The Golden Catch

by Roger Weston

  Another knock on the door.

  Mok Don jumped up onto his feet, but his wooden leg gave way and he collapsed to the floor. With one leg he’d never make it through the glass.

  The doors to his office burst open.

  Mok Don climbed up on his hands and his knee and lunged for the envelope knife on his desk. Police poured into his office. He plunged the knife into his heart. Machine-like he yanked the blade out and plunged it in again and again. He wrenched the point around. The pain was hell and he screamed. He plunged the knife into his belly and twisted the blade all around.

  “I win,” he shrieked. “I win, you rotten scum.” Then he hit the floor.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Three months later

  Frank anchored the Hector in Musashi Inlet.

  For a moment his eyes fixed on the mass of fallen cliff, thousands of tons of igneous rock. The boulder would have eclipsed an apartment building. It had always been there, he knew, but it now sat in a different angle than before the tsunami. He felt his heart rate pick up as he considered the awesome force that had moved it.

  He rowed the skiff ashore and crawled up onto the lava. He lifted the aluminum skiff with its bow line, pulling it up over the edge of the lava and dragging it across the flat-rock shelf toward the massive boulder. He pulled it around the obstacle and stood there for a moment.

  A slope of blasted rockfall used to be piled along the base of cliff here, yet the tsunami had stripped it all away. Not a single pebble remained on the ground. The lava had been licked clean of the thousands of tons of broken lava rock, and only the watery cave remained now, yawning wide like the reaper’s mouth calling out to the doomed.

  Frank cringed at the thought of going inside another cave. Caves and the heavy toll they charged had become a living nightmare—his personal hell, the articles of which were written in blood.

  Warm and damp air that stank of sulfur wrapped around him in the entrance chamber. The eerie sounds of a wind tunnel howled the melancholy chant of monks. Frank sat down on a warm rock. He removed the caving helmet from his backpack and turned on the helmet lamp. The beam illuminated sulfur steam rising from vents in the floor and snow melt dripping from cracks in the ceiling. Volcanic geothermal heat streamed up vents created by water percolating in the bowels of the earth. He pulled the skiff into the river that led into the depths of the island.

  Frank breathed heavily and tried to force the memories of tragedy out of his mind even though they played in his head like a movie. He thought of Melody, and his eyes watered up. Her tones sang through his thoughts like the beautiful cries of a loon. Powerful feelings of love and regret and devastation saddened him and distracted him. The bird song faded away and he heard the thunder of gunshot, a report that had echoed though his mind for years, the bad report that deprived him of the woman he loved. He had heard that gunshot a thousand times since her death, but now it rang louder than ever.

  The soft howl of the wind tunnel played its funeral song as if a spirit knew it was time for Frank to join his wife. Frank shoved the aluminum skiff away from the riverbank and rowed through the darkness.

  He glided into a massive cavern that was coffin dark, and lit a flare. Red light filled the cavern. His helmet lamp illuminated blood-red cave walls and stalactites that hung from the ceiling like long, wild Viking hair. The stalactites looked wet as if they dripped crimson fluids. The gentle current pulled his boat into a large cavern where the water slowed as the river widened from ten feet to a hundred feet across. The cave wall frowned at him where a gaping stone mouth opened to another run of the deep volcanic throat. Above the crooked mouth, dark eye-like pits watched Frank, and he wanted to turn around and leave. Hot wind moaned through the openings of gloom and foreboding.

  Visions of Frank’s past raced through his mind like a film on fast forward, and his record condemned him. He wiped puddles of sweat out of his eyes. The water under the boat was actually simmering now. The heat grew so intense that he pulled the hood over his head. It was like Dante’s river crossing for the unforgiven. Frank thought of Mok Don. The man got better than he deserved, but Frank also lacked angel’s wings. His deeds and his life’s work would never save him.

  Frank couldn’t understand why Mok Don hadn’t fought the charges in court. Many had survived similar battles. Not only that, Mok Don had survived three tortuous weeks at sea while others died around him.

  Strange thoughts raced through Frank’s mind. He thought of a Phoenix rising from the ashes. He remembered a house he had blown up in Columbia after the cartels had tortured four American military advisors and burned them alive on video. After the explosion, Frank watched a man climb out of the rubble and walk away with no serious injuries. All the others had perished while this one walked away, and Frank, thinking he had just seen some kind of miracle of destiny, let him go. Sometimes things didn’t go the way they should.

  The cave was a subterranean dungeon with weird formations. Sacrificial tables along the shore waited for victims. Time-sculpted hands on the ceiling waited, ready to drop their spikes. As he swung his flare around, a forest of treelike shadows stretched and tilted. Frank felt like they hid evil spirits eager to torment the latest arrival at the gates of the underworld.

  Frank rowed his boat through the open mouth and into the deeper throat of the cave where the windy breath howled and stirred the steaming water into a state of undulating turmoil. The cave narrowed, and as he came around the corner. His helmet lamp illuminated a dark, man-shaped outline, but it was only a rock formation. Behind it, Frank saw a boiling mud pit. This was a hellish place. He remembered the little bottle with the seed. No, there was nothing to fear anymore.

  Sweat soaked through Frank’s clothes as hot wind pushed the boat backwards. Steam burned his throat, so he breathed through his nose.

  He rowed as he followed the rock beach around another corner into a huge cavern. Frank crawled onto a lava table and walked into the darkness toward a side cavern. There in the deep he saw it—a huge mound the size of a car covered with tarps. With a buck knife, he cut away the canvas that had been attached to stakes driven into the rock floor. He pulled away the tarps. Most of them crumbled as he did so.

  “The Kobukson,” he whispered. It rested on black sand that covered the rock floor. He kneeled down, beholding the thousand-pound golden turtle ship replica. He wondered what Mok Don would have done to get his hands on this.

  Frank ran his finger along the golden bulwark and touched a spike that protruded from a plate of gold. He moved around to the front. He tapped his finger on the turtle head and gunwales.

  Steam and sulfur fumes swirled around the cavern. How ironic, Frank thought. The bowsprits of the real ships had carried smoke generators that emitted sulfur fumes to confuse the enemies.

  Frank stepped back and looked at the whole ship: the humped turtle-shell with spiked gold plates; the eight oars reaching out on each side; the square sails intricately knitted with thin gold wire. A treasure worth millions.

  He walked around the ship admiring the amazing craftsmanship of the artifact.

  He’d bring Abby back tomorrow to take photos. She would be so pleased.

  Frank turned his attention to the cave and looked it over closely. He considered the black sand on the floor. The tsunami had swept perpendicular to the cave entrance before impacting the coast. The turtle ship had been shielded and protected from the awesome, destructive forces that stripped away the rocks at the mouth of the cave.

  So this was the kobukson, the most amazing artifact he’d ever seen. He’d call Dane Leisbeth back tomorrow and follow through with his plans for a world tour to raise money for North Korean widows and to eventually return the relic to South Korea, where it belonged. He could live with that, but more importantly, he could live with himself. He had made so many mistakes in his life, but he’d done the best he could at the time. Frank never claimed to be an angel anyway. He looked around the gloomiest cavern he’d ever seen and wasn’t worried a
nymore—about anything.

  END

  Thank you so much for reading The Golden Catch. I am honored that you not only began the book but read it straight through to the end.

  For more Roger Weston books, check out the series below.

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  Books by Roger Weston

  The Brandt Series

  VENGEANCE: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 0)

  The Recruiter: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 1)

  The Handler: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 2)

  Rogue Op: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 3)

  Rogue Op II: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 4)

  American Op: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 5)

  Global Tilt: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 6)

  Vulcan Eye: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 7)

  Shadow Lawyer: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 8)

  Shadow Court: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 9)

  The Doorman: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 10)

  Coming soon: Book 11 in The Brandt Series

  ***

  The Sands Series

  GHOST SHIP: A Jake Sands Thriller (Book 1)

  RELIC: A Jake Sands Thriller (Book 2)

  THE TARGET: A Jake Sands Thriller (Book 3)

  ***

  More action-filled adventures by Roger Weston:

  The Golden Catch: A Frank Murdock Action-Adventure

  Frank Murdoch lives on a remote private island in Alaska, drawn there by its peace and isolation. There he finds a secret, unearthed from a cave sealed for seven decades. His historical research attracts Abby Sinclair, a lovely archaeologist. But it also catches the attention of Mok Don, chaebol leader and Korean Mafia kingpin. Frank Murdoch-crab fisherman and ex-CIA assassin-is back on his island with Abby, but Mok Don is closing in. Now the island's peace and quiet is threatened by the clash of one man's greed and another's love.

  The Assassin's Wife: A Meg Coles Thriller

  Drama Professor Meg Coles is in a state of shock after her husband is terminated and she barely escapes the killers. Now she is on the run, on the F.B.I.'s most wanted list, and a fugitive of the law and of government assassins. She learns that she knows very little about the man she's been married to for ten years. She must become a criminal to survive and to find out the truth, and she must get answers before the death teams silence her permanently

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