AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to TB'S LMC (who is much better at the spooky stuff than me - you should check out her TIWF Halloween Challenge co-winner, "Labyrinth!") for a great beta job that really helped this story come together. Also thanks to Amy C. for the extra medical input after the Challenge, which I've incorporated here and I think adds quite a bit to the realism.

If you're a TIWF member, this version of Evocation isn't quite the same as the one you've already read. I've rewritten and expanded it. :-)

EVOCATION

Chapter One

Sometimes, the rescue business was just one long endurance test.

Scott Tracy stood behind the pilot's seat in the cockpit of Thunderbird Two, squinting past the throbbing pain of his headache at the relentless fall of the rain. Weariness burned like hot grit behind his eyes, every muscle in his body ached – he'd been running on fumes now for more hours than he could remember. If it hadn't been for a liberal dose of one of Brains' more closely-guarded secrets, the cocktail of natural stimulants his brothers Alan and Gordon had dubbed Rock It Power (which they swore they hadn't engineered on purpose to get that oh, so encouraging acronym), he seriously doubted he'd still be on his feet at all. Not for the first time, he was grateful that he and his father had overcome their initial doubts and decided to okay the concoction for testing back when their chief engineer had first proposed it. Rigorous training and the maintenance of a high level of fitness would always remain an International Rescue operative's first lines of defense, but sometimes you just had to do what you had to do to stay in the game.

Sixty feet below him the great green transport's forward floodlights bathed the Costa Rican jungle in a fierce blue-white glare. He felt the knotted tension in his shoulders relax a little as he saw what he was waiting for – the mud-streaked outline of the Firefly trundling slowly into view up what was left of the trail, the downpour sluicing chunks of dirt and clumps of leaves and twigs from her yellow paintwork. They weren't out of the woods yet, though, literally or figuratively – despite her massive weight and low center of gravity, the Firefly still struggled for traction on the critically oversaturated ground. As Scott watched, she slipped sideways, scooping a foot-high wall of water and thick, greasy mud before the edges of her caterpillar treads. After a moment's hesitation, she dug in, ground forward a few more feet, and slipped again.

Scott opened his mouth; remembered almost immediately that he'd lost the military grade microtransmitter mounted behind his right ear in that last unplanned immersion in the muck. Making a mental note to talk to Brains about a modification, he raised his left arm instead, scraping off a layer of mud so he could more or less see the screen of his wristcom. "Firefly from Scott. How's it going, Virg?"

Virgil had his screen off, which meant he was concentrating hard and didn't want to deal with distractions. Scott could hear how tight his brother's jaw was. "We'll make it. And if Alan tells me one more time that the secret to driving in mud is momentum, I'll feed him a yard of this crap personally."

Scott smiled a little, feeling some of the drier layers crack at the corners of his mouth. "I'll get the RVs ready downstairs in case you need 'em."

"FAB," Virgil grunted, although it sounded more like punctuation than agreement.

"Think we're gonna have to haul her in?" Alan entered the cockpit behind Scott.

Scott took the bottle of water and analgesic pack from his youngest brother without looking round, eyes still fixed on the Firefly's progress. "Think Virg's gonna let us, after you pushed his buttons like that?" One of the painkiller tablets was broken and he grimaced a little at the bitter taste. "He'll get her up that ramp now if he has to carry her on his back."

"Hey, I know what I'm talking about. Which one of us drove the Bolivia-Chile Rally last year? Give you a hint, it doesn't start with a 'V.'"

Scott winced as the Firefly lost traction again, skewing to the right, losing several feet of ground. He could almost hear the invective Virgil was probably muttering right now under his breath. "I'm not saying you're wrong, you know."

"Whoa! Do I get to tell him you said that?"

"Depends on whether you want to spend the next forty-eight hours in the hangar hosing down every single piece of equipment we brought with us," Scott grinned. "Never pays to be the bearer of bad news."

He glanced around at Alan then, letting out a short laugh at the sight. The youngest Tracy was covered in layers of brown mud from head to foot; even his hair was stiff with it. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Al, but I don't remember you looking this bad after the Bolivia-Chile run."

"Pots, kettles, bro. Seen yourself in a mirror lately?"

Scott rolled his eyes and headed toward the door at the back of the cockpit. "I'm going down to the pod. Get ready to raise her on my signal. And keep an eye on the stabilizers – if she starts tipping even a fraction of an inch, yell."

He was right about Virgil, of course. It took him another twenty minutes to do it, but he got the Firefly up the ramp and into the pod under her own steam. His only concession was not taking the time to turn around to back her in, as he would normally have done. Scott was sure he'd considered it, though.

As soon as the pod door was up and locked and Thunderbird Two had settled back down over it like a giant nesting hen, Scott gathered his exhausted, filthy crew and started sending them through the showers in shifts.

It had been a long, punishing slog this time. Several days of torrential rain had pounded San Jose, the Costa Rican capital city, coming down at a rate of more than three inches an hour at its peak. Weakened by the deluge, the side of a mountain had collapsed over one of the city's suburbs, burying it alive. As was often the case, the speed of their craft enabled them to be first on the scene after only the most local of responders, and the IR crew had managed to use their sophisticated imaging equipment to snatch twenty living victims, including four children, from the suddenly liquid earth. After that, it had been three days of recovering bodies.

It was the children that still got to them the worst. One of the buildings destroyed by the landslide had been an orphanage that Scott remembered making the news a decade back, for being the first in the region to become completely self-sufficient using hydroponic agriculture systems. There was nothing left of it now but an anonymous pile of mud and rubble, and there had been no survivors.

Sometimes, being too tired to think could be a blessing.

Reserving Virgil for the longer leg of the flight home, Scott assigned Gordon to pilot Two for the first twenty-minute hop northward to where they had left Thunderbird One, hidden inside an old hangar at a small airfield deep in the jungle. After his initial flyby and reconnaissance of the San Jose disaster situation, Scott had realized that the ground was deteriorating so rapidly that having both Thunderbirds on scene would be more of a liability than an asset this time. A rapid consult with Eduardo Tamayo, their closest agent in the region, had resulted in his suggestion of One's current location. The airfield had apparently been built by a foreign gold mining concern more than half a century ago, but was now abandoned. "She'll be safe there," Eduardo had told them. "The locals won't go near the place. They say it's haunted by evil spirits."

"How much longer can it rain like this?" Tin-Tin sat in the rear row of seats, legs pulled up against her chest, arms hugged tight around them. Her eyes were brooding as she watched lightning trace a burning trail down the dark sky ahead. "It's terrible."

"Guess that's why they call it a rain forest," Alan deadpanned, and Tin-Tin was about to round on him when she saw the smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. She snorted and dug her elbow in the direction of his ribs, which he dodged with practiced ease. She relaxed a little, then, letting him reach out and pull her against his shoulder.

Scattered applause greeted Virgil's arrival from the galley with a tray of coffee. Scott nodded his approval as his brother handed around the mugs. "Thanks, Virg. Good thinking."

"Do I get a raise?" Virgil lowered his bulk into the seat beside him with a grateful exhalation.

"Thunderbird Five from Thunderbird Two. Two minutes out from Las Muertas."

"FAB, Thunderbird Two," John's voice came back after a second, over the cockpit speakers. "Take it easy on the way home, guys."

"Copy that," Gordon said. "I don't know about anyone else, but I'm planning to sleep for a week."

"But, Gordon, Mrs. Tracy told me she baked fresh pecan pie for us," Tin-Tin teased, her smile lightening the effect of the deep smudges of weariness under her eyes. "If you sleep that long, there won't even be crumbs left."

"Change of plan," Gordon decided. "Pie first. Then sleep."

That raised murmurs of agreement all around. Grandma dipping into her stash of pecans, picked fresh annually on her sister Laura's family farm in Oklahoma and vacuum sealed for the journey to Tracy Island, was never an occasion any of them wanted to miss, no matter how tired they were.

"Turning on final," Gordon said, shifting smoothly to the business at hand. "Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, and return your seats to the upright position."

"Can you help me with my tray table?" Alan asked Tin-Tin innocently. She leaned close and whispered something in his ear, and he stifled a laugh. In front of them, Scott and Virgil exchanged indulgent eyerolls.

Looking ahead again as Thunderbird Two completed her bank on to final approach, Scott spotted the bright pinpoints of the portable runway lights they'd laid down coming into view directly in front of them, slowly growing closer as Two lost altitude.

And suddenly, they were gone.

"What the hell..?" Gordon said, startled.

Before Scott could even react, every light in the cabin went out.

"Gordon!" he rapped into the sudden darkness. "What's going on?"

"We just lost all power," came his brother's tense response.

A stab of lightning briefly illuminated Virgil as he rose to his feet and headed forward. "Hit the backups," he ordered. "And get the emergency lights online."

"Backups are dead, too," Gordon said tightly. "No lights, no power. No engines."

Scott abruptly realized he was right – he could no longer hear the familiar high pitched whine of Thunderbird Two's turbines.

"That's impossible!" Virgil was snapping at Gordon. "Do you know how many backup systems we have on this ship?"

"No, but I'm sure you're about to tell me."

From the brief scuffling sounds and what he could make out as his eyes adjusted, Scott figured out that Virgil had reclaimed Two's pilot seat from Gordon. Scott heard a few clicking sounds and then his brother swore softly under his breath. "Virg, what's the status?"

He didn't like the disbelief growing in Virgil's response. "Gordon's right, all systems are down. Every single one of them. Somebody get me a flashlight so I can run the loss-of-all-generators checklist."

"No can do," Alan said from the rear of the cockpit. "Flashlights are dead, too."

"That's impossible," Tin-Tin exclaimed.

"Anybody else hearing an echo in here?" Gordon's voice was too weary to relay any real sarcasm.

Scott raised his wrist…and realized that his wristcom was every bit as useless as the rest of their equipment. "Coms are down."

"Use your…" Alan's voice broke off; Scott twisted to see his youngest brother's dim outline staring at his own inert wrist communicator. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Crash positions," Virgil said tightly. "We're going down. Brace yourselves… I can't release the pod, so it could get a little rough."

The last thing Scott remembered thinking before the point of no return was that at least they'd been lined up for a landing before the power went out. If they'd had to turn to find the runway, they'd really have been in trouble.