Chapter 17: THE PLANE — PART 2
The Beechcraft hung above us like a promise and a threat.
Morning light caught the plane's battered fuselage, illuminating rust and corrosion and the particular decay that came from years of tropical exposure. The tree cradling it groaned with every breeze—a sound like arthritic joints protesting movement.
"Beautiful," Locke breathed. "The Island provides."
"The Island provides a death trap." I stepped past him, studying the cliff face, the tree roots, the angles of approach. "That tree's going to give way. The question is when, not if."
"Then someone needs to climb before it falls."
"Nobody's climbing."
Locke's serene expression hardened into something less pleasant. "James, I've told you—"
"And I've told you." I turned to face him, letting the weight of everything I'd seen and done settle into my posture. "That plane killed the last people who tried to fly it. It's not going to kill anyone else. Not today."
"The Island—"
"The Island doesn't care about any of us. It's a piece of rock with electromagnetic anomalies and ancient history and a lot of dead people in its soil. Whatever's in that plane, we're getting it out without human sacrifice."
The words hung in the air. Boone watched our confrontation with wide eyes, probably seeing more conflict than he'd expected between two men who were supposed to be allies.
Locke's jaw worked. "You don't understand what's happening here."
"I understand better than you think. I understand that you woke up from that crash with your legs working for the first time in four years, and you've been chasing miracles ever since." I stepped closer, lowering my voice. "But miracles have costs. And you're not the one who's been paying them."
Something flickered behind Locke's eyes—recognition, maybe, or the first stirring of doubt.
"What do you suggest?" he asked finally.
"Rope. Salvaged line from the beach. We rig a system to pull down whatever's in that plane without putting anyone inside it."
"That could take hours."
"Better than taking a body bag."
---
Three hours later, we had something functional.
The rigging was crude—parachute cord from the salvage pile, anchored to a stable rock formation above the cliff, threaded through carabiners we'd scavenged from passengers' luggage. Not pretty, but it would hold.
Boone proved surprisingly useful. His upper body strength and fearlessness with heights made him perfect for the setup work that didn't involve actually entering the plane. He rappelled down the cliff face to attach lines to the Beechcraft's tail section, his movements confident despite the hundred-foot drop beneath his feet.
"Got it!" His voice echoed off the rocks. "The tail door's jammed, but I can see inside. There's cargo. Boxes or crates."
"Don't touch anything. Just attach the lines and climb back up."
"There's something else. Looks like... statues? White statues."
Virgin Mary figurines. Stuffed with heroin. Charlie's addiction in a convenient package.
"Leave them. We're after the radio."
The system worked better than I'd dared hope. We used the rigging to stabilize the plane long enough for Boone to snake a line through the cockpit window, securing it to the radio equipment mounted on the dashboard. Then we pulled, slowly, carefully, while the tree groaned and the plane shifted and everyone held their breath.
The radio came free.
The plane fell.
The crash was enormous—metal and wood and years of accumulated decay shattering against rocks a hundred feet below. The sound echoed through the jungle, probably audible all the way back at camp.
But the radio was in our hands. And Boone was standing beside me, alive, breathing, not pinned beneath wreckage with his sister's name on his lips.
"That was close," Boone said. His voice shook slightly.
"That's why we didn't climb."
Locke stared at the wreckage with an expression I couldn't read. Loss, maybe—the religious experience he'd been denied. Or perhaps something else entirely.
"The statues," he said. "They went down with the plane."
"Doesn't matter. We got what we came for."
"Those statues were—"
"Heroin." I cut him off before he could spin some mystical interpretation. "Smuggled drugs in religious packaging. The plane was carrying traffickers, not pilgrims."
The revelation landed differently on Boone and Locke. Boone looked relieved—no miraculous cargo, no sacred mystery, just human ugliness preserved in amber. Locke looked betrayed.
"You knew," Locke said quietly. "Before we came here. You knew what was in that plane."
"I suspected."
"How?"
"Does it matter? The radio's intact. We might actually be able to contact someone. Isn't that worth more than a few pounds of heroin?"
Locke didn't answer. He gathered his gear and started back toward camp, his movements sharp with suppressed frustration.
Boone watched him go. "He's angry."
"He'll get over it."
"Will he?"
I didn't have a good answer for that. Locke's faith was the most dangerous thing on this Island, and I'd just proven that faith couldn't always be trusted.
But at least Boone's alive. At least that worked.
We packed the radio carefully and began the long walk home.
---
Shannon found us at the tree line.
She'd been watching for our return—I could tell from the way she positioned herself near the main path, casual but deliberate. Her eyes found Boone first, scanning for injuries, and something in her shoulders relaxed when she confirmed he was whole.
"You're okay."
"I'm fine, Shan."
"I heard the crash. Everyone did. They said you went to find some plane and—"
"The plane fell. We got what we needed before it did." Boone set down his pack. "Sawyer kept us from climbing it."
Shannon's attention shifted to me. The same complex gratitude I'd seen after the polar bear, now mixed with something else—understanding, maybe, of how close her brother had come to dying.
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
"Shannon would have called this stupid," Boone said suddenly. "The climbing plan, I mean. She would have said we were being idiots."
Shannon blinked. "I would?"
"Yeah. You would. And you'd have been right."
Brother and sister stared at each other across three feet of beach sand. I watched something pass between them—acknowledgment, maybe, or the first crack in whatever wall they'd built between their shared history.
This is good. This is how it should be.
The thought was comforting. But it was followed immediately by another, colder realization.
Saving one person moves the death somewhere else. The pilot died anyway. Some deaths are fixed.
What happens to the death I just prevented?
The Island kept its ledger balanced. That was the rule I'd learned with the pilot, with Ethan, with every intervention that seemed to work until it didn't.
Boone was alive. The price would come due somewhere else.
I just didn't know where yet.
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