of unwashed bodies and sour beer from his lungs. Instead he merely replaced it with the unique mix of stagnant water and rotting fish that lingered over working harbours the world over. Grimacing with distaste, he crossed the road to the dockside and stopped there, leaning against a thick wooden bollard while he struck a light and puffed fire into his cigarette.

The thick, aromatic smoke drove the bad taste from his nose and throat. He blew it out slowly through pursed lips. Squinting against the setting sun, he watched as a familiar fishing rig rounded the headland, tacking against the wind and tide. He couldn't resist a glance at his watch, and then a wistful look towards the car waiting for him a hundred metres down the road. Sighing, he took another pull on his cigarette and resigned himself. Strolling along the wharf to the vessel's usual berth, he settled in to wait. Perfect. Someone screws up a thousand miles away, some satellite blinking away in the vacuum overhead blows a fuse, and on the island of Dominga, Chuck Travis's dinner was going to grow cold without him.

He'd come down to the water and toured the bars to canvas eyewitness accounts of the storm, searching out the locals among swarming tourists who thought 'sleazy and grubby' translated to 'native charm'. The tech-boys in the States were baffled apparently. A malfunction of the World Weather Control System was meant to be impossible. A decade or more of publicity material and school lessons had promised that. Travis smacked his lips, tasting the lingering charge in the air. So much for the white-coats' promises. Now they were reduced to asking him for help, or at least for evidence of the scale and after-effects of the event.

Travis had thought that getting out and about would at least be better than pacifying a few hundred angry tourists, stranded at the airport by the announcement of a no-fly zone until the induction charge dissipated. Mike Kearney had even offered to swap when the Chief announced their assignments. If he'd known information gathering would be such a frustrating task, and one that took the entire day, Travis might have taken his fellow detective up on the offer. No one he'd found had been out to the south, or at least no one had been prepared to admit it.

Perhaps the Levan brothers would have something to say that was worth writing down. They had to have some reason for coming back into port against the tide, well before the evening catch they'd set out for could be complete, and there was always a chance it was a legitimate one. Leaning idly against the nearest bollard, Travis snorted with cynical amusement as he saw the men on the fishing boat notice and react to his presence. The 'fishermen' in this town and its police tended to be on familiar terms. Perhaps it was still possible to make an honest living from the sea on some of the smaller islands, although far too many of those had become no-go areas for decent men or one man empires, carrying the Domingan flag in name only. Here on the capital island, where visitors brought in ideas, technology and prices far beyond islander dreams, it was a rare boat that didn't take the occasional 'charter fare' or run a few cargos they'd rather keep away from police attention.

Judging by the agitation aboard on seeing him, the Levans' 'fishing trip' had landed them more than a few albacore. Well, this was their lucky day. The Levan boys were more law abiding than most of their peers, and smart enough to realise that tacking away from their berth would just bring Travis down on them hard and fast. They'd try and bluff this out, and just for once, Travis fully intended to let them. He had better things to do than search the boat and wasn't interested in spending the night writing up a few smuggled video cameras. He was pretty confident it was nothing worse.

At least he was until the two locals swung into the dock far more rapidly than was usual, even for their agile craft. Tony Levan shouted his name, beckoning him forward urgently. Travis swore. He was stepping up onto the gunwale before the boat had come to rest, hurrying to the two pale figures lying in on a pile of netting amidships.

"They were drifting. Out east." Cal Levan spoke in quick, urgent bursts, clearly keen to explain. "There was wreckage. A yacht maybe."

Travis gave him a quick nod, too busy checking the pulse on both man and boy to take in the words. Still in a crouch, he rocked back on his heels, reaching down to his belt and pulling out his radio.

"Inspector Travis. Ambulance to the docks immediately. Adult male and child, pulled from the water. Suffering exposure, concussion, probable other injuries. ETA on ambulance please?"

Interference crackled across the channel, residual electromagnetic charge from the storm induction making the response from headquarters unintelligible. Travis shook his radio angrily. God knew how much of his message had got through. He tried again, louder, hoping that the key words would penetrate. His radio gave a burst of noise, and in the midst of it he managed to make out "Travis", "ambulance" and "six minutes". It was enough. Switching off the device, he tucked it back into his belt.

The two Levan brothers were busy tying up the boat, hauling a length of wood out from against its sides to act as a gangplank. Travis let them. He checked the man's pulse again, worried by how sluggish it felt, and gently adjusted the bruised head to keep his airway clear. The little boy by his side, ten, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, stirred weakly, and Travis moved to stroke thick chestnut-brown hair back from his eyes.

"Hey there," he said softly. "Can you open your eyes for me?" To his disappointment, the boy gave a groan and the movement subsided. Travis reached for his wrist, reassuring himself with the strong pulse there. He looked up at the dock and the gathering crowd, willing the ambulance to hurry.

Tony Levan came back down onto the deck, his expression sombre as he looked at his unexpected passengers. The fisherman was in his thirties, his skin browned by ocean spray and long days in the southern sun. By comparison the pallor of the shipwreck victims was obvious.

"Tourists," the local sniffed. "Probably brushed against the shoals on the way out of port, didn't notice they'd sprung a leak until the ship came apart around them."

Travis gave him a hard look, still holding the child's limp hand. "They told you that?"

"Out cold since we found them," Tony said, shaking his head.

"Then they could have been caught in the storm down south?"

Tony shifted, his shadow moving across the unconscious man at his feet. "Not where we found them, Inspector" he insisted quickly. "Out east."

"That's what Cal told me," Travis noted, frowning. It was a hell of a coincidence that even inexperienced tourists could shipwreck themselves on today of all days. "Care to be a little more specific?"

Tony shrugged, apparently unconcerned as he gazed out across the water. "Show you on a chart," he offered.

Travis hesitated, reluctant to leave the two victims alone in full view of voyeuristic tourists and locals alike. He tilted his head, hearing the siren of an ambulance approaching. "Later," he muttered to Tony Levan before raising his voice. "Clear a way there! Let the medics through!"

The approaching paramedics looked grim, their expressions lightening and becoming more focused as they realised that they were dealing with living patients. Clearly enough of Travis's message had got through to summon them, but the content had been either garbled or simply not passed on, leaving them with no more information than that someone had been pulled from the water.

Travis helped them stabilise the victims, following them to the ambulance and keeping the growing crowd back with angry shouts. He watched the vehicle roll away, and then glanced between the Levan boat and his own car uncertainly. For a brief moment, a wistful thought of his long-delayed dinner sprang to mind, but he dismissed it quickly, and dismissed the Levan brothers a moment later. They could wait. He headed for his car, squinting and flipping down the shade as he swung into the setting sun. He followed the ambulance, heading for the hospital, determined to see this through.

Chapter 3

"What're you doing, Scotty?"

Scott sighed in exasperation as he looked up from the equipment laid out in front of him. Gordon was sitting on one of the shallow ribs in the bottom of the lifeboat, his back against the side, one hand sheltering his eyes from the low-angle sunlight. The discarded foil wrapper from their second emergency meal pack lay by his side. Scott's stomach grumbled at the sight of it. He'd allowed himself a few bites of each, leaving Gordon the bulk of both lunch and dinner. His belly might be complaining that decision, but Gordon had regained a little colour, and exploring the many individual plastic packets the pack contained alongside the self-heating main course had kept him busy for the last twenty minutes.

The active little boy was finding their confinement in the small vessel an ordeal. He'd paced up and down the length of the boat a dozen times, and then from side to side of it, intrigued by the way it rocked under even his small weight, before Scott told him sharply to sit down. He'd perched on the edge of the hull, tapping his heels idly against the walls, until Scott had noticed and dived forward to grab him, dragging him back into the boat, screaming at him not to be so stupid. They'd both been taken aback by that outburst, and it had kept Gordon quiet and still for almost an hour as the boy laid low and tried to work out what he'd done wrong. Scott wasn't about to tell his little brother that he'd flashed back on the storm and the sight of Virgil falling into the pitch-black water, and Gordon was worried enough by the situation that he didn't dare ask.

Now though, the familiar look of boredom was back on Gordon's face, and Scott realised that if he didn't answer Gordon's first query, the insistent questions would only escalate.

"Come see." He beckoned Gordon forward, and rose from sitting cross-legged to catch his little brother when he slipped on the thin layer of water still pooled between the ribs lining the boat. Gordon froze, clearly expecting another reprimand. Scott sighed and set his brother back on his feet before sinking down to his knees on the damp deck, putting his eyes on the younger boy's level. "Gordy, look. I'm sorry for snapping at you earlier, okay? I just… it's just that I'm meant to be taking care of you. I'm not going to shout again."

Gordon shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again uneasily. He pulled at the collar of his newly-dry, but thoroughly creased, shirt. Scott scratched unconsciously at his own neckline, irritated by the salt permeating the sun-dried clothing, as he waited for Gordon's response. The six-year-old studied him intently for a moment before offering a tentative smile.

"Unless I do something really stupid?" he suggested.

Mustering up a smile in return, Scott chucked his younger brother under the chin. "Really stupid," he agreed lightly.

"Okay." Gordon nodded calmly. He gave Scott another brief, serious look. "I think I would have shouted too, if Allie was sitting there," he admitted with a shrug.

Scott gave him a one-armed hug, proud and impressed. At home, Gordon liked to push the bounds whenever he could, but in just the last year or so, he seemed more aware of when he could do so and when it was time to listen to his parents and big brothers. Having four-year-old Alan in tow most of the time probably had a lot to do with that. For the first time, Gordon was starting to ask not only whether he was prepared to try something himself, but also whether he wanted to risk Alan trying it too. Even now, with Alan safely at home with Mom, Gordon was applying the 'would I let my little brother do that?' rule that all Tracys learnt to consider.

Now Gordon glanced at Scott for permission before prodding the heavy hunk of machinery lying on a tarpaulin Scott had spread to keep it dry. "So what is it?"

Scott caught his little brother's wrist, pulling Gordon back against his own chest and guiding his fingers carefully across the metal components as he explained. "Well, we put some gas in this end, and when we pull on this cord, it comes through a little at a time into this box here. You know how Mom lights up the cooker with a spark?" Gordon nodded, wide-eyed, and Scott went on. "Well, there's a spark, and it makes the gas go 'bang!' like a firework. It all gets hot and rushes out through here. That makes this wheel turn, and that turns this rod, which turns the propeller. So, if we put this over the side of the boat, and start it going, it'll push us through the water."

Gordon nodded. His eyes ran over the system again, and his lips moved as if replaying what Scott had told him and committing it to memory.

Scott reached around him and started clipping the plastic shell back into place over the compact outboard motor. His Dad had explained a similar engine the same way, first time they'd gone out in a hired yacht. Scott hadn't been much older than Gordon was now and had listened with interest but without much enthusiasm. To his father's amusement, that had come a year later when the family jet was taken in for overhaul and his dad showed him its equivalent, but much more complex, system.

Jeff Tracy had always taught his sons to be thorough, and to be certain of any equipment they depended on. Now more than ever, Scott was determined to live by that, and the concentration it required had helped too, distracting him from darker thoughts. If there'd been any particular hurry, he might not have bothered to open the thing up and look it over. As it was, while the vast majority of the mechanism was a closed box as far as he was concerned, he'd checked the fuel chamber was empty and the exhaust clear, that the pull-cord was wound evenly on its gear without knots to snag it, that the mechanism appeared to have been greased and that the shaft and propeller were rotating freely. It was all he could do, and it was going to have to be enough. Even with the gas still in its metal can to one side, the engine was as heavy as Gordon. Scott was pretty sure he could lift it well enough to snap it onto the brackets on the stern. Once it was in the water though, there was simply no way he'd have the leverage to pull it out again.

"Scott?"

"Yes, Gordon?"

"It looks awfully small."

Scott grimaced as he placed his feet carefully wide, trying for sufficient stability to lift the engine without rocking the boat. The same thought had occurred to him. The ocean stretched to touch the horizon in every direction, flat now but with the memory of last night's towering waves stored within it. By comparison this motor seemed just about big enough to take them across a garden pond.

"It's more powerful than it looks," he promised Gordon hopefully, grunting a little as he hefted the weight up to balance on his shoulder. "Gordy, I want you to go up to the front of the boat, and hold on tight, okay? I'm going to take this to the back, and it might tip the boat up a bit."

Gordon bit his lip, before nodding reluctantly. The little boy had been more clingy than usual since the two of them had wakened alone, and was obviously worried about being separated from his brother by even the length of the boat. Scott braced himself, his legs and back protesting the weight of the motor, as Gordon threw his arms about his brother's waist and gave him a quick hug. Gordy released him before he could complain, running forward to the blunt prow and taking a firm grip on the safety lines. Scott watched to make sure he was settled before turning in the opposite direction.

"Stern." Gordon's voice came as he was mid-way through heaving the motor onto the closed lid of the emergency cabinet. Scott finished the procedure before glancing back at his brother, checking Gordon was still where he was meant to be.

"Excuse me?"

"Dad said the back of the Santa Anna was called the stern. Is that true in a little dinghy like this too?"

Scott sighed, turning back to inspect the problem ahead of him. The anchor point for the engine was built into the back wall of the locker, the top-most notch barely visible to Scott as he leaned forward over the chest-high box.

"That's true in any boat, Gordon."

"Why?"

Turning his back on the cabinet for a moment, Scott hopped up to sit on the edge of it. The boat rocked, and Scott reached out to steady the motor resting on the lid beside him, even as his eyes flew to Gordon. The little boy had gasped when the deck moved, but he was sitting huddled in the well of the boat and his grip on the safety line was white-knuckled. Holding still for a few seconds while the motion subsided, Scott made the effort to keep his frightened brother talking.

"I don't know, Gordy," he admitted. "But how many other parts of the boat can you name? Show me?"

Gordon looked uncertain. "Well, this is the prow," he volunteered cautiously.

"That's good." Scott twisted slightly in position, glad to find that the boat didn't move when he shifted his weight slowly enough. Cautiously, he lowered himself to lie with his chest on the lid of the locker, the motor beside him as he inched toward the back of the boat. "You know your right and left, don't you?" he called over his shoulder. "Can you remember what Dad said we had to call them?"

"Port and starboard," Gordon answered promptly, sounding a little happier for the distraction.

"Uh huh," Scott agreed, freezing as he felt the boat tilt under him, the stern dropping noticeably lower in the water. Rolling a little onto his side, he reached an arm over the back of the cabinet, trying to figure out the mounting by touch alone. "Which is which?"

"Um…" Gordon hesitated. He'd loved every moment on the Santa Anna, at least until the storm blew up, and had run Dad ragged with his questions. On the other hand, over the course of a two-week expedition, that made for a lot of new information for him to take in. "Port is… well…"

His cheek still pressed to the cool lid of the emergency locker, Scott frowned. He could feel grooves and notches in the back wall of it, his arm damp with sea spray as he explored the mounting by touch. Making sense of it without taking a look was impossible though. This was no good. He wasn't about to risk swinging the heavy motor over the edge blind. He listened to Gordon trying to figure out right from left as he edged further across the locker, legs hanging in the air behind him as his head moved out over the turbulent water in their wake. The list to stern was significant now and Gordon's voice trailed off as the prow lifted out of the water.

"Want to know how to work out which is which?" Scott asked a little breathlessly. He peered down at the mounting bracket before glancing over his shoulder, He squinted against the eye-level setting sun, barely able to make out his pale little brother against the scarlet glow. "How many letters has 'port' got?" he asked, before looking back down at the water below.

This wasn't going to be easy. The dinghy had never been designed for use exclusively by children. At thirteen, Scott had hit the start of his growth spurt, but even so was a full foot shorter, and significantly less powerful, than the adults expected to do this.

"How many letters, Gordy?"

"Four," Gordon whispered, the word barely reaching his elder brother.

"Yep, and which one has four letters: left or right?"

Twisting in place on the cabinet lid, he got both hands on the heavy motor, rolling it over so when he lifted it, the mount and anchor point would be facing one another.

"Left," Gordon decided quietly, counting on his fingers. "Left has four letters, Scotty."

"Uh huh, so that's how you remember it: port and left have the same number of letters, and they mean the same thing." Lesson over, Scott took a deep breath. His fingers were still painful and bruised from clinging to the safety ropes the night before. He ached all over, battered by storm and wave, cramped from sleeping awkwardly and weakened by far too little food and water. But there was no one else to do this. He rolled onto his back, lifting the motor to rest on his abdomen, and then pulled it up to the level of his collarbone.

"Starboard and right don't have the same number of letters. Right has five and starboard has eight."

Nine, but with the weight of the motor pressing down on his chest, Scott couldn't spare the breath to correct his brother. He rolled again so that he was looking down into the water, this time taking the weight of the motor entirely on his arms and shoulders as he lowered it down behind the boat.

"Scott, why doesn't right and starboard have the same number of letters?"

Awkwardly, Scott slid the heavy motor against the stern, trying to persuade it to latch into place.

"Scotty?"

Not working. He inched out a little further, latching his feet over the edge of the cabinet, a full third of his body now hanging over the back of the boat. With the extra leverage, he was able to see a little better. He twisted the motor a few degrees and there! Finally, it slid into its mount, ridges in the surface of the motor slotting into grooves that held them securely, and then the whole thing twisting to lock into place.

Scott's arms screamed with relief and he panted, not realising how much weight had been transferred through his chest until it was relieved. He started hyperventilating before he worked out what was happening. A wave of dizziness struck suddenly, a rushing sound in his ears as the blood pounded through them. For a while, he couldn't figure out up from down, or forward from backward. The feel of small hands on his ankles, pulling him backwards with determination but little strength, gave him the reference point he needed. He began to squirm back onto the emergency locker, helping Gordon's frantic tugs, until he was able to rest his head on its cool surface.

"Scotty?" Gordon was still pulling at his legs, his voice tear-filled.

"I…I'm okay, Gordy," Scott managed, blinking past the dizziness. He inched back further and found himself tumbling off the lid and into the boat, almost flattening his little brother. Gordon squirmed out from under him, and a few moments later, Scott's eyes focused to find the little boy fumbling with the catches on the locker. Gordon got the heavy lid up through sheer force of will, letting it rest on the crown of his head as he stood on tip-toe and reached down into the locker with both arms. Scott watched, bemused, as Gordon managed to lift the two-thirds-empty water bottle down and offer it to his older brother.

Scott accepted it gratefully. He rued every sip, but recognised that passing out from dehydration so soon wouldn't do either of them any good. Gordon's face was tear-streaked, his eyes bright as he hovered uncertainly in front of his brother. Scott smiled reassuringly, and offered his little brother the bottle to finish.

"Nine," he corrected mildly. Gordon stared at him and Scott rested a hand on his shoulder, using him for support as he climbed to his feet. There was still the fuel to get into the motor before the failing sunlight faded into pitch-blackness and it became impossible. "Starboard has nine letters, Gordy: S, T, A, R, B, O, A, R, D."

Gordon gave him an incredulous look, and then crossed his arms across his chest. "I don't care," he declared petulantly.

Scott sighed and reached down for the gas can he'd left on the tarpaulin. It was on its side, either toppled when the boat tilted or knocked over by Gordon in his haste to reach Scott. The lid was on tight though, and the heavy metal can still held its precious contents. He picked it up by the handle and looked tiredly towards the rear of the boat. Gordon threw himself in his path, wrapping his arms around Scott's waist and effectively anchoring him to the spot.

"Don't do that again, Scotty! Please! I don't want you to fall in!"

Scott leaned down, stroking his brother's hair.

"I've got to pour the gas into the engine, Gordy," he told the little boy. "Remember I showed you how it worked? It won't go without fuel."

"Why does it have to go at all?" Gordon asked, still holding his brother tightly, but tilting his head back so he could look up into Scott's face. Very wide amber eyes seemed to fill his pale face. "Where are we going, Scotty?"

Standing in the boat, Scott couldn't answer his brother's question. His eyes swept the featureless ocean. He had a vague idea that they'd been some way south of Dominga when the Santa Anna sank, but the storm could have carried them anywhere, and they'd spent the day adrift on unknown currents. They could be hundreds of miles from land, or just over the horizon from solid ground. Truthfully this was why he'd been in no hurry to unpack the motor, until the sun dropped toward the water and he'd decided he wanted it done before nightfall. After twenty-four hours adrift, their powerful but short-lived beacon would already be fading. They couldn't count on anyone finding them. They had to take the initiative themselves, but now the engine was mounted, he faced a frightening decision. The instant he started the motor, he'd be committing them to a direction, and it could easily be one taking them further from salvation rather than towards it.

He turned towards the setting sun, shivering in the gathering twilight as he searched for inspiration. The temperature was dropping already and he was far from sure that, even with blankets to wrap around them, either of them would survive another night on the open water. Despite that, he couldn't help a shiver of appreciation for the view. Strange that anywhere so hostile could be so beautiful. The evening sky was filled with streaks of salmon-pink and deep scarlet. Virgil would have loved it.

Scott swayed, and he felt Gordon tighten his hold still further. For the sake of his little brother, Scott took a deep breath, and then froze, eyes widening. Reaching down, he picked Gordon up, letting his brother wrap his legs around his chest to steady himself. With Gordon's cheek pressed against his, he pointed south-south-west. In full light, the faint smudge on the horizon had been lost in the heat haze and glare of reflection from the water. Silhouetted now against the luminous sky, the distant hint of land was a lone, solid reference point in an otherwise featureless world.

"See that, Gordy?" he asked in a whisper. "That's where we're going."

Chapter 4

The hospital's emergency room was quiet. It was too late in the day for work-related accidents, too early for the Tuesday night drinking crowd, mostly tourists, to start trickling in. Despite that, Chuck Travis had been waiting for news for almost an hour. The adult victim had been hurried off almost as soon as they arrived, leaving the child behind in an ER cubical. The detective inspector had managed to linger by the kid's bedside, waving his police credentials and pointing out that the otherwise-unaccompanied and unidentified boy was the subject of an ongoing enquiry. A series of doctors and nurses had come by, hooking the kid up to a drip and seemingly endless monitoring devices. They'd conversed in bewildering medicalese, and Travis, there by courtesy, knew better than to interrupt while their tones remained urgent.

It was a relief when the rapid activity subsided, leaving Travis alone with the unconscious child. Sighing, the tired policeman perched on the edge of the bed, brushing a stray curl of chestnut hair away from a sun-reddened face. He was startled when the boy stirred, flinching away from even the gentle touch. As gently as he could, Travis patted the kid's cheek, using the other hand to scrabble blindly for the call button.

"Hey there," he said softly. "Can you hear me?"

He was rewarded by a brief glimpse of burnt-honey irises. The kid moaned, screwing his eyes shut and shifting in the bed. A blur of white in Travis' peripheral vision announced the arrival of a doctor on the other side of the bed, waving him back and taking over with a hand on the kid's shoulder.

"Can you tell me your name?" the woman asked, soft but urgent. "Do you understand?"

"Dad," the word was barely comprehensible, a dry whisper. The boy's forehead creased into a frown, his eyes still closed. "Dad!"

"Your Dad is here. We're looking after him. But we need his name, so we can look after him properly. Can you tell us his name?"

"Jeff." Again, the kid's voice was slurred. He coughed hoarsely. His eyes cracked open, searching out the doctor without focussing. "He's hurt?"

Travis poured a glass of water, glancing at the doctor for permission before putting it to the kid's lips. The child sipped eagerly, raising his head a little when Travis pulled the glass away before dropping back onto his pillow, eyes slipping closed.

"And your name?" the doctor pressed. "When your Dad asks about you, we've got to know who you are, haven’t we?"

A worried, confused frown crossed the boy's face. "Virgil," he said softly. "I'm Virgil."

The kid, Virgil, looked as if he wanted to say more, but exhaustion dragged him down before he could shape the words. The doctor scanned his monitors with a quick, efficient glance, frowning down at the child and making a few notes on his records. She sighed, stepping back from the bedside and turning to look at the detective.

"Inspector Travis, have you got any idea what happened to these two?"

"Shipwrecked," Travis shrugged. He looked down at the boy's sleeping face. "I'll get to the bottom of it," he promised. "How are they, Tasmin?"

"Could be worse, Chuck." Doctor Tasmin Evans dropped the formality, sighing as she dropped into the chair by Virgil's bedside. "Severe exposure and everything that goes with it: dehydration exacerbated by seawater consumption, exhaustion, hypothermia and moderate to serious sunburn on exposed skin. They'd have been in bad trouble if they'd got here much later, but all that is pretty straightforward to treat." She smiled at Travis's exaggerated sigh. Most of the cases he'd brought into the hospital over the years before he made Detective Inspector had been simple alcohol poisoning and associated minor injuries. The doctor had never seen him hovering so protectively over a 'case' before. She sighed, glancing down at her notes. "The kid has some badly bruised ribs, which we're going to have to strap up. We were a bit more worried about the father's – Jeff's – concussion. Double concussion, that is."

Travis frowned. "Are you going to make me beg for an explanation, Mina?""

"He took the first blow to the head somewhere around twenty-four hours ago. The broken wrist and rope burns around it happened about the same time. Looks like he tried to hold on to something without much success. After that, either Lady Luck turned the other cheek or young Virgil here kept him afloat somehow, because he sure couldn't have done anything about it himself."

Travis nodded, filing the information away for future reference. "You said 'first'?"

"The word is that the Levan boys brought them in?"

Travis nodded, long since accustomed to how rapidly gossip could travel in Dominga. More than enough people had seen the Levan boat's arrival and the brothers were well known locally. Mina shook her head grimly.

"Then either Tony clobbered him with the boat before spotting him, or Cal dropped him when they pulled him up. There's another lump on his skull that can't be more than five hours old. That, as much as the exposure, is what has him out cold, and he's going to feel pretty poorly when he wakes. Don't expect to get much out of him for another day or so." She leaned over the bed, straightening the covers that Virgil had disturbed when he stirred. "The boy might give you something sooner, but probably not before morning now. We'll move him up to paediatrics as soon as I've checked there's a bed ready for him, but he's tired enough to sleep through. If he really was holding his Dad out of the water for a day or more, you can hardly blame him."

"Right." Travis nodded. He sighed, glancing at his watch for the tenth time. Nine o'clock. "I should have been off duty an hour and a half ago," he told no one in particular.

Tasmin gave him a sympathetic look. "That might have to wait a while. Apparently your radios aren't working any better than the vid-phones at the moment. Your chief sent a constable to the front desk a few minutes back, said to tell you that since you'd volunteered, this case is yours, and he expects a briefing together with your write-up of the storm reports first thing tomorrow."

The doctor couldn't resist a smile as Travis let out a heartfelt groan and pushed himself away from the bed. "I'll get on it: I'll try and figure out who these folks are and if anyone's missing them yet. If they say anything else, you'll let me know?" He hesitated, one hand raised to pull aside the curtain surrounding the cubicle, glancing back down at the kid.

Tasmin shooed him with an imperious gesture.

"Get along with you, Inspector. We'll make sure they're still here when you get back. Now, do I have to call the porters to throw you out?"

Travis took her at her word, striding out through the waiting room, pulling out of the parking lot with a squeal of tires and not slowing down until he pulled his car into its reserved slot in front of police headquarters. At this time of night it was pretty quiet. Much like the hospital, the police station was enjoying the lull between daylight crimes and those committed after dark. It was a good few hours before the duty constables would have to deal with throwing out time in the local bars and the associated furore. On a bad night, the cells in the basement would be heaving before midnight.

By contrast the squad room of the detective division was empty, and except under exceptional circumstances would remain so until the morning. Precious little crime on Dominga was serious enough to keep a detective from his home and hearth, or urgent enough that it wouldn't wait until after the day's first cup of coffee. Unfortunately, pinning down the identity of two half-drowned tourists qualified. Their government, whichever it turned out to be, would expect it, and Travis intended to give them nothing to complain of in the process.

The main fluorescents were dark, but someone had left a lamp shining on Travis' desk, and the coffee machine was keeping a carafe of rich brown liquid warm beside it. A scribbled note, reading simply 'Hard luck' identified the coffee-fairy as his colleague and occasional partner Mike Kearney. He put the note aside with a snort of amusement, and poured himself a half mug-full. He was still hopeful that he could make enough progress on the kid Virgil and his dad that he needn't burn the oil much past midnight. No point in stoking up on the caffeine now if it wasn't necessary.

He flicked his computer's monitor on, sipping from his mug as he slipped into the chair behind his desk. Ignoring the pile of paperwork on his desk for the moment, he fired up his network connection, perusing his local email as he waited for the global security network to load up. Discarding a dozen departmental circulars and a reaffirmation of his instructions from the chief, he grimaced in frustration. The international police identity database was never exactly fast to load, layers of security and password protocols limiting it to a snail's pace, but nor was it usually this slow. The snowstorm of interference dancing across his screen suggested that, just for once, the problem was at the Domingan end. Irritating as hell, but hardly unexpected. A storm the size of last night's was induced perhaps once in a decade, and only then mid-ocean, with shipping and aircraft ordered to steer clear for the following week. The induction charge the malfunction had left in the air was screwing enough with electronics that Travis had been glad to find his car still worked, let alone his computer.

Finally though, the search window popped up, inevitably just when Travis had decided to make a start on writing up uninformative storm accounts and try the database again later. Sighing, the detective turned back to it, trying to work out where to start.

Virgil seemed the obvious initial reference point and Travis entered the unusual name as a lone search term, ticking the box that indicated he was looking for a juvenile rather than adult record. The 'working' icon appeared and the network began to grind away, quite obviously not planning to spit out any results soon. A slow half an hour, spent transcribing stories of fish shoaling in the wrong place and local folklore about seaweed, later, he pulled the window back to the front of his desktop and frowned at the hundred and fifty-four hits already identified. A hundred and fifty-fifth popped up as he watched and he killed the search angrily. He'd honestly never guessed that so many parents could be that cruel to their kids in the space of eighteen short years. True, a few of the names he'd glimpsed in his brief scan of the list had been phonetic variants on Virgil, from cultural and ethnic backgrounds where it probably sounded quite normal, but a fair few had been from the western, industrial countries most likely to have produced his shipwrecked kid.

Shaking his head, he spent the next five minutes pulling up the advanced search form, this time entering not only the boy's name, but his father's name Jeff (or Geoff, or phonetic variants and extrapolations thereof), and narrowed his search to boys between nine and fourteen years old. Either end of that range was almost certainly way out, but he'd rather be safe than risk missing the kid. The boy's accent had been almost impossible to distinguish in his slurred speech. Travis's first guess would have to be American, but again he played it safe, specifying only that the subject of his search was an Anglophone.

With the new search underway, he swivelled his chair, reaching out to top off his coffee mug, no longer convinced that this was going to be as rapid a process as he'd hoped. On the plus side, this search should run more quickly, the birth date, gender and language constraints cutting out large sections of the database before a more detailed search was made for text matching the two names Travis had specified. Even so, it was another eight minutes before the computer chimed to inform him that the task was complete. He glanced at the relevant window, clicking on the single record selected rather than trying to squint through the interference to read the one-line summary the search returned.

He expected a second window to open, giving him access to everything from the boy's full name and address to his educational and brief medical records. The identity database gave civil rights paranoids the world over nightmares. On the other hand, it sure made the job of accredited police forces around the world easier, and as a Detective Inspector in the Domingan Confederation's police service, Travis was fully entitled to access that kind of information.

What he wasn't expecting was for his computer to freeze, the database window flashing suddenly red, the mouse and keyboard unresponsive. He stared at it for a moment, baffled, picking up the mouse and tapping it futilely against the desk in an effort to get some kind of response. The red border around the search window was interrupted by the single word 'CLASSIFIED'. Confusing as that was on the ID record of a kid so young, it didn't come close to explaining what had locked up his machine.

The vid-phone window that popped up a few seconds later gave him a hint though. The internal vid-phone on a police computer was meant to be secure, unhackable. There was no way a call should be connected without Travis screening and approving it, even if he'd given his caller the necessary system ID. The uniformed man on the other end of the line, dark-skinned but with features and expression lost in a haze of interference, seemed oblivious to that. Travis winced and turned down the computer speakers as a roar of interference, mingled with unintelligibly distorted words, emerged from them. The man spoke again, and then the picture flickered and steadied.

"Is that better?" the caller asked, the nuances of his voice still lost to noise but the words coming through loud and clear. "I've boosted the signal our end."

Travis nodded grimly, wondering where to start. With the basics, he decided.

"Who are you?"

"Vaughan, NASA Security. I'm sending through my online identity confirmation and clearances now. And I'm talking to Detective Inspector Charleston Travis, right? Well, Inspector, you just tried to access Virgil Tracy's file on the ID net, and I'd very much like to know why."

"I can't discuss the specifics of an ongoing case." The rote response rolled off Travis's tongue without him having to think about it. The rules regarding journalists and inter-agency jurisdiction poachers were pretty much the same. He was still not entirely sure which category Vaughan fell closest to. An icon came up on his desktop for a received ident confirmation, and he had to resist the urge to check it, able to tell from the sound of processor fans alone that the computer was already struggling to maintain the vid-link without burdening it further. Did this man really just say NASA Security?

He didn't get a chance to ask. The security officer Vaughan appeared to be on a short tether. There was a distinctly military bark in his voice when he answered, his American accent coming through clearly despite the crackling line. "It's a simple enough question: do you know where the kid is, or don't you?"

Frowning, Travis set his lips firm, still confused as to how he'd ended up talking to the man in the first place. "What's your interest in this case? Since when has an outfit like NASA security had access to the police ID net?"

"Federal agency," Vaughan snapped. "Look I don't have time for this kind of evasion, and nor do you. You've got about two and a half minutes before the C.I.A. traces your search and comes down on your head like a ton of bricks. Believe me, I'm the lesser of two evils in front of you right now."

Travis stared. "You're joking."

Vaughan's fingers rapped an impatient tattoo on the desk in front of him. His near-black eyes were visible even through the snowstorm of interference. "I want you to look me in the eye, Inspector, and tell me what is even vaguely amusing about withholding evidence on a kid that's been missing for over twenty-four hours."

Travis buckled under the pressure, out of his depth and knowing it. "White, prepubescent male? Ten or eleven years old? Chestnut hair, mid-brown eyes? Dad a tall, dark-haired man in his forties, name of Jeff?" He paused, his eyes widening as he put two and two together. "Wait, did you say Tracy? Jeff Tracy? The Jeff Tracy?"

"You've found them." The man sounded genuinely relieved, but still urgent. "Where are they? How are they?"

"Mercy State Hospital, Dominga. Care of Dr Tasmin Evans. She tells me they'll be all right in a few days. They were shipwrecked – probably the big storm we had down here. Some of our local fishermen brought them in."

Now Vaughan did actually slump a little. "Thank God for that. Jeff's retired but he's still like family to the agency. Lucille called us for help as soon as Jeff and the boys missed their evening call home."

Travis felt a hole open up under his feet and his stomach drop into it. He'd been pretty sure that Virgil and Jeff had a traumatic story to tell. Until now, he'd assumed it at least had a happy ending.

"Boys plural?" he asked quietly. "I'm afraid we only found Virgil and his father."

It was hard to read Vaughan's expression over the still-fuzzy vid-phone, but his breathing became a little harsher.

"Jeff had three of his sons with him on the yacht," the NASA man told him in a low voice. "Scott, Virgil and Gordon."

There was a moment of silence between them. It was broken by the ringing of the more conventional telephone on Travis's desk, the sudden sound making him leap nearly out of his skin.

"That'll be the C.I.A.; they're faster than we gave them credit for."

Travis looked at his phone as if it had suddenly turned into a hand grenade. In his job, a fair amount of interagency liaison was inevitable, but the United States C.I.A. was an intimidatingly-serious new prospect. "What do I tell them?" he wondered aloud, not so much asking for advice as delaying the inevitable.

Vaughan sighed. "That you've found the ex-astronaut businessman they were looking for, so the defence contracts, and the network of personal contacts through half the US military, that have them in a flap are probably safe. But Jeff will do anything for those boys, so if you don't find his missing kids, one way or the other, they might not be for long. I need to contact the hospital, and then break the news to Lucy. I'll call you back."

With that, Vaughan's vid window closed itself. Travis stared at his screen. "Thanks," he muttered sarcastically as his screen unlocked, first Virgil's file, and then Jeff's and those of the other two boys Vaughan had mentioned, opening across it. He reached for the persistently ringing telephone, wincing as a loud crackle filled the line.

"Detective Inspector Travis," he announced, careful to keep his voice calm and level. "Can I help you?"

Sitting perched on the emergency cabinet, Gordon determinedly holding on to his ankles despite his protest that it was unnecessary, Scott leaned back and adjusted the throttle on the outboard motor to idle. They were perhaps half a mile from the shoreline now, and his initial euphoria at simply spotting land had been replaced by more practical concerns.

The island in front of them rose steeply out of the water. Thick jungle and sandy beaches barely obscured the outline of the apparently extinct volcano that had formed it. It was land, and that was wonderful, exciting and a life-saver in the truest sense of the word, but in the pale moonlight it also looked small, wild and very remote from the civilisation Scott was accustomed to.

It had taken them the better part of an hour to get this far, the first half of that spent trying awkwardly to refuel the mounted engine while Gordon alternated between watching his brother anxiously and keeping an eye on the barely-visible island as Scott had asked. Twilight had long since faded to nothing, and Scott had been terrified that they'd be plunged into pitch darkness still directionless, and drift away from potential salvation during the long night. It was a relief to find that, with the previous night's cloud cover a mere memory, the waxing moon gave them enough light to make out shapes and silhouettes, even if the details were lost. By the time the engine had coughed into life, the lunar radiance had thrown just enough light on the island for Scott to have confidence that the direction Gordon indicated and the vague blur against the night sky were one and the same.

His heart had lifted as he caught a sparkle of brighter light, a reflection of some kind. He'd angled towards it hopefully as the island grew in the night, hoping to find glass: a window, a car windscreen, something. Now he gazed at a sparkling, dancing stream, picked out in blue-white reflections as it trickled across the beach. He knew he should consider it a lucky find, but couldn't help feeling a pang of disappointment nonetheless.

His parched mouth and throat craved the cool water so near at hand, but he had to do something about getting there first. The beach, what he could see of it, appeared to have quite a shallow gradient, although looking at the towering volcano he'd be willing to bet there was a sharp drop-off not far from shore. In theory, if he let the tide drift them in, perhaps with a touch on the motor to help it along, he could jump out when they were close enough to the beach and pull the boat gently ashore with Gordy safe inside. There was only one problem with that idea. Scott was far from confident that his tired limbs were capable of hauling the heavy three-man lifeboat through the water, and he was pretty sure that even if he got them close, he wouldn't be able to pull it up above the tide line. Chances were that they'd wake in the morning not only shipwrecked but also marooned, the boat long since washed away. Or worse still, that he wouldn't get them both ashore at all, the boat with Gordon still inside slipping out of his grasp and drifting out of reach.

It wasn't an option he was prepared to consider for long.

He hesitated, glancing down at his tired little brother. Gordon was leaning on Scott's legs as much for his own support as to ensure Scott remained balanced. Worried, the older boy shook his head, knowing that if he was to get them both ashore and keep the boat too, he was going to have to take a risk.

"Gordy?" he called softly. Amber eyes looked blearily up at him, Gordon running one hand through unruly copper locks to push them back away from his face. "Gordon, I want you to sit down, okay? Curl up really tight – like a mouse when it's asleep. Understand?"

Gordon shook his head, hands squeezing Scott's ankles. "Not going to let you go," he insisted. "If I let you go, you're going to fall…"

"Gordon – "

"…and if you fall, you're going to be gone just like Daddy and Virgil, and I'm going to be all on my own, and that would be bad, and I don't want you to go, Scotty, and…and…"

"Gordy!" Scott slid forward, jumping down from the emergency locker and wrapping his arms around his shaking little brother. Gordon had seemed to be coping well, all things considered, putting all his trust in his eldest brother. Clearly the idea of Scott leaving him too was just too much for the six-year-old to deal with. Scott squeezed him tight, and then pulled back a little, gently raising Gordon's chin and stroking the hair back from his tear-filled eyes. "Gordy, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to leave you alone. No way. No how."

Gordon trembled, his expression uncertain. Scott's determination rang through his voice, his statement throwing down a challenge. He'd face down the universe itself to make sure his words came true, and Gordon realised that. The younger boy was still frightened, but he nodded reluctantly before burying his face back in Scott's chest.

Scott sighed, holding his brother for a few seconds longer before easing gently away from him. "Gordy, I'm not going to fall in, okay? I just need to get us to the beach over there. And it might get a little bumpy." He sighed, looking down at Gordon's quivering lips. "Okay, Gordon, you can hold onto me if you want. I'm going to turn the engine back on and then jump back down here, okay? As soon as I jump down, we have to tuck up tight, just like I said. Can you be ready to do that?"

Again, Gordon gave that short, scared nod. He was reluctant to release his elder brother completely, and he watched with worried eyes as Scott pulled himself wearily back up onto the closed emergency locker, sitting with his legs dangling down into the lifeboat and his body half-twisted so he could reach for the motor controls while keeping an eye both on his little brother and the coastline ahead. Taking a deep breath, Scott locked the rudimentary directional controls and, bracing himself, threw the throttle full open. The boat surged forward, and he gave it the briefest moment to steady, determined not to prove his brother right. Then he slid back across the locker, tackling Gordon to the deck and wrapping himself around his little brother, head and arms tucked in.

The impact threw them back against the locker, adding to Scott's already extensive collection of bumps and bruises. The bottom of the boat made a harsh grating sound as it climbed the beach, the noise all-pervading and seemingly never-ending. The motor roared as the propeller lifted free of the surface. Robbed of resistance, it over-revved, choked and cut out. The grinding of sand and stones against the keel went on though, the lifeboat riding higher on the beach than even Scott had intended. The vessel rocked from side to side, and the boys rolled with it, Gordon letting out a frightened scream as he clung to his brother. An age passed, the noise and movement gradually subsiding. When the boat settled, it was with a lurch that left the deck listing steeply to one side. Scott rolled to that side of the deck, Gordon slipping from his grasp. Both boys scrambled to their knees, balanced more on the side-wall of the dinghy than its bottom, their eyes searching one another out in the moonlight.

"There, that wasn't so bad now was it?" Scott tried, his voice shaking.

Pale in the silver light, Gordon stared at him. Scott was growing concerned by his silence when the little boy giggled. Scott stared as Gordon tried to suppress his giggles and ended up hiccupping instead. He chuckled, the younger boy's laughter becoming infectious, and closed the gap between them, running his eyes up and down Gordon in the moonlight to check for injuries. Finding none, he gave his brother a light swat on the back of the head before taking his hand.

Climbing down from the boat was a tricky task, the angle making it difficult to find solid footing. Scott dropped to his knees as soon as he'd set Gordon down, burying his hands in the sand and gulping back tears of relief at the feel of solid ground. Gordon stayed close, hand on Scott's shoulder as they looked up and down the length of the beach and the impenetrable blackness of the jungle that rose from it.

The adrenaline surge was passing now, combining with the ordeal of the day to leave both boys shaky and exhausted. Scott knew that he should scout their surroundings, unpack their supply cabinet and figure out a way to make a proper shelter. Instead, he let Gordon lead him over to the freshwater stream crossing the beach. He sipped the water cautiously, not sure whether his parched tongue was even capable of detecting any contaminants. He'd meant to keep his brother away from the unpurified water, going back to the boat to fetch what was left of their bottled supply for Gordon while risking the stream himself. Gordon didn't wait for Scott's permission though, falling to his knees by the shallow bank and scooping up handfuls of the cool liquid. Sighing, Scott did the same, too tired and weak to do anything else.

Gordon was asleep on his feet by the time they'd drunk their fill. Scott picked his brother up, letting the younger boy's head rest on his shoulder as he carried him to the tree-line. There was no way they were going to risk the forest tonight, but dry palm fronds littered the ground around the base of the nearest trunks. Putting Gordon down, Scott pulled a pile of the dead foliage aside, checking for anything living amidst the leaf litter. Satisfied for now, he guided his sleepy brother into a hollow between a slender tree trunk and its roots, pulling the warm, dry leaves back over them as they curled up together, asleep in moments.

Chapter 5

"Chuck, what the Hell is going on?"

Charleston Travis groaned, propping his elbows on the desk and burying his head in his hands. After a gruelling half-hour interrogation over a telephone line that even Alexander Graham Bell would have considered lousy, he was in need of two things: another mug of coffee and an aspirin. What he did not need was the chief's voice, loud and angry, ringing through his head.

Chief Inspector Lex Coates was a big man, not so much fat as well built, with two hundred pounds of muscles softened by middle age. He filled the doorway, silhouetted against the brighter illumination of the corridor outside. He scanned the room with his eyes before stepping through, flicking the light switch as he did so. Travis groaned again at the spear the sudden brilliance sent through his optical nerve, barely aware of Mike Kearney slipping in behind their boss.

"Chief?"

"I spend all day running around after this storm business, and then when I get a call from some guy at NASA of all places, it's not because their satellites went haywire. It's him telling me you need backup because the C.I.A. are wringing you dry."

Kearney dropped into the chair behind his own desk, next to Travis's, leaning intently forward across its surface. "We were expecting to come busting in here to find you tied to a chair and a couple of spooks pulling out your fingernails."

"And if there isn't a good explanation for why I'm not at home getting ready to join my wife in bed," Coates added, shrugging out of his coat and leaning against another desk nearby, "that is still a workable option."

Travis sighed, too used to his boss's hyperbole to take the threat entirely seriously, but recognising the warning it carried nonetheless. "The Levan boys' John Doe? Turns out to be Jeff Tracy. Ex-astronaut, all-around, All-American hero Jeff Tracy."

"Whoa," Mike shook his head, leaning back in his chair and letting the breath whistle past his teeth. The chief appeared less impressed. Vacationing celebrities, each with their vastly oversized motor yacht and antisocial habits, were commonplace on Dominga. A lunar astronaut might represent more class and distinction than most of them, but he was still just another tourist as far as the chief was concerned. Coates tossed his coat towards the stand on one side of the room, already pulling a chair around to sit on as it settled onto its hook.

"He still alive?"

Travis nodded. "Not able to talk yet, but Mina Evans thinks he'll be fine. His kid Virgil too."

Coates frowned. "Okay, so the Levan boys rescued him, and you got him to a hospital. Good for you. What's with the midnight calls?"

"And I still want to know what that C.I.A. crack was all about," Mike Kearney added, twisting in his chair to reach for the coffee machine between him and his partner. He topped up Travis' mug without being asked, tipping the carafe towards his boss and getting a shake of the head before filling his own cup. Travis sighed, sipping the darkly aromatic liquid.

"I just got off the 'phone to the Americans," he admitted. "The agent I spoke to wanted to know whether this was an accident or whether Tracy ran into some rather more human sharks out there. He wanted to know in the baddest way."

"Why?" Kearney asked, confused. "If Tracy is back safe now?"

"Wouldn't say. From what Vaughan – that's the NASA security guy, he got through just before the C.I.A. traced my search on Virgil – told me, and what I've read in the papers, Tracy's been building up quite a successful consulting and construction firm since he 'retired'. I'm guessing they want to make sure that his defence contracts are secure."

"Wait," Kearney interrupted. "This Vaughan dude called before the C.I.A. tracked you down?"

"NASA security," Travis repeated, rolling his eyes and stressing the acronym. "Guess Tracy has some well-equipped friends in high places. And they all want to know what happened."

"Couldn't they just wait for the guy to wake up and ask him? A day or two's not going to be the end of the world."

Coates grunted at Kearney's question, turning a frown on his subordinate. "That depends on what Tracy Industries is building."

Travis was shaking his head grimly. "Two more of Tracy's kids are missing. The agent – damn guy kept me talking for half an hour and wouldn't give me his name – has got some idea that every island in the Confederation belongs to smugglers, thugs or criminal masterminds. He seems to think Tracy's sons would make great blackmail material, and that someone down here might just take advantage of them."

Coates and Kearney had both stilled, their expressions going from ones of professional interest to sombre concentration when the missing children were mentioned. Kearney laid his cup down, running a hand through his curly brown hair. Coates grimaced and massaged his face with the heels of both hands.

"Whether they're alive or dead," he agreed tiredly. "Even if they're at the bottom of the ocean, someone could call Tracy and say he's got them. The man's trying to run a business, but he'd be a security risk for the rest of his life." He raised his head, fixing Travis with a piercing gaze. "So what was it? Accident or pirates?"

The detective sighed, scrubbing at his own eyes. He hadn't been given a moment to think, first by Vaughan and then the C.I.A. agent. Now though his mind was working at double speed, trying to make up for lost time. "First assumption? I would have said it was that damn storm we had last night, if it wasn't for the fact it doesn't jibe with where Tony and Cal Levan said they were found. Cal said there was wreckage, and it takes a lot to sink a high-end modern yacht like Tracy's – that miniature typhoon could have done it. I don't think it could have happened before the storm in any case. Tracy is ex-military. He'd have a radio on his yacht – the Santa Anna, by the way – and he'd have got word out if they were in trouble, or about to be boarded."

Coates pulled his own useless radio from a pocket and tossed it onto Travis' desk. "Not with this kind of static in the air."

"Exactly. And if it had been much longer ago, we'd have seen a report filed on the missing yacht too. Vaughan seemed to think Tracy was in daily contact with his wife. This last day or so, we've been missing bulletins through the interference, but we were pretty much on top of them before that. Now from what Mina told me, Tracy was knocked pretty hard and ended up in the water at least a day ago. That doesn't leave much time unaccounted for. If anyone had tried to question him, I'd have thought they'd hold on to him for a while, soften him up a bit, and that would leave its mark, even if there'd been time for it."

"They could have tossed him straight back and be planning to contact him to talk business later, with the kids as collateral," Kearney suggested.

"He and the kid we found were in the water for damn near a day, and picked up by a fishing rig that happened to be passing. What kind of blackmail plan starts by leaving the survival of its target to blind chance? And why give one boy back while keeping the other two? No, whether it was the storm or just freaky bad luck, I don't reckon there was a human hand behind this."

"You told the Americans that?"

Travis shrugged. "Just that there was no evidence of foul play that we'd seen," he admitted. "One thing the spook was right about is that it's one huge coincidence that the infallible weather system let loose just a couple of hundred miles from where Tracy was found."

Coates sighed heavily, hauling himself out of the chair and towards his own desk on the other side of the room.

"You know, we're going to have to find these kids before this will be over," he told his detectives. He paused, turning sombrely towards them. "And you know they're probably out there for the second night. If they were shipwrecked more than a day ago and have been adrift since, they might not be a pretty sight when we find them."

Travis nodded bleakly. Kearney just sighed, waving one hand in acknowledgement.

"Right. Mike, you get onto weather control. Find out just how long it's going to be before it's safe to send out search and rescue choppers in this induction charge-thing. Ask what the wind and ocean's been doing while you're at it. I want a map of the most likely drift path of wreckage – or anything else. Oh, and get me satellite photos too. I want to know where that yacht was when it sank. I'm going to take a look at the harbour records and the reports from some of the other islands, just in case Chuck's gut feeling is off on this one. If there are any new players, or big boats, in the area someone should have noticed. I'm going to send security to the hospital. Tracy's a big enough name that when word gets out, he's going to be a target for kooks and journalists whether or not we throw pirates and kidnappers into the equation."

"What about me?" Travis asked quietly. He was used to his boss taking control and respected him for his ability to get things done, but even so… "This is my case, Chief. You're not taking me off it now."

Coates snorted humourlessly. "When you're our liaison with NASA and the CIA? I wouldn't dare. I'm just counting my blessings that the boffins are still calling Dominga a no-fly zone otherwise we'd probably have been swarmed under by spooks and scientists already. Find out what happened, Chuck. I want detailed, formal statements from Tony and Cal Levan, and a written report from Dr Evans. Get back on with Vaughan and the wife, if you can. It's a damn big ocean out there. We need to know where that yacht was meant to be before photos do us much good. And see if you can talk to Tracy and the kid. We need to get definite information here."

Travis nodded, reaching for his coat and heading towards the door. Mina had ordered him out of the hospital for the moment, but he still had options. At this time of night, he had a pretty good idea where to find the Levan brothers. "I'll be at Bobbie's," he called over his shoulder. "Oh and, Mike?"

"Yeah, Chuck?" Mike asked distractedly, eyes already on his computer screen.

"Have the coffee on when I get back?"

Jeff Tracy's body was a throbbing, confused mass of pain. He was dimly aware of the cool sheets of a bed beneath him, but it seemed to be tossing and tumbling under him. Waves of nausea and dizziness assaulted him, making the world a noisy, chaotic place even before he opened his eyes or became aware of the sounds around him.

His eyes slid open a crack, outside his voluntary control. The blaze of light just added to his confusion. He gasped, and someone trickled a few drops of cold liquid between his lips, calling him by name.

"Jeff? Jeff, can you hear me?"

The water felt good for a moment as it hit his throat, but then his stomach revolted. He barely managed to roll onto his side before he lost control of the nausea. He'd choked up what felt like half the Pacific Ocean before the convulsions began to subside. Again a voice called him, and it was somehow wrong. Even in this hazy, distorted world, he had a strong feeling that something was missing. No… someone!

His eyes shot open and he tried to sit up, only for nausea and dizziness to overcome him again. Someone held his shoulders as he began to vomit helplessly again. There was no hint though of the voices Jeff needed to hear.

"V'g'l?" he gasped between heaves. He didn't understand his own urgency, his recent memories seemed to contain nothing but tumbling, roiling chaos and the intense need to find his sons, one of them in particular. "V'g'l?" he tried again, the word mumbled and distorted. "Sc'tty? Gord'n?"

There was noise, as if someone were trying to speak to him. Jeff couldn't make out words above the pounding of blood in his own head, but the voices were still wrong. He struggled to open his eyes again, and failed, tumbling back into the darkness long before he could make sense of the light.

Bobbie's place wasn't a bar in the strictest sense of the word. True, a stained wooden counter ran the length of the place, and true, drinks were served and money was taken. But this wasn't one of the bright, noisy tourist traps that littered the town. No one got through the door without a word and a nod from Bobbie herself. She didn't give that word easily. This was a place for serious drinkers and serious talk.

Of course, Chuck Travis thought as he stepped past the bouncer and into the dark, smoke-clouded interior, that didn't mean that the talk wasn't complete and utter crap sometimes.

He exchanged a nod with Bobbie, trying to remain outwardly cool in the face of her intent scrutiny. He hadn't been sure of his welcome here, although he'd been pretty sure that he'd be let in today, if only because there was a kid involved. The woman ruled the dockside with a fist of iron, and had done for as long as Travis had been savvy enough to see it. Bobbie was probably in her late forties, but in this light could easily pass for twenty years younger, her body kept lithe and fit by hard work and harsh times. She had character rather than the artificial beauty that could be found in bars where tourist women roamed in search of holiday adventure. As Bobbie leaned forward across the bar, her lips pursed thoughtfully, Travis admitted to himself that she terrified him for reasons that had nothing to do with the rumours about what happened to any smuggler in the port who crossed her. On the other hand, Bobbie was no more black or white than any of the semi-legal fishermen she served with drinks. Travis had walked past this bar in the afternoon and seen the place full of street kids tucking into their only hot meal of the day. He'd heard rumours, started by Bobbie herself no doubt, that she only did it to divert police attention from the bar. He didn't think her clientele believed it any more than he did, but it would take a braver man than him to tell her so.

He drifted across to sit opposite her, laying down a larger-than-strictly-necessary 'gift' on the bar as she served him a shot of gin. He downed it in one, eyes meeting hers. She nodded, and placed a beer on the dark wood in front of him.

"You here to cause trouble?" she demanded, not exactly loud but not hiding the question either. "The way I hear it, the boys are heroes."

"One kid in hospital, Bobbie." Travis dropped his voice to little more than a murmur, inaudible to anyone more than a few inches away. "Two more still to find."

"Find what you need to know and get out," she said softly, giving the bar a cursory wipe before turning away, not waiting for Travis's nod but simply assuming it would follow. He wasn't expecting the mutter she threw over her shoulder, lips barely moving. "Levan's been spending hard tonight, drinking hard too. Shouldn’t give you trouble."

He sighed sipping his beer, eyes scanning Bobbie's 'guests', slipping past the clandestine huddles and faces that suddenly ducked away to hide from him. No one had ever hung a crime on Bobbie herself, and if felonies were planned in here, well, that had to happen somewhere, and for reasons he couldn't explain, he was pretty sure she kept a lid on the worst excesses. Another time, he might come here with the place's illicit activities in his sights, but on that day he'd come armed and not riding on the coattails of missing children.

A hearty laugh, followed by a quieter chuckle, drew his eyes towards the back of the bar. Lifting his drink, he sauntered in that direction, his gaze fixed on Tony Levan's broad shoulders. The man shrugged expansively, still turned away. From the sweeping gestures he made, it seemed that whatever overblown story he'd just told had reached a natural conclusion. By his side, Cal was taking orders for the next round, their drunken circle of cronies quick to volunteer their wants. Bobbie was right, Tony was well away, a noticeable slur in his voice as he waved a hand in mid-air.

"…pretty damn spectacular from San Fernando, he said," the drunken man declared loudly.

Travis's eyebrows rose to his eye-line. Cal staggered out of his seat and towards the bar, stopping dead in his tracks when he saw the detective. Travis shot the younger brother a glare and a threat both wrapped up in a 'stay there!' look, slipped past him and settled into his vacated seat all in one smooth gesture.

"What was, Tony?" he asked casually, putting his beer on the table in front of him.

Tony turned an unfocused look on him. "The storm, you not listening?"

"Gee that's weird, Tony." Travis leaned back in the chair. The other men around the table had grown quiet, a few of them confused, the rest wary as they recognised the cop.

Tony himself blinked hard. "Hey, you crashing my party?"

"Sounds like you've been having fun, Tone. And you know, that's kind of odd too, 'cause you only went out for the evening catch, and you must have turned round before you got out to the shoals. Your nets were empty, Tony. No catch, no cash. So why am I hearing you've been throwing money around tonight?"

Tony blinked at him, too drunk to process the question. Cal, on the other hand, was looking distinctly nervous, edging towards the door at the front of the bar. At a glance from Bobbie, the bouncer there stepped into the doorframe, blocking it completely. There was a stir, the bar's patrons looking from Travis to Bobbie, two authority figures in temporary alliance.

Travis raised his voice slightly. "Where'd the windfall come from, Cal?" he asked without looking in the younger man's direction. "Did you snatch the guy's wallet? It must have been loaded. Did he put up a fight? Is that why he got that goose-egg?"

"He was out cold!" Cal hurried back along the bar, his voice dropping into a hiss. "Unconscious, way before… we found him."

The hesitation was slight, but Travis had been listening for it. Before he'd walked into Bobbie's place, he'd been prepared to push these men hard for details because that was the only way to get past the façade that all these 'fishermen' showed to the law. Now, when he pushed it was because he was suddenly damn sure that the Levan brothers were hiding something.

He looked back at Tony, letting his more sober brother stew. "So, don't you want to know what's weird, Tony? You and your brother both insist you were off east when you found your castaways."

"That's right," Tony slurred, a little more focus in his eyes as he began to recognise his interrogator. "Hundred miles east, that's what he said."

"He said that, did he?" Travis asked, mildly entertained to see Cal's furious expression shooting daggers at his brother's back. "Must have said a lot of things. Like what the storm was like off 'Fernando. Pretty damn spectacular. Should have been, that close to where it was blowing hardest."

"Uh, yeah."

Travis slammed his half-empty mug back on the table with a loud bang, beer slopping over its sides. "No! 'Cause you were out east, and San Fernando is way down to the south, and you know as well as I do that the kook who lives there won't let any boat but his own and the weekly servants' launch land there. So, tell me, Tony. Where did you really find those people? Who did you meet off San Fernando today?"

Tony blinked at him, glancing at Cal before closing his mouth hard. Cal jerked his head and one of his drinking circle vacated a seat for him, looking glad to be out of the firing line.

"Look, Inspector, you're taking one egg and trying to make an omelette here. Tony and me, we have a regular thing with the cook over on 'Fernando. Make sure he gets the supplies he needs on the weekly boat, if you know what I mean. That's all. Tony here was chatting to him on the radio earlier."

Cal Levan thought fast, Travis had to give him credit for that. His story might even be true. Auguste Villacana was one of the weirder of the one-man island tyrants in the Confederation, and exotic contraband foodstuffs sounded more or less his speed, and about right for the Levan brothers too. On another day, Cal's story might have plausible enough to talk his way out of the situation, but not a mere day after the induction pulse hit the atmosphere slap bang on a line between San Fernando and Dominga. Travis pulled his radio out with a quick gesture that had an unnervingly high fraction of Bobbie's clientele twitching towards their pockets. He flicked the switch, and thumbed up the volume, letting the loud crackle and pops fill the now-silent bar.

"You had a nice chat on the radio, huh?" He dropped the light tone from his voice, and spoke in deadly earnest. "Not today, you didn’t. Where'd you find the tourists, Levan?"

Tony was sobering quickly, his expression worried. He tried one last time.

"I don't get it, Inspector, we're heroes right? We did everyone a favour. We brought those folks in quick as we could, got them to hospital and all."

Travis sighed. It was near-midnight, he'd missed dinner, and was now functioning almost entirely on coffee. He was too tired for much more of this.

"Yeah, you got them to hospital, Tony. You might be a little bent, but I'm pretty sure both of you are still human enough not to let a man and boy die if you don't have to. And that's why I know that sooner or later you're going to tell me where you really found them." He took a deep breath. "And what happened to the other two kids in the water."

There was dead silence, not even the clink of glasses. It was as if everyone in the bar had frozen.

"Other kids?" Tony Levan was looking at his brother, either completely shocked or doing a good impression of it. "That bastard never said nothing about other kids!"

Cal pushed back from the table, his chair falling with a clatter as he stood. "Look, Inspector Travis, if we'd known there were others, we'd have brought them back too, okay?"

Travis stayed seated, catching Cal's eyes. "What bastard?" he asked softly.

Cal hesitated, swore, and rubbed a hand across his eyes.

"Villacana. That monster of a motor-yacht of his cuts across our bows, near swamps us. Says his people fished a couple strangers out not far off San Fernando. Boat battered to bits by the storm. Kid was holding his dad onto a boom, or a bit of broken mast or something, 'cording to the captain. But the yacht has engine trouble and the captain reckons that if they keep going all the way to Dominga, they're not going to make it home themselves, so can we bring them into port? Well, we're not monsters, Inspector, and hey, Villacana himself comes over all quiet like. He doesn't want investigators snooping around his home, he says, and with the folks getting help anyway, it can't do any good so why should he put up with it? He'll make it worth our while, "reimburse us for our lost catch" he says. We just have to agree to be a bit creative in where we 'found' them."

Cal paused, shaking his head. "No one mentioned any other kids, Inspector. I swear it."

Travis had listened intently. He kept the interest off his face as he spoke. C.I.A. conspiracy theories danced around his head. "Do you think they might have been taken back to San Fernando?"

A snort from Tony dragged everyone's attention back to the larger man. "Wouldn't put anything past that cold bastard Villacana or most of his people. But his captain's not a bad guy. Those folks were in a bad way. If there'd been more of them, he'd have seen they got help."

Rubbing his forehead tiredly, Travis sighed. He looked around the room, populated almost exclusively by Dominga's fishing and smuggling community. "We'll be planning an organised search leaving on the morning tide," he announced quietly, knowing that the news would travel quickly. "These boys need to be found and they need to be found fast. Anyone that can help…" He let his voice trail off, and turned back to the chagrined Levan brothers. "I need you both to come down to the station, give me a statement and coordinates."

Cal Levan grimaced in distaste, but he nodded, looking serious. Tony Levan's alcohol-dazed expression became rebellious. "Hey, we told you the truth. Don't see why - "

His voice cut off with a strangled scream. Hand still on his collar, Bobbie hauled the taller man to his feet, the ice-bucket she'd just emptied down the back of his shirt tucked under one arm.

"You're going down to that station, because otherwise you're never showing your face in here again, Levan. That reason enough for you?"

She gave him a shove, and Travis and Cal caught him between them, their grip half support and half restraint. Travis gave Bobbie a sombre nod and led his two prizes to the door.

He'd found what he needed to know. Now it was time to get out.

Chapter 6

It was a near-perfect copy. A technician from the World Weather Satellite itself could have walked in and not known the difference. They'd never have guessed they were beneath the surface of a tropical island, instead of hovering a hundred miles straight above it, any more than they'd have guessed that all this had been put together by a single man, bent on reminding the world what it owed him.

In fact, there was only one difference between this room and its counterpart on the orbiting platform far above. Villacana's fingers caressed the extra control panel and the button at its centre. He let himself fantasize about pressing this button, sending the room live and taking the weather satellite system back under his control. The fancy brought him pleasure, sending a thrill through a heart and head otherwise devoid of emotion, or almost so.

A niggle of irritation and frustration spoiled the moment, reminding him of why he'd come down here, and why it would be unwise to make his move so soon after the minor problem his test run had encountered. He pulled his hand away from the master switch, moving from the main terminal in the room to one of the lesser consoles that lined its perimeter. These data access points were always live, always tapped into the sealed, EM-shielded fibre optic cable that Villacana had laid in secrecy and at great expense. It was the one luxury he'd allowed himself when moving here, before even the concept of this room had occurred to him. The peasants, fools and illiterates on Dominga and the other islands could put their trust in wireless transmission, radio links and satellite relays if they wanted, but Villacana had been a computer programmer almost since he'd written his first word. He'd spent more than half his life immersed in the sea of meta-information, learning to manipulate it to his own ends. Even when he'd turned his back on the world and its petty vindictiveness, he hadn't been able to sever his link to that world.

He settled into the chair at the console, and within seconds, his eyes and his hands were moving in perfect unison, navigating from news site to news site, re-establishing his contact with the rest of the planet. He checked half a dozen different email addresses, and short-cutted his way through twice as many regular information sources. He could no more give this up than a drunkard could give up his last shot of liquor.

Again, the uncertain feeling that he wasn't prepared to recognise as anxiety disturbed his enjoyment of the moment. He shifted the focus of his surfing, moving it closer to home, and concentrating on the news media in this corner of the Pacific, and in the Domingan Confederation specifically.

As he'd expected, the papers based on Dominga itself were largely silent and out of date, a few of them managing to get brief text-only updates through the lingering charge affecting all atmospheric communications. Those based a little further out had updated but had little to say, commenting on the ferocity of the storm based largely on satellite pictures, and going on about the difficulty of communications with the state capital as if the government there actually had anything to say worth listening to. Satisfied, as far as he went, Villacana cast his net a little wider, searching the global media for reports on the storm. There were many, not specifically because a short-lived typhoon had battered a remote island group, but rather because the satellite malfunction causing it implied that such freak weather was possible at any time, anywhere on the planet.

He sighed, relaxing a little. There wasn't a mention of San Fernando anywhere in the meta-data plane he was probing, and nor did the discovery of a shipwrecked man and boy rate column inches, or the electronic equivalent, anywhere he could find. He'd been confident in the fishermen's greed, and in his own cunning, but even so it eased a tension he'd carried all day to realise that no one knew or cared about the yacht lost in the storm. True, the report might get out in a day or so, when Dominga came back online, but by then a couple of unimportant tourists would long since have either lived or died. It would be old news, with nothing to tie it back to Villacana or his work here.

Drawing a line under his search algorithms, he turned back to the storm reports. He indulged himself, reading the full text of several editorials, ranging from near-hysterical doom-mongering to weighty-but-worried discussion of the implications. It was almost an hour before he left the underground room. At the top of the stairs outside, he turned and locked the door firmly behind him, sealing it physically, electronically and with an electrostatic charge that would discourage even the most fool-hardy of his hirelings. Not that any would have the wits or initiative to try it. He encouraged a dull, uninspired loyalty in his workforce, buying it with abundant pay, enforcing it with chilling threats.

Despite that he double-checked the locks before turning and striding through his villa with the shadow of a scowl on his otherwise impassive face. He had run his searches. He had every reason to believe he'd got away with his test, and by the time he was ready to make his move the media would have done his work for him, whipping the global population into a frenzy of fear and uncertainty. Almost everything was going perfectly. So why was some small part of him still worrying that, just possibly, the one insignificant thing that hadn't was going to come back and bite him?

Scott Tracy woke with a start, struck a stray blow by his little brother's flailing arm. He was murmuring an automatic comfort before he registered which brother was huddled against him, or why his bed was so uncomfortable. Memory returned within seconds, and he reached up to stroke Gordon's hair in the moonlight, stilling the younger boy's nightmare.

The temperature had dropped, stars showing crystal-clear through an empty night sky. The cool air chilled Scott's face, but he barely felt it. Set against the previous night, there was no comparison. He was dry and sheltered from the wind, solid ground beneath him, Gordon curled like a hot water bottle against his chest rather than the shivering heat sink of the night before. Careful not to disturb his little brother, Scott pulled and prodded the pile of dry palm fronds back over them, repairing the damage done by Gordon's restless movements.

He stopped, a long, thin palm leaf slipping from his fingers, when Gordon began to stir again. The little boy was crying in his sleep, calling out for their father and Virgil with a painful urgency. Scott snuggled closer, talking quietly about Mom and John and Alan, hoping that some of what he was saying might penetrate his brother's subconscious to ease his dreams. He kept up his murmur until he was sure Gordon was deeply asleep, and then found he simply couldn't stop. He kept talking to drown out the voice in his ears reminding him that Dad and his closest brother were gone, and that he'd watched them fall and huddled in the lifeboat, too scared to do anything about it. When tears overtook the words he kept them very quiet, easing back from Gordon so that his silent sobs wouldn't shake the younger boy awake.

"I'm sorry, Virge," he whispered into the night. "I'm so sorry."

Virgil woke with the sound of his own name ringing in his ears. A familiar voice had called him, the memory of it fading with his dreams.

Warmer and more comfortable than he could remember being in far too long, Virgil paused to take an inventory. His head still felt thick and heavy, but his eyes opened when he told them to, and all ten fingers and ten toes responded when he wiggled them. His throat was dry, and his face felt as if someone had taken sandpaper to the skin, but he could also feel a cool lotion on his cheeks and the cool breeze of air conditioning wafting across them. He shifted a little, intending to roll onto his side, and stopped at the alarming pulling and stinging sensations the movement provoked. He blinked his eyes to focus them, lifting his left hand just high enough that he could see the drip attached to the back of it without having to lift his head.

Realisation dawned and he looked from side to side, taking in the long room, lined with a dozen beds. Most of them were empty, huddled forms just visible in the two beds furthest to his right. His sleeping companions, and the closed curtains on the windows above him, suggested that he'd woken in deep night. The details of the room were obscured by darkness, but there was enough light spilling from the nurse's station at the far left-hand side of the room for him to get a hint of primary colours that made his eyes ache.

He was in hospital, and for a few moments the knowledge that he was back on solid ground and safe had been enough for him. But he was in hospital alone, none of his family at his bedside, and, even in the middle of the night, that was just plain wrong.

The nurse sat at her station, unaware that he was awake. Her concentration was directed elsewhere, and Virgil squinted, trying to make out the shape of the two people having a quiet argument in the doorway of the room, wondering if either of them had been the voice that had awakened him.

"I've got to speak to him, Mina. You said he's not in any kind of danger any more." An unfamiliar man, tanned and casually dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, spoke with an urgent tone to his voice.

"He's still a sick child." That was the woman dressed in white medical robes. His doctor maybe? "He needs his sleep, and I won't have you waking him." There was a note of finality to her tone, and the man seemed first angry and then resigned to it. The woman watched his protests die away before speaking a little more gently. "Couldn't the Levans give you anything?"

"They told us what Villacana's men told them," the man shrugged. "I'm pretty sure that they're not holding anything back… now. But it's not enough. We only have two people who know what really happened, and you're not letting me talk to either of them."

"Believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to try last time one of them was awake. Concussion can be…messy." The doctor folded her arms, her long shadow moving across the walls of the ward as she shook her head. "You're not getting anything out of my patients until they're fit enough. I'm sorry, Chuck. I know you're under a lot of pressure on this, but, honestly, it's still full dark outside, the planes are grounded, and the satellite pictures are seeing nothing but static. What's waking the kid up going to achieve that won't wait 'till morning?"

Chuck leaned back against the doorframe, throwing a guilty glance in Virgil's direction before running a hand through his hair. "God, Mina, I don't know. I just feel like I'm climbing a mountain blindfold. We don't even have decent photos of these kids to show around. The ones the mother tried to send through look like they were taken in a snowstorm, and their ID pictures make them look like anaemic zombies, not to mention being years out of date."

There was a long pause before the doctor, Mina, sighed. "Do you really think they're still out there to be found? After this long?" she asked sadly.

Her friend threw up an arm in a frustrated gesture. "Who knows? Anything could have happened to them! Literally!"

Mina reached out to lay a hand on his arm. "Look, Chuck, you need to get some sleep. Your chief can keep everyone off your back for a few hours, surely?"

"I don't need anyone's permission to sleep, Tasmin," the man snapped. The doctor laughed softly, not offended.

"Just to persuade your own conscience to let up on you for a bit. Sleep deprivation is making you tetchy, Inspector."

"God, I'm sorry, Mina. You're right. It's just… I guess I'd just feel better if I could talk to the kid first."

Virgil had been letting the unfamiliar voices and names roll over him, only half-following the conversation. He still felt lethargic, but something in the man's persistence was getting through to him. He pushed up a little in the bed before his chest tightened, his entire rib cage lighting up with agony. Deciding it was too much effort, he dropped back onto the mattress.

"Hello?" he called softly, mindful of the other children sleeping at the far end of the ward.

Man and woman both dropped their discussion instantly. The doctor waved the duty nurse back, but Chuck followed her to Virgil's bedside despite her glare. Perversely, it was harder to see them as they came closer, leaving the corridor light behind, but Virgil blinked up at them nonetheless.

"Hey there." The woman's voice was soft. He pushed up again, fighting past the pain, and she helped him, raising the head of the bed and tucking a pillow behind him so he wouldn't struggle or strain his bruised ribs. "How are you feeling?"

"I'd like a little water, please?" Virgil asked politely, trying to keep the pleading out of his tone. He looked at the woman as her companion poured from a water jug, trying to place his curious sense of déjà vu. "Is my Dad okay?" he asked softly, taking the glass in both hands and a little surprised to see its surface trembling. The doctor smiled at him.

"You asked us that last time," she told him, shaking her head when he frowned in confusion. "He'll be fine, Virgil. He's feeling a bit poorly at the moment, but he's going to be just fine. Just like you."

Virgil took a sip of the water, still frowning. The news about Dad was a huge relief that pulled tears to the corner of his eyes, but the feeling persisted that something was very wrong, stopping him from relaxing.

"Scott?" he said simply, not quite sure what question he was asking.

The doctor hesitated, and her companion moved forward, perching on a chair he pulled up to the bedside.

"Virgil, I'm a policeman, Inspector Travis."

Virgil looked at him in weary confusion. "She called you Chuck," he pointed out irrelevantly.

The man smiled gently, but there was a worried expression beneath the façade. "You can call me Chuck too if you like, Virgil," he said smoothly. Virgil gave him a level look. There was enough condescension in the man's tone to irritate even his sleepy mind. He was eleven, not a kid like Alan or Gordy. The thought of his younger brothers pulled him back to the here and now, and he finally pinned down the idea that was bothering him.

"Someone's hurt," he whispered, looking from face to face for confirmation and an explanation.

Doctor Mina stroked his hair, her other hand on his shoulder as she tried to persuade him to calm down. "What makes you think that, Virgil?"

Virgil glanced at her before looking at the policeman with worried eyes. "If they were both okay, Scott would be here. So either Scott's hurt, or Gordy is. What happened? Where are they?"

Virgil's voice was rising, and the doctor tried to soothe him, glancing past him at the other children in the room. Inspector Travis sighed.

"Virgil, we don't know where your brothers are. Can you tell me what happened to them?"

"Don't know?" All trace of sleep gone, Virgil stared at him incredulously. "But… but they have to be here! They've got to be okay. They were in the lifeboat. That's what the lifeboat is for!"

"They were in your lifeboat?" Inspector Travis repeated. "Why didn't you get into the boat with them, Virgil?"

"I did. There was a wave. I fell in." Virgil blurted out the short sentences, his pulse quickening as he remembered. "Dad came after me, but he got hurt. The storm was blowing really hard, and there was so much wind and the rain, and all I could do was try and hold on to Dad. Then the boat was gone and I couldn't see Scott and Gordon any more, but they have to be out there, and you have to find them!"

"We're going to," Inspector Travis assured him, resting a hand on his arm reassuringly. "It's going to be all right, Virgil. We'll find Scott and Gordon, but it would help if you knew where you were when the storm came up. Did your Dad mention where you were going? Or did you go past any islands maybe?"

Virgil nodded, numbly. His father had sat all three boys down every evening for the past week, challenging them to figure out how far they had travelled and where they were before checking their answer against the yacht's GPS. The first fringes of the storm had started to rock the boat when they were in the middle of the task. By the time they'd argued out their solution and came to Jeff to ask him for the right coordinates, he'd been hunched over the public schedule page from Uncle Jim's weather satellite, looking worried and trying not to show it. That was when everything had started to go wrong.

Frowning, Virgil tried to remember the figures, but the numbers had never really registered in the first place. Instead the image of the sea chart swam in front of his eyes, Scott's firm ruler lines and pencil marks overlaying it. He waved a hand vaguely in the air, trying to think of a way to describe the picture in his head. The drip shunt pulled on the back of his hand and he stifled a hiss of pain, staring down at his hands.

"Paper," he said quietly. "Can I have some paper?" he clarified at their bemused faces. "So I can show you the chart?"

The doctor sighed, leaning forward in the chair beside his bed and stroking his hair back. "Virgil, you ought to be sleeping. I don't want you tiring yourself out now."

Nodding distractedly, the boy ignored her, eyes instead on the police officer raiding the children's play table for paper and a pencil. He held his arms out for them as Travis approached, and bent over the notepad immediately, aware of the two adults exchanging worried looks. Sighing, the doctor leaned across him, adjusting the position of his drip stand so he could move his hand a little more freely.

"He's just eleven, Chuck," Doctor Mina murmured, as if Virgil were not present. "How could…?"

Virgil ignored her, angry with her for being right, and with himself for the tiredness that made his hands clumsy. He sketched in the shapes of the islands, measuring the ratio of their sizes and the distances between them with his fingers, determined to reproduce the long-gone chart accurately. He'd always been able to do this – take something he'd seen once and make it real again on paper. Usually though he was capturing a beautiful scene, or the expression on one of his brother's faces. It wasn't often he wanted to reproduce a flat picture.

There was a rustle of curtains as Inspector Travis drew them part-closed around Virgil's bed, turning it into a cubicle. Then the tired boy found himself blinking in the yellow glow of a desk-light, squinting with the effort of stopping his eyes watering. He shook his head to clear it, and focused again on his paper. Right, there was Dominga, and there were the handful of other islands large enough to have recognisable outlines on his Dad's chart. He drew fuzzy dots in for the scattering of smaller islets, confounded by his blurred vision and the blunt pencil. Finally satisfied with the accuracy of his crude rendering of the Domingan archipelago, if not with his own numb-fingered penmanship, Virgil sketched on the lines he'd seen his brother draw the night before, and marked the position of the Santa Anna with a cross. He tore the page out of the pad, not bothered for once by the untidiness of the jagged edge. Turning to the detective, he pressed it into the man's hand.

"There."

Inspector Travis was staring incredulously at the chart, and then up at the boy who'd produced it from memory with just a couple of minutes work.

"We were there. Scott and Gordon were there. Are there. You've got to find them."

Virgil yawned, and then flushed, angry with himself. His hands were already moving the pencil over the second page on the note-pad, putting in some outline strokes, when he felt someone trying to tug his drawing implements away. The doctor was standing over him, one hand poised on the lever to lower the head of his bed, while the second tried to relieve him of his paper. He resisted, holding tight.

"Virgil, I need you to get some sleep. Your father's going to want to see you when he wakes up. You want to be awake to see him, don't you?"

Her voice was soft and persuasive, but she was underestimating the force of Virgil Tracy's will, and the training his brothers had given him. He held tight, but slumped his shoulders pathetically, widening his eyes the way Alan did when he wanted something and adopting the quivering voice that Gordy had explained to him in a rash moment of honesty. "Please," he begged, letting his voice hitch on the word. "Please, just ten minutes? Ten minutes more and I'll try to sleep, I promise."

Scott would tear strips out of him for trying this, before doubling up with laughter. It wouldn't have worked for a second at home. Lucille Tracy wouldn't have survived five strong-minded sons if she'd been so easily swayed. Even their occasional baby-sitters had become wary of such begging, although Gordon and Alan were still cute enough to pull it off, particularly when they tag-teamed their appeals.

Virgil had no such back-up, but then Mina didn't have the training. Her eyes softened, her movements becoming a little flustered as she fussed with his bed-covers. "Ten minutes," she agreed, her tone making it somewhere between a promise and a warning. "And then you'll close your eyes for me?"

Virgil nodded, his expression still tragic, but his pencil already moving again across the paper. The doctor sighed, stepping away from the bedside and calling the detective, paper chart in hand, after her with a jerk of her head.

Travis followed her, the two adults once again stopping just inside the doorway and dropping their voices so they were barely audible over the scratching of Virgil's pencil. They underestimated though how sound could carry in a near-silent ward.

"Manipulative little bastard, isn't he?" Travis commented with a grin.

"Language!" Mina snapped, offended more by the implication she'd been duped than by what her friend had said. "He'll probably fall asleep in a minute or two, paper or no paper."

No way. Virgil's eyes were drifting closed, but he drew deeply on a genetic reservoir of stubbornness, concentrating on his rapid but precise strokes. The pencil Travis had brought him was more of a black crayon. Its core, softer than graphite, made it difficult to keep the lines narrow. He flipped over to the back of the pad, rubbing the pencil against the paper, rotating as he went to wear the sides down and leave a point. Flipping back to the front sheet, he added a few finer features to his sketch before tuning back in on the adults' conversation.

"This will help," Travis was saying, looking down at the chart in admiration. "Give us somewhere to start."

"Assuming it's accurate," Mina pointed out. "And that the typhoon didn't blow them to the other side of the world." She paused, her voice soft and worried. "Do you honestly think there's any chance they're still alive?"

Travis sighed heavily. "They were in a boat, and that's better than in the water, but, honestly?" He shook his head. "I'd almost rather they had been snatched by pirates. That storm did for a well-equipped, modern sailing yacht. Its dinghy of a lifeboat hadn't a snowball's chance in Hell."

The splatter of a teardrop on the bottom corner of his paper startled Virgil. He blinked back its fellows, hard. Scott and Gordon couldn't be gone. The world just didn't make sense without his eldest brother in it. Dipping a finger in the drop of moisture, Virgil used it to smear and soften some of the lines he'd drawn, getting the image just right.

Finally, with just a few seconds of his self-imposed time limit remaining, Virgil lowered his pencil. Another tear rolled down his cheek, and he carefully moved the pad a little further away, not wanting to damage his sketches. Mina glanced his way, said something Virgil didn't make out, and nodded as the detective turned to leave.

"Inspector!" Virgil stopped him with a quiet but urgent call. Angrily, he dashed the tears away with one hand, and held out the pad with his other as the two adults approached. His two brothers looked out of the paper at him, Scott's expression bold and confident, Gordon's angelic with just a hint of mischief lurking in his eyes. Travis had rolled up the chart-drawing into a tight tube, now he tucked it into a jacket pocket and took the notepad reverentially in both hands, staring down at the two sketched faces. He'd recognise them from the ID photos, Virgil was sure, but the boy knew he'd captured his brothers in a way no formal, over-exposed photograph could. "You wanted pictures of my brothers," he said simply, dropping back against his pillows.

This time he didn't resist when Doctor Mina pulled the supportive pillow out from behind his back and dropped the head of his bed. She reached for the desk-lamp. Tear-streaked, and finally giving in to the exhaustion that had been pulling at him, Virgil was asleep before she touched it.

Chapter 7

Travis drummed his fingers impatiently against the desk, waiting for the vid-phone to connect. The hour-glass icon on his computer's desktop turned over and over, the motion hypnotic. Of course, at gone three in the morning, almost anything was hypnotic. Travis could feel weariness adding weight to his bones and sapping the strength from his muscles. The chief had sent Kearney home an hour ago and been on his own way out as Travis walked in. The detective fully intended to obey his order to get some sleep, just as soon as this call was out of the way. He pushed the chair back a little from his desk, letting him rest his feet on the crossbar that ran at ankle height beneath it. His eyes drifted across the desk as his head nodded.

Then his eyes fell upon Virgil's sketch and the painful tightening of his chest gave him new strength. He reached for the thick paper sheet, studying the two faces. When Virgil had first started to draw, Travis hadn't held out much hope. He'd thought the boy might give them a vague idea of where the boat had been, a cartoon of some kind, indicative but useless for any kind of thorough search. He'd never expected a detailed chart, let alone sketched portraits of the missing children that were photo-realistic in their detail. He'd never seen the two boys in the person, but even so, he had confidence that Virgil had captured their likenesses. He studied them now: an older boy much like their father in bone structure and with the same charismatic air that Travis remembered from Jeff Tracy's NASA press conferences, and the younger child, paler in colouring, almost delicate in build and features but clearly a little troublemaker for all that, with laughter very much at home on his face. The line drawings were simple, but they did far more to evoke an image of Virgil's brothers than the interference-speckled and out-of-date photographs.

A crackle of noise from his speakers broke into his thoughtful contemplation of the pictures. He turned back to the screen to find the vid-phone window open, but the image it contained little more than a snowstorm of light and colour. Somewhere in there, the wavering outline of a seated man was barely visible. Travis wouldn't have liked to guess who he was talking to, and he certainly couldn't make out a word from the modulated roar of white noise. There was another surge in the volume, his contact trying to say something, before the vid-phone connection cut out completely.

Frowning, Travis leaned forward over his keyboard, checking the status of Dominga's network access and satisfying himself that while its bit rate was still ludicrously low, it hadn't dropped out completely. He was still investigating that when his computer chimed, this time accepting an incoming call rather than trying to force through an outgoing one.

At first, when the image appeared on the screen, it was as distorted and useless as the first connection had been. Then it steadied, the volume of the random noise dropping dramatically. Vaughan swam into view through the static, the picture still far from perfect but marginally functional. The tall black man was leaning forward in his chair, tension obvious in his posture.

"You called, Inspector?"

Travis allowed himself the luxury of a moment's resentment. No one should sound that alert at this god-awful hour. Of course, Vaughan was a good five hours ahead, in the office early perhaps, but not unreasonably so, and probably tanked up on coffee to boot.

"Actually, I tried but couldn't," he pointed out, not quite willing to forgive the man for something as simple as having got some sleep. "You’re the one who called."

"It's easier to filter and boost the signal if it's initiated from our end." Vaughan waved a hand vaguely in the air. "So they tell me. I'm just security." He shook his head, leaning forward intently. "But it's the early hours of the morning in Dominga, and I don't think you called to ask about vid-phone technology."

Travis allowed himself a small smile. "I have some news for Mrs Tracy. I thought she'd want to know that Virgil was awake and alert not long ago. The doctor was pleased that he was able to process where he was and what was happening so easily. Apart from some lingering tiredness and a bit of bruising, he's physically fine."

Vaughan's sigh was relieved. "That's good to hear. I'll pass it on." He drummed a quick tattoo on his own desk with his fingers and shook his head. "You have Lucille's number though; it was in Virgil's file. You managed to have a conversation with the C.I.A. yesterday, so I know your 'phone is working. Why use me as the middle man?"

The smile faded from Travis' face. He rested his arms on his desk, his fingers flat on the surface to keep them still. "Because she called you in the first place, and because there's more news. News I don't want to have to yell and get confused about and have misheard and repeat again over the kind of telephone lines we're getting out of Dominga at the moment. No mother deserves that."

Vaughan's movement stilled. He seemed to hold his breath for a long moment before sighing, shaking his head and running a hand through his short, silver-dusted hair. "Tell me," he said simply.

The explanation went on for quite some time, Travis explaining the progress of the investigation as he would to Tracy's wife, but going into the kind of detail he'd usually reserve for his colleagues. He wasn't entirely sure what Vaughan's role in NASA was, but his clearance levels had been impressive. Travis had looked over the NASA security ident that had come through, and had the chief run a check to confirm it. The encrypted file that served as an electronic signature and authorisation was pretty much impossible to fake, uniquely coded with its intended recipient and the time-stamp so it couldn't be forwarded onward. The file Travis had received was the best confirmation he was going to get that the older man was both who he said and easily a match for Travis when it came to authority and data access. He was pretty sure that Vaughan could demand any information he wanted, or simply take it, and was asking through courtesy alone. Given that, it made sense to be cooperative.

Vaughan listened in silence, scowling slightly to himself, and nodding when Travis reached a natural conclusion.

"So the boys weren't actually in the water when they were last seen, but it still looks bad," he agreed quietly. "I'll explain that to Lucy. She won't give up hope, but she ought to try to prepare herself if she can. It's killing her that it's not safe to fly down there yet. Seeing Jeff and Virgil… it won't be enough, but it would help everyone a little, perhaps." He took a deep breath, drumming his fingers on the table again. "These Levan men: can they be trusted?" he asked, the clipped military tones coming through in his voice as they had before.

"Well, I won't say they're squeaky clean, but the dirt's all on the surface. They're good men. When they say they've told us everything, I believe them. We interviewed them separately, and their stories matched perfectly."

"Villacana. Why do I recognise that name?" Vaughan repeated it, rolling the sound on his tongue. "What can you tell me about him?"

Travis shrugged tiredly. "Half the islands in the Confederation are privately owned. A lot of people retire out here. Dominga gives them passports, a flag of convenience and a certain degree of insurance in the form of disaster relief and emergency services, in return for a nominal tax. Most of them never come close to the capital." He frowned, scratching at the dark shadow of stubble on his face. "Villacana is younger than most. Some kind of electronics whiz kid who burned out but made his fortune first, according to gossip. Turned his back on the world and bought the freehold to San Fernando eight years ago. Rumour has it he has the place booby-trapped. About as mad on privacy as you can be on an island like that – two full-time servants on the island, another half dozen who come in on a boat for four days a week to do chores and double up as crew for his motorboat when he's in the mood."

"Electronics," Vaughan shook his head. "The name still rings a bell. I'll look into it." His tone turned angry. "What the hell did the man think he was doing?"

"Probably just what he told the Levans: keeping 'Fernando quiet, with no regard to who might suffer the consequences. I plan to ask him."

Vaughan frowned. "You've not asked already?"

Now Travis gave a bitter laugh. "Your boys up on the Weather Station have been giving us some trouble down here, remember? Even if anyone on San Fernando would pick up the 'phone, and they don't always during the day let alone at midnight, that pulse thing hit the water along a straight line between here and there. There's no way we're getting a signal through it."

"It was a malfunction." There was a curious hitch to Vaughan's voice, a note of something that might be anger. He shook his head. "I'm looking into it, but the station personnel weren't to blame."

"Right," Travis drawled disbelievingly. "Well, we're not to blame for this mess either. We're sending as many boats as we can muster out on the morning tide to look for those boys. It's not the best we can do, but it's all we can do until this damn interference clears."

Vaughan gave him a level look. "You need to hit the sack, Travis," he said frankly. "If there's nothing you can do until the morning, then get some sleep while you can."

"Vaughan, when I need your permission - " Travis's angry protest was cut off by a beeping sound on Vaughan's end on the line and a disembodied voice.

"Mr Vaughan, it's the weather control station again. Commander Dale for you."

Vaughan's grimace was visible even through the snow of interference. "I need to take this, Travis."

"The Weather Station commander? Yeah, well give the guy a punch from me, okay? A hard one."

The glare Vaughan threw at him seemed to burn the screen, and the slow drift of noise across it steadied for a moment to show his cold eyes. "Jim Dale is one of Jeff Tracy's oldest friends. Flew two missions with Tracy as his commander. He's Virgil's godfather, for Christ's sake. You want me to beat him up? Believe me, he's doing that plenty well enough himself."

Travis felt the anger in Vaughan's tone like a punch to his own jaw. He shook his head, lost for words. Vaughan watched him for a few seconds.

"Keep me informed," he said simply. "Vaughan out."

The vid-phone window closed, and Travis deactivated his screen with an angry prod of the finger. Massaging tired eyes with the heel of his hands, he swore out loud. Mina was right. Lack of sleep made him more than tetchy, it made him into a jackass. He grabbed for his jacket and car keys, picking up Virgil's chart and picture for safe-keeping on his way out of the door. Time to get some rest before he dug a deeper hole and stepped right into it. There was nothing to be done until morning, and no matter how much Travis wished there was something he could do for Virgil's stricken family, he couldn't change that.

The light was too bright. Scott screwed his eyes up tight, raising one hand to shield them. He rolled over, hoping to turn away from his window and steal another few minutes of sleep. Even before he opened them, his eyes were stinging and he felt incredibly lethargic, as if he were starting a cold. Perhaps Mom would let him stay home from school, he thought hopefully. Perhaps she might even come and close his curtains for him.

Something tickled his cheek, and he raised his hand to brush it away, eyes still closed. His hands touched something dry and brittle, he wasn’t sure what, and then it was gone. A moment later it was back, a stifled giggle telling him that the irritation wasn't purely his bad luck… unless you counted having four little brothers in that category. He blinked his eyes open, squinting to focus them on the small figure standing over him. Gordon had his hands behind his back, his face wearing an expression of angelic innocence that had stopped working on his brothers as soon as the little boy was old enough to get them, as well as himself, into trouble. The warm haziness of sleep's echo faded away. Scott's eyes narrowed, taking in the narrow leaves of a palm frond poking out over his brother's shoulder, clearly held in his concealed hands. Gordon had evidently decided that it was time for his companion to wake up, and that tickling him was the way to make sure it happened.

Tensing himself, Scott reached out in a sudden pounce, grabbing the younger boy by the waist and pulling him back into the pile of leaves before he could react. Gordon let out a startled yelp, tumbling on top of his brother, and squirming as Scott retaliated with tickles of his own. Honour satisfied and pride avenged, Scott sat up beside his laughing little brother and took stock.

The sun was low on the horizon, no more than an hour past dawn, and shining straight down on the hollow Scott and his brother had climbed into the night before. Its heat was rapidly passing from pleasantly warm to uncomfortably hot, and Scott stripped out of the salt-crusted sweater he'd slept in. Gordon had already done the same, stripping down to nothing more than his underwear and a T-shirt. Sighing, Scott crawled out of the pile of leaves and scooped up Gordon's discarded clothes, carrying them to the stream and dumping his own beside them as he too undressed and kicked off his shoes and socks.

Gordon watched him curiously, sitting up in the leaves and then leaving them behind to trail after his older brother. Scott glanced up at him.

"Been awake long, Gordy?"

Gordon shrugged. "Ages," he said in the slow drawl that told his brother at once that he was exaggerating even if the little boy himself didn't realise it. He frowned uncertainly, casting a nervous glance at the flowing water. "What're you doing?"

Scott had moved along the stream to the point where it left the tree-root consolidated soil and spilled down onto the beach. From the looks of it, the water flow was usually little more than a trickle. Fed by run-off from the storm, it had become wider and deeper, the streambed showing raw earth, newly eroded. As he'd vaguely remembered from the night before, it broadened a little as it left the trees, forming a shallow pond bounded by pebbles washed out of the dirt. Satisfied, Scott dumped their clothes in the water, stepping barefoot onto the stones in the pool bed so he could swirl the fabric through the fresh water with one foot.

"The sun'll dry these out in a few minutes, an hour at most. The salt from the sea was making our clothes all itchy, and then we got them sandy coming up the beach too. Wouldn't you rather have clean things to wear? This'll help, Gordy. Trust me."

"Shouldn't we be using soap? Mom always wants to put soap in water."

Scott paused and gave his brother a level look. "Do you see any soap around here, Gordon?" Gordon's inquisitive expression faltered, and he looked around him at the unfamiliar environment, shuddering. Scott deliberately injected a little humour into his voice, trying to counteract his brother's obvious anxiety. "I won't tell Mom if you don't, Gordy, okay?"

Gordon nodded glumly, finding a long stick from somewhere and poking idly at the clothing. Scott could sympathise. They'd both rather have clean clothes; ideally still warm from the drier and with that fresh laundry smell they associated uniquely with their mother. Rinsed through or not, their one set of jeans, T-shirts and sweatshirts wasn't going to come close to that. Shaking his head, Scott stepped up onto the bank and ran a comforting hand through Gordon's hair, before kneeling down by the pool and reaching into it. He scooped up the items of clothing one by one, wringing them out and dumping them on to a flat stone by the edge of the pool.

"Mom uses a washing line," Gordon pointed out quietly, not so much an accusation or criticism as a wistful memory.

"Uh huh," Scott agreed, still trying to lift his brother's spirits. "Well, Mom doesn't have lots of trees growing in the yard, so she can't use them. We can do better here."

Looking about him, he frowned. The trees lining the beach were almost all palms, tall and straight without side branches. In the shadows beyond he could see more low lying bushes, but he wasn't about to walk into an unknown jungle shoeless and dressed in nothing more than a T-shirt. More importantly, he wasn't going to encourage Gordon to do so by example. Stepping out of the pool, he carried the clothes to the tree line and started to hook them on the rough, triangular pieces of bark that stood out from the palm trunks, a little relieved when it actually worked.

"Keep out of the jungle, Gordy," he warned softly as Gordon came over to help, handing the younger boy his short socks to hang over a lower bark ridge.

Finally sure that all their few precious clothes were stretched out in the sun, rippling gently in the light sea breeze, Scott looked down at himself and his brother. His T-shirt was soaked through, clinging to his chest, and somehow Gordon too had managed to get himself soaked, despite not coming within three feet of the pool. Well, might as well make a thorough job of it.

"Your turn," he told the younger boy. "Bath time."

Gordon's eyes widened, and he shook his head vehemently.

"Ah, no, Scotty. I'm okay. I'll have a bath tonight."

"Your skin's all salty too." Scott looked pointedly at the hand Gordon was using to scratch idly at his leg. "And so's mine. Come on, Gordy. This won't be too bad."

"I don't want to! Scotty! Please!"

Scott frowned in confusion as Gordon's voice edged from awkward towards real anxiety. Usually the little boy was all too eager to get wet, hauling his resigned to the family to endless pools and beaches, and even splashing through puddles in the rain. Mom always said that Gordy felt safe in the water, that he liked the feeling of being supported and the freedom it gave him. Realisation dawning, Scott looked down at his reluctant little brother and saw the fear underlying his refusal. Memories of their night in the boat, ice-cold water all around them, far from nurturing and relentlessly powerful, flashed through his head, and he wondered how Gordon was coping with sudden awareness of just how dangerous his preferred element was. Small wonder that the experiences of the last day and a half had stifled any inclination he had to go near large amounts of water. The little boy must be very nearly in shock for even the six-inch-deep pool in front of them to look like a threat. For a few moments Scott hesitated, looking down at his brother's quivering lips and tempted to let it go, but the salt residue on their skin really was uncomfortable, and their night in a pile of palm fronds had left a layer of dirt and powdered leaves over it. Gordon would suffer through the day if something wasn't done.

"I'll come in with you," he promised. He caught his little brother up before the child could object further, holding on tight despite Gordon's struggle to get free. "Deep breath, Gordon. It's going to be cold."

After the ice-cold torrents of rain and waves crashing over the lifeboat's sides, the chill of the stream was insignificant. That didn't stop Gordon screaming as Scott dumped him in the shallow pool, and scrambling backwards to cling to Scott's legs. Scott gritted his teeth, stepping into the pond beside his tearful little brother and kneeling in it to scoop water over himself and over Gordon. The coolness felt good, easing a sunburn that he hadn't even realised he'd acquired. Keeping a firm grip on Gordon with one hand, he shrugged out of his T-shirt, switching holds so he could slip it off each arm in turn. Dumping it in the water beside him, he eased Gordon's shirt off too, ruffling the boy's mop of copper-coloured hair as it became visible again. Gordon's cries were subsiding into heaving sobs, some of the terror fading from his frantic expression. Scott kept him close, alternately cuddling him and trying to wash them both down.

He certainly felt invigorated by the time he let his brother escape, scrambling out of the pool after the smaller boy, and watching worriedly as Gordon stood wide-eyed and shivering on the beach, dressed only in his underwear and looking lost and confused. Wringing out the two T-shirts, Scott spread them over a couple of sun-baked boulders near the pool before jogging to catch up with his brother.

Gordon turned away from him as he approached, crossing his arms and glowering at the sea. "Leave me alone!" he said angrily. "I hate you."

Scott flinched. Gordon was angry, scared and tired. Even so, the words hurt. He reached out to touch his brother's shoulder. "Gordy…"

Gordon jerked away from the touch, running a few steps towards the ocean before freezing. He backed up, his expression frightened, and took off along the beach instead, running away from his brother. Scott sighed, letting him go for now, recognising from long experience that Gordon needed time to calm down before he'd be ready to talk. Turning in the other direction, he walked back towards where they'd left the lifeboat, glancing frequently over his shoulder. He was relieved to see Gordon settle down on an outcrop of rocks a short way up the beach. Knees drawn up to his chest, the little boy stared out to sea with an expression torn between wistful and loathing.

Chapter 8

Worried, but not sure what else to do, Scott turned to the problems ahead of him instead of the one behind. The lifeboat was at one end of the beach, its pale hull vibrant against the dark grey of a weathered basalt cliff-face behind it. Scott frowned as he approached, bothered by something in the perspective of the scene that he couldn't quite pin down. The boat had well and truly beached itself, its shallow keel dragging a deep groove in the sand and stones behind it, but unable to prevent it tipping on its side. The deck had come to rest sixty degrees from horizontal. The hull, standing well proud of the water, showed signs of its difficult landing, the surface of half the rigid polymer panels splintered and abraded. That wasn't what made Scott let loose with a swear word that would have his father boxing his ears.

As he rounded the prow of the small boat, trying to figure out what was bothering him, he realised that the cliff-face wasn't, as he'd assumed, somewhere in the background. He'd subconsciously thought that the trees hanging over its edge must be a truly impressive size to cast their shadows across the boat. He hadn't realised that they could just be surprisingly close. Frozen to the spot, Scott followed the groove left by the keel with his eyes, tracing it back to where it vanished beneath the encroaching tide. Then he looked up at the cliff-face rising a mere two metres from the far side of the toppled boat, and the jagged rocks at its base. He shook a little, throwing a quick glance behind him towards where Gordy sat just out of sight around the curve of the beach. Just a few metres to one side, a couple of degrees askew in his blind run at the beach, and Scott would have driven them straight into the rock wall.

He could have killed them both.

His stomach twisted in dismay, and then rumbled, shaking Scott out of his panicky what-ifs. With one last, wide-eyed glance at their narrow escape, he shook his head. He took a deep breath, hands clenched at his sides. Concentrate on the here and now, his dad had always told him. And here and now, he was hungry. He was pretty sure Gordy was too, and wondered whether that might be contributing to his little brother's temper. Scott was inclined to linger over meals and when he got hungry, he was generally pretty definite about it. Gordon, by contrast, was one of those children who always protested when Mom called them to the dinner table, resenting the time taken from his fun-filled and active life. At the same time though, his family had learnt early on that whether Gordon himself realised it or not, the little boy tended to get cranky when his body was craving the sugar it needed to refuel his batteries.

Climbing cautiously into the boat, using his arms to balance him when it rocked a little under his feet, Scott made his way across the sloping deck to the emergency locker. He'd left it latched tight the night before, more concerned with getting onto dry land than what they were leaving on the boat. Now he flicked the catches open, pushing the lid wide. Pulling one of the thin blankets out, he threw it loosely around his shoulders, embarrassed despite himself to be wondering around even a deserted beach in nothing but his shorts while their clothes dried. Modesty satisfied, he reached in again, this time for the third of their pre-packed meals, hunger making his fingers over-eager and clumsy. Setting aside the self-heating main course – some kind of omelette if the wrapper were to be believed – for Gordon, he broke open a packet of crackers and the rubbery cheese-like sheets that accompanied them. They had the texture of old car tyres and tasted about as good, but Scott found he was eating faster and faster nonetheless. He forced himself to slow down, taking small bites and chewing well before each swallow. Even so, his stomach was still rumbling when he'd finished and he looked with hungry eyes at the rest of the pack. Feeling guilty, he allowed himself to snaffle the small packet of sweet biscuits as well, leaving the chocolate bar and the rest for Gordon. Sighing, he folded the outer foil wrapper closed, crossing the boat again to place the meal at the lowest point of the hull. Calling Gordon over now would probably get nothing more than defiance and another tirade, but at this angle, the starboard rail of the boat amidships dipped below chest height even for the younger boy. Gordon would find the food waiting there when he came looking, a silent apology from his eldest brother.

Turning back to the locker, Scott leaned in and began to pull out its contents, taking a mental inventory of their supplies. The boat had been designed to keep the Santa Anna's nominal three-man crew alive for twenty-four hours on open water, confident that with modern tracking systems and equipment they would be rescued long before that deadline. There had been three bottles of drinking water, each holding two litres. The first, Scott and Gordon had exhausted between them in the nearly thirty-six hours since they'd been set adrift. Worried, Scott broke the seal on the second bottle, taking a sip from it to moisten his mouth after the dry crackers before setting it down next to Gordon's food. He'd have to keep the bottled water for Gordon from now on, taking his chance with any reasonably clean water they could find as they went along.

More worrying still was that, of their original six food packs – two full meals a day for each of three adults – they were down to only three remaining. Scott had heard that it was possible to live from the natural products of a jungle, but he'd been raised deep in the heart of the United States. He was more accustomed to the arid isolation of military bases and their environs than this kind of alien abundance. Unless the jungle boasted a ready supply of easily identified fruit and vegetables, they were going to be in trouble in another day at most, and that was assuming Scott could cope that long on the meagre rations he was allowing himself. Scott laid the three packs side by side on the deck, considering the problem.

The best-case scenario was that they'd be rescued long before food became an issue. As they'd drifted the previous afternoon, he'd expected at any moment to hear the throbbing engines of an air-sea rescue helicopter, unable to imagine that it would take long for their beacon to be tracked and the boat to be found. It was only gradually that he'd thought it through. He could still taste the slightly metallic tang to the air and feel the hair on the back of his hands standing up when the breeze blew past them. He'd never felt a storm-induction charge, but like any kid he'd learnt about them at school. Unlike most kids, he'd also had a pretty thorough lecture, and heard dozens of stories, from his Uncle Jim, and he doubted many people in the world knew more about the weather control system.

Putting aside the fact that the storm should never have happened, and the grief-driven anger that thought carried, Scott tried to deal with the simple fact that it had. The radiation pumped into the atmosphere, controlled and manipulated by the weather satellites, had stopped Dad calling for help when things first got bad, and stopped anyone getting their GPS alert when the Santa Anna sank. Scott couldn't have said where he was to the nearest two hundred miles, and with neither the ship's locator signal nor the lifeboat's beacon, the folks on shore probably couldn't even come that close. There was another problem too. People would be searching for Scott and Gordon, Mom would have seen to that, but even if they knew where to look, Scott hadn’t seen a single contrail in the sky. Scanning it now, there was still no vehicle, not even a hint of a high-altitude stratoliner, in sight. He tried to work out what effect this kind of static might have on a 'plane's engine, and couldn't get much further than 'not good'. Not good at all. Scott had no idea how long the effects of the storm were going to last, but he was pretty sure they were already standing between him and any chance of getting his little brother safely back to what was left of their family.

He remembered his initial, single-minded determination to keep Gordon alive at any cost. The jagged edges of grief and shock had been papered over by the practicalities of the moment, but that resolve still burgeoned inside him, driving him onwards. If Scott couldn't rely on other people to rescue Gordy, he had to do it himself. That meant they couldn't stay on the beach, with a ruined boat and its long-since exhausted emergency beacon, hoping for the best. They were going to have to brave the jungle.

The island had looked small in the fading light, and he'd certainly not seen any evidence of people, but Dad had said most of the Domingan chain was inhabited, if only by one or two people who wanted to be alone. Standing in the well of the boat, Scott stared up at the cliff, and beyond it, the volcanic peak that dominated the island. His eyes followed its black basalt slopes back down to the verdant vegetation at ground level. Searching the place would take days, even without an exhausted six-year-old in tow, but Scott had no choice but to believe that he'd find inhabitants sooner or later, and that they'd be able to help. Someone had a couple of unexpected guests. Scott and Gordon just had to find them and let them know.

Spreading out the small square of tarpaulin he'd used to work on the engine, with a blanket on top of it, Scott placed the food and the last bottle of water in the centre, before turning back to the emergency locker. The first aid kit was rudimentary but it contained insect-repellents, antiseptics and an assortment of bandages. It went on the blanket, followed a moment later by a wad of thin net-like material that might have been designed to keep the sun off or insects out, Scott couldn't be sure.

The pile of supplies already looked heavy, but there was no question of leaving the flare gun behind. The stubby pistol and its three charges had an ominous look, and Scott carefully checked the safety, handling it with the respect his father had taught him for any firearm. He wrapped it carefully in their last blanket, making sure it wasn't in plain sight for Gordon to find, before laying it down with the rest of their supplies.

Frowning, he shook his head. He simply wouldn't be able to carry much more. He just had to hope he'd picked out the important things. Leaning back over the emergency cabinet, he searched through what was left there. Reaching deep into the bottom of the locker, pushing aside an unwieldy coil of thick rope and a kit for patching a leaking hull, Scott's fingers brushed a metal object, pulling it out to find the welcome shape of a fairly-impressive Swiss army knife. He flicked out the longest blade, running his thumb cautiously over its edge and hissing with satisfaction. He almost sliced the digit open when the sound of his name being screamed in a panic split the air.

Gordy! The knife fell from suddenly nerveless fingers as Scott spun on the spot. His brain raced, trying to work out how long it had been since he'd last set eyes on his little brother. He should never have let Gordon out of his sight! What could have happened? Had Gordon fallen from the rocks he was sitting on? They hadn't looked high, but Scott knew from painful experience that his little brothers could find a way to fall off almost anything when left unwatched. Had he fallen into the water, been swept out by some unseen current or undertow? Had Scott remembered to tell Gordon not to go into the jungle? Or had he just thought about saying it?

Worst-case scenarios assaulted him as he scrambled from the lifeboat, desperate to see around the plastic hull and the curve of the beach to where he'd left his brother. Why couldn't Dad have been here? Or even Mom? Scott might have been the oldest, but he was only thirteen! He'd been left in charge of Virgil or even Johnny unsupervised before, sure, but Gordon and Alan were too little. Their parents kept their youngest children close. Dad should be here. He should have been the one to survive. Scott was just so not cut out for this. He'd let Virgil down, and now Gordon too.

Breathing hard, Scott sprinted down the beach, relief flooding him as he caught sight of his little brother. Confusion came hard on its heels as he registered that the child was standing in the middle of the beach, apparently intact and not in immediate danger, but with near-hysteria reddening his face, and Scott's T-shirt twisted in a tight knot between his hands. He shouted for Scott again and again, his eyes too tear-flooded to see his approaching brother.

Scott slid to Gordon's side on his knees, fighting back his own panic to deal instead with the younger boy's.

"Gordon? Gordy! I'm here. I've got you." Scott grabbed hold of Gordon's shoulders and pulled him tight, feeling the six-year-old shaking. "I'm here, Gordy! What's wrong?"

"Scotty?" Gordon's shouts cut off with a strangled sob and he threw his arms around Scott's neck, clinging like a limpet. "I couldn't find you," he sobbed into Scott's shoulder. "I looked and I called and then I looked some more, and you weren't by the stream or on the beach or at the tree where the leaves were or at the washing-line trees and you weren't here, and I called and you didn't answer and I don't hate you, Scotty, really I don't and I know that's a bad word and it hurts people to say it and you're angry with me 'cause I was a baby like Allie 'cause I didn't want a bath, but you said you wouldn't leave, and I was scared 'cause I said I hated you and I'm sorry, really sorry, and I don't want you to go away, and I thought you might have gone in the water and got eaten by sharks or monsters or drowned or something and I shouted and I tried to find you but you weren't there!"

Scott rocked his brother soothingly, stroking the soft copper hair with one hand, keeping a firm hold on his brother's back with the other.

"Oh, Gordy. I'm sorry." He laid a soft kiss on the top of his brother's head as he'd seen his mother do when his little brother was scared and upset. He wondered how long Gordon had been looking for him and cursed his own thoughtlessness. He'd never been the centre of a young child's world like this. It was a scary responsibility. "Gordy, I'm sorry, but I'm here now, just like I said I'd be. I was just in the boat, Gordon. I wouldn't leave you. Not ever. I just didn't hear you call me." Not until his brother's calls had worked their way up to a hysterical scream. "Everything's okay, Gordy, you hear me?"

"I don't hate you, Scotty!"

"It's okay, Gordon. I know. I don't mind. You were upset, that's all."

"I… I thought you'd got angry and gone away like I told you."

Scott sighed. Not letting go of his sniffling brother, he shifted his weight to get one foot flat on the ground, before standing with Gordon still held securely in his arms. "I just didn't hear you, Gordy. I was in the boat but I'm here now, and I won't leave you on your own again. Not even if you get really angry with me. I'm not going to let you go."

Gordon didn't lift his face from Scott's shoulder until Scott stopped by the stream, dropping back to his knees since letting go of his little brother to reach the ground wasn't an option. With one arm still firmly around his slowly-calming brother, Scott scooped up just a little cool water with the other, angling his body so Gordon didn't have to see the pool. Gently, Scott bathed his brother's flushed face, settling Gordon onto his lap, and then reached out for his brother's newly dry T-shirt, pulling it over the trembling and slightly sun-touched shoulders. He disentangled his own shirt from around Gordon's hands in the process, shaking out what he could of the wrinkles and pulling it awkwardly over his head, in a near-reversal of the procedure it had taken to get it off in the first place.

Gordon was calming a little as Scott picked him up again and carried him to the trees where they'd left the rest of their clothing, and even cooperated somewhat as Scott dressed him, still clinging to Scott's legs, but giving his brother enough freedom to pull his jeans back on over his briefs. Still murmuring soothingly to his brother, refusing Gordon's intermittent apologies and apologising in turn, Scott got them both back over to the boat, lifting Gordon to sit on the edge of it, and sitting beside him, helping him with the water bottle and then cutting up the rubbery omelette into bite sized pieces for him. By the time Gordon was prepared to let his brother stand up and move a few feet away into the boat, the sun was climbing rapidly towards noon. Scott rubbed a hand across his brow, aware of bright amber eyes watching his every move as he tried to work out a way to tie the tarpaulin and its contents into an easily-carried bundle.

Gordon had had a stressful morning and they were both tired still from everything that had gone before. Even so, they needed to get moving. It was a day and a half since the Santa Anna was wrecked in the storm. It could easily be that long again before anyone would be able to come looking for them, and by then they'd be starving as well as exhausted, sunburned during the days and freezing at nights. For his brother's sake, Scott didn't dare allow them to sit here any longer.

The jungle awaited them.

Dawn was still casting a rosy glow across the sky when Travis pulled his car up in front of Mike Kearney's house. He'd got maybe three hours sleep. At first, he'd simply been kicking himself for ending the conversation with Vaughan on such a sour note. When he had finally slept, he'd been disturbed by nightmares of children slipping between his fingers to vanish beneath the water, and haunted by the faces of Virgil's two brothers. Resting his arms on the steering wheel, he adjusted the driver's mirror to take a look at himself. He might be stubble-free, but his dark hair was tousled and the shadows under his eyes undermined his otherwise clean-cut appearance. Barely twelve hours since the Levans had brought their human cargo ashore, and already Travis was looking wrecked.

From the looks of his colleague, Mike hadn't got much more rest. The detective pulled a coat on, kissing his wife and adjusting the dressing robe around her shoulders with a tender touch. He whispered something to her and she gave a deep sigh before nodding and gesturing him towards the car. Impatient, Travis spared Mary Kearney a brief wave, both sympathising with and envying her as she vanished into the house and back towards her bed.

Kearney tumbled into the car's passenger sheet in a malcoordinated jumble of limbs, almost sitting on Virgil's drawings before Travis could snatch them to safety. Shaking his head, Travis shoved the paper back into his colleague's arms, freeing up his own hands to put the car in gear.

Eyes widening, Kearney studied the chart. "Chuck, where did you get this?"

Travis grunted, eyes on the road as he navigated the quiet streets towards headquarters. "Virgil Tracy. Turns out the kid's got a photographic memory. It might not be entirely accurate, but…"

"It's somewhere to start." Kearney finished for him, frowning thoughtfully at the sketched reference map and angling it into the rapidly-growing sunlight. "You've been to the hospital already this morning?"

"Last night. Well, about three AM, to be honest. The chief had sent you home and there wasn't much we could do with the information overnight in any case."

"True," Mike shook his head sadly. "Without air-sea rescue…"

"Any word on when it might be safe to fly?"

"Another twenty four hours. Minimum." Kearney drummed his fingers against the arm-rest on the passenger-side door. "We've got, what, two hours before the tide changes? We'll get the rescue boats out there this morning, but even if every yacht and fishing rig in the Confederation lends a hand, the wreckage is going to have spread out by now. Spotting anything without air cover or satellite imaging is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack." He paused, unstrapping his seatbelt as they pulled up in Travis's reserved spot at police headquarters. "Did Virgil tell you anything else?" He flipped the chart aside and froze, staring at the two faces on the second sheet of paper. After a few moments, Kearney swallowed hard, dragging his gaze away from Scott Tracy's challenging eyes. "Kid's got talent."

"Yeah." Travis threw his door open, heading up the steps to the main entrance without bothering to check his colleague was following. "The boys were in a lifeboat apparently. How'd you come on those wind measurements last night? If they did get through the storm…"

"Getting there." Kearney pushed ahead of him as they approached the squad room, bursting through its swing doors with Virgil's chart in hand and hurrying to his desk. "Where is it? Where is it?"

Leaning back against his desk, Travis watched Kearney riffle through a pile of poster-sized paper sheets, eventually pulling out a detailed navigation chart of the archipelago. The library stamp in the corner told Travis that Mike's attempts to gather information last night had ranged far and wide.

"You know you're going to get in trouble about that?" Travis commented, gesturing toward the ring-shaped coffee stain overlaying the 'Reference Only' mark. Whatever librarian Mike had dragged into work after-hours would be still less happy when he returned the loan.

Mike blinked at the stain, seeing it for the first time. He shook his head. "I'll live. Give me a hand here."

Travis shifted a pile of paperwork, tucked haphazardly into brown cardboard folders, onto his own desk, making room on Mike's to lay the full-size chart side by side with Virgil's sketch. He could tell at once that the match was good, not just the shapes of the main islands but also their relative size, orientation and separation impressively accurate. Whipping a plastic ruler from his desk draw, Mike transposed the markings from Virgil's chart onto his own, questions of ownership and condition irrelevant.

"Right, so one bearing west-south-west, passing between Santa Isobella and Horizon and angling up towards the Illian chain. One north-south, just west of San Fernando on one end and ending fifty miles due east of Dominga. And where they cross…" Mike held the point of his pencil pressing down on the chart, leaving a sharp indentation. He drew a circle around it. "About thirty-five or forty miles due north of 'Fernando."

"Damn it," Travis shook his head tiredly. "That's even further south than Cal Levan thought, right?"

"Yeah," Mike agreed absently. He was searching through the pile of papers again, eventually pulling out a satellite image of the entire archipelago, with a coordinate grid and a mosaic of large squares overlaying it. Travis traced the coordinates as Mike read them out, moving his fingers along the horizontal and vertical grid to settle just within the northernmost edge of one of the squares. He read the code marked in it back to Kearney. Kearney scowled, shaking his head with a sigh.

"I was looking in the wrong footprint."

"Uh huh?" Travis agreed, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. "And that means…?"

"I ran over to the met office last night. The last clear satellite imaging they'd downloaded was about three hours before the storm. I was looking for any sign of Tracy's yacht to give us an idea where to start. It wasn't where the Levans said it was at first: surprise, surprise. But I had another look when you'd got a statement off of Cal and tried to work out where they might actually have been."

"And they were further south?" Travis asked, sitting back with a sigh. "You know, I'm really going to knock that Villacana guy for six when I see him."

"He probably had no idea about the boat," Kearney reminded him, glancing sideways at his friend. "I'm not arguing that the guy's a bastard and I say we take him to the cleaners for interfering with an investigation, but taking this one personally… it's not going to help, Chuck."

Chuck Travis stared at the other man, torn between anger and offence. He stepped back from the table, about to object, and stopped when his eyes fell on Virgil's sketches, tossed carelessly onto a nearby chair. "I don't know, Mike. You've not seen this kid. He keeps his Dad afloat for a day in open water, and the first thing he asks about when he wakes up is how the man is and then where his brothers are. When they were just names, bad photos… Hell, it was sad, but that's life." He shook his head. "The kids in the photos could have been anyone." He indicated the sketches. "These boys? These are Virgil's brothers. You can see that fire in their eyes."

"Sounds like Tracy's going to have to fight to get his son back." Lex Coates' voice was amused and just a little sarcastic. The chief strode into the office looking none the worse for wear for their late night. His expression was calm but serious as he came to the Travis' side and gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. "Hold it together, Chuck. Kearney, what have you got?"

Mike Kearney had been leaning over the satellite imaging, peering closely at it. He felt blindly under the chart and photographs for something and pulled out a large, old-fashioned magnifying glass, staring down through it in a classic Sherlock Holmes pose. Travis couldn't help cracking a smile, exchanging a glance with his boss. They might make a detective of Kearney yet.

"I think… I think I've got the Santa Anna."

Travis stepped forward at once, aware of the chief by his side. He took the magnifying glass from Kearney, directing it towards the spot the other man indicated. The image on the picture was not much more than a millimetre in length, and a fraction of that wide. Despite that the shape was recognisably streamlined, even if the detail was blurred. Travis handed the magnifying glass on to Coates, looking at Kearney with a question in his eyes.

"She's the right size and shape, and there aren't many ships of that type in the area according to the harbour master. She's in the right place too. Forty miles west of Virgil's coordinates, which is about right for two hours sailing in the prevailing winds that evening. Looks like the kid was spot on. He was probably there to within a handful of miles either way."

Travis nodded eagerly. "So the two boys in the lifeboat – Scott and Gordon – if we know where they started from, where would they have ended up?"

Kearney's enthusiasm faded. His shoulders slumped and he folded his arms across his chest, shaking his head. "God knows. Chuck. If they'd been where we were originally thinking, or anywhere else, all this," he waved an arm to indicate the research he'd been doing, "would have given us a place to look. As it is the Santa Anna had to be within a few miles of ground zero for the induction pulse. That typhoon was churning the air and sea up like a whirlpool fifty miles across. The boat could have been flung out anywhere – if it was very, very lucky."

Travis felt his guts pull tight. "I need coffee," he muttered. More importantly, he needed to stop doing this: riding a rollercoaster between realism and wild hope.

He headed for the coffee machine, aware of his colleagues' eyes on his back as he went through the familiar ritual of cleaning, filling and restarting it. Behind him, Coates was giving Kearney orders, and then bringing the rest of the detective team up to speed as they trickled through the door. The Domingan Confederation had a population not much more than that of a small city, numbering in the high tens of thousands rather than millions, and scattered across almost forty inhabited islands. The remaining complement of the police force's detective branch constituted a handful of officers, all of them junior to Kearney and Travis himself. There had been no point in bringing them in the night before. Now though, organising and managing the search was going to take all hands.

Coates came up beside him, helping himself to the first mug of coffee before Travis could do so, and then watching as Travis filled his own mug. "I'm going to have to get down to the coast-guard's office. Their helicopters and helijet are grounded, but they're sending their hydrofoil out with ours and they've got the systems in place to coordinate any other boats that volunteer."

"What do you want me to do?" Travis asked in a low, tired voice.

"What you have been doing – figuring out what happened. We're sending the police launch down south, and I got through to the Santa Isobella station. They're sending their launch too, but our hydrofoil's going to beat anything else down there. You and Kearney have got half an hour to get yourselves down to the dock and get on it. It'll drop you at San Fernando. Villacana has a motor yacht we could use in the search, and a lot of questions to answer." One of the junior officers arrived with Virgil's sketched portraits in one hand and a pile of copies in the other. Coates took them, grunting slightly as he studied the picture, before handing the original back to Travis. "I'll make sure these get distributed. Search boats, media, and any islands I can get a strong enough signal through to. If anyone might have seen these boys, or they've washed up on a beach somewhere, I want these pictures out there tugging at heartstrings."

Nodding, Travis drained the last dregs of coffee, and picked up his leather jacket from the chair he'd discarded it across. Mike Kearney was already waiting by the door, his expression almost as impatient as Travis felt.

"Let's go."

Chapter 9

There was a vice clamped around Jeff Tracy's head and it was tightening by the moment. He could feel each excruciating turn of the screw applying more pressure to his temples until it seemed his head would burst. He managed a low groan, twisting his body in an attempt to escape the trap and frowning in surprise when his head moved freely against a soft pillow.

"Jeff? Jeff, can you hear me?"

The woman's voice was a high note above his body's symphony of pain. The urgency in it got through though. Jeff grunted and blinked his eyes open. He closed them with another low groan, agony shooting straight through his optic nerve and into his brain.

"Jeff, I need you to respond to me before I risk stronger analgesics."

The idea of painkillers sounded good right now. It was almost enough to tempt Jeff Tracy to open his eyes again. He wondered why someone was putting him through all of this, searching his memory for any hint of what he might have done to deserve it. He found something far worse than he could have imagined.

"My boys!" Jeff tried to push himself out of the bed, unbalanced as he realised his right arm was strapped in place across his chest. He squinted furiously, trying to force his eyes to focus on the white-clad doctor beside his bed. "Where are my sons?"

"Calm down, Jeff," the doctor soothed, her voice low. She raised a glass of water to his lips, encouraging him to sip as she spoke. "I need you to answer just a couple of questions for me, okay? What's your name?"

Jeff stared at the features now swimming into view through his blurred vision. He took enough water to moisten his sandpaper throat, and then pushed the glass away. "You know that. You just called me Jeff," he pointed out, dropping back onto his mattress and raising his free hand to his pounding head.

She gave him a hard look. "I could call you Henry," she offered, some of the gentleness vanishing from her voice in the face of his uncooperative attitude.

"Look, forget me. What happened to my boys?"

The doctor sighed. "Jeff, I've looked at your medical records so I know perfectly well that you know the procedure for a concussion check. I need to be sure you're all there before we talk about anything else."

Jeff glared at her. "Fine, my name's Jeff Tracy. I was born in Kansas. I'm married to Lucille, work in construction, and was shipwrecked last night by a storm that should damn well never have happened!"

The doctor nodded thoughtfully, evidently not offended by his angry tone. "And you've got one whopper of a headache, I'm guessing?" She picked up a hypodermic syringe and injected colourless liquid through a port in the IV he hadn't got around to noticing. "This should kick in within a minute or two. Just lie still, all right?" She stepped away from the bed and out of his immediate line of sight. He raised his head through a few degrees, following her to the door with his eyes.

"Fine. Great." Jeff bit off the words, short-tempered from the pain and struggling to stay on top of the stomach-churning fear. "Where are my sons?"

The doctor gave him a calm look, before turning back to whoever she was speaking to in the corridor. Jeff couldn't make out the words. He clenched his left fist in frustration. His right hand appeared to be in a plaster shell from knuckles to elbow and even the attempt to move his fingers triggered a pang of agony that burst through the rapidly descending mist of pain relief. He took a moment to breathe through the pain, looking up at the doctor with mute appeal when he could focus again.

"Try not to move your wrist, Mr Tracy. We've regenerated the bone, but it's still fragile and you dislocated it when you broke it, so there's a lot of tissue damage. You'll need the cast for a week or so. You've probably worked out by now that you also have a fairly nasty concussion, but you're past the worst of it. Just let me or one of the nurses know when you need more pain relief for the headaches."

"Doctor…?"

"Evans. Tasmin Evans."

Jeff swallowed hard, trying to work up some moisture in his mouth and throat to ease the croak in his voice. "Doctor Evans, I appreciate your help, but, so help me, if you don't tell me…"

"I've sent someone to bring Virgil down here. He's been awake for an hour or so already this morning. He's doing well, all things considered."

Jeff let out a long, exhausted sigh of relief. His memories of the shipwreck were hazy and incomplete at best, but he'd never forget the horrified expression on his young son's face when the loose boom swept him into the turbulent ocean. Everything after that dissolved into noise, chaos and churning water in his memory.

"You found him. When he went into the water, I thought…" Jeff's voice trailed off weakly and Dr Evans patted his left hand sympathetically.

"You've been worrying us more since they brought you in last night."

Jeff nodded tiredly. "They found us more quickly than I expected then. I was afraid – "

His voice cut off, his heart leaping into his throat as an orderly pushed his son into the room. Virgil was slumping in his seat, pale beneath peeling sunburn and deeply weary. The momentary terror that tightened Jeff's chest at the image of his eleven-year-old boy in a wheelchair was eased when Virgil caught sight of him and jumped up, almost toppling both chair and orderly in his haste. He flung himself at his father's bed. Jeff found himself sitting up without thought for the pain and effort it took, reaching out to help Dr Evans lift the child onto his father's mattress. Virgil threw his arms around Jeff's side, burying his face against it and shaking.

Jeff took a moment just to hold him, pressing his face into his second son's soft, wavy hair and planting a kiss on the top of his head. "Virgil," he breathed softly. "I thought I'd lost you."

"He was suffering from exposure when you were brought in," Evans volunteered. The doctor had a small, sad smile on her face as she watched the reunion, but her eyes remained deadly serious. "He's still exhausted, and on some fairly strong painkillers for his bruised ribs, but otherwise fine."

Jeff winced, remembering the force with which the boom had struck his son's chest. Virgil was lucky to get away without at least one fractured rib. Hell, they were all lucky simply to survive the storm. But that thought brought with it another, more alarming one. Something very important was missing from this picture. Virgil was still clinging silently to his father, his body trembling with emotion and his face buried in Jeff's shirt, although Jeff was almost sure his boy wasn't actually crying. It was a worrying reaction in his usually calm son. It would take a lot to upset Virgil this badly. The shipwreck in itself, and his father's concussion, would come close, but those situations were under control and even seeing Jeff awake didn't seem to be reassuring his son. Dr Evans' "all things considered" rang through his mind. Stroking Virgil's hair with his good hand, Jeff looked up at the door, willing himself to see his other boys walking through it.

He turned pleading eyes on the doctor, feeling sick to his stomach. "Scott? And Gordon? How bad…?"

She sighed, the slight air of sadness she'd carried about her revealing itself as sympathy. "There are people out looking for them now, Jeff. The police and coastguard are doing everything they can to find the lifeboat."

Jeff's eyes widened, going to the digital clock on his bedside table, and trying to make sense of the glowing red figures. "They've been adrift for fourteen hours?" he asked, horrified and clinging to calm with his fingertips. He felt Virgil flinch against him, and dropped his arm around the boy's waist to pull him in a little tighter.

Evans sighed deeply, shaking her head. "Thirty-eight," she corrected in a soft voice. "The storm wasn't last night. It was the night before."

Jeff stared at her, trying to think coherently. His body felt as if it had been pounded with a sledgehammer. His limbs ached with exhaustion, his arm was filled with fire where Virgil had knocked against it, and his headache was returning rapidly. Compared to the fierce, tearing pain in his chest, it all faded into insignificance. He heard Virgil sniffle a little and rocked his son gently, shifting his weight so he could swing his legs over the side of the bed. Evans caught him, forcing him back as easily as she might a child.

"I've got to find them!"

"The search boats left hours ago, Jeff. If there's anything to find…." She shook her head again. "There's nothing you can do. And Virgil needs you here."

His second eldest was helping to support his weight now, his pale face finally raised to look anxiously up at his father.

"You're sick, Dad," Virgil told him softly. "You need to stay in bed."

Reluctantly, Jeff allowed himself to be lowered back to his sheets, driven equally by the doctor's gentle pressure on his shoulder and the panicky glint in his son's eyes. Virgil stayed sitting, perched on the side of Jeff's bed and staring down at him with a far too weary expression for a child so young. Jeff reached out with his good hand, and Virgil took it, clinging to the reassurance. Dr Evans fussed around them, straightening the bed sheets, alternately scolding Jeff for trying to get out of bed and assuring him that she'd keep him informed.

"Lucy..." Jeff said tiredly. "Has anyone told my wife? You'll need photos of the boys..."

"She'll be on the first aircraft in," Evans told him briskly. "As soon as it's safe."

Jeff shook his head, feeling the churning acid in his stomach roil as he realised the implications. "The induction pulse," he said flatly.

"Is making life harder, yes," the doctor agreed.

"I talked to Mom," Virgil said. The boy had a dazed, lost tone to his voice. "On the phone. We had to shout. I couldn't really hear what she was saying. Al… She put Alan on and he wanted to speak to Gordy."

Jeff squeezed the hand Virgil was holding, offering his son a faint attempt at a reassuring smile. Dr Evans sighed.

"Inspector Travis of our police department has been keeping Mrs Tracy updated. And we have pictures." She reached into her pocket, pulling out a folded sheet of paper. Jeff Tracy's missing sons gazed out from the creased, photocopied page. He drew in a quick, pained breath and glanced up at Virgil's face. The boy was looking away, staring at the wall in the effort of avoiding his father's eyes.

"That's very good, Virgil," Jeff told him softly. The boy flinched, shaking his head.

"I was tired and in a rush. Inspector Travis needed to know what Scott and Gordon look like. He… he thinks they're already dead, Dad. But they're not, are they? Gordy's probably frightened, but Scott's looking after him and stopping him from being scared, and they're just waiting for us to find them."

The desperate plea in Virgil's voice hurt to hear. Virgil's eyes were locked on his now, begging his father to agree.

"I'm not going to believe they're gone until… unless I see them for myself. Your brothers are smart, resourceful, brave…" Jeff's voice trailed off. From Virgil's perspective, Scott was his fearless elder brother, but Jeff was pretty sure Gordon wasn't the only one of his missing sons who must be terrified. He wanted nothing more than to hold his eldest boy and his second youngest in his arms and tell them everything was going to be fine. He couldn’t even do that for the one son within his grasp.

He tugged his hand gently out of Virgil's tight grip, and used it instead to pull the boy down next to him on the bed. Virgil resisted for a moment, but then snuggled against his father's side. Jeff was aware of the doctor moving a call button into his reach before leaving the room quietly. Ignoring her, Jeff Tracy held his son in a one-armed embrace

"Scott will look after Gordy," he agreed quietly, putting all his faith in the one thing he was sure of. "Wherever they are."

Scott Tracy was just about ready to throttle his little brother.

The chastened, frightened child who'd thought himself abandoned lasted through their meal and perhaps five minutes into their walk through the jungle. After that, the tired, whiny and impulsive six-year-old was back with a vengeance. Relieved as Scott was to see his brother's spirits recover, there were limits to what he could take.

He leaned against the nearest tree, one hand on its rough bark supporting most of his weight, and looked desperately around him for the fourth time in the last few hours.

"Gordon!"

There were an anxious few moments, Scott's blood pressure rising with each heartbeat. By the time Gordon's mop of red hair appeared around a trunk a few metres away he'd abandoned the idea of hurting his brother and had to suppress the impulse to hug him instead.

Innocent amber eyes batted at him. "What, Scotty?"

Scott crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes. "I've told you not to wander off, Gordon. I've explained why it's dangerous. Twice." He squatted in front of his brother, letting his pack slide off his shoulders to the ground. He could tell when his brother was playing up, he could even kind of see why. It was just that Gordon had picked an astonishingly bad time for it. "Gordy, if I could just snap my fingers and get you home, I would. Making my life harder isn't going to help."

The younger boy folded his arms in a mirror of Scott's. "I was just…"

"Just exploring, just curious. Yes, I know." Scott shook his head and stood up, angry with the excuses. "It's not safe, Gordon! If I don’t know where you are I can't look after you. Do you actually want to fall into a hole, or get lost, or get eaten by snakes?"

Gordon shook his head. He tried the angelic smile that Scott knew all too well, the greenish light from the canopy above giving his face an elfin cast. "You'd find me, Scotty. You keep me safe. You're the best big brother in the whole world."

"Tell Virgil that."

Scott wanted to claw the words back the moment they left his mouth. Thoughts of the brother he'd lost had been haunting him constantly, but he'd meant to keep them inside where they couldn't hurt anyone but him. Their younger brother stared at him, suddenly sombre and with all the defiance draining from him.

"I'm sorry, Scott," he said miserably. "I don't mean to be naughty. I'm just… just really tired."

Scott sighed. "I know, Gordon," he said quietly. "So am I."

Gordon was old enough to have a fair grasp of how much trouble they were in, and young enough to forget when he was distracted. The last thing Scott had meant to do was remind him about what had happened. He squatted back down again, unrolling his tarpaulin pack to pull out their water bottle and handing it to his brother, trying not to look enviously at it.

Scott's throat was starting to ache, and his entire body was craving water, but Gordon needed it more. The younger boy took a long draught, and raised the bottle again before hesitating. Turning, he offered it to Scott instead. Scott accepted the bottle and tipped it up, letting barely enough past his closed lips to moisten the inside of his mouth. He'd drunk his fill at the stream on the beach before they'd left and he'd do the same next time he found a reasonably clear source of water. In the mean time, it made sense to limit their supplies.

He reckoned that they were lucky if they were doing a mile an hour, cutting through the jungle to reach the island's west coast, lining the volcanic peak up against the sun to keep their bearing as they did so. At first, when they'd stood on the beach and Gordon had asked where they were going, Scott had been stuck for an answer. Then he'd glanced up at the sun, rising full and fierce over the beach, and realised he did have a vague idea.

He could remember leaning over the chart their first night out, cooperating with Virgil to figure out their bearings. His closest brother had studied the map for a few minutes, a slight frown on his face, before their father asked what was wrong.

"Why are all the towns on the south-west?"

Virgil's question had seemed like a silly one to his elder brother. There were only three islands with settlements of any size in the entire archipelago. Then he'd looked more closely and realised it wasn't just Dominga and the other main islands that followed Virgil's rule. More than half of the other islets with houses and docks marked on them had the same south-west orientation. Dad had pointed out the prevailing winds and talked about storm surges from the ocean. That made sense to Scott and he'd tuned out the conversation as it turned technical – Virgil asking why people were worried about storms when Uncle Jim controlled the weather, their dad laughing at that oversimplification and explaining just how new the whole World Weather Control System really was. Scott had been more worried about getting an answer to Dad's coordinate challenge. Now though, he was both thankful for, and relying on, Virgil's observation.

From their north-east facing beach, there had been no hint of civilisation, and no prospect of rescue. Scott was pinning everything on the hope that the south-west coast of this island, whichever it was, would reveal something different.

He tucked the bottle into his pack before Gordon could ask for it back, standing and indicating briskly that Gordon should follow him.

"Stick close, Gordy. Or am I going to have to improvise a harness for you?"

Gordon threw him a look of total disgust. Their mother still pulled out a child safety harness to keep Alan nearby if they were going somewhere crowded. Gordon had managed to avoid the indignity for the last eighteen months or so, mostly by dint of an oft repeated, cross-my-heart promise to stay close, and the presence of three elder brothers with a death-grip on his hands. It was a while since he'd even been threatened with the dreaded restraints, but his behaviour today came close to warranting it.

Scott sighed as his little brother pushed past him, content to let Gordon walk ahead as long as he could see where the younger boy was. The path opened out into a small clearing ahead of them, the low-lying ferns and other shrubbery thinning. They'd been following what seemed to be an animal track, although Scott wondered a little nervously what lived on the island that made paths this kind of size. Now though, a gap in the foliage opened out to leave actual brown earth visible. Opposite them, they could see a wider path leaving the clearing a little to the right of straight-ahead. Gordon moved forward more quickly, encouraged by the brief escape from green-filtered twilight into full daylight. Scott followed, grateful for the easier going. At least he was until he saw the wire stretched at ankle height between the trees ahead.

"Gordon, stop!"

Gordon spun on the spot, his expression irritated. "What?" he demanded. "I'm not doing anything..."

Scott swooped on him, dropping the pack and picking his little brother up bodily to lift him back away from the trip wire. Gordon yelped and squirmed, and Scott dropped him quickly.

"Don't move," he warned, falling to his knees to examine the wire. He ran his finger along the fine metal thread, relieved and surprised that he'd seen it all. If it hadn't been for the sunlight glinting from it, Gordon would have walked straight into… whatever it was.

He frowned, torn between relief at the first evidence of human occupation he'd seen on the entire island and dismay at its nature. Carefully, he traced the wire with his eyes, following it through an eyelet screwed into the tree-trunk on the left and then up into the dense canopy overhead. He blanched, launching himself backwards and scrambling across the clearing to his little brother.

Startled and alarmed himself, Gordon backed quickly away.

The little boy had gone perhaps three steps across the clearing when the ground gave way beneath his feet. For a split second, the image of Gordon's shocked expression burnt itself across Scott's eyes, then he was launching himself through the air, body and instinct moving far faster than rational thought could, determined not to see another little brother fall beyond his grasp. He landed on his chest, sliding along the ground, blinded by the leaves and soil streaming down into the hole ahead of him. His head and shoulders hung down into it when he came to a rest, his arms outstretched. And hands in his, held tightly in a grip he'd never surrender, Gordon dangled three feet above the sharp metal spikes lining the pit.

The younger boy's eyes shone with fear. He was shaking, the trembling transferred through their linked hands and into Scott's body. His feet scrambled at the side of the pit, the movement doing nothing but wrenching Scott's arms and shaking more dirt into the trap below him.

"Gordon! Gordy! Stay still! I've got you, but you've got to stay still!"

Scott gasped the words breathlessly, struggling to draw air past the weight of his brother pulling down on his chest. Gordon stilled, adopting something close to the rigid terror he'd exhibited during the storm. When Scott looked down though, his brother was staring back up at him, frightened but trusting. Scott drew in a deep breath, letting the situation settle and summoning a wan smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"I thought I told you not to move," he said softly.

"I'm sorry." Gordon's voice trembled. "Scott, I'm sorry! Pull me up? Please?"

"I will," Scott promised at once. "Just give me a minute." Scott's eyes were fixed over his little brother's shoulder. The spikes were dull grey steel, but there was a greenish stain around their tips that was deeply worrying. Scott's arms were aching, his back protesting the strain, but his brief attempt to bend his arms just set up a deep trembling in his biceps. Gordon's three and a half foot form was on the small side for his age, and usually his eldest brother had no problem lifting the child. From this angle though, with tired arms, a tentative palm-to-palm grip and no leverage, Scott couldn't even raise him through half an inch. He wracked his mind for a solution, speaking more to distract his little brother from his predicament than for any other reason.

"I know it's frustrating when you don't understand why someone tells you to do something, Gordon. I know it sometimes seems like we shout at you a lot, when you're just trying to have fun and make us laugh."

"I never mean to be naughty," Gordon whispered, gazing up appealingly at his elder brother.

"We understand that, Gordy. It's just that you need to think a bit more sometimes. When we tell you to do something, we're just trying to keep you safe and happy. Or keep everyone else safe, for that matter." Scott chuckled, remembering a couple of his little brother's more outrageous exploits. He tried to shuffle backwards, twitching his hips, hoping he could drag Gordon up to safety. He froze when he felt the lip of the pit begin to crumble, dirt trickling past Gordon's upturned face. Very nearly half Scott's weight was over the pit and he didn't dare move his legs for fear of disturbing the fragile balance. He swallowed hard. "Sometimes things are important, even if you don't realise it. But Gordy, we do love you. Even when we're shouting at you. You know that, don't you?"

Gordon went still, his hands twitching in Scott's. His elder brother stared down anxiously at his suddenly chalk-white face. Straining his neck, Scott tried to see past Gordon, wondering if his brother had scratched himself on one of those frightening, oil-sheened spikes, but his feet were still well clear.

"Gordy?"

The little boy frowned. "Am I going to die?" he asked calmly.

Scott couldn't help flinching. He glared down at his brother. Gordon tilted his head in a gesture that was almost a shrug.

"You used the L-word. John and I were watching the vid-screen, and Johnny said that grown-ups only use the L-word if they want to make a baby like Alan or one of them is going to die."

Scott stared at him, dumbfounded. Shaking his head disbelievingly, he made a note to have a word with his middle brother if he ever got the chance, both to find out what the boys had been watching and to warn him to mind what he said. On the one hand, given most of the melodramas on television, the precocious nine-year-old had probably made a shrewd observation. On the other, there were some ideas their younger brothers certainly weren't ready for.

"Well, John is pretty smart, but he's not always right," he told Gordon firmly. "Grown-ups love each other, and love us, in lots of different ways. Mom and Dad love all of us."

Gordon relaxed a little. "That’s good." He sighed, grinning up slyly. "Besides, you're not really a grown up. Big brothers don't count."

Scott huffed out an exasperated breath. "Well, I'm glad we've got that settled."

Gordon nodded, but his voice trembled a little. "Scotty, my arms are going numb."

"Yes, Gordon. Mine are too." It was helping a little, to be honest. The first wash of pain and shock had faded, and it was getting easier to think. Scott bit his lip. "Gordy, I really want to pull you up, but I can't. If I hold really still, do you think you can climb up my arms?"

"I can't!" Gordon's eyes widened and his grip on Scott's hands tightened. "I can't, Scotty."

"You're going to have to." Scott spread his legs behind him, tilting his feet to try and find some grip with the sides of his shoes. He could feel a sharp stone pressing into his side, but he daren't move for fear of their entire support crumbling away. "Come on, Gordon, you can do this."

He didn't give his younger brother any more warning. Taking a deep breath, he tightened his grip on his Gordon's left hand until it was painful, simultaneously loosening his hold on the boy's right.

Gordon screamed, his right hand scrambling to re-establish its hold, his shoulders straining as he reached upwards. His hand fell on Scott's wrist and, instantly, Scott returned his brother's hold wrist-to-wrist. Gordon stopped kicking, his sobs tearing at Scott. Both boys breathed hard, but Scott tried to muster an encouraging smile. "That's it, Gordy. See: you're higher up already, and I've still got you. Now let's try your left hand, okay?"

Gordon's "no!" coincided with Scott loosening his grip. Gordon didn't scream this time. He sobbed quietly, straining upward with his left hand, taking a new hold on Scott's forearm and giving a louder cry of relief when he felt Scott re-establish his grasp.

"Gordy, it's okay. I'm not going to let you fall. You trust me, don't you? I need you to get your hand up over my elbow, okay? I'll keep hold of you, but I need you to move your hand now." Again, Scott relaxed his right hand, this time able to pull up a little with his left, helping Gordon's desperate reach, and able to grasp his brother very nearly at the shoulder when they made contact. Step by step, inch-by-inch, Scott helped his little brother climb up until Scott could hold him first under the shoulders, and then by the waist. The steady trickle of dust under them was getting faster and stronger as Gordon clambered over Scott's shoulders, a foot on the back of his elder brother's head giving him the push he needed. Scott could feel himself gradually slipping forwards. It seemed like an age before Scott was able to twist painfully back onto solid ground, Gordon sitting on his legs to steady them.

He lay on his back, Gordon scrambling across the ground to lay his head on his brother's chest as they both panted to catch their breath.

Scott gazed up at the blue sky, glimpsed through the opening in the canopy. Reluctantly, he dropped his eyes to the other side of the clearing, where a metal net filled with uniform, heavy concrete blocks hung poised above the trip-wire. The two boys lay in the narrow space between its impact zone and the gaping pit whose poisoned spikes reached to the sky.

Gordon had followed Scott's gaze. He huddled against his elder brother and shivered. "I guess there are people here," he said eventually.

"Yeah," Scott agreed, trying to sit up and deciding to lie still for just a moment longer. "And you know what, Gordy? I don't think they're very friendly."

Chapter 10

Frustration tightened Virgil's grip on the arms of his wheelchair. Being pushed through the hospital by a porter made him feel like a fraud, as if he were stealing attention from those who needed it more. He wanted to get up and walk back to the paediatric ward on his own, he felt as if he should, and it was mind-blowingly irritating to realise that he couldn't.

Waking up curled beside his sleeping father had felt safe and warm, only the growing throb of discomfort every time he moved his chest troubling him. It wasn't until the nurse had touched his shoulder and told him she'd sent for someone to take him back to the children's ward that he'd started to be embarrassed about it. He was eleven years old, but he'd reverted to a little kid, clinging to his father. True, Dad hadn't seemed to mind, but then Dad was used to having Gordy and Alan to cuddle. Maybe he'd just forgotten that Virgil was meant to be one of his older sons.

That Virgil was more than likely now his eldest.

It was a frightening thought, almost as much because of the responsibility as because it meant that he'd never see Scott again. He and Dad hadn’t talked about that much. It was just too big an idea to put into words.

They hadn't really talked much at all before both of them had drifted off to sleep. That bothered Virgil when he came to think of it. Dad had been asleep all night, and Virgil for most of it. He just didn't get why they were still so tired. Too tired, in fact, to get out of the chair he was in, even if his aching ribs hadn't made even the thought of it painful.

"Almost there," the orderly pushing him encouraged. Virgil frowned, looking up to realise he'd not even noticed the elevator ride up. The swing doors of the paediatrics ward opened ahead of him, letting him back in to its world of forced cheerfulness and primary colours. He slumped a little deeper in his chair, wishing he were back in his dad's room.

Dr Evans was waiting for him, her hands gentle as she helped him from the chair to sit on his own bed. She frowned at him when he gasped in pain, hand pressed to his ribcage.

"Your father's nurse said your pain medication was wearing off," she noted, feeling his temperature and then checking the time on her watch. "And she's right."

She reached into her pocket and shook out a couple of pills from the bottle there, handing them to Virgil with a glass of water. "Now, are you going to be good for me and swallow those down, Virgil, or do I have to put you back on a drip?"

Virgil swallowed obediently, struggling to get the large tablets past his throat and sipping the water to help them down. Task accomplished, he held the half-full glass out to the doctor. She shook her head, refusing to take it and instead topping it up from the jug on his bedside table.

"Drink it down, Virgil. All of it. You're still a little dehydrated, and I want you to be on top form to keep your Dad company."

"What's wrong with him?" It was the first thing she'd said that Virgil found interesting enough to respond to. He couldn't keep the thin edge of worry out of his voice. His Dad was meant to be tall, strong, unbreakable. At the time, Virgil hadn't processed the image, but now his first glimpse of his father – lying in a hospital bed, pale and in pain – came strongly into his visual memory. He shuffled backwards to lean against the headboard, and pulled his knees up to his chest, hugging them. It felt like every foundation in his world was trembling.

Dr Evans sighed, perching on the edge of the bed and studying the huddled child. He could see understanding in her eyes.

"He banged his head, Virgil. That made him a bit sick. He'll be all right; it'll just take him a little time before he feels better. He's going to be tired and sleep a lot for a couple of days, that's all."

Virgil looked at her with exhausted eyes. He'd driven himself as hard as he could, held on when he was on his own, done everything he could to help Scott and Gordon. When they'd taken him down to Dad, he'd thought he might finally be able to relax and let the grown-ups take over.

"I want my Mom."

"I know, sweetheart. I wish she could be here, I really do. She'll be here tomorrow. Now, do you want to try and sleep for a little? I could close your curtains?"

Virgil shook his head wearily. He was tired, yes, but he'd been awake for less than half an hour. His mind was still too active for more sleep, even if his body was drained of energy. He looked around the room, feeling the need to be doing something.

At the far side of the ward, the other two children admitted here were playing. He'd been introduced to them that morning: eight-year-old Amelia, who was learning to walk again after eight weeks with both broken legs in plaster, and six-year-old Susie who'd been having treatment for something serious over on the mainland and was well enough to come back to Dominga, but still too sick to go home. Susie's mom was playing with the two girls, helping them arrange some kind of complicated scenario involving dolls from the toy chest and lots of clothes. Even when he was well, little girls were something of an unknown commodity to Virgil. He tended to ignore the ones at school and, with an abundance of little brothers, his world had a decidedly male bias. These two seemed nice enough, but their attempts to entice him into their games before Dad woke up just left him more tired, and he felt no desire to join them now.

His eyes slid past them and across to the arts and crafts play area. He looked back at Dr Evans and she smiled before he could ask, crossing the room to bring back not just a large flip-pad of the coarse-grained paper sheets and the black crayon from the night before, but also a handful of other pencils and, thank goodness, a pencil sharpener to go with them.

"Now, technically," the doctor said with a smile, "we're not allowed to take these out of the play area. But I won't tell if you don't, Virgil."

Virgil gave her a brief, grateful smile as she deposited her haul on a tray. Reluctantly, he eased out of his huddle, tugging the pillow up behind his back and straightening his legs on the bed as the doctor settled the tray across them.

He tuned her out, oblivious to her watching him, as he sharpened a soft-leaded pencil. He sketched in the first few lines: the blocky shape of the life-boat's stern, seen from the prow, and centred in it a hunched shape. He added details quickly, desperate to get the image down on paper so he could get it out of his head. Water sprayed over the boat's rails and streaked from the sky, blurring everything and crossing every straight line. Gordon was barely visible, his torso made bulky by the life-vest, his face hidden in Scott's chest so only the back of his head showed. Scott himself was kneeling. He was bent over his little brother, holding the boy tight, but his head was raised and looking directly out of the paper. His expression, the last glimpse Virgil had seen of him, was one of total, terrified horror.

Virgil made the sketch detailed, working in thick, dark lines, before reaching for the coloured pencils the doctor had brought him. They were a crude set; perhaps twenty shades spanned the complete spectrum. Virgil didn't think for a moment they were enough for a full, colour picture, but he used them to highlight his pencil drawing. He added hints of brown and grey to the boat, a touch of orange to Gordon's life-vest, and the subtlest hints of orange and yellow to his little brother's hair. The cresting waves were picked out in dark green and blue, splashes of white on top of the black outlines to suggest the roiling foam. Scott, he left untouched, a monochrome focus in the tinted world, except for one thing: Scott's eyes stared out desperately from the paper, a deep midnight blue.

It took over an hour to get the effect he wanted, working with inferior tools, and with eyes that seemed to go blurry from time to time until he blinked the excess moisture away. When he looked at that inner picture, he could feel the deck heaving under his feet and his desperate need to get to his brothers. He could feel the sting of waves against his cheeks and hear the roaring of the angry ocean. He tried to put that on the canvas, knowing he didn't have the skill.

He looked down at the paper for a long time when he'd finished, eyes locked with his brother's, trying to feel the comfortable connection he'd always felt when they were together. When he eventually looked up, he blinked back unshed tears, startled to find Dr Evans sitting by his bedside, but in a different position as if she'd gone and come back while he was absorbed with his drawing. She held out her hands in a 'may I?' gesture. Virgil shook his head, holding onto the pad himself but tilting it so that she could see more clearly.

"That's very good, Virgil," she said gently. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

Virgil shook his head, knowing he didn't have words. He'd never been much of a one for flowery language. That was why he was drawing after all. He flipped over the top sheet of the pad, frowning at the smooth surface as he began to picture a new sketch. He was lifting his pencil when a glass of water was thrust between his face and the paper.

"Drink it," Dr Evans ordered her eyes and voice compassionate but firm. "The whole glass, or I take the paper away."

Sighing, Virgil downed the glass of water before looking up at the doctor in mute appeal. She smiled gently, leaving him to it.

Two hours later, Virgil was looking down at a new picture. His own image stood at his father's right side. Dad's arm was around Mom's shoulder and she was holding Alan in front of her, John standing on her left. He'd started this sketch a dozen times, trying to get it right. Even in the final version his parents looked gaunt and unhappy. John was scowling, Alan's bottom lip quivering. His own expression just looked dead. He couldn't get the faces right, didn't know what to do with hands or postures. Even the heights seemed wrong. He couldn't find an arrangement that worked, no way that their family of seven could make sense as a family of five. Angry, distressed, he slashed at the picture with his pencil, leaving a heavy black line cutting through his parents' chests. It wasn't enough.

The duty nurse came over from her station when he tore the sheet from the pad with a loud ripping sound. She tried to take the picture from him, not understanding when he resisted, holding onto it, only to tear it first in half and then into quarters and eighths. She backed off when Dr Evans arrived a minute or so later, but Virgil wasn't in the mood to talk about it. He let the fragments of paper fall from his fingers, kicking the tray off his bed with a loud clatter, and feeling instantly guilty about it.

"Sorry," he muttered quietly. "Can I sleep now?"

"Can't we talk about this, Virgil?"

Virgil pulled his knees back to his chest, rocking slightly. "No. I'm tired."

"It's almost lunchtime," she coaxed. "Aren't you hungry?"

Virgil turned away from her, squirming down from his sitting position so he was curled on his side. "I just want to sleep. Please?"

There was a long minute of silence, the doctor waiting for him to break. He heard her gathering up the scattered pencils and paper, and then a deep sigh.

"All right, Virgil," she told him, drawing the curtains around his bed. "But I'm here if you want me, okay?"

Virgil ignored her, too tired to resist the sleep creeping over him, and too tired to hide from the dark dreams that came with it.

By Domingan standards, seen as one of a chain that included everything from Dominga itself to seamounts and reefs that barely broke the surface, San Fernando was a mid-sized island. Perhaps ten miles long by five wide, its profile was dominated by a tall volcanic peak rising out of thick jungle. To the west, a second mountain rose from the ocean floor, its ridge-like summit just a couple of hundred metres above the water's surface. The two islets had merged into one, connected by a mile-wide isthmus with a long narrow inlet to the north of it and a sheltered bay to the south. The only speck of land for a hundred miles in any direction, it should a welcome sight. If it wasn't for the cold, uncaring face of its owner, it would have been.

Auguste Villacana stood on the jetty, his expression closed as he watched the police hydrofoil approach. He'd hailed them as they neared the island's twelve mile limit, the short-range radio cracking and popping, but marginally comprehensible as he demanded that they turn away from the private waters. The hydrofoil's captain – a uniformed officer more accustomed to chasing down suspected smugglers and running fellow policemen between the major islands than diplomatic wrangling – was more than happy to hand the microphone over to his technical superior. Inspector Travis hadn't bothered with diplomacy either. He'd simply stated that Villacana needed to answer questions on an active case and that the hydrofoil required docking permission, and then cut the radio signal, unwilling to shout across a difficult connection when he had travelled for more than two hours to see the man face to face.

Travis and Kearney waited impatiently, letting the two junior members of the hydrofoil's crew cast mooring lines to a waiting pair of Villacana's staff on the dock. The island's owner stayed back, studying the two detectives and studied in turn.

Travis knew of Villacana by reputation, as he'd explained to Vaughan, and he'd looked through the man's file as the hydrofoil flew across the now-calm ocean. Rationally, he knew that the man's youth shouldn't surprise him. Despite that, some part of him had still expected to see a greying, middle-aged millionaire more typical of Domingan island owners, rather than a wiry, unimposing man in his mid thirties. Villacana's expression was neutral, showing neither anger nor any hint of welcome, but there was a bitter twist to his lips and his dark eyes hinted at his hostility. He didn't so much as raise a hand when the hydrofoil's boarding ramp was run out, but his two servants fell back behind him, standing poised to obey his orders, their eyes lowered.

Kearney eyed them warily, letting his colleague take the lead as they headed towards the ramp.

"You've got to wonder what he does to keep them so scared," he observed under his breath. Travis nodded grimly, forcing a smile onto his face as he stepped onto dry land and approached their host.

"Detective Inspector Charleston Travis," he announced himself, offering his hand. "Good to meet you, Mr Villacana."

Villacana took his hand, giving it the minimal, perfunctory shake that etiquette required before dropping it. "I wish I could say the same, Inspector. However, I've made my desire for privacy quite clear in the past, as well as a mere twenty minutes ago on the radio. I do not appreciate unexpected visitors, even official ones."

Kearney was bridling visibly, making it perversely easier for Travis to keep his temper as he gestured to his partner to calm down. "My colleague, Detective Inspector Michael Kearney." He waved a hand beside him as he deliberately introduced the rest of his companions to see how Villacana would react. "The hydrofoil's captain, police sergeant Walter Oksahi, constables Taylor and Andres."

As he'd half expected, Villacana ignored the hydrofoil crew, and didn't even consider introducing his own people. This was a man with a very clear sense of what was worthy of his attention. Obviously his servants and other lesser beings didn't come close. Travis suspected that he wouldn't make the cut himself if it wasn't for his capacity to disturb Villacana's lord-of-all-I-survey idyll. The man kept his eyes fixed on Travis' face, as if expecting an explanation accompanied by their instant departure.

Thoughtfully, Travis waved one hand, giving Oksahi permission to cast off. There was a sudden bustle of movement behind him as the police hydrofoil made ready for departure, and Villacana's servants started forward to help, taken by surprise. Now Villacana did react, raising one hand to stop his people.

"I must insist that you return to your vessel," he said coldly. "I cannot allow it to leave you here."

Travis faced him, eye to eye. As Kearney had cautioned him, there was no reason to believe that the recluse knew how big an error of judgement he'd made in concealing the Santa Anna's location. Despite that, there was something in the man's demeanour that made it almost impossible not to dislike him. The man had to know why they were here, but there was no hint of regret or apology in his expression. Travis couldn't help wondering what would have become of Virgil and Jeff Tracy if Villacana had been alone when he found them, rather than in the company of a rather more human crew.

"Mr Villacana, I'm afraid you can and you must. We have some crucial questions to ask you regarding the events of the evening before last, and the hydrofoil is urgently needed elsewhere. It will return for us in two hours, at which point we may or may not be forced to place you under arrest, but I can assure you, we are not leaving until we have answers to our questions."

For the first time, there was a crack in Villacana's façade. The man's eyes flashed with irritation and a hint of something else that Travis had no time to identify. Perhaps it had been the threat of arrest. Travis didn't need the look Kearney threw him to know he'd pushed his luck with that one. At most, what they knew of Villacana's activities warranted a fine and a caution, but the reaction made him wonder whether just possibly what they didn't know was far more interesting.

The man glared at them, and turned abruptly. "Follow me," he said.

They did, trailing the island's owner to a small 4x4 vehicle that waited by the dock. They climbed onto its rear bench at a gesture from Villacana, not entirely surprised when their host didn't take the wheel but rather the passenger seat, waiting for one of his servants to chauffeur them. The vehicle bounced along a winding path that climbed steeply north-west from the dock to a house perched high on the smaller western half of the island. Villacana sat rigidly, his back turned to them, not looking around at his visitors but managing to project his distaste for them nonetheless.

Kearney snorted quietly, leaning across the seat toward his colleague. "Do you think he'll brush us off on the doormat, like the dirt we evidently are?" he whispered.

Travis couldn't help chuckling. He waited until Villacana had glanced over his shoulder and turned back before answering in a low voice. "Wander off the path and you might not get that far. Reckon there's any truth to the booby trap rumour?" He nodded at the tree branch arching over the path ahead of them, and the glint of reflection from the glass lens it supported. Security cameras, discreet but apparent to the two trained observers, kept every turn in the path under thorough surveillance. Kearney shrugged, gesturing ahead to point out the compound coming into sight ahead of them.

Perched on a ridge-line, the house overlooked the northern inlet. A steep slope below it and gradually rising jungle beyond the sheltered water formed a wide, sweeping valley that separated the residential compound from the volcanic peak dominating the island's mainland. It was a nice house, Travis noted as the entered; he had to give his host that. The rooms were large and open-plan, every utility on hand and every comfort saving device employed. On the other hand, the steel and glass furniture, vid-screens and complex electronics on open display couldn't be further from the 'primitive' aesthetic that most island-owners aspired to. The sitting room's picture window contrasted the lush green of the jungle spread out below with the sparkling diodes and polished metal shells of some of the most elaborate stereo and video equipment Travis had ever seen. The place would be a sparkling beacon at night, hidden from the sea, but proclaiming its indifference to nature over the entire island.

Villacana stood in front of the glass wall, gazing across the jungle rather than looking at his guests. From time to time, he glanced to his left, at a blank screen that he evidently expected to be live with information. Travis remembered what he'd read: that this man had been responsible for some major breakthroughs in information technology while still in his late teens. A man like that, a man who surrounded himself with the number of gadgets on display, would not appreciate the effective information blackout the induction pulse was still causing.

Kearney gave an impressed whistle as he settled into the chair Villacana indicated. "For someone who wants to escape from the modern world, Mr Villacana, you certainly have a lot of it here."

Villacana turned, his gaze drifting across that screen before settling disdainfully on the detectives. Again there was a brief hint of emotion from the man, and this time it was definitely anger.

"If I wished to have people comment on my private arrangements, Inspector Kearney, I would have put up 'one dollar per entry' signs on the dock-side."

Travis shot his partner a quick look, asking him to think before he spoke. He had to admit that their host had a point. They were here to talk business, not interior design. Kearney sighed and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out his notebook and a pen in a silent offer to record what was said, leaving Travis to concentrate. Travis nodded, turning calmly to the cold man by the window.

"Mr Villacana, I believe you and your motorboat picked up two ship-wrecked tourists yesterday, sometime around noon or in the early afternoon."

Villacana didn't blink, didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"And transported them almost to Dominga before handing them to a local fishing vessel."

"Your point?"

"Why did you pay the fishermen to lie about the sequence of events?"

Villacana turned a cold gaze on him. "Have you any evidence that I did?" he challenged.

Travis winced internally, keeping his face calm. "I have the sworn statement of the men involved, and evidence that they returned from the trip substantially wealthier than when they departed. When I question your captain, I suspect he'll be able to verify that you spoke to the fishermen. Don't you think it's possible that he even saw something exchanged?"

"All circumstantial." Villacana waved a dismissive hand.

Kearney leaned forward. "I notice you've not denied it," he noted.

Villacana gave a miniscule frown. Travis was getting a headache. Reading any kind of emotion off the man was an uphill battle to say the least, taking careful inspection and a lot of concentration. Even so, he recognised the moment when Villacana decided to give in to the inevitable.

"Residual charge from the storm was causing my motor to misfire. Since my boat was unable to reach Dominga, it seemed unnecessary to remain involved in the situation at all. Relocating the event did no harm, and I have never been fond of the presence of strangers near my home. I saw no need to draw attention to San Fernando for the sake of a couple of tourists and a freak natural occurrence. Inspectors, I have yet to see anything in your questioning that warrants the degree of intrusion and offence…"

Travis spoke across him, flicking his fingers at Kearney with an instruction to watch the other man carefully. Kearney nodded, continuing to record the conversation in his notebook, but doing so mostly without looking, only the occasional glance checking what he'd written.

"'Relocating the event' did a great deal of harm. And the circumstances of two nights ago can hardly be described as a 'natural occurrence'. There was definitely a human hand in it."

Villacana's eyes flickered, moving to something over Travis' shoulder and then back to his face so quickly he wondered if he'd imagined the motion. The man strode halfway across the room, pulling a steel chair from under a side table and sitting rigidly upon it.

"I understood it to be a malfunction of the weather control system. Isolated as San Fernando is, and given the interference, I have been unable to tune into my usual news broadcasts. Surely no one suspects that the storm was induced deliberately? Without warning, and so close to land?"

The urgency of his question was perhaps understandable given the close proximity of San Fernando to the storm's centre. Any landowner might have asked the same. Even so, there was something in the man's usually so-careful tone that seemed subtly wrong, too inquisitive given his demeanour. Travis had only meant to voice a little of his frustration with Commander Dale's Weather Station and humanity's tendency to strong-arm nature into submission with uncertain results. Sabotage hadn't even occurred to him as a possibility. He blinked as he made a mental connection. Hadn't Vaughan said he was "looking into it"? Why the hell would NASA security be looking into a freak technical problem?

Travis forced the questions aside with an effort, trying to keep his perplexity from his face. Even so, he was wary when he answered Villacana. "Can you think of any reason why your island would be the target of such an attempt?"

Villacana gave the slightest shake of his head, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly as he sat back in his chair.

"Certainly not. And I was involved in some of the early coding for the Weather Station project myself, many years ago."

"When you worked at NASA?" Travis pressed. He hadn't needed to wait for Vaughan to call back on that one. It had been in the former software engineer's file when he looked.

Villacana tilted his head in acknowledgement, his lips pursed and something that looked like anger smouldering in his eyes.

Travis sighed. Making conversation with the man was uphill work. You found yourself falling into his formal speech patterns and tying yourself in conversational knots.

"I was merely referring to the fact that the storm was artificial, Mr Villacana," Travis reassured him. "And, to return to the matter at hand, I have to ask what you know about the people you pulled out of the water."

Villacana flicked a hand dismissively. "A man and a boy. Barely alive." Not a flicker of interest in whether or not they'd survived. Even to wonder that would take a little empathy, and Travis was starting to suspect that the man had none.

"Did you recognise them?" Kearney asked, resting his pencil for a few seconds and drumming his fingers on the stiff-backed notebook. Villacana had all but ignored the second detective, seeing no need to communicate with anyone but the lead investigator. Now he spared Kearney a glance, but spoke to Travis.

"No, why would I?"

"The man was an ex-NASA employee, like yourself."

Villacana shook his head, apparently unsurprised and uninterested. "NASA has thousands of employees. I worked in a highly specialised department, almost ten years ago. Inspector, I fail to see why a couple of stray tourists should warrant this degree of investigation, or why their initial location was important."

"It's important, Mr Villacana, because while the two individuals you rescued are recovering in hospital, two other young children remain unaccounted for."

There was a definite, momentary flash of total surprise. None of the horror, sympathy and desire to help that every other rational person who'd heard the news exhibited. Travis had stopped expecting that, and its absence wasn't why he felt his heart sink. Despite the unlikeliness of it, he'd retained a lingering hope that, just possibly, the wild speculations the C.I.A. had put into his head might be true. In his heart, if not his head, he'd wondered if the boys actually had come ashore on San Fernando and been held for some nefarious purpose. It was better than the alternative: that they'd most likely been swamped and drowned within half an hour of being cast adrift, or died of exposure a handful of hours later. Unfortunately, that faint hope was gone. Villacana couldn't have cared less who he'd rescued, and news of the missing children had caught even the sanguine island-owner off guard.

He could have forgiven the man if he'd shown just a hint of compassion or even interest. Instead Villacana's only visible emotion after the surprise came and went was a slight irritable twitch and an unconcealed annoyance.

"I'll have my captain give you the coordinates where we located the shipwreck. As you'll see they are well north of San Fernando. I assume that you will be organising a search. I would remind you that this island and its waters are private property and that intrusion by search boats is unnecessary and unwelcome."

Kearney's expression was professionally neutral. Only his eyes told Travis of his intense dislike and distaste for their host.

"The search pattern is already being established. There will be almost forty vessels out here before the end of the day." The turnout had surprised even the coastguard personnel coordinating the search. Some of the smaller vessels would take all day just to reach the search zone, and anchor there overnight rather than making the trip back to Dominga. Others, including a few tourist yachts almost as big as Villacana's, would be reaching the designated area already, not far behind the coastguard and police hydrofoils. "The search zone ends just within your northern waters, Mr Villacana." It was the maximum distance from Virgil's coordinates that anyone thought an unpowered dinghy could have drifted in the time available. Kearney shook his head, almost disappointed. "We won't be encroaching on your precious island," he finished sarcastically. "We know just how important your privacy is."

Villacana looked at him with a deep, and barely-concealed distaste of his own. "Inspector Kearney, in my experience, the vast majority of my fellow human beings are ignorant, unintelligent savages who work only for their own benefit, often at the cost of others more deserving, and who believe that their petty affairs are more important than those of any other. Since many of them appear to object to my beliefs, I have chosen to remove myself from their society. I do not appreciate the attempts of others to inflict their company upon me, and nor do I welcome the disdain of one such as yourself. I have cooperated with your enquiries and done no more than assert my right to be left alone – a right I purchased, I would remind you, from your own government. Kindly keep your opinions and comments to yourself."

Kearney jumped to his feet, his fists clenching at his sides as he tried to pin down any one thing in Villacana's calm but cold statement he could legitimately object to. Travis stood too, distracting the two of them from one another and falling back on cool formality to mask his own anger.

"Thank you for your cooperation, but I have to remind you that you intentionally misled the authorities about a serious nautical incident, knowing that it was likely to be referred to the police for investigation. While the Domingan state recognises your autonomy to govern San Fernando as you see fit, the Confederation treaty clearly requires you to comply with international law in your interactions with other islands and the larger world. Whether you consider it so or not, Mr Villacana, you have committed an offence, and an investigative visit such as this is only the mildest of the possible consequences."

"And it is one I've lived with and now regret," Villacana said calmly, no hint of the proposed regret in his tone. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I believe there is an office in the boathouse where you can interview the captain and arrange for him to return you to your hydrofoil."

Travis was astonished but careful not to show it. Kearney looked more openly surprised.

"We've travelled a long way to speak to you, Mr Villacana," Travis protested mildly.

"And, I believe, said everything that needed to be said." Again, Villacana spared Kearney a dismissive glance before looking briefly up at an apparently non-descript segment of wall above his head. "You've recorded my statement, and I can provide an electronic recording of it if necessary. Send a transcript when the interference has cleared and I will gladly append my signature file."

"Or visit Dominga to sign a paper copy?" Travis asked, more through annoyance than any real need to push the point. The man's lip curled.

"If hard-copy is strictly necessary, mail is carried by the servants' boat once weekly."

He didn't appear to move, but one of his silent servants appeared behind the detectives.

"This man will guide you to the boat house."

Kearney glowered. "You think we couldn't find it on our own?"

Again there was that glimpse of unexpected anger in Villacana's eyes. "I'm sure you're capable of exploring quite thoroughly, Inspector Kearney. However, the jungle surrounding this house can be a dangerous place. I should not like you to stray and become lost." He raised a hand, and the nameless servant circled the detectives, coming between them and Villacana and beginning to usher them towards the door.

"I'll take you up on that electronic recording, Villacana," Travis called over his shoulder.

The man didn't bother to acknowledge.

Chapter 11

Villacana stood in his living room, as ice cold and expressionless as the glass and steel around him. Inside, he was burning, anger and frustration tearing through him.

Kearney and Travis were fools, but they were detectives, accustomed to searching for clues. What had they read of his reactions? He had almost given himself away with his questions about the weather satellite, he knew that, but the detectives' visit had unsettled him. It had been too unexpected, not part of his plan. Any intruder in the world he'd built for himself was unacceptable. The thought of them made him feel unclean, violated, as if San Fernando and everything on it was an extension of his own body. Or maybe just his territory, in the sense that predatory great cats had their territories, prowled out, kept safe and jealously guarded.

For the intrusion to come now, so close to the fruition of his plan, when he had so much to lose and so much to hide… That was just about the worst outcome that his theoretically-faultless test could have brought about.

He cursed the nameless tourist who had brought this upon him, and all his brood. Villacana had hoped finding the barely-viable bodies would help deflect attention from his island. He hadn't thought for a moment that there might be other passengers on the yacht to draw attention back here. And typical of the shipwrecked victims to be children, sure to bring bleeding hearts out here in droves.

Villacana had been waiting so long to get his revenge, to make the world that had rejected him sit up and recognise his genius once and for all. It had taken him years of hard, solitary work, sourcing each component, ensuring everything was perfect. He had thought to exploit the world-wide unease about the weather system as early as this very night. With an undetermined number of search vessels in the area, some of them small enough perhaps to pass through his perimeter system undetected, he couldn't take the chance. Who knew whether a passing boat would spy a reflection from the dish, or notice something else that had escaped his meticulous planning?

He shook his head, caught sight of himself doing so in the reflective glass of the window, and realised that his anger was slipping through even his automatically maintained mask of neutrality. Carefully, slowly, he took a deep breath, held it and released it gradually.

This was not the time to start doubting himself, or his precautions. This one incident with the sailing yacht was a fluke, a distraction, no more. Passing on the electronic call button in his wristband, he moved instead to the wall panel, running his fingers over the vid-screen and bringing up a link to his data-conduit. With a few quick commands, he isolated the records of his carefully-innocent conversation with the detectives, adding a barely-perceptible layer of white noise to it to blur even his slight vocal inflections. Downloading it to a data-card, he pulled the device from its socket, weighing it in his palm. With another sequence of commands he killed the automatic monitoring system he used to keep his servants in line, before summoning the entire household with a final sequence. He didn't want a record of this conversation.

The Islander natives trailed in, polite and reasonably clean despite their rough appearances. They lined up in front of him, their eyes averted as Villacana preferred.

Tranter was still escorting their unexpected 'guests' to the boathouse and, knowing his job, keeping them there. Friell hovered inside the door, acting as a rearguard, his eyes as cold and emotionless as his master's. Villacana had picked his two full-time servants carefully, selecting men greedy enough to tolerate his idiosyncrasies if the pay was sufficient, and as clear-sighted as he was when it came to the rest of humanity. Neither of the men knew what their master did when he vanished into his 'laboratory', and while they had helped construct the dish to his rigorous requirements, neither had doubted his statement that he merely required better communications for his work. He was certain that even if they suspected his long-concealed plan, neither of them would care.

He had never bothered to learn the names of the five men who came in every week on the boat. They were hard-eyed men, not from liberal Dominga, but rather from the more cut-throat harbour and bars of Santa Isobella. He'd selected them solely for their ability to do whatever they were told without question. Their loyalty was certain as long as it remained paid for, and was reinforced by the memory of Villacana carefully and precisely flaying the arm of the first man who had gossiped about San Fernando and its owner. He'd gained no pleasure from the messy activity, merely seen it as a necessary step to securing his goal; eight years without trouble from his employees had proved it worthwhile. In those years these men had laid paths and traps, maintained the gardens – both formal and kitchen, cleared debris after storms, carried equipment and supplies from the dock up to the house, and on one memorable occasion thoroughly beaten a pair of stray fishermen intruding on a western beach, before setting them adrift.

Only one man in this room had yet to learn the rule of absolute obedience, and was yet to prove his loyalty. The large motor yacht was a relatively new purchase, an indulgence that Villacana now vaguely regretted, but hadn't been able to resist. He had realised that hiring a new man competent to captain the vessel would be necessary. He hadn't appreciated how reluctant he would be to open even his cynical, violence-motivated circle of trust. Or how hard it would be to find a man with the required combination of skill and conscience-free, greedy obedience. He was still far from sure of his choice, a Domingan native with more concern for the rules of the sea than the rules his employer laid down.

He studied the man briefly before he extended his hand, proffering the data-card.

"There are two detectives in the boathouse. Take this to them, answer their questions, cooperate with their requirements."

"Sir." There was nothing to fault in the man's bowed head or quiet acknowledgement. Villacana waved a hand in dismissal, indicating two of his anonymous men with stabbing gestures.

"You, and you. You will be needed as boat crew. Go with him."

Villacana and his other servants watched as the captain left the room, his shoulders slightly bowed under the weight of the eyes upon him, trailed by his nominated crew. Friell slipped out behind them, escorting them to the main door of the house and securing it behind them before returning to the sitting room. There was silence for a few seconds and Villacana took a moment to enjoy the thrill of power he felt over the remaining four men, waiting on his command, ready to obey him unconditionally.

"We may have intruders on the island. Detectives aside, there are two others who may have washed ashore here. I want you to check the traps, search for any sign of unauthorised individuals on the island. My equipment and activities are not to be subject to espionage or interference. No matter who is responsible, or the cause. If anyone has washed ashore here, I want to know that was precisely what happened. That they washed in on the morning tide. I want to hand their dripping bodies over to the authorities without hesitation. Understood?"

There was just the briefest pause. This was darker than anything he'd asked of them before, but he had no doubt that they were capable of it. He stood impassive and unyielding, recognising that a ruthless attitude to others that he'd always thought of as remote and abstract was becoming very close and real.

"Go," he said simply.

They went without argument.

Scott had second, third and fourth thoughts about guiding his little brother along the path that the trip-wire had protected. In the end, he'd settled for a compromise. They kept mostly to the trees, Gordon never more than a few steps away from his eldest brother, both of them cutting cautiously back onto the flatter, clearer ground when the undergrowth became particularly rough.

The sun was in their eyes, the path leading them almost due west. It broadened gradually, and it took some time for Scott to notice that they were now sticking almost exclusively to the beaten earth track. He'd treated Gordon's blistered feet, and his own, trying to ignore his tired brother's tears as they limped onwards through the apparently never-ending jungle. They were both growing listless, walking because they had to, and not even Gordon had the energy to spare for side trips or exploration.

It was getting on for late afternoon when Scott tripped over a deep gulley in the surface of the path for the third time. He landed on hands and knees, aggravating the scrapes he'd already acquired, and stayed down, breathing hard. Gordon was at his side in seconds, tugging anxiously at his arm, and he struggled to blink back the mingled tears of pain, fear and exhaustion.

"I'm… I'm okay, Gordy. Just give me a minute."

Gordon dropped to sit beside him, hugging his knees, his worried eyes never leaving his brother's face. Scott sighed, sitting up and unrolling his pack. He pulled out food and water for his brother, letting himself swallow a mouthful or two of the cool liquid while Gordon ate hungrily. There had been a pool not far from the path a little way back, its level topped up by the recent rainfall, its bottom hidden by a layer of fallen leaves, and Scott had literally drunk until he was sick. That had taken a few minutes to recover from too, and despite the cravings of his dehydrated body, he'd sipped more cautiously before they left the pool, wary of his viciously cramping stomach.

His throat was still sore, the acidic taste not fading from the back of his mouth, even when he allowed himself a little of the bottled water to soothe it. He refused the food Gordon offered him entirely, a little surprised to realise that he really wasn't hungry. He managed a smile for Gordon's sake, knowing that his little brother was almost as alarmed by Scott's lack of appetite as his Scott himself was grateful for it. It didn't fool the younger boy.

"Scott, are you getting sick?"

Scott gave him a wan grin and a shrug. "I'm not sure, Gordon. But look, the path is getting wider. We're going to find someone soon, they're going to call Mom and she'll take you home and everything will be okay."

Gordon just looked at him, and Scott waved a hand to indicate the path they were on. He stopped, focused and frowned, actually looking at the surface for the first time. The narrow gulley he'd tripped over was worn, baked by the sun and eroded by the rain, but it was nonetheless unmistakeable.

"Tyre tracks!" Gordon jumped a mile at his brother's cry. Scott grinned at him, waving him closer. "Look, Gordy, they're tyre tracks. You can see the treads. We've got to find someone soon."

He dragged himself to his feet and picked up their ever-lightening pack, urging Gordon on. Ten minutes later, he was walking with Gordon's hand in his to encourage him when his little brother stopped suddenly, almost pulling Scott off-balance.

"Engine!" Gordon's eyes widened. "Scotty! I can hear an engine!"

Scott held his breath, closed his eyes and concentrated everything on hearing the sound his little brother had detected. Several seconds later he was breathless, but sure. Gordon was right.

Scott scanned the skies, wondering if the induction pulse had cleared enough for aircraft to fly over. He dropped the pack to his side, scrabbling for the long-forgotten flare gun, before his eyes fell once again to the tyre marks beside it. He hesitated, listening again to the sound rolling off the sides of the volcano. The engine note was wrong for a plane, now that he concentrated on it.

"There's a car coming," he realised. "A jeep, a van, something."

A small hand slipped into his, Gordon's other hand plucking at his sleeve as Scott's little brother tried to pull him aside.

"We have to get off the road, Scotty."

Scott looked down into the younger boy's frightened eyes, bemused. True, his little brothers had road safety drilled into them, but even so it seemed a strange comment. Gordon tugged at him again. "Scotty, please, there were spikes and traps and bricks… we have to hide!"

Scott felt sick, torn between two unpalatable choices as he realised his brother was right. From the moment he'd seen the trip wire, he'd realised that the people on this island would have to be approached carefully. Pulling his brother out of a pit of poisoned spikes had cemented that conviction. At the same time, his own strength was failing rapidly and he knew that, despite all his efforts, Gordon wasn't doing much better. Was the choice between turning his little brother over to someone who had already tried twice to kill them, and simply collapsing here in the jungle? Neither option was acceptable.

He thought quickly, weighing up the little they had, and the resources around them, wracking his mind desperately for a plan. He saw it in a flash of inspiration and leapt on it, knowing how little time they had from the growing roar of the vehicle engine.

He ran to the edge of the crude road, and off it into the jungle. Fallen branches and the occasional half-rotten tree trunk were common sights on the leaf-mould floor. In the first hour of their journey, Gordon had stopped at several, fascinated by the fungal growths and streaming columns of ants that colonised them. Now Scott ran desperately towards the log he'd seen from the road, counting on it being half-eaten through, grateful beyond measure when he found that solid as it looked, it was all but hollow. "Gordy, help me!" he demanded, heaving up one end of the log and beginning to drag it across the ground.

His little brother was tired, but his already well-developed love of practical jokes made him quick to see the potential in a situation like this. He grasped Scott's idea almost immediately, helping him to drag the log across the path. Scott was already dropping flat on his belly to hide in a thicket of undergrowth to one side of the rutted surface when Gordon ran back into the road with armfuls of leaves, scattering them artistically around the hollow log in a touch that would never have occurred to Scott. A close look might reveal the inconsistencies, but at first glance the obstruction looked like it had been there for weeks, the leaves gradually building up around it. He pulled Gordon into a one-armed hug as the younger boy dropped down beside him, grinning smugly.

Scott smiled at him. "You're just a little too good at that, aren't you, you little monster?"

Gordon laughed, the sound lifting his elder brother's spirits. Scott hushed him reluctantly, finger on lips as the engine noise swelled around them.

They were waiting for less than thirty seconds when the jeep came into view, its bench seat occupied by two large, bored looking men, its short truck-bed empty save for a scatter of dirt and a length of rope. The vehicle came to a halt, its engine reverberating painfully loud after the near-silence of the last day. The two men in it looked from the fallen tree blocking their path to one another and back again before the driver leaned forward against the steering wheel, resting his forehead against his arms.

"Well, get out and move it then," the man said in a thick, Domingan Islander accent.

His partner frowned, ready to complain, and thought again when the driver shifted in his seat, purposefully revealing a gun tucked into his waistband. Scott heard a small gasp beside him and reached out quickly, putting a hand over his brother's mouth and meeting his eyes anxiously.

The second man climbed out of the jeep, his entire posture screaming reluctance. He lingered for a few seconds with one foot in the cab, about to step down backwards. "Are you okay with this?" he asked, his tone deliberately nonchalant.

The driver opened one eye, looking blankly at his colleague.

"Villacana wants these people found and dealt with." He shrugged. "So, we deal with them."

The second man gave an echoing shrug, stepped down to ground level and then hesitated again. "Marshal was talking to one of the cops on that hydrofoil. Said they were looking for a couple of kids."

The driver opened both eyes, his voice cold. "You've been taking the same money I have these years. You helped last time we had intruders, and now you have a problem? You going to give up the pay? You think you can run far enough to hide when Villacana comes after you? He's cold, but the man scares the hell out of me."

The combination of threat and warning in the driver's voice was unmistakeable, and Scott held his breath as the second man thought about it. "No," he said quietly. "Guess not."

"Right, so if those kids are here, we make sure they can't tell anyone what they've seen. Ever. We hand the bodies over to the cops and it's over and done with. Right?"

"Right." The second man kicked at the log, grunting in satisfaction as his foot went through the rotten bark. He kicked it a few more times, breaking it into manageable chunks before sweeping them aside with his feet, evidently disinclined to get his hands dirty… at least not on a mouldy, fungus-crusted log. He shook his head in disgust as he climbed back into the jeep. "Hardly worth stopping for. Truck would have gone straight through it."

The driver grunted in response, throwing the vehicle into gear and forcing it through the scattered remnants of the boys' crude barricade. Lying in the undergrowth, too shocked and afraid to move, Scott listened to the engine sound slowly fading. His plan had been simply to stop the vehicle and assess the situation when he found out who was in it. Even when the jeep and its unpromising passengers had drawn up, Scott had wondered if he and Gordon could somehow hide in its truck bed.

After the conversation they'd just overheard, he was overwhelmingly relieved that they hadn't tried.

He didn't realise he still had his hand over Gordon's mouth until his little brother gave up tugging at his hand and bit him instead. He yelped, letting go and rolling up to a sitting position, Gordon beside him. His brother looked as shocked as Scott himself felt, and he knew that despite the men's oblique speech, he didn't have to explain. He worked his mouth for several seconds, coughing to clear his raw throat, before he