They turned and hugged.
“Don’t forget to tell Finn about the plane,” Willa said.
“I won’t.”
“Good luck,” Charlene said. She sprinted across the wide runway and out of sight, in the direction of the massage cabanas.
Willa crept up to the old plane.
“Psst!” she hissed.
“In here,” came Philby’s voice.
She pulled herself up onto the wing and looked down into the cockpit, where Philby sat in the torn leather pilot’s seat.
“There’s no room,” she complained.
“My lap,” he said, patting his legs.
“As if!” She debated playing along, but was afraid of how he could suddenly distance himself.
A brilliant yellow flash lit up everything around them. She jumped into the cockpit and onto Philby’s lap.
They both looked up into the night sky as the fireworks boomed. The two spreading flowers in the black were red and blue.
Not yellow.
Philby pushed her forward as he leaned and peered out at the runway. A yellow and blue line of flame ran parallel to the tarmac.
“The propane…” Philby muttered to himself.
“The what?” Willa said.
He quickly explained Maybeck’s discovery of a planted propane tank connected to the island’s insect tubing.
“But if they removed it…”
“There must have been two,” Philby said. “Don’t you see? They use the fireworks as cover so it won’t be noticed. By putting propane through the line and lighting it, they mark the runway for the pilot.” He grew excited. “The plane you heard about. The delivery! With everyone’s attention on the fireworks…with all the booming…no one sees or hears the…”
His voice was covered by the low growl of an approaching plane somewhere in the blackened distance.
* * *
Maybeck might have reached Luowski without being noticed, but a burst of color from the fireworks display threw Maybeck’s shadow across the wall, causing Luowski to spin around. The boy stood so fast the headphones flew off his wide skull. He lifted his left arm in time to block Maybeck’s punch, delivering his own right fist into Maybeck’s abs.
Maybeck was in shape. The blow hurt, but his abs were rock hard, limiting the damage. Maybeck faked a left by raising his elbow and caught Luowski by surprise with an extended left, up and over the forearm block, that connected with Luowski’s ear. He clearly rang his bell with that one. Luowski staggered back off balance and into the radio gear.
But as the boy reached out, Maybeck saw he was going for some kind of improvised switch—a black button on the end of a pair of wires crudely attached to a box on the wall. Maybeck didn’t know what the boy was up to, but he knew he had to stop him from reaching that button. He moved toward it. In the process, he opened himself up.
Focused on the button, the off-balance Luowski still managed to backhand Maybeck across the face. As he followed through, he caught Maybeck by the sleeve of his shirt and tugged.
The kid was phenomenally strong, Maybeck realized a fraction of a second too late. Not just strong, but well coordinated, able to convert his raw power into decisive moves. Maybeck had felt he was within inches of stopping the kid from reaching the switch and then found himself being hurled back toward the shed door. It was like he bounced off a force field.
Luowski pushed the button; its popping sound was familiar to Maybeck. Luowski defiantly tore the button from the wires. Whatever he’d just done, there was no undoing it.
Maybeck scrambled to his feet in the open door.
“How’d that work out for you?” Luowski said, clearly in control of the situation.
“About as well as this is going to work out for you,” Maybeck fired back.
He slipped out of the shed, shut the door, and locked it. Only with the click of the padlock did he recall where he’d heard the sound that button had made: his aunt’s barbecue grill.
The igniter.
* * *
It was some kind of ceremony. The Cast Members were led into Tia Dalma’s cabana, and she started chanting something indistinguishable as Finn listened from behind.
Neither Jafar nor his staff were anywhere to be seen.
Finn sneaked closer across the sand and pulled himself up to peer through the bottom of the open window, catching glimpses of the interior.
Six Cast Members. Three girls. Three boys. He tried to commit their faces to memory, though in the flickering candlelight he couldn’t see clearly. Tia Dalma was waving a small doll in one hand and a carved idol in the other—a boy? He couldn’t tell.
She uttered nonsensical words in a steady, hypnotizing stream. Finn dropped back down, afraid he was coming under whatever spell she was issuing. For there was no doubt about what she was up to.