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Radford, thePhoenix’s mate who had abandoned them, was safely back on dry land. The smugglers had left behind aUSA Today with the whole story — Radford telling the world that the six kids in his charge had all died in the shipwreck.
    “Great guy, that Rat-face,” said Luke bitterly. “He has the same warm, fuzzy personality as the Green Blimp back there.”
    Charla shuddered visibly. “That was awful! I can still hear the sound it made when he hit that man! I wonder what they lost.”
    “It must have been something important,” Luke said grimly. “Mr. Big wouldn’t threaten to kill somebody just to scare him. He’s really ready to shoot that guy.”
    They walked in silence for a few moments, listening to the rustling of the palms as a slight wind blew. Luke reached up to brush a bug from his cheek. But instead of an insect, he felt his hand close on a small piece of paper.
    Litter? In the jungle?
    He looked down and saw Benjamin Franklin staring back at him. This was ahundred-dollar bill’t Wordlessly, he showed it to Charla.
    “Money!” she breathed.
    Then they saw it, lying in the underbrush, its lock sprung — a black suitcase. It gaped open, and out of it poured neat bundles of bills, all hundreds.
    “Oh, wow!” Luke groaned. “Now we know what they lost, and why they’re so upset about it.”
    Mesmerized, Charla dropped to her knees and ran her hands over the pile of money. “In my neighborhood,” she whispered, “this could buy — my neighborhood!”
    “There’s got to be a couple of million at least.” Luke nodded. “They’re going to come after it, no question.”
    Charla looked stricken. “Yeah, but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack! It was a total accident that we found it! They’ll have to search the island fern by fern. They’ll stumble on our camp twenty times before they ever track down this suitcase!”
    Luke crouched beside her and began stuffing bundles of bills back into the luggage. “That’s exactly why we have to help them.”
    “Help them?” Her voice was shrill. “We’re dead if they even find out we’re here! How can we help them?”
    “By making the suitcase easier to find/’ Luke explained. “We just have to put it somewhere they’re bound to notice.”
    “We can’t lean it up against the door of the Quonset hut,” she pointed out. “They’ll know something’s fishy.”
    “I’m not that stupid,” said Luke. “We’ll just take it closer to their camp and leave it out in the open. The sooner they find it, the sooner they stop looking.”
    At the castaways’ camp, the gloom had begun the previous nightfall and had settled into despair with every passing hour.
    Two facts: One, the smugglers were back; and two, Luke and Charla had gone over to the military installation and had not returned.
    Ian mulled over the information every which way, but a single word kept bubbling to the surface:caught . The smugglers had them, and that meant they were probably dead.
    He choked on a lump in his throat. Or maybe they were alive, being interrogated about who they were and who was with them.
    He felt a surge of pride. Luke was strong; he would never talk! But the feeling evaporated in a second as he recalled a TV documentary on interrogation methods. Luke would talk. Everybody talked. Which meant the smugglers could be coming for them right now.
    The night had been terrible. Ian was pretty sure no one had slept, except maybe Will, whose temperature had gone over 101, and who mumbled through fevered dreams. Everybody was sure they should be doing something, but no one could decide what that might be. Though the castaways had no official leader, without Luke they would never agree on a course of action. Luke was the mortar that held them together. And it was beginning to look as if he would never be back.
    “Haggerty can’t be dead,” J.J. assured everyone. “He’s too mean to die. And Charla — who could catch her?”
    But even he looked worried. And he