Escape (10 page)

The effect was so stupefying that the castaways were turned to stone.

Luke’s gaping disbelief changed abruptly to terror as his mind made the jump from bewilderment to explanation. The smugglers had tracked them down! This frogman was here to kill them!

He grabbed wildly for a weapon and came up with a heavy bunch of finger bananas. He reared back to take a murderous swing.

“U.S. Marines!” barked a commanding voice from behind the goggles. “Drop those bananas!” He rumbled a laugh into the stunned silence. “I never thought I’d get a chance to saythat .”

He spoke into a tiny mouthpiece that stuck out of his rubberized helmet: “Swimmer to base. Got ‘em.”

From his belt he pulled a razor-sharp eight-inch hunting knife. With a powerful sweep, he slashed through the sun canopy from one side to the other. Blinding light streamed in as the cover fell away, exposing the lifeboat to brilliant blue sky.

A roar from above drew five sets of dazzled eyes. A massive helicopter was moving into position over them.

Charla was the first to speak. Her voice was so shrill and full of disbelief that it was almost unrecognizable: “We’re — rescued?”

The instant the word was out of her mouth, she began to cry. Each in turn, Lyssa, Ian, Will, and Luke gave in to the juggernaut of emotion. Twenty-eight days marooned. A week adrift before that. Suffocated with danger and fear. Surrounded by death.

And now — just like that — it was all over. It seemed almost unreal.

The chopper lowered a cable to the swimmer.

“Take my brother first!” begged Lyssa. “And watch out for his bad leg!”

The marine fastened the straps around Will. The boy turned his tear-streaked face to his fellow castaways. “You did it, guys. You got me out.”

Then he was gone, winched up to the helicopter, where waiting hands pulled him aboard.

Luke’s mind was in a fog as he watched the others drawn up to safety.I’m going home. Tentatively, he turned the idea over. It had been so long that he didn’t really think of home very much anymore. It was even hard to picture his room or his parents’ faces.

“Okay, kid,” said the swimmer. “Last customer.”

Luke allowed himself to be strapped into the harness. It was almost too easy. A kind of cheating. Five weeks of terror and struggle, and then a helicopter comes along — a Get Out of Jail Free card. He felt a pang of grief. If only all of them could have been here to play it.

His ascent to the chopper was faster than he expected. Two marines dragged him aboard and ripped the harness from him. He looked around for the others, but saw only one face — a million-dollar smile behind custom-made designer sunglasses.

“I came back for you, Haggerty,” said JJ. in an injured voice. “You weren’t there.”

Luke grabbed him by the collar. “The smugglers?”

“In jail,” beamed the actor’s son. “And they’re already looking for Radford.”

Luke shook his head in amazement. “I can’t believe you did it.”

“Well — I had a little help.”

Luke frowned. “From who?”

In answer, JJ. pulled off his shades and waved them in Luke’s face. The inscription on the earpiece flashed in the sun: JONATHAN LANE, THE

TOAST OF LONDON —
PS.

Luke was impatient. “Yeah, yeah. You’ve got great sunglasses. Come on, how did you get away from the smugglers?”

“The guy they had guarding me tried to sell my shades,” JJ. explained, “and the pawnshop owner wanted proof that the inscription was legit.

He got in touch with my dad’s office, and they called the FBI.”

“But how did they know where to find you?”

“The cops squeezed it out of my guard.” JJ. grinned. “It was the glasses, Haggerty. I told you they were special.”

Luke stared at the one-of-a-kind shades. He had always hated them; they were the ultimate symbol of JJ.‘s cocky, Hollywood attitude. Never could he have imagined that they would save all their lives.

The chopper crew hauled the swimmer in through the door and sealed the sliding hatch. The helicopter banked southwest, heading back to its base.

“Guam in forty minutes,” the pilot called to the castaways.

“You mean we’re not going to the island?” Luke asked anxiously.

The swimmer put a hand on his arm. “Whatever you left there, I’m sure your folks’ll get you a new one.”

“It’s not what we left,” insisted Luke. “It’s what you left.”

“Us?” The pilot turned around to regard him. “We weren’t even there.”

“Not now,” Luke informed him. “In 1945 — you forgot your atomic bomb!”

SEPTEMBER 3, 1945

1805 hours

The tropical sun set on an island of impatience. The transport plane was loaded. Airmen jammed their hands in their pockets and tried not to fidget. The war was over. They should have left hours ago. What was the holdup?

Still hanging from the broken crane, Junior, the third atomic bomb, had been opened like a five-ton cookie jar.

Sergeant Holliday and Corporal Connerly watched as the technician removed two pieces of radioactive uranium that provided Junior’s nuclear fuel.

For the most destructive weapon humankind had ever devised, the trigger was astonishingly simple. At detonation, the smaller uranium slug would be fired into the larger bowl-shaped piece to set off a nuclear blast strong enough to destroy an entire city. It seemed scarcely more technical than starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together.

The uranium pieces were packed in separate lead-lined containers. Next, the detonator was removed — an ordinary gun barrel hooked up

to an altimeter. The components were put in the bock of a truck to be driven to the airstrip and loaded onto the plane.

Holliday stared as the technician stepped onto the flatbed of the truck to accompany the nuclear material.

“Wait a minutel Where are you going? What about the bomb?”

The man patted the lead-lined containers. “The real bomb’s in here, Sarge. That” — he pointed to the shell of Junior — “is a very expensive paperweight.” And the truck drove off.

Holliday was annoyed. “Well, what are we supposed to do with it?”

Connerly surveyed the small crowd of airmen that had gathered around the bomb pit. “Anybody got a piece of paper?”

When the six young people entered the lab, they were dressed in identical air force coveralls. This seemed completely appropriate, because the military doctors had never before seen such a close-knit group.

They demanded adjoining hospital rooms, ate every single meal together, and stayed up until all hours of the night watching the Discovery Channel in the lounge. They could not seem to get enough of one another’s company and conversation.

Later in the afternoon, they were scheduled to fly to Hawaii, where their parents would be waiting to welcome them back from the dead. But that morning, they were guests of the highest-ranking general on Guam. He had declared that these six, of all people, had the right to be present for this procedure.

The six took their front-row VIP seats. They seemed fit enough, although they were thin and very sunburned. One of them was on crutches. Their eyes were focused on the concrete floor where the atomic bomb lay, its long body extending three-quarters of the way across the lab.

The operation began. Physicists and technicians cut their way through black metal and removed a large piece of the rounded side. The chief scientist beckoned the six forward. They approached gingerly. This was, after all, an atomic bomb, the most awesome man-made force of all time. It had scared them when they’d first stumbled across it on their island; it scared them now.

The compartment was empty, except for one small item. It was a yellowed sheet of paper that had been torn from a loose-leaf notebook. On it, in faded ink, someone had written a single word:

KA-BOOM!

The flash of the reporter’s camera captured the moment — six castaways seized by the kind of laughter that could only come from those who had not truly laughed for a very long time.

That picture made it to the front page of every newspaper in the world.

On September 12, 2001, Calvin Radford, former mate of thePhoenix , was arrested in a waterfront bar in Macao. He was charged with six counts of attempted murder.

*

On October 23, 2001, the International Geographical Commission made an addition to their map of the Pacific, a tiny cay at latitude 17‘31” North, longitude 157‘42” East. They called it Junior Island.

On December 28, 2001, the six castaways held their first reunion at the Los Angeles home of movie star Jonathan Lane.

They did not go to the beach.

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