CRY WOLF by CATHRL RATED FRPT

Because it just makes so much sense for Jeff Tracy, the man who wouldn't even tell his close friend Tim Casey about IR, to give a guided tour of the island to two random kids...

Thanks to my husband for beta-reading, and my son for telling me exactly which episode I should be retconning.

Winner of the 2008 Tracy Island Writers Forum Retrofit Challenge.

Missing Scene 1. Tracy Island, a couple of weeks before "Cry Wolf" starts:

"It was all a false alarm?" Jeff sat forwards, fingers steepled, hoping his son could read how serious he thought this was without him having to get unpleasant about it. "How could that happen?"

On the screen, John sighed. "The trainees had been promised a surprise as part of their final exercise. So when one of them put in a call to International Rescue as a bit of a joke and I responded, it didn't occur to him that he was talking to the real thing. He carried on with the exercise, I believed him, and, well, he got the shock of his life when One showed up."

"They were very apologetic," Scott said from his seat near Jeff's desk. "Horribly embarrassed, too. Asked me to stay and be guest of honour. I was tempted. We need more firefighters like them."

"Well, I'm sure glad you refused." Jeff looked sternly round the rest of his sons as they sat in their favourite places for the debrief. Virgil would have done the same as Scott, he was fairly sure. Alan or Gordon, though, might well have been flattered enough to accept, and that could have been disastrous. It seemed that this had been a genuine mistake by a small fire service college in middle-of-nowhere outback Australia. But let word get out that the result of that mistake had been a real live IR operative at their graduation dinner, and every school, college and university on the planet would be trying it on.

"It looks like this was a one-off," he agreed, and even over the video link he thought he saw John's shoulders relax. "Let's forget it."

"Not quite yet, Father," Scott said. His eldest son was much easier to read. Scott always struggled to look him in the eye when telling his father something he wouldn't want to hear. Right now his eyes were fixed about ten feet to Jeff's right, somewhere between the orchid and the bookcase.

"One of them recognised me."

"So you laughed it off with 'Scott who?', right?" Virgil's tone was light, but his expression was anything but.

"Sure I did! I know the drill. But this guy...he wasn't convinced. He said yeah, he must have made a mistake, but..." Scott shook his head, still not looking at Jeff. "He knew perfectly well who he thought I was. He was probably off to find some old newspaper reports and confirm his suspicions. He just didn't want to argue."

"He has no proof --" Jeff began.

"He doesn't need proof! He speaks to the press, says some tall dark-haired guy called Scott who looks just like Scott Tracy is the pilot of TB One. Then one of those surfers who kept asking Gordon if he was that swimming champ says it in public. How many does it take before the coincidences get ridiculous? Scott, Virgil, John, Gordon, Alan - type that into Google and you get the Tracy family. And, oh look, we all disappeared from our previous jobs a couple of years before IR started up! I knew we should have used codenames!"

Virgil, sitting alongside his older brother on the sofa, threw Jeff what could only be described as a pleading look. Alan and Gordon, for once, were both speechless, and with good reason. Scott didn't get upset, and yet he patently was. Even John's expression was concerned. And Jeff knew that the time had come for the next step in his plans.

"Boys, it's time for stage two of Operation Cry Wolf."

"You mean you had this planned all along?" Scott's expression of betrayed disbelief hurt, but Jeff firmly told himself he'd done the right thing.

"Absolutely. You needed for it to sound natural. On a rescue, the last thing you need is to worry about whether you sound like you or like someone else pretending to be you. Brains and I discussed this at length. We decided that the extra subterfuge needed could be the difference between life and death for someone."

Scott looked somewhat mollified as he nodded, much to Jeff's relief.

"But I don't see how any of this helps," Alan said.

"Cry wolf," Gordon told him. "We make all the evidence point to IR pretending to be the Tracy family, and nobody will believe it when someone says we really are us."

"But the evidence points to us being us. Because we are us."

A slow smile had started to spread across Scott's face. "Except that the real Tracy family would surely never use their real first names. That would be stupid."

Gordon shifted in his seat, his hands clenching into fists as he scowled. "And I'm a hopeless cripple who can't swim a stroke any more, or even walk properly. Father's always pushed hard for me to use the stick in public so nobody thought it was odd I wasn't going back to WASP."

He hadn't asked the question, but Jeff answered it anyway. "That's what I said, that's what I meant. If it helps us here, that's a bonus."

Gordon's face cleared and, in the seat next to him, Alan's broke into a broad grin.

"So you'd like for me to maybe talk about motor racing a bit more --"

"Is that even possible?" Virgil muttered. Alan ignored him.

"--in the hearing of our rescuees? I think I can manage that."

"We need more than that," Scott said, his eyes fixed on Jeff's. "We need to push it. To tell the truth and have it not be believed, at a time and place of our choosing. Am I right?"

"You're right."

Scott's face briefly lit up as if he was ten years old again, before he schooled his expression in a way more appropriate for a thirty year old decorated fighter pilot. Jeff resisted smiling. It was very gratifying when his sons let slip that their father's approval still mattered to them. And, he had to admit, he'd been worried about this day and how they'd react to finding out they'd been played. Scott, in particular.

Virgil would follow Scott, of course. Now he was frowning, considering the practicalities rather than the bigger picture. His brothers had noticed and were waiting patiently for his question to arrive. Jeff did the same.

"Who do we tell? And how do we make it just convincing enough for people to think it might be true and then realise they've been had?"

Jeff glanced around the room. He had their full attention in a way they normally reserved for briefings for rescues which looked as if they'd be particularly hazardous. They all knew how serious this was. And how delicate.

"I'd like it to be two or three kids. Pre-teen, preferably. People who have been rescued in a situation where we're getting them out of there anyway. At that point, we pretend a situation where whoever is transporting them has to divert back here. Then we give them a quick tour and take them home again. Since we can't let them see the island, they'll have to be blindfolded on approach."

"Nobody will believe a security setup where they're blindfolded on approach and then shown the Thunderbirds," Alan said.

"At age ten? You would have." Gordon prodded his brother in the ribs. "Remember when I told you --"

"Not now, Gordon. But you're right. A ten year old will think it perfectly reasonable. But an adult hearing their story should wonder why the Tracy family would tell someone exactly who they are but try to hide where they live, when five minutes on the internet would give them grid reference and photos."

Alan laughed out loud. "That's brilliant! It'll look exactly like the blindfolds were to hide that they weren't landing on Tracy Island!" He sat back, legs outstretched and hands behind his head, beaming delightedly at his brothers, and Jeff found the smile infectious.

"Indeed. So, Scott, Virgil, I trust you'll keep your eyes open for likely candidates?"

"It does seem a bit mean," Virgil said. "Should we use kids like that? And what when someone asks them to pull us out of a photo lineup and they do it?"

"Well, IR obviously used the latest rubber mask technology to fool them - that's probably why they chose a famous family to impersonate." Gordon waved a hand dismissively. "Heck, I've even seen a mask of me, around the Olympics. I wish I'd bought it now. Looking like someone for a couple of hours is easy these days."

"The kids will get a tour of Tracy Island for their troubles," Scott said. "And we'll tell them the truth. Nobody's going to think they're lying; they'll think International Rescue lied to them. We're the ones crying wolf. It's fine, Virg. It'll work. And we do need something."

Missing Scene 2. During the "Cry Wolf" episode, just before Scott meets Tony and Bob for the first time:

The kids must have seen him overfly them, but they were making no attempt to come closer for now - something for which Scott was deeply grateful as he fired his landing jets and dropped to the ground, scattering sand and dead foliage everywhere. He waited for everything to settle in case of unstable ground before killing the engines and reaching for the radio. "Thunderbird One to Control."

"Go ahead, Scott."

"It's another hoax. Couple of kids playing at International Rescue."

Scott heard John swear and a murmur of 'sorry', before his father's voice came in on a slightly less clear channel.

"Are you sure?"

"I have them on my scanner now. Two kids, one down a cliff on a ledge, the other at the top with a rope. Costumes not so far from our uniforms, and a Thunderbird Two go-cart that I have to get a photo of for Virgil. Provided it doesn't have a camera detector, of course. I can see the walkie-talkies from here."

"Okay then, son. Come on home."

Scott took a deep breath, still watching their antics on the screen. It was a not inconsiderable cliff, and if one of the kids was to slip and fall he might be needed for real.

"Father, I think they might be the candidates we're looking for. They're about nine and ten, obviously put a lot of effort into this. It's not exactly the situation we discussed, but how about I go speak to their parents about bringing them for a trip over to Tracy Island? Say we're concerned about fake callouts. That would even explain how come I'm not going to ask them to keep it secret."

"I dropped the ball this time," John said. "Sorry, Father. I'll do better."

There was an audible 'click' as whatever Jeff wanted to say to his space monitor was done in private. Scott spent the time watching the 'rescue'. That was a very passable sash that the kid at the top of the cliff was wearing - they might have managed to keep a lid on photos, but it was way too good for coincidence. He guessed someone, at some time, had made a sketch and posted it online. There wasn't a whole lot even Brains could do about that.

The second 'click' brought his attention back to the radio.

"Go for it, son. Use your judgment. Just let us know if we're expecting guests. I expect your grandmother will want to cook, and I want everything to be picture perfect."

"Almost as if it was staged?"

"Exactly."

Scott straightened his uniform before climbing out of the hatch and heading through the scrub towards the location where the two boys, now off the dangerously steep ground, were still playing their game. He needed to make a good impression. Just the sort of impression that Scott Tracy, ex military man, would make. If he was him. Which, for now, he wasn't. Man, this was confusing. He was very glad he hadn't spent the last six months worrying about it.

Missing Scene 3. The day after the final events in the "Cry Wolf" episode:

"Have you seen the papers?" Virgil asked as he came into the living room.

He promptly realised that the question was redundant, as three newspapers were lowered. Alone of his brothers, he preferred reading on-screen to printing everything out, and today there was a particularly high and rather unstable-looking pile of newsprint next to the coffee pot on the table.

Scott flat out grinned at him, waving vaguely at the pile. "Maybe not all of them, but a good selection. Bob and Tony have done us proud. Which one were you reading?"

"The New York Times. They have a great editorial on the dangers of hoax callouts for all the rescue services, and a pretty good description of 'Scott: tall, dark-haired and blue-eyed pilot of Thunderbird One'. No speculation on who this Scott might be, sadly."

"They left that to the British papers," Gordon said. "'Can five matching names really be a coincidence?' - that's the Telegraph. 'The names of the IR operatives match those of the sons of billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Tracy' - The Times. 'We know who you are, IR!' - that's the Sun. 'Tracy family run IR from secret lunar base' - that's the Daily Sport. I've no idea where they got the lunar idea from, though. They don't say."

Scott burst out laughing, putting a hand out for the paper in question, and Gordon sorted it from a small heap of discards at his feet and handed it over. "Don't worry about it. They have an obsession with the moon going back decades. Confused the hell out of me, the first time I went to buy a paper in England. Ten papers with headlines about the Russian elections, and the Daily Sport saying Texaco had found oil on the moon."

"You couldn't get oil on the moon," Alan said.

"Apparently they never let reality get in the way of a good story. Anyway..." Scott raised his eyebrows at Alan, and from his angle Virgil could see their youngest brother tucking a colour supplement away as if he'd only ever been looking at the more serious stories.

"The Aussie press is just the same," Alan said. "More focus on the kids, especially in the local press, but plenty of speculation. And you were dead right, Scott. The Sydney Morning Herald has an interview with one of those surfers. He stops short of saying it was Gordon Tracy who rescued them, but it's quite clear that's what he thought."

"John says the TV stations are having the same sort of discussion the world over," Jeff said, arriving with his favourite mug and sitting down behind his desk. "I have one concern, though. Several of the papers have reported on the 'security precautions' we used with Bob and Tony. Not one of them has thought it odd yet."

Gordon kicked at the pile at his feet in disgust. "You're kidding! But that's bound to change, isn't it? Once they start analysing it a bit more, they're bound to realise it makes no sense?"

Jeff tapped a key on his keyboard with a flourish and sat back, picking up his mug again. "I sincerely hope so. If not, we have more work to do."

Missing Scene 4. Three days later:

"I can't believe journalists are so stupid!" Alan slammed the paper he'd been reading down so hard that the cups on the table rattled and one, fortunately empty, tipped over. "'Tracy Sons Groomed for IR from Birth' - I ask you! What do we do now? Hide out here forever? I have things to do!"

"Blonde or brunette?" queried Virgil from the piano stool, breaking into a slow waltz.

Alan favoured him with an icy glare. "Actually, Virgil, I need to renew my racing license in person, because if it expires I have to go through safety training again. I thought it might be better if I took my shift on Five instead."

Virgil said nothing, but the waltz segued into the Star Trek theme and Alan sat back with no more than an annoyed snort.

"He's right, though," Gordon said. "Can't we drop a few hints? Write some anonymous letters pointing out what we need pointed out?"

"Penny's tried." Virgil stopped playing in order to wave a hand in frustration. "The papers took the attitude that she was obviously distressed that Father hadn't taken her into his confidence. It made one local paper in England and that was it. I think she was rather embarrassed."

"But we have to do something," Gordon said. "This can't carry on. Father's spending hours on the phone trying to keep things sane. Even so, every switchboard at Tracy Industries is jammed solid with people asking about IR. He can't --"

He broke off as the phone in the corner rang. Virgil reached out and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Uh, who?"

"Sorry, I think you have a wrong number." He put it down again, eyebrows raised. "That was the Washington Post, asking to speak to the head of IR."

The resulting silence was broken by the phone ringing again, and an almost identical conversation.

"Who?" asked Alan.

"Sydney Herald."

"How'd they get this number?" Gordon queried.

"Who knows?" As the phone rang for a third time, Virgil picked it up, listened briefly, put it down and unplugged it. "Anyone who needs to talk to us will know one of the other numbers."

As if in response, another phone, this one higher-pitched, began to ring from the direction of the kitchen, and then Kyrano's voice could be heard.

"International Rescue, you say? I fear you are mistaken, sir. Good day."

Alan groaned dramatically, and for once it seemed entirely justified.

Missing Scene 5. The following Friday, in a TV studio in California:

"Our special guest tonight...Mr Scott Tracy!"

Scott swallowed hard, listening to the applause and waiting for the moment when he should walk out. He hated this sort of thing - but this time, it simply had to be done. He straightened the jacket of his suit, plastered what he hoped wasn't too obviously a fake smile on his face, and strode out onto the studio floor, trying not to look as terrified as he felt. Alan or Gordon would have been so very much better at this. They both had far more experience at being interviewed than he did.

"Which is precisely why it should be you," his father had said. "You never talk to the press. The media will sit up and take notice."

They had, too. Scott had rapidly found himself with the pick of any chat show he wanted, anywhere on the planet. Having taken the advice of Tracy Industries' head publicist, he'd turned all of them down in favour of an interview on a much more serious late night news program, most of whose interviewees were politicians and academics. He hoped this would get him taken more seriously. Provided he could manage not to fall over his own tongue - or, first, his own feet. On the screen, TV lighting looked relatively normal. Now he was here, it was horrible - dazzling bright, and the floor was a tangle of cables. Out in the shadows he knew there was an audience, but he could see no more than a blur of faces in the bank of seating beyond the camera operators. He'd almost rather have been on the end of Thunderbird Two's winch in a hurricane.

He at least made it onto the set in one piece, and sat down with some relief, trying to orient himself. There were lights in his eyes, and cameras everywhere - he had no idea where to look, and fell back on Alan's advice. 'Looking at the interviewer's always OK. Better than the wrong camera. They'll switch to the one you are looking at, of course...but it makes you look like a novice.'

Which I am. Scott pushed that to the back of his mind, settled himself more comfortably on the chair, and made eye contact with his interviewer. The applause died away, and with the ease of long practice Eddie Kerr turned slightly, leaned one elbow on his chrome-and-glass desk, and gave Scott his trademark sceptical gaze.

"So, Scott. I hear a lot of people think your family runs International Rescue. The question we all want to hear you answer tonight is, of course, are they right?"

"No. One hundred percent no." Scott tried to sound decisive. 'Pretend you're reassuring someone on a rescue,' Virgil had said. Alan had told him never to show fear in the face of a reporter, it was like blood to a shark. He suspected that in practice they were both saying the same thing.

"The evidence is compelling, you must agree. The sheer coincidence of the names is staggering."

"Way too staggering." Scott sat forward, one of the few bits of TV body language he was sure he could use correctly, and tried to look sincere. "Would anyone in IR's situation really use their own first names in public? Especially when those names are so closely linked together in another context?"

"It does seem a little careless," Eddie said. "Or maybe just a little arrogant. How can we know you're not frantically backpedalling now you've been outed?"

"You really can't," Scott said. "But that's not why I agreed to be interviewed. There's a bigger problem."

Eddie frowned, and indicated for him to continue, and Scott mentally crossed his fingers and turned to the camera that he was almost certain Eddie was looking into.

"People are calling us for help. They're calling us at home, they're calling my father's secretary, they're calling Tracy Industries' head office, they're calling every subsidiary we have. They're even calling companies we have contracts with! But we can't help them! Of course we are doing our best to make sure that the authorities get the details as quickly as possible - but the delay might be time that someone doesn't have. People have to contact the emergency services. Not us. Please. Before someone dies."

There were a few gasps and murmurs from the audience, and a distinct pause before Eddie said, "But really, Scott, how can we not think that the rumours are correct? Take International Rescue's aquanaut, for instance. Several people have described him as a startlingly good swimmer, about six feet tall, with red hair, and in his early twenties. Isn't that an accurate description of your brother Gordon, the Olympic champion?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Scott saw the giant screens at the back of the studio come to life, one showing footage of Gordon swimming, the other a closeup of him on the podium at the Olympics, wearing a grin so wide it really did appear to stretch from ear to ear. They'd discussed what to do in this case beforehand, knowing that Gordon was the most likely example to be used due to the apparent coincidence of both his looks and his talents. Despite Alan's best efforts, he'd yet to persuade anyone that Thunderbird Six should be a race car.

Sorry, Gordo. I'm afraid your medical history is about to become hot news. Scott shook his head, and allowed his determinedly cheerful expression to fade. "It's an accurate description of my brother Gordon as he should have been. Sadly, since winning the Olympics he's had a high speed hydrofoil accident. He's making a good recovery, but much of the damage will be permanent. Ask anyone who follows swimming when the last time was that they saw him. He was invalided out of WASP, and he doesn't swim competitively any more. I doubt he ever will again. He still walks with a stick."

Kerr's face lost some of its composure - clearly he hadn't known that, and Scott suspected some poor researcher was in for a roasting later. A serious injury to one of Jeff Tracy's sons should have been headline news. Would have been, even, except that the same day that details had been released to the press, a plane full of American holidaymakers had crashed shortly after takeoff with no survivors. The hydrofoil crash had been relegated to a couple of paragraphs in the papers, and a brief mention on the TV news.

The man was a professional, though. A swift gathering of himself, and he carried on. "The rest of you, though, seem to fit. Why can't you be the pilot of Thunderbird One that the world thinks you are? You left the Air Force shortly before International Rescue began operations. Why would you do that, unless you were taking a step up?"

Scott smiled. This question was one he'd spent years answering. It simply didn't hurt any more.

"I'd made it as high as I was going to in the Air Force. I didn't want to fly a desk, and in any case it was important for me to start familiarising myself with how a big company like Tracy Industries is run, and I couldn't do that while still in the Air Force. The clincher was that an opening came up for a test pilot at Tracy Aerospace. I admit it, I got the job because I'm Jeff Tracy's son. But I love doing it and I'm good at it." He paused, just briefly. "And being the boss's son has to be good for something."

"You didn't want to be an astronaut?"

He didn't need to fake the rueful expression. "Lots of people want to be astronauts. Most of us don't make it."

"Your brother John --"

"Is a bestselling writer of astronomy books, who has identified more comets than anyone else in the past two years." Scott smiled again, much more confident now they were back onto questions he'd expected to get. "He doesn't have time to work for International Rescue. Nor does Virgil - when he isn't designing for Tracy Aerospace, he's painting or playing piano. Alan, though..."

"Alan is your youngest brother?" Kerr asked, doubtless for the benefit of the audience. "The ex-astronaut and occasional racing driver? Considerably more occasional since International Rescue appeared on our screens?"

"Yes, that's right." Scott permitted himself a grin. "You got me there. Alan has plenty of free time. Maybe he runs International Rescue."

There was a burst of laughter from the audience. It seemed Alan's carefully cultivated public image as a party animal and ladies' man was some use after all.

Eddie Kerr nodded. "So, Scott, it seems that you have been misrepresented. Are you angry?"

He'd considered this one beforehand, too. "No. I can absolutely see why they want to remain anonymous. Provided we can put a stop to the emergency calls going to the wrong place, I don't have an issue with them using our names as codenames. I'm flattered, even. And, guys, if you're ever recruiting..."

Kerr laughed and leaned back in his chair, the audience laughed, the sign for the commercial break came up, and Scott felt the knot of concern loosen inside his chest. Job done, to the best of his abilities. He thought it was good enough. He desperately hoped that it would be.

Missing Scene 6. A week later, outside a nightclub:

"But I tell you, I work for International Rescue! I'm due some respect!"

The larger of the two bouncers, the one holding Alan's right arm, glanced at his shaven-headed colleague and rolled his eyes. "Sure you are, Mr Tracy. And this is us respectfully suggesting that it's time for you to go home and get some sleep."

"Sleep? I don't need sleep! I was just telling my friends all about how I rescued five gorgeous babes. Gorgeous, they were. An entire synchronised swimming team. Perfectly matched."

"Course you did, sir. Mind your head, now."

Alan didn't resist as he was guided extremely competently into the back seat of a waiting cab, where he slumped unsteadily against the far door.

"Where are you staying, sir?"

"The Sher...Shera... That big hotel in the middle of town. The one with the towers. And the flags. Lots of flags."

The shaven-headed bouncer unsuccessfully tried to hide a smile, and his colleague said, "That'll be the Sheraton."

"He going to pay me?" the cab driver asked.

The first bouncer opened the front door, crouched down and leaned in, and lowered his voice so that anyone even a quarter as drunk as Alan was pretending to be wouldn't have picked it up. "That's Alan Tracy. You know - International Rescue pretend to be him and his brothers? His dad owns half of Manhattan. See he gets into the hotel safely, you'll get paid. Probably triple."

The driver nodded and fired up the engine. "Don't you worry about a thing, Mr Tracy. I'll get you back safe. Just you sit back and enjoy the ride. So, how's it feel to be mistaken for International Rescue?"

"We are International Resh..." he protested.

In the mirror he could see the man's broad grin. "And an honour it is to drive you, sir. I'll be telling my kids all about it."

"Oh, no! It's a secret. Nobody knows. Only a few people on that TV show, anyway."

There was a choked splutter from the front seat, and Alan hid a delighted grin, well satisfied. He was pretty sure that, from now on, the more they cried wolf, the safer their secret would be.