Island of the Sequined Love Nun

though all three hundred or so names looking for missing corneas. He typed in CASE, TUCKER. There were H's marked under the heart and lung category. The harvest date was today.
    "You fuckers," he said. There was a shuffling in the back room and he stood so quickly the chair rolled back and banged into a cabinet on the other side of the office. The database was still up on the screen. Tuck reached out and punched the button on the monitor. It clicked off as Mato came through the door.
    "What are you guys doing here?" Tuck said.
    Mato pulled up. He seemed confused. He was supposed to be doing the yelling.
    "We're flying tonight," Tuck said. "Do you guys have the plane fueled up?"
    Mato shook his head. "Then get on it. I wondered where you were."
    Mato just looked at him.
    "Go!" Tuck said. "Now!"
    Mato started to slink toward the door, obviously not comfortable with leaving Tuck in the clinic. Another guard came into the office and when Mato looked up, Tuck snatched his paper and pencil from the desk. He dropped the pencil and when he bent to pick it up, he hit the main power switch on the computer. The computer would reboot when turned on and the doctor would only know that it had been turned off. He'd never suspect that someone had been into the donor files.
    "Let's go, you guys."
    Tuck pushed past Mato out the office door, shoving the paper in his pocket as he went.

    Tuck made quite a show of the preflight on the Lear, demanding three times that the guard with access to the key to the main power cutoff turn it on so he could check out the plane. The guard wasn't buying it. He walked away from Tuck snickering. Tuck checked under the instrument panel. Maybe there would be some obvious way to hot-wire the switch. He'd been lucky with the computer. The switch and all the wires leading into it were covered by a steel case. He couldn't get into it with a blowtorch, and frankly, he had no idea which wires did what. It probably wasn't even a simple switch, but a relay that led to another switch. There'd be no way to wire around it.
    He left the hangar and went back to his bungalow. Unless he found some way to get off the island, he was going to be short a couple of lungs and a heart come midnight. Beth would have at least one guard on the plane with her, probably two, given the circumstances. And he had no doubt that she'd shoot him in the crotch and make him fly to Japan anyway. There had to be another way. Like a boat. Kimi's boat. Didn't these guys travel thousands of miles over the Pacific in canoes like that? What could the doc do? He'd been so careful about safeguarding the island that the guards didn't even have a boat to chase him with.
    Tuck put on his shorts and took his fins and mask to the bathroom. He knotted the ends of his trouser legs and started filling them with supplies. A shirt, a light jacket, some disinfectant, sunscreen, a short kitchen knife. He found a small jar of sugar in the kitchen, dumped the sugar into the sink, and filled the jar with matches and Band-Aids. When he was ready to seal it, he saw the slip of paper he'd written on in the office sticking from the pocket of the trousers and shoved it into the jar as an afterthought. He topped off the pants bag with a pair of sneakers, then pulled the webbed belt tight to cinch it all up. He could swim with the pants legs like water wings. The wet clothing would get heavy, but not until he hit the beach on the far side of the minefield. To Tuck's way of thinking, once he was past the minefield he was halfway there. Then all he had to do was convince the old cannibal to give him the canoe, enough food and water to get somewhere, and Kimi to navigate. Where in the hell would they go? Yap? Guam?
    One step at a time. First he had to get out of the compound. He checked the guards' positions. Leaning out the window, he could see three-no, four-at the hangar. He waited. He'd never tried to make the swim while it was still light. They'd be able to see him in the water from as far away as the runway. He just had to hope that they didn't look in that direction.
    The guards were rolling barrels into the hangar to hand-pump the jet fuel into the Lear. Two on each barrel, four out in the compound, bingo. One guy had to be in the hangar cranking the pump. And Stripe was in the clinic. Showtime!
    Tuck went into the bathroom, lifted the hatch, threw down the pants bag and his swimming stuff, and followed it through.
    He weighed sneaking against running, stealth