~ Island – pacific ~
Time seemed to slow for Julia, she watched in terror as the men surrounded Tom. There was nothing she could do without giving her position away and there was no way that Tom was going to get out of there. Something was wrong though; one of the men broke away from the group and walked casually over to the hatch. Her eyes widened in alarm, she looked around for Stan, to see him stopped at what he was doing, staring as well. The soldier looked inside the open hatch and immediately turned to face his comrades, panic fuelling his movements; he waved frantically and sprinted towards the other soldiers. He disappeared as the first bomb exploded.
It was an unexpected disturbance to the jungle, the noise and flames sending hundreds of birds flocking to the sky and cawing loudly. There was too much flying debris and smoke to see clearly, so Julia had no idea if Tom was alright or had gotten away. As the smoke cleared Julia witnessed Tom wedged firmly between two men, not going anywhere. It was now or never, she thought, she readied herself to go rescue him when another ten planes on Tom’s side exploded at the same time, showering the bitumen in burning metal and acrid smoke.
Simultaneously, jeeps with soldiers came skidding on to the runway to inspect the remaining planes, reminding Julia that she only had four minutes until Stan and her planes blew up. Stan was already waving her over, so she ran over to him and together they made their way back to where they started. It was here that Stan realised how difficult it would be to cross the runway without being spotted. It was all about timing. A sudden series of explosions of Tom’s blasted out across the tarmac, a bright tongue of fire, and that’s when Stan made his move. Grabbing Julia by the wrist the two of them sprinted across the wide bitumen strip. He hoped they’d make it far enough away before the planes exploded.
Behind them they heard the fierce explosions of the bombs on their side going off but they didn’t dare turn around and stop in case they were spotted. Finally in what appeared to Julia to be a random spot in the jungle, Stan stopped, leaning against a tree to catch his breath. The truth sank in for Julia, it had all gone horribly wrong, they’d lost Tom and he was probably going to be killed. The thought made her want to sit down and cry. Instead she held it together.
‘What now? Can we go and rescue Tom?’ she asked directly. A deadly look entered Stan’s eyes.
‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do,’ he grunted. He was now searching for something amongst the brushwood.
‘Ahh,’ he said sounding satisfied. Out of the jungle plants he pulled four very large bombs which looked strangely familiar.
‘Are those the-’ before she could finish her sentence, Stan answered her.
‘Yes, they’re from the last planes. And we are going to use them to do more damage.’ He was annoyed that he had the girl with him. He was not used to doing field work with someone else; it was always just him and that was how he liked it.
‘Ooookaay.’ Unaware of Stan’s irritated tone, Julia continued, ‘What exactly are we going to blow up this time? Has it not crossed your mind that we should be flying off this island as fast as possible to tell the people you work for what’s about to happen to the world, rather than playing around with explosives?’ Her voice oozed arrogance. ‘I mean think for a minute. Look what just happened to Tom because of us and those damned explosives.’
‘Listen girl. We don’t exactly have much time. I’ve a feeling the rockets are going to be launched any day now. By the time we get back to the U.S it will have been too late. So it’s down to us to stop this madness and in order to do that we have to blow some shit up. Now I don’t need to put up with your whining, so I can gladly leave you here and pick you up again once everything’s been done? Your call.’
‘I’m coming alright,’ she responded, slightly put out by his sharp reply.
‘Good. This is what we’re going to do. On my way in I saw two buildings that looked like storage areas and I assume one is for supplies and the other is for weapons, explosives and other interesting stuff like that. I’ve no idea which is which so we’ll have to go by trial and error.’
‘What do we need to go to the armoury for if we have the bombs here?’ asked Julia. Resisting the urge to sigh, Stan explained.
‘There are a lot of very well trained soldiers here. What do you think will happen when we break out sixty civilian prisoners? How do you propose they’re going to fight? We need to get as many weapons from that armoury as we can, to the prisoners, so that those who want to fight can. It’s going to be brutal and lots of people will get killed,’ he said it without emotion, he was only stating facts.
‘I want us to do it tonight, try and take control of the island that is. The best way to reach the storage buildings from here is probably by water. We have to carry these,’ he indicated the bombs, ‘back across the runway and then we have to cut left through the forest, until we reach the coast. From there I’ll manoeuvre along the coast with the bombs and you will make your way there across the water to the jetty and into the weapons storage.’ He gave out orders like it was the most natural thing to do and Julia had to fight the desire to retort smartly. She nodded meekly.
‘Let’s go. We’ve a long walk ahead of us.’ He thrust two of the bombs at Julia. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to carry these two.’ Not giving her time to reply he set off back towards the runway, leaving Julia no option but to follow.
It took considerably longer to reach the runway, they were both tired and carrying the bombs didn’t make anything much easier. When they neared the runway, Stan pushed out as far towards the end as he dared and studied the whole thing carefully, making sure there were no soldiers spotting the place. The whole area was a mess; a lot of the trees were burnt black and crumbling with the slightest whiff of wind. There were the burnt out shells of the planes littering the side strips, smoke curling out of a few and small flames issuing from others, some tilting on crazy angles. Twisted metal plagued the whole runway.
There was nowhere for them to duck behind as they crossed so Stan was left no choice but to make a quick sprint across with Julia, and they were lucky enough not receive any sign that they’d been spotted. Now came the hard part, trekking through thick vegetation towards the coast, constantly on edge in case they were spotted and in the baking heat, with the bombs. It was hard work and by the time they reached their destination it was already late afternoon. Stan allowed them both some time to rest until nightfall, they’d need every grain of strength they could get if they wanted to survive this and get everyone else off the island.
‘Do you think Tom’s still alive, Stan?’ Julia asked hopefully.
‘You really like him don’t you?’ he didn’t bother answering the question straight away.
‘Well yeah I guess I do. Well do you think he got executed?’
‘In all the time that I’ve been in that prison they never executed anyone apart from this one guy.’ He paused as if the memory was hazy. ‘One day he was marched outside. No explanations, he was just taken outside. It seemed that the people on the island knew him somehow. I managed to watch through a window what was happening. They were taking him to the tower when the guy spun around and tried to attack his captor. He wasn’t quick enough. He barely had time to draw back his fist for a punch when the guard stabbed him with a strange knife. It happened so quickly it was all a crazy blur. Oh and he seemed to know Rose too. She didn’t take his death well at all, put up a hell of good fight when they tried to take him away, she fought like a maniac. So don’t worry about Tom, people have done far worse than that guy ever did.’ He had Julia’s attention after he told her of this.
‘Was the death quick at least?’
‘Very, he didn’t stand a chance. Almost immediately he was gone.’
‘Did you manage to see who it was that killed the guy?’ she asked, keeping her tone neutral.
‘I did. It was a man named Russell Silver.’
‘OK. Well I’m going to get some sleep.’
>
So that was what had happened to her uncle. There was more going on here than just a terrorist attack. Whoever had killed her uncle Roger was either another one of them or knew of their kind. What is a shape shifter doing on this island with a man like Smith? She thought worriedly.
***
41