Escape

  The sound of the blow, metal against human flesh, was a sickening thud. Huddled inside the dispensary, both Luke and Charla flinched.

  The victim went down, and a third man quickly stepped between him and his boss.

  Mr. Big wasn’t finished yet. “You’ll find it,” he agreed, “or the next thing you’ll find will be a bullet in your head!”

  “It’s too late now, boss,” reasoned the third man. “It’ll be dark soon. We’ll have to look for it in the morning. What can happen to it? There’s nobody here but us.”

  In the gloom of the dispensary, Luke and Charla exchanged an agonized look. Neither of them dared speak until the voices of the three men faded.

  “Where are they?” asked Charla in something much less than a whisper.

  “Probably in the main building,” breathed Luke. “Or maybe down by the beach, getting stuff from the plane. Either way, we can’t risk leaving now.”

  She nodded. “But when?”

  In the diminishing light, she felt rather than saw Luke’s shrug.

  Night fell quickly in the tropics. With the thick rain forest blocking even starlight, the darkness in the dispensary became total and suffocating. There was an isolation to it, Luke thought. He knew Charla was only a few inches away, but he could not see her at all. They wouldn’t make it ten feet in the jungle in this blackness.

  They were stuck here until morning — stuck here together, yet separated by a complete absence of light.

  He felt her hand steal into his. Her fingers were cold as ice.

  Fear.

  Charla couldn’t believe some of things she used to consider fear. Like the butterflies as she crouched in the blocks, waiting for the starter’s gun in an important race.

  Tension, sure. Doubts, always. But fear?

  These last few weeks had taught her the true meaning of fear: losing the captain at sea, dangling like shark bait from a tiny raft, facing a lifetime marooned.

  And now cowering in the pitch-black of the dispensary, hiding from certain death.

  That was fear.

  All through the terrible night, she revisited her old anxieties: that moment, still in midair after the dismount from the balance beam, not yet knowing if she could stick the landing.

  Nerve-wracking? Of course. Gut-wrenching? Maybe. Fear? Not even close.

  Even her ultimate old fear — the disappointment on her father’s face as he held up the stopwatch: “Now that wasn’t exactly a personal best, was it?” — made her smile in the darkness. In this place, this situation, who cared about a few hundredths of a second?

  Her whole life so far had consisted of training and striving for athletic perfection. And right now that seemed about as important as ice cubes in the Arctic ….

  “Charla — wake up.”

  Luke knelt before her, one hand over her mouth, the other shaking her by the shoulder.

  She looked out the smeared, cracked glass. It was still dark, with just the first few tendrils of dawn creeping across the sky.

  “Let’s get out into the trees,” Luke whispered. “Then we can wait for the light and take off.”

  They invested precious seconds closing the rickety door, determined that the dispensary should look as if no one had been there for decades. Then they were crawling through tightly woven underbrush, praying that the screeching of the awakening birds was covering the rustle of their movements.

  They were well away from the Quonset huts by sunup. They found the broken concrete of the old runway with a minimum of wandering. From there, they were able to point themselves in the direction of their own side of the island.

  Charla let out a mournful sigh. “Can you believe that they’re back so soon? We almost walked out of the hut right in their faces!”

  “I thought we’d have more time,” Luke agreed, hefting the pillowcase over his shoulder. “Man, was our signal fire a bust or what? We didn’t even see a plane or boat, much less get rescued!”

  “Nobody’s looking for us,” Charla reminded him. “We’re dead, remember?”

  It was true. Mr. Radford, the Phoenix’s mate who had abandoned them, was safely back on dry land. The smugglers had left behind a USA Today with the whole story — Radford telling the world that the six kids in his charge had all died in the shipwreck.

  “Great guy, that Rat-face,” said Luke bitterly. “He has the same warm, fuzzy personality as the Green Blimp back there.”

  Charla shuddered visibly. “That was awful! I can still hear the sound it made when he hit that man! I wonder what they lost.”

  “It must have been something important,” Luke said grimly. “Mr. Big wouldn’t threaten to kill somebody just to scare him. He’s really ready to shoot that guy.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments, listening to the rustling of the palms as a slight wind blew. Luke reached up to brush a bug from his cheek. But instead of an insect, he felt his hand close on a small piece of paper.

  Litter? In the jungle?

  He looked down and saw Benjamin Franklin staring back at him. This was a hundred-dollar bill! Wordlessly, he showed it to Charla.

  “Money!” she breathed.

  Then they saw it, lying in the underbrush, its lock sprung — a black suitcase. It gaped open, and out of it poured neat bundles of bills, all hundreds.

  “Oh, wow!” Luke groaned. “Now we know what they lost, and why they’re so upset about it.”

  Mesmerized, Charla dropped to her knees and ran her hands over the pile of money. “In my neighborhood,” she whispered, “this could buy — my neighborhood!”

  “There’s got to be a couple of million at least.” Luke nodded. “They’re going to come after it, no question.”

  Charla looked stricken. “Yeah, but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack! It was a total accident that we found it! They’ll have to search the island fern by fern. They’ll stumble on our camp twenty times before they ever track down this suitcase!”

  Luke crouched beside her and began stuffing bundles of bills back into the luggage. “That’s exactly why we have to help them.”

  “Help them?” Her voice was shrill. “We’re dead if they even find out we’re here! How can we help them?”

  “By making the suitcase easier to find,” Luke explained. “We just have to put it somewhere they’re bound to notice.”

  “We can’t lean it up against the door of the Quonset hut,” she pointed out. “They’ll know something’s fishy.”

  “I’m not that stupid,” said Luke. “We’ll just take it closer to their camp and leave it out in the open. The sooner they find it, the sooner they stop looking.”

  * * *

  At the castaways’ camp, the gloom had begun the previous nightfall and had settled into despair with every passing hour.

  Two facts: One, the smugglers were back; and two, Luke and Charla had gone over to the military installation and had not returned.

  Ian mulled over the information every which way, but a single word kept bubbling to the surface: caught. The smugglers had them, and that meant they were probably dead.

  He choked on a lump in his throat. Or maybe they were alive, being interrogated about who they were and who was with them.

  He felt a surge of pride. Luke was strong; he would never talk! But the feeling evaporated in a second as he recalled a TV documentary on interrogation methods. Luke would talk. Everybody talked. Which meant the smugglers could be coming for them right now.

  The night had been terrible. Ian was pretty sure no one had slept, except maybe Will, whose temperature had gone over 101, and who mumbled through fevered dreams. Everybody was sure they should be doing something, but no one could decide what that might be. Though the castaways had no official leader, without Luke they would never agree on a course of action. Luke was the mortar that held them together. And it was beginning to look as if he would never be back.

  “Haggerty can’t be dead,” J.J. assured everyone. “He’s too mean to die. And Charla — who could
catch her?”

  But even he looked worried. And he hid right along with the rest of them when they heard a rustling in the foliage.

  Crouched in the underbrush, Ian let his mind run riot. Would the castaways be discovered? How long could they stay hidden? Could Will keep up?

  And then a surprised voice asked, “Where’d everybody go?”

  “Luke!” cried Will.

  It was interesting, Ian reflected during the celebration that followed. Things were not good and getting worse. Yet the glory of little triumphs like this — welcoming two friends back from the brink of death — would surely rank among his greatest memories. You know — if he lived long enough to have memories.

  As the castaways shared accounts of the last day and night, they were able to piece together what had happened. During a fistfight over a poker game, the door of the smugglers’ plane had been accidentally knocked open, and a suitcase full of money had dropped out over the jungle. Soon a second group of smugglers would arrive, carrying a shipment of elephant tusks, rhino horns, and other illegal animal parts. They were the sellers; Mr. Big was the customer. He needed the lost money to pay for his goods.

  “So we left it where they’re bound to find it,” Charla concluded. “It’s in plain sight in just about the only clear spot over by the air base.”

  Lyssa was horrified. “You helped them?”

  “We helped ourselves,” Luke amended. “The last thing we need is those guys combing the island.”

  Charla shook her head in wonder. “You should have seen it. Millions of dollars just lying there. I swear I was tempted to roll in it.”

  “It’s fake,” scoffed J.J.

  Charla shot him a resentful look. “Even poor people know what money looks like.”

  J.J. was disgusted. “CNC can’t print up a batch of phony bills that look real?”

  Luke groaned. “We all know what you think. Let us think what we think.”

  Later, Luke, Lyssa, and Ian went through the pillowcase and tried to take stock of the supplies from the dispensary.

  Lyssa was dubious. “Is any of this stuff even good after all that time?”

  “There’s no way of knowing,” Ian replied. “I don’t see penicillin, which is what we really need. The rest — ” He shook his head. “I have no idea what most of it is for.”

  “This might help.” Luke fished in the case and came up with the medic’s journal. “Maybe it says something about bullet wounds.”

  All day and half the night, Ian pored over the fifty-six-year-old diary of Captain Hap Skelly, M.D. He devoured the details of Sergeant Holliday’s fire-ant bites, Colonel Dupont’s gout, and Lieutenant Bosco’s stomach flu, searching for the tiniest hint of anything that might help Will. He skipped lunch and dinner too, reading by flashlight when it got dark. He owed it to Will, sure. But there was another reason.

  For weeks, Ian had watched no television, surfed no Internet, and read not a single word. In the anxiety and fear of these terrible weeks, it had never crossed his mind how much he missed information.

  On the beach of a tiny island in the vast Pacific, Ian felt like Ian again.

  Feb. 17, 1945. Having trouble keeping supplies. Who to order from? As far as the army’s concerned, we don’t exist on this tiny island. Can’t even send letters home. Mission is too top secret. Our families must think we’ve vanished off the face of the earth.

  Penicillin ran out weeks ago. Have been using an infusion of bitter melon — a local plant that resembles a small cucumber with acne. Seems to control Holliday’s infection. But am I turning into a witch doctor?

  Will hated the idea from the start. “What’s an infusion?”

  “It’s sort of like making tea out of something,” Ian replied, handing him a steaming cup.

  The patient was appalled. “You guys have been plotting against me! I’ve been minding my own business here, and you’ve been picking weird jungle plants so you can poison me!”

  “Most medicines come from tropical vegetation,” Ian explained. “I saw it in a show about saving the rain forest.”

  “That World War Two doctor said it was safe,” added Luke.

  “Forget it. I won’t drink it.”

  But he did drink it, largely due to his sister’s threat to have it poured down his throat. The complaining was a filibuster. Will never seemed to run out of new ways to describe the taste of bitter-melon tea — skunk juice, crankcase oil, toxic waste, boiled sweat, and Sasquatch drool, to name a few.

  It became so entertaining to listen to his graphic descriptions as the day wore on that they almost lost sight of a very serious reality: Will’s fever was still rising.

  “It’s not working,” Lyssa whispered nervously. “Isn’t there anything else we can give him? How about that stuff from the dispensary?”

  “Well, there is one thing,” Ian ventured reluctantly. “Novocain.”

  “Novocain?” laughed J.J. “What are you going to do — drill his teeth?”

  Ian flushed. “Today Novocain is mostly used by dentists. But it can actually freeze any part of the body for surgery.”

  “You mean surgery on Will?” Lyssa was shaken by the sudden realization of what the younger boy was leading up to. “Shoot his leg full of painkiller and try to cut the bullet out?” She turned blazing eyes on him. “Are you crazy? It’s only a little fever! He’s not that sick!”

  “I agree,” said Ian. “But if he gets that sick, the bullet has to come out.”

  “In a nice clean hospital!” Lyssa added, a shrill edge to her voice. “With a doctor who didn’t learn his job by watching the Surgery Channel!”

  “Nobody’s cutting up anybody,” soothed Luke. “Ian’s just laying out our options.”

  “This isn’t an option,” insisted Lyssa. “Never, never, never!”

  Ian’s expression plainly told her that never might come sooner then she thought.

  * * *

  The second group of smugglers arrived the very next afternoon. Will choked on a mouthful of bitter-melon tea when he spotted the aircraft.

  Lyssa put her hands on her hips. “Oh, come on. Don’t be such a baby.”

  Will kept on gagging and pointing.

  “Plane!” shouted J.J.

  Luke peered through the binoculars. “Twin-engine floatplane,” he reported in a subdued tone. “It’s them, all right.”

  Lyssa’s hope popped before her like a soap bubble. For a few seconds, this plane had carried rescuers and not a fresh set of problems. Oh, God, what if help never came? What would happen to Will?

  Watching her brother was like observing somebody with a bad flu. But while flu built, peaked, and then went away, this was growing worse with every passing moment.

  That evening, Will’s fever went well over 102 degrees. His face was flushed, his eyes were sunken, and he seemed languid and hazy.

  In the middle of the night, he woke up the castaways with loud shouting. When Lyssa finally managed to shake him out of his nightmare, he was annoyed with her.

  “Come on, Lyss, I’m trying to get some sleep. I’m not feeling so great, you know.”

  The next night, he kept everyone up with hours of high-pitched giggling.

  “Hey,” muttered J.J., “lose the laugh track.”

  But the snickers and guffaws continued until almost dawn. At that point, Will fell silent, dozing on and off all day. At four o’clock, his fever topped 103.

  “That’s bad, right?” he asked feebly. “That can’t be good.”

  “You’re burning up,” Ian admitted. “We’re going to take you down to the water and cool you off.”

  Luke and Ian helped Will into the surf. He was really weak, but once in the ocean he seemed better, with a natural buoyancy that made him comfortable in the water.

  Will winced from the pain in his thigh. “Man, that stings!”

  “Salt water’s good for the infection,” Ian reminded him. They had been applying compresses to the wound at every bandage change.

  With a
chest-pounding Tarzan yell, J.J. leaped off the high rocks at the edge of the cove and hit the waves with a drenching splash.

  What a flake, Luke thought in disgust. We’re trying to keep Will from boiling over, and all it means to J.J. is a beach party. Not to mention that it was just plain nuts to make unnecessary noise when the smugglers were on the island. Okay, J.J. made it pretty plain that he believed the whole thing was a CNC hoax. But surely, somewhere in the back of his mind there had to be a sliver of doubt ….

  It had become the castaways’ habit to enter the ocean fully clothed, letting their fatigues wash on their bodies. Then they would undress in the water, throw everything on the rocks, and go for a swim. The tropical sun was so hot that even the thick GI clothes dried almost instantly.

  Luke had just pulled off his shirt when Will disappeared. One second he was bobbing like a cork; the next he had sunk out of sight, leaving barely a ripple.

  J.J. got there first, slapping at the waves, hollering, “Will!”

  Luke grabbed his arms. “Cut it out! I can’t see anything!” He stuck his face under and forced his eyes open, ignoring the stinging of the salt.

  There was Will, curled up peacefully as if he had suddenly decided to go to sleep on the ocean floor.

  Luke grabbed him under the arms and yanked his head up to the air. J.J. and Ian were right there, and they hustled Will, coughing and spitting, onto the beach.

  The girls were already pounding across the sand, Charla out front with Lyssa hot on her heels.

  “I’m okay!” Will tried to call, only to come up choking again.

  “What happened?” gasped Lyssa.

  “I don’t know,” Will wheezed. “I was swimming, and then — ” He shrugged. “Then I was here.”

  “You blacked out,” Luke informed him.

  “But I feel better,” Will insisted weakly. “In the water, it was like I was waking up for the first time all day.”

  Lyssa squeezed his hand.

  “I’m losing it, Lyss,” he confessed fearfully. “Even I can tell, and I’m the one who’s losing it.”

  Lyssa swallowed a lump in her throat. “Ian had an idea — ”