The journey had been long and difficult, but at last the ships docked at the harbour in Peru. It seemed as though the dockside crew had been awaiting their arrival, as they almost immediately swung into action with their cranes. The ship crews opened the access doors to the hold and readied the chains for unloading the vast quantities of equipment they had brought with them. Large boxes, containers, entire rail vehicles, and sections of rail soon began to accumulate on the dockside.
A veritable army of supplies soon emerged- construction equipment, rails, sleepers, more ballast than they knew what to do with, support vehicles, and some sleeping coaches for them to rest in.
Pipp glanced about. "Signal's poor," she said. "Not that surprising, seeing as this is the middle of nowhere."
"Probably also for the best," Zipp noted.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"We wouldn't want any streams giving our location away, would we?"
Pipp huffed. "I'd put a filter on it! Nobody would be able to tell where we were!"
"You do have a habit of announcing where you are on a stream, though."
"Girls?" Lord Haven called. "If you're quite done bickering we have a railway to build. Come here and take a look at this map."
As the yard crews martialled the rail vehicles into a logical order, Lord Haven, now dressed in the style of a Victorian explorer, pointed on the map. "This is us," he said, pointing to the dockside. "And the section we are going to need to rebuild is here. The section inbetween, according to what research I was able to do, is still in usable condition. And I discovered there's a passing loop for us to stable our equipment in before we head into rebuilding the line."
Lady Haven, who was dressed similarly to her husband, spoke up. "Now then, you three," she said. "It's going to be hot and humid out there, and as such you will need to drink plenty of water to avoid getting dehydrated."
"What about you two?" Zipp asked. "We'll be driving, I assume."
"Correct," Lord Haven said. "We'll be joining the clearing team, leading from the front. Thunder! Is Purbeck 1 ready for takeoff?"
"Yes sir!" Thunder replied. "I'll scout from the skies and look for any obstructions!" Minutes later, an ex-RAF Sea King lifted off and flew towards the jungle.
Minutes later, the train joined it, the glorious roar of twin Crompton engines sounding through the dockside as they started down the Trans-Amazon Railway.
"This is very wobbly!" Charles complained. "There's also a big tree overhanging onto the track!"
The train was forced to stop as the advance crew got out and began hacking their way through the undergrowth with machetes. After what felt like hours, the line ahead was finally clear enough to navigate, and the train began to move off once more.
"Stop!" Pipp called, and the train screeched to a halt.
"What's wrong?" Zipp radioed.
"I left my phone back at the dock!"
Sophie rolled her eyes. "Seriously?"
"I'll send somebody back to go and get it," Lord Haven radioed. "But please don't do it again. We're supposed to averaging 90 miles a day, and we've only done 5."
Things weren't going much better in Milan. "I'm convinced it said baggage handling was this way," Sunny said.
"We need to go to baggage reclaim, not baggage handling," Argyle pointed out. "Baggage handling is for people who load things onto flights, not return them to passengers."
Sunny went bright red. "Sorry."
Argyle rubbed her head. "Not to worry. It's an easy mistake for first time flyers."
"And probably last time as well," Sunny replied, looking at the floor and wobbling a bit. "That was really rough."
"Just be glad the flight was that short," Goldie said. "You were spared the horrors of airline food."
They reached the baggage carousel, where a message had appeared on one of the screens. The following passengers have had their baggage loaded onto another flight due to delays.
In that list was their names. "Really?" Argyle asked.
"Looks like we're filling out a baggage transfer form," Goldie sighed. "Where did you say our hotel the airline had booked us into was?"
Argyle handed her the address, and Goldie went off to fill out the forms.
"What's going on?" Sunny asked.
"The short version is that the airline loaded our bags onto the wrong flight, and we'll need to get them delivered to the hotel. Your mom's dealing with that as she speaks a bit of Italian and I speak none at all."
Sunny nodded. "Another reason to travel by train, I guess. Your bag is always with you."
"Unfortunately, Eurostar doesn't run to Milan."
Goldie came back a few minutes later, looking exhausted. "Well, that was more of a hassle than it needed to be," she said. "The language barrier really didn't help either. The good thing is the hotel is only a few blocks down from here, so how about we go get something to eat?"
"Perhaps we should wait until evening," Argyle said. "It's only 4 in the afternoon now- time zones are confusing, I know."
"I meant something like a coffee and ice cream or similar," Goldie explained. "That's often quite good to keep you going in a new place with partial jetlag."
"That sounds great," Sunny said, who was beginning to feel a bit off from the jetlag. "I could do with a boost."
"Remember your body thinks it's an hour earlier than it actually is," Goldie explained. "There used to be this old trick where you could travel from France to Britain by ferry and arrive before you'd left."
As they exited the airport with what little baggage they had, none of them saw Opaline observing them from nearby with a pair of binoculars. "Perfect," she said. "They've arrived." She picked up a radio. "Ready the assets for action. Attach unit 3503 to the Bernina Express at Tirano. I shall be in position to support you shortly."
Things were going a bit smoother in Northern Ireland. The Moonbows had arrived and were driving across the top end of the Emerald Isle. "Well, new territory for all of us!" Izzy said, excitedly. "I've never been here before!"
"I went through Belfast on my way to an oil rig once," Isaac said. "There's quite a bit of oil in the North Sea."
"Remember why we're here, though," Aurora said. "Focus on the task. We're not on holiday."
"I know," Isaac replied. "All I need to do is follow the signs for the Giant's Causeway and we should get there."
Izzy smiled. "How about we sing? Sunny and I found that was an efficient way of skipping the boring bits of travel."
"The island isn't really big enough for that exploit," Aurora explained. "It works with England as that's huge, but the same can hardly be said for Northern Ireland."
The crew rattled along when they suddenly found themselves near the coast. "Ah! Bushmills!" Izzy said. "I saw that on the map for driving to the Giant's Causeway! Not far to go!"
"There's no need to get so excited," Isaac said. "Seriously, where does she get her energy from?"
After a few more minutes, the car arrived at a car park, with the Giant's Causeway stretching before them. But the place was rather busier than they were anticipating.
"Is it normal for guys in uniform to be walking over them?" Aurora asked.
Large numbers of soldiers seemed to sweeping the surface of the rocks to find something. Isaac got out a pair of binoculars and took a closer look. "That's surprising," he said. "They're from PHALANX."
"PHALANX?" Izzy asked.
"They're a private military company. They did security on a fracking plant I worked on once. We'll need to move carefully to avoid being spotted."
They left the car and split up, figuring it would be harder to find them if they were split up, and made their way across the causeway. Luckily, most of the men in uniform were clearly meant to be looking elsewhere before they were hunting. One man shouted something and it caused them to head away from the scene.
That was their chance. The trio made their way across to a point where they had been previously looking. Izzy was first to get there, and spotted a box at the bottom. She began to whinch it up with a rope before depositing it on the side of the rocks. She waved her parents over.
"What could be in it?" Aurora asked.
"I don't know, but if there were mercernaries looking for it the object inside must be valuable," Isaac said. "Let's get it back to the car."
"I don't think so," said a voice. The trio looked around in surprise when a red dot suddenly appeared on Izzy's chest.
"Don't move," Aurora whispered.
"HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!" bellowed a voice. The trio did as ordered.
Several men stormed over, and cuffed them. "You three won't be causing any more trouble."