by Alex Just
~ Island – pacific ~
Stan managed to convince Martin that he shouldn’t wake everyone and cause unnecessary panic. He explained he was going to get out tomorrow night to figure out a way to release them all. Martin agreed, with heavy reluctance. There was not much he could do about it and he’d be able to get off this cursed place, away from Tom and Julia.
Stan spent the day working as normal, though he was restless and impatient for nightfall. Adrianna noticed, for the first time since they’d been imprisoned, she approached him alone.
‘What’s bothering you? You seem really tense,’ her voice trembled the tiniest bit as she spoke but Stan still picked up on it.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he smiled up at her. ‘I’m getting out of here tonight and going to get everyone else out.’
‘The hole in the toilet is ready?’ she asked, arching one eyebrow sceptically.
‘No.’
‘Ok… then how?’
‘We had visitors last night.’ Quickly he outlined how he’d met Julia who was with the other boy. How she was going to turn up tonight and spring him. Adrianna lapsed into thoughtful silence. Without warning she leant in and kissed Stan passionately. As she pulled away he could make out tears glistening on her cheeks.
‘I’m so, so sorry for the past fifteen years Stanley, all this time blaming and hating you so much when it wasn’t your fault. I’ve no idea how to make it up to you but I’ll try my best, I promise. I know sorry doesn’t even scratch the surface in what I’ve done to you, the pain I’ve caused but it’s all I have to offer and I’ll understand completely if you don’t want to forgive me.’ She took a deep breath and was about to stand up. Putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder he sat her down next to him, and whispered softly.
‘I was never mad at you Anna, ever. It wasn’t your fault but Russell’s.’
With Anna sleeping calmly against his shoulder he waited patiently for midnight. It came and went. No sign of anything. He was on edge and waiting, completely clueless. Being kept in the dark and not in the thick of action was not his style at all.
He must have dosed off, for suddenly he jerked away from the wall as he heard the stifled yell of one of the guards. Something was definitely going on. He just didn’t know what. Creeping silently through the slumbering bodies all around him he made it to the door and glued his ear to the key hole. There was shuffling of feet and then a long stretch of silence. Suddenly the door swung outwards and he stumbled out into the open, face to face with the girl, Julia. She waved him out urgently and pulled his ear close to her lips.
‘Get into the forest and hide. We’ll come find you in a second. I just have to return these quickly.’ She held up the keys and was gone, dissolving into the night. How the two would find him remained a mystery and it would continue to puzzle him for a long time to come. He made off for the jungle, cutting across the bitumen, avoiding the search lights and ducking under a stray fern to be met by the thick jungle bush. He cut into it at a steep angle, keeping up a light jog whenever he was able to. He burst through into a clearing and decided that here would be fine, and so he returned to the edge and camped down amongst some low lying ferns.
Bunkered down in thick jungle growth waiting for what he didn’t know, Stan found himself alone. All his instincts were on high alert, every nerve was on fire urging him to get off this island and contact his superiors, tell them about the mole. Bitterness welled up in the back of his throat at the thought of that traitorous piece of... the crazy plan that was on the brink of being put into practice and the thousands of lives that would be lost. What had the girl said? “Go somewhere away from here, hide and we’ll come and find you. We’ll see from there.”
He’d no idea how they were going to follow him, they were just kids and he was a trained soldier. But he’d decided to go with their plan before the guard came back and realised what was going on. His thoughts were interrupted abruptly as two browned faces hunkered down in front of him, both had their fingers raised too their lips in the international symbol for silence. The soundless hush was enough for Stan to realise that he hadn’t chosen a wise hiding place because as he looked around him, he saw that the grass and bushes were all trampled and half destroyed by the hard soled feet of the soldiers. It was a routine training spot. Without being asked twice he got up and followed the two silently into the jungle. They were odd, the boy, his dark blonde hair with streaks of white yellow where the sun had bleached it and bright green eyes that almost seemed to glow in the grey dawn. He moved with almost a feline grace, as his lean figure dodged overhanging branches and avoided the jungle thorns fierce scratches.
The girl was pretty, no doubt about that, she was wearing faded blue jeans, cut off at the knees same as the boy, her top was layered with so much grime and filth that it was impossible to tell what the original colour was. The boy was wearing a black shirt; the sleeves had been torn off revealing muscled arms. Stan didn’t know yet if he could trust them or not, but one thing was for sure, these two had been through a lot and had adapted to their environment brilliantly. They held the same fierce determination of survival as Martin did. I will have to be honest with them, he thought, they will smell a rat a mile away if I try and fib through a few parts, they’ve become far too shrewd and attentive. Being honest with himself, Stan reasoned that he might not so easily get the better of the boy if it came to a fight, even though he was bigger and stronger.
After what seemed like an age they arrived at a gnarled old tree in the middle of the jungle. Expertly the kids shimmied up the tree and settled in the first boughs looking down at him expectantly. Resisting the urge to sigh, he followed them up. He caught the look of surprise on their faces as they watched him scale the tree just as easily as they had. The girl pointed further up into the tree, from where they were perched, Stan could make out what seemed like a natural hollow formed by the trunk itself and the intertwining branches of the tree. It was small and cramped but provided a sense of security. Settled down at last, there was an awkward silence between them.
It’s their show, Stanley figured, so let them make the first move. They did. The boy spoke first.
‘My name is Tom; this is Julia. I’m not sure if you remember meeting me on the cruise?’ Stan picked up on it immediately in the way Tom glanced at Julia when he introduced her. There was something going on between these two. Great, adolescent testosterone was the last thing he needed when it came to getting everyone off the island. Tom continued.
‘As the ship got wrecked, we were thrown into the water and ended up being carried onto the beach opposite where you all got beached. We spent the time surviving on whatever we could scavenge, hoping for a way off this place.’ Here he paused. To anyone else this would’ve meant nothing. To Stan it spoke volumes. Straight away making the connection between Martin being separate from these two, he figured that the two boys had had a fierce argument about the girl. It had ended badly which was why Tom was now pausing. The memory was uncomfortable.
‘There was a bit of a discrepancy between Martin and us, he disappeared. We tried following him and it led us here.’ He jerked his head behind him.
‘What is going on, what is this place? Who are you?’
The last question was more of a demand; the green in Tom’s eyes was so intense that Stan had to look away briefly.
‘One at a time I guess,’ he sounded tired, even to his own ears. With patience he explained everything he’d learned, about where they were and what the purpose of this base was. Finally he told them who he was and who he worked for. A long silence followed after he had finished, he let the full impact of his words sink in slowly. When at last someone spoke it was Julia, a slight flush forming on her high cheek bones. It was a question.
‘How can we best stop him or do some damage control?’ her forehead had furrowed into a crease of lines as she frowned seriously. She’d felt getting Stanley out was hard enough, now all of this made it seem small a
nd insignificant.
‘Can’t we just burn this whole place down?’ asked Tom, angrily.
‘Sure we can, we just need explosives and what about the prisoners? We going to let them burn too?’ He immediately regretted his tone at Julia’s expression.
‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.’ A pause. Unexpectedly Tom leapt into the air. ‘Of course, how stupid of me. We need to destroy them.’
‘Destroy who?’ Stan asked slightly perplexed and irritated.
Tom’s reply was full of excitement.
‘The planes of course, that’s one major flaw in his perfect plot. If we can take them all out then a huge part of his plan will be ruined and might convince him to quit all together?’
Stan had a stunned look on his face as the meaning of the boy’s words really hit him. How had he overlooked this opportunity? It was perf... except for the explosives part. Not letting his hopes get too high he asked the boy a question.
‘How’d you want to do that? Again, without explosives?’
Looking a little bit put out, Tom pondered on the solution to this problem, his face creasing in concentration. The other two watched silently, and although he wouldn’t admit it to himself Stan was anxiously holding his breath hoping that the kid would come up with an answer.
The silence stretched on and Tom sought out the far corners of his mind for any detail he might have picked up on and filed away as unimportant. Suddenly he remembered something he’d seen while they’d waited for nightfall to spring Stan. If what Stan had told them was true then what he’d imagined to be ordinary cargo was nothing of the sort but instead a very large bomb and the securing wires were actually electrical connectors that allowed the bomb’s explosion time to be set. If they were to destroy the planes they’d have to set the bombs off.
With a feline smirk he looked up at the other two.
‘It’s simple really,’ he grinned and outlined what he had in mind. ‘The only thing we need is someone with knowledge of bombs and how they work and then get them to demonstrate to Julia and I how it’s done, and we have a plan.’
‘Well that’s me. I know a little something about explosives. This isn’t going to be safe at all. You two realise that do you not? I’ll understand if you don’t want to take part.’ His gaze was steady and sincere.
Tom met his stare square on and replied fiercely.
‘We’re going to help you take them down no matter what. And I doubt it’ll be more dangerous than anything else we’ve been through.’ Tom flashed a cocky grin with his comment, knowing full well that Stan couldn’t know his and Julia’s special abilities.
For the first time in a while Julia spoke.
‘When do you want to do this?’
‘Right now kids,’ replied Stan standing up silently.
The other two had no choice but to follow suit.
‘Either of you know the way to the end of the runway? We’re going to work our way backwards from the end all the way to the start.’
Julia nodded at this and pushed her way in front of the two guys. They walked solidly for half an hour, Julia and Tom frustrated that they couldn’t morph before they burst through the foliage onto the last “plane parking” at the end of the runway.
Instead of stopping to set the bomb off on this one Stan continued to walk onto the main runway and down towards the complex, turning off on the third concrete strip which branched off. In response to Tom’s questioning look he replied:
‘If by some unfortunate stroke of luck any form of communication is destroyed we might want another way to get off the island, so these last two strips with their planes here we’ll leave undamaged. They’ll think that these ones will be destroyed as all the ones in front leading up to the campus will have been blown apart.’
‘Clever,’ Tom acknowledged.
The first test was to figure out how to pre-detonate the explosive without killing themselves.
Stan opened the hatch and peered inside. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he realised just how large this bomb was. It had a simple detonation mechanism he noticed with relief. A timer had to be activated with the simple flick of a switch as well as a toggle which allowed you to alter the countdown. He waved over the two kids and without speaking a word he demonstrated the task that depicted the process. He set the countdown, hesitated a minute and then flicked the switched down. A small bleeeep was emitted from the bomb, the countdown had begun. He motioned for Tom and Julia to do the same on the others, fast. Together the three of them sprinted out to the different planes.
On the jungle side of the runway, the concrete roads leading off it were not as long and held two planes, whereas the opposite side had three. They had to move faster Tom thought, as he looked at their progress, they had barely reached half way and already the murky grey was thinning as the sun began its ascent. It was too risky to sprint across the runway; they were stuck on the sides they had run too. Tom had reached the last two parking strips and it was a good thing they remained on their sides, as with the dawn, an early morning foot patrol jogged along the runway, a fitness drill as well as a routine check on the aircraft. Tom was forced to clamber into the cargo hold with the live bomb in order to avoid being spotted. Sweat dripped off his forehead as he felt the claustrophobic heat of the cargo hold grasp him.
A shaft of light spilled into the cramped area and too late Tom realised that he hadn’t closed the hatch properly. Fear gripped him tightly as he waited with bated breath for the patrol to pass his plane by. He wasn’t that lucky, the sound of approaching footsteps was unmistakable, a quick yell from the soldier:
‘This one ere’s got the hatch not shut properly. Just gonna check it out.’
‘Be quick about it,’ came the curt reply.
Some guardian angel must have been watching over Tom for the man opened the hatch a fraction and then slammed it shut properly not wanting to keep the patrol and his superior waiting too long.
When Stan was sure none of the other two were looking he slipped back the way they’d come, to the planes that they were leaving untouched. After five minutes he was back helping the others setting the timers on the bombs. The light was now growing brighter by the second. Soon it would be broad daylight.
Julia and Stan were on the opposite side to the jungle and had decided to work their way from the front to the back in setting the timers, so that by the time light hit they would be a safe distance away from the complex. Tom hadn’t thought quite that far ahead.
With relief Tom opened the last hatch and was about to set the timer when he turned round, he was starting to feel really ill and wanted to check on the others, only to find himself staring at a ring of automatic rifle barrels all pointed at his head. He froze. What he hadn’t been aware of was that one of the guards in the tower had spotted him and sent a team down to capture him. He assessed his options. They couldn’t have spotted the others as the only guards were around him. There was nothing he could do, unless... he turned his left wrist a tiny fraction listening for a slight click.
‘Don’t move. Raise your hands above your head where we can see them and step out from the cargo hold area.’ The voice, cropped like a soldier’s haircut, oozed military precision, each syllable clearly pronounced. What a crappy accent, thought Tom bitterly, yet with some satisfaction he slowly moved his hands out above his head. In the process he flicked something, and in the silence as he stepped out to his captors a loud beeeeeep could be heard. The man who had spoken stared in stupefied horror at Tom. His face crumpling in fear as it dawned on him what Tom had just done. Needing to be sure he sent one of his men forward to inspect, while another guy cuffed Tom.
The guy turned to his superior emitting a yell as he waved frantically for everyone to get away. No one wasted a second. They all turned and fled the plane making for the complex; Tom tried making a run for it in the mayhem but was prevented by two hulking men forcing him along in their mad rush.
They weren’t quick enough.
<
br />
***
39