Escape (7 page)

He was aware of the bobbing of the craft as it moved out from the beach. Then a brief but powerful acceleration, and they were airborne.

It’s really happening, he thought. The train had left the station, and it was too late to get off. He couldn’t escape the impression that his life had changed so completely that he was now somebody he barely knew. It was terrifying, no doubt about it. But he also felt very alive and excited. Whatever happened, he was sure that it was better than rotting away on that island.

He eased open the lid of the crate and looked around. There were no windows, but some light was sneaking in through the door seal, making it possible to examine his surroundings. He squeezed himself out of the box, keeping low to avoid hitting his head. It was even louder out here, and he could see why. The front of the cargo hold opened into the engine housing. He tried to climb into it, but the heat of the roaring motor drove him back.

When they came to unload the cargo, he’d better not be here

Day 24, 3:20 p.m.

JJ. had never been good with boredom. In his world, a whole lot of people and money had always been devoted to the entertainment of JJ. Lane. But even a week adrift on the lifeboat and almost a month stranded on the island hadn’t prepared him for this plane trip.

It was long — hour after hour, cooped up in a cargo hold where he couldn’t even stand. Not a window to look out of. And through it all, a teeth-rattling, never-ending roar that drowned out all thought.

Where were they going? Mars?

Wherever it is, let’s just get there.

Then he felt it — the beginnings of descent. A wild panic knifed through him. They’d be on the ground soon. And then what?

The turmoil in his head threatened to tear him in two, a wrestling match between a craving for excitement and a dark voice repeating, Youcould be dead soon.

It was a smooth landing, but to JJ. it was jarring and unexpected. As they taxied, jouncing along a bumpy runway, he silently went over the details of his plan. It would work. It had to. His life depended on it — his and the lives of Will and the others.

The plane came to a halt, and the engine shut down. The sudden absence of all that noise was like falling off the edge of the earth.

There were voices outside and the slamming of a door. The time was now.

Taking a deep breath, JJ. rolled over to the engine opening, clamped his hands on a metal bar, and hoisted himself inside. It was still painfully hot, but bearable now that the motor was off. His elbow brushed against the engine block, and a searing pain caused him to snatch his arm back. There, on the sleeve of his fatigues, was a small brown scorch mark.

The curse was halfway out of his mouth when he heard someone fumbling with the catch of the cargo bay. Scrambling with his heels, he backed into a corner and tried to be very, very small.

Light flooded the hold. One by one, the crates were hauled out by men speaking a language that could have been almost anything. Then a voice with an English accent: “Yeah, we had a spot of misery on that ruddy island. Don’t even ask why. Got a mosquito bite for every minute I spent there.”

JJ. huddled in the shadows, hardly daring to breathe. And then it was over. The plane was unloaded; the voices grew more distant.

He felt a great surge of relief and triumph. He’d pulled it off! Now all he had to do was lie low until the men went home. Then he could sneak out and find the nearest policeman.

Suddenly, without warning, the engine roared to life again. A blast of heat hit JJ. in the face, and he lost his grip on the bar. He dropped like a stone to the floor of the empty cargo bay.

Frantically, he looked out the open hatch. The plane was swinging around to park inside a large aircraft hangar. It was like being on display on a rotating dessert rack at a diner. There was no place to hide.

The element of surprise was his only weapon. He had to make a break for it.

Crawling on all fours, he scrambled to the edge of the hold and prepared to jump.

Doit ! he urged himself.Don’t wait till they see you !

When he hit the floor of the hangar, he was already running. First he made for the cover of a pile of tires. But excited shouts told him he’d been spotted. He shifted direction for the hangar doors, yelling, “Cop!Cop !”

Heart sinking, he took in his surroundings. Dense jungle flanked the single runway. This was not a busy airport, but a private landing strip. Which meant there were no police around — only enemies. He was alone and badly outnumbered.

JJ. was fast, and the electricity of the moment made him even faster. He gave no thought to where he was or where he might go. All his concentration was on escape.

The jeep came out of nowhere, slicing across the doorway to cut off hisex’t’t . JJ. tried to put on the brakes, but he was running too hard. His knees hit metal, and he bounced back, looking around desperately for a clear field.

There! To the left!

But just as he sidestepped the jeep, a beefy arm grabbed him around the neck.

The race was over.

On the same day that JJ. left on the smugglers’ plane, Will Greenfield failed to wake up.

Lyssa was frantic. She had spent the entire day trying to snap her brother out of his stupor. She used everything from bitter-melon tea dribbled between his lips to pots of seawater splashed in his face. She slapped, pinched, and shook him, but with no result.

“Is he in a coma?” she asked fearfully.

Ian just looked bewildered. He loosened the bandage on Will’s leg and lifted it. The wound was an angry red, with threatening lines of lighter red emanating from the center like a sunburst. The skin around it was hot to the touch.

“He needs a doctor/’ said Ian, stating a fact that everyone had known for some time.

There was almost a click as the castaways made the same connection: a doctor — rescue — JJ.

“JJ/s got to be where he’s going by now,” decided Luke. “If Will’s going to get his doctor, we’ll know in the next couple of days.”

“What if no one comes?” put in Charla.

Luke took a deep breath. “Well, then we’ll know that JJ.‘s — that he didn’t make it.”

“If that happens, we’ll have to operate,” said Ian. “It’ll be Will’s only chance.” •

Luke went gray in the face. “Before he left, JJ. made me promise we wouldn’t do it.”

“Let’s pick a deadline/’ Lyssa said bravely. “If we don’t hear anything by that time, we’ve got to figure that JJ.‘s — not coming. And we do our best to get the bullet out.”

“I wouldn’t wait too long/’ Ian advised nervously.

Luke thought it over. “Let’s give JJ. a few hours to escape and find help. Then they have to put together a rescue team and come back here to find us/’ He did a rapid calculation. “Not tomorrow, but the morning after that.”

He looked around the circle of faces. Everybody nodded in agreement.

On his broken piece of raft, Will slumbered on.

Day 24, 5:50 p.m.

On the island of Taiwan, off mainland China, a small private airstrip was the final destination for the smugglers’ cargo of illegal animal parts.

In an empty storeroom in back of the hangar, JJ. found himself in a rickety bridge chair, opposite none other than Mr. Big himself.

The fat man had neither the time nor the desire to be pleasant. “What were you doing on that island?”

“My boat sank,” JJ. replied earnestly.

Mr. Big reached out and delivered an open-handed slap right across JJ.‘s mouth. “The truth, right now.”

“Honest!” exclaimed JJ., tasting blood from a cut lip. “I was shipwrecked! I only stowed away with you guys to get out of there.”

English Accent stepped forward. “Boss, you don’t think he could be off that kids’ boat trip that went down?”

“That was a month ago,” said the fat man in the soiled green suit. “There’s no way any of those kids could have survived for so long.”

“It’s amazing what you can pick up from the Discovery Channel,” said JJ.

Another slap. This one hurt.

“How can I make you believe me?” JJ. exclaimed. “We left Guam on thePhoenix on July eleventh! Captain Cascadden was the skipper, and the mate was a guy named Radford. ThePhoenix sank. I was in the lifeboat for a week, and I’ve been eating bananas and fending off lizards ever since.”

Mr. Big considered this. His piggy eyes got even smaller. “And your fellow survivors?”

JJ. shook his head. “I was the only one who made it. All the others went down with the ship.”

The fat man nodded to English Accent. “Naslund.”

Naslund grabbed JJ.‘s arm, forced it behind his back, and yanked it high.

JJ. gasped. The pain was unbearable. He had taken his share of cuts and bruises in his life, but this was different. This pain was being applied by a professional, who knew exactly what to twist and how hard to twist it. It was cold and calculated, like a chess move.

“Come on, boy,” Naslund urged. “I don’t want to snap your arm. Just tell us who else is on the island.”

JJ. fought to reason through the pain. It was something the castaways had never considered in coming up with this plan. They had always known JJ. would be at risk if he got caught, but this scenario had not occurred to them — that he might betray the others, and the smugglers would go back to the island and kill them all.

“I was alone!” JJ. grunted.

A quick twist, and the agony was double.

“You’re breaking my arm!”

“Who was with you on the island?” insisted Mr. Big.

JJ. thought of the others. In that instant, he knew that his friends were worth a broken arm. “Nobody!” he gasped.

Another yank. The jolt cranked up the level of pain higher than he could have imagined. Black inkblots began to stain the edge of his vision. He was going to pass out.

And then it was over. Naslund released him and he dropped to the floor, sucking air.

He heard the squeak of a chair as Mr. Big stood up. “Clean up afterward,” he instructed his employee.

“After whaf?” From the corner of his eye, JJ. saw Naslund pull a small handgun out of his belt. It was like living a scene straight out of one of his father’s movies. It didn’t seem real. But it was happeningright now! This stupid boat trip was costing him his life! He was going todie’t

Die. The word echoed in his head like the tolling of a bell. It was unthinkable! Bad things happened — bad luck — lousy days. But notthis !

He was so shocked and panic-stricken that he almost forgot his trump card.

“Wait!” he screamed into the gun barrel. “You can’t kill me! I’m worth money!Big money! My father is Jonathan Lane!”

The two smugglers exchanged a look.

“It could be true, boss,” said Naslund. “The news said Lane’s kid was on that boat.”

The gun disappeared from JJ.‘s line of vision. He allowed himself to breathe again.

That storeroom became JJ.‘s prison cell, where he was held under constant watch. His guards were two Asian men who stayed with him in four-hour shifts. They didn’t speak English, or perhaps they just had nothing to say to him, because he never got a word out of either of them. Privately, he nicknamed them “Mean” and “Meaner.”

Mean was the thief. He patted JJ. down for valuables and seemed really annoyed when all he got was the designer sunglasses. Meaner was the music lover. He brought along a tinny portable radio, and spent his shifts leaning against the door, listening to a country-and-western station. In between songs by George Strait and Shania Twain, an excited DJ emitted a flood of what sounded like Chinese, addressing his listeners as “pardner.”

His meals were fast-food packs of odd-tasting instant noodles that came with plastic chopsticks. He had thrown up from his first helping. After the island diet — mostly fruit and taro — the food seemed so rich and heavy that it lay in his stomach like a shotput.

Mean and Meaner found nothing more hilarious than watching him trying to shovel and slurp his dinner. Finally, Naslund took pity on him and conducted a crash course on eating with chopsticks.

J.J. was absurdly glad to see the Englishman. The hours and hours of not knowing what was going on were even harder than the number Naslund had done on JJ.‘s arm.

“Did you talk to my dad?” he asked anxiously. “He’s going to pay, right?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” was the reply. “We’ve got to prove you’re alive first.” He slapped a copy ofUSA Today into JJ.‘s hands. “Hold this up. And watch the birdie.” He raised a Polaroid camera.

“What’s the newspaper for?” asked JJ.

“Don’t block the headline,” ordered the smuggler. “You have to be able to tell it’s today.”

Click. A whirring noise produced the picture, which began to develop.

“You’re going to ma/7 it? I’ll be stuck here forever!”

Naslund shook his head. “We’ve got a friend who’s a whiz with computers. The way he e-mails, it’s like it just pops out of thin air, totally untraceable.”

“Dad’ll pay up,” JJ. mumbled, mostly to himself. “He has to. He won’t let me die “

Naslund chuckled. “You’re a valuable little piece of merchandise, you know that? You might even fetch a better price than that atom bomb.”

“You’ll never sell that bomb,” JJ. blurted without thinking. “You couldn’t get it off the island. It weighs a million tons!”

Naslund raised both bushy eyebrows. “So you know about that, do you? Not as sweet and innocent as you’d like us to believe.”

JJ. reddened and said nothing.

“Funny thing about that bomb,” the Englishman went on cheerfully. “It’s not the shell that’s valuable; it’s what’s inside. I don’t know how to take that stuff out — but I’ll bet we can find somebody who does.”

By the time he strolled out of the storeroom, JJ. was almost happy to be left with the country music stylings of Meaner.

Day 26, 6:40 a.m.

Luke stood at the water’s edge watching the sky lighten as dawn broke. No plane, no boat, no helicopter — no JJ. Time had run out on the boy from California.

He felt a twinge of guilt for all the times he and JJ. had locked horns. True, the kid was a flake. But a lot of Luke’s resentment had been envy. With Jonathan Lane’s money and connections, Luke would have been acquitted with an apology, not shipped off on Charting a New Course.