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the case, Jack's fate would have been as bad as the birds that were smeared across the cockpit.
    Jack stood and listened carefully. Voices?
    Yes! He heard voices.

Three
----
    C APTAIN H AMMOND WALKED OUT OF the sea and fell to his knees at the shoreline. He buried his face in his hands and sobbed. A few minutes later, with his breakdown over, he rose to his feet. Not being able to tell if the salt he tasted was from his tears or the seawater, the pilot wiped his hand across his face and walked slowly to the tree line. Smoldering pieces of the airliner littered the jungle floor. A row of seats dangled precariously from a huge rubber tree ten yards in front of him.
    Hammond recalled the final seconds of their harrowing ride--the sound of the engines flaming out, the downward drag of the plane as the cockpit alarms went crazy, the bewildered look on his co-pilot's face in the final seconds--the sea getting bigger in the windshield.
    Despite his years of flight experience, he was shocked to see the pieces of the plane spread out so far from the water. After all, the plane didn't explode and break up in mid-air. Still, there were fragments everywhere, and he found this odd based on his ditch approach. The last thing Hammond remembered before ditching was seeing the islands that hug the huge coastline of Australia. This island could be one of several hundred uncharted islands off the mainland.
    Hammond heard voices ahead and ran in their direction. Huddled together near a pile of luggage were a half-dozen people who looked like they'd just survived a nuclear bomb blast. Some had clothes hanging in tatters, and several had makeshift bandages wrapped around their wounds. He was relieved to see Tracy Mills, one of the flight attendants.
    "Tracy, are you all right?"
    Tracy nodded. "Captain. Is there anyone else--"
    He looked at the ground as he answered, "I just don't know."
    The cockpit sat twenty feet away, turned upright as if it had been dropped from the top of a building. Hammond clambered over to the cockpit, pushing aside debris.
    "Help me, Tracy. Help me push this window out."
    Hammond yanked on the windshield while Tracy used her foot to push on the window frame. It took every ounce of strength they had but finally, with a decisive crack, the windscreen gave way. The momentum caused Hammond to fall backwards onto the jungle floor.
    Regrouping, Hammond went to the open cockpit window and forced himself to look inside. Oh no!
    The scene inside the cockpit made his heart sink. The copilot, First Officer Towson, hung upside down from his twisted seat. Hammond could only identify him from his uniform. The impact had split Towson's head down the middle and a grayish red jelly seeped from the gruesome wound. Hammond choked back bile.
    Strengthening his resolve, Hammond reached across and grabbed the radio control. He started to say something into the microphone when he noticed it.
    Below the maze of switches and dials and digital readouts, a huge tangle of wires hung to the floor. Following the tangle of wires to the radio transceiver, he saw now it was hopeless. The radio was totally destroyed. He climbed down from the window and looked at Tracy and the rest of the group. He shook his head.
    "Where the hell are we?" someone asked.
    Wherever they were, Hammond's impression was this island was an alien, inhospitable place where time had stood still. He definitely didn't want to be here for very long.
    "I'm not sure, somewhere around the Java Sea, maybe the Banda Sea." Hammond said, though he was just guessing.
    "Where the hell is that?" another demanded.
    "Around Indonesia and East Timor, north of Australia," he answered, more confidently. Though he didn't know where they were, at least he knew where those seas were.
    * * *
    With Captain Greg Beard at the helm, the frigate Kanglour was churning toward a small chunk of land off the coast of the Indonesia. Beard studied the boat's GPS for a moment. This uncharted island was smack dab in