A Texas oil well fire is extinguished by International Rescue, but stewing over the proceeding is Ned Cook, a famous TV news personality, who has been barred from taping IR in action. As Scott and Virgil take off for home, Cook has his cameraman, Joe, record Thunderbird One’s takeoff and flight, which brings on pursuit of Ned and Joe's TV truck by Scott. Scott uses an energy ray to erase Cook's recording, then resumes course for home. But the delay proves fortuitous for Scott, for over the Pacific Ocean Virgil is tracked by the USS Sentinal, a surface combatant capable of hundreds of knots. The ship scans Thunderbird Two and cannot identify the craft, and gets word from Washington to treat the unidentified aircraft as hostile. Missiles are launched at Virgil, who radios a distress call to Tracy Island before a second salvo blasts the tail section of Thunderbird Two and injures Virgil. Jeff Tracy contacts Washington and the Sentinel finally learns of Thunderbird Two's identity, but even though Virgil nurses the crippled craft home, his injury and the craft's heavy damage put Thunderbird Two out of action until parts and pieces for the ship can arrive for IR's mammoth robot repair station to go into action. In the interregnum, as Virgil recovers, the family watch a live telecast of the world's most audacious engineering project - the moving of the Empire State Building to a new location in downtown New York City. Covering the event is Ned Cook, but as the mammoth skyscraper is moved, the ground begins to crack, and just before signing off Cook and Joe are swallowed in a mammoth sinkhole, just before the building collapses into the ground, burying both men alive. They somehow survive, but with Thunderbird Two crippled there is no possibility of IR pulling off a rescue - until Virgil realizes the help they need is available from an unlikely source.