“They are gone, I’m afraid. Much of the treasure you have seen here arrived on the Teiyō Maru after I returned home to Japan. There was a small gold dragon, a miniature version of the large statue you saw. I had placed the maps inside that dragon. My remaining men were not disciplined, and the crew of the Teiyō Maru stole many items before they left—including that dragon. They took it when they sailed. I came all the way back here only to discover the maps are gone.”
Something about the prince’s statement was off. Why was he explaining this? “What do you mean?”
“My men heard on the radio that the Teiyō Maru was bombed. The ship sank. So you see, the maps really are gone.”
“Are there other copies?”
The prince smiled and touched the side of his head. “Here only. Good-bye, Lieutenant,” the prince said.
What happened next took Ozzie by surprise. The prince turned to Ben and embraced him. They stood like that for so long, Ozzie began to wonder if he should start down the mountain on his own. When Masako finally let the young man go, they both had tears in their eyes. Masako spoke softly in Japanese, then he reached into his pocket and removed the small piece of white silk Ozzie had seen earlier. Ben extended his hands, palms upward, and the prince spread the silk cloth on his hands. He reached into his pocket again and removed the gold prayer gau this time. He placed the object in Ben’s hands, folded the silk around it, and closed Ben’s fingers over the bundle. The boy bowed his head. Then the prince grabbed Ben by the back of the head, and they pressed their foreheads together. They said something in Japanese in unison. Then Prince Masako turned briskly and walked back into the cave.
Ben’s back was to Ozzie. He was fussing with his shirt and pants—probably hiding the gold object. They started off. As he followed Ben through the forest on the downward slope, Ozzie tried to spot some sort of landmarks so he could find his way back one day, but all he saw were trees.
After they had been walking for over an hour, Ben was so far ahead, Ozzie could barely see him.
“Ben!” he called out, asking him to slow down and wait up. Then he heard something in the bush behind him. It sounded like breaking twigs. He half turned and it felt like a blinding blast exploded on the back of his head.
Aparri, Luzon
The Philippines
November 26, 2012
“Can you take the con?” Cole asked once they had cleared the river mouth and the depth sounder showed the bottom was more than a hundred feet beneath them and dropping.
He wanted to take another look at the copy of the map and the charts of the Babuyan Islands, and he needed a clear head. He was glad to be leaving Aparri behind and headed for the Babuyan Islands, but he didn’t feel very confident about the information they’d got from the Norwegian. There was something about the man that made Cole not trust him. Brian seemed to think he was all right, though.
“Sure,” Theo said. “I’ve got it.” He reached up and switched on the radar and the AIS. Cole turned back toward their living quarters aft of the wheelhouse, but he paused in the doorway for a moment to watch his friend.
Theo had modified all the electronics on board their vessel so that they gave audio signals. The AIS system gave him a readout of the name and type of commercial vessel approaching them and the vessel’s speed, course, and their closest point of approach. The more likely scenario in these islands, however, was that the boat crossing their bow would be a small wooden fishing vessel called a bangka, a sort of canoe with a single outrigger, and they hoped the radar would pick it up and the fisherman would have the good sense to stay clear. If the radar detected a target, a tone would sound—high-pitched meant it was to starboard, low-pitched was to port—and the frequency of the ping told Theo how far off it was. If the target worried him, Theo could fetch Cole to take a look for whatever was ahead.
Cole watched as his friend slid a big set of headphones up onto his head and flipped open his laptop with the Braille reader. Theo’s fingers danced across the keyboard. Cole watched the screen he knew his friend could not see. In a matter of seconds, he had connected his laptop to a satellite network, used a VPN logon, connected to Spotify, and was playing his favorite soca and reggae tunes through the headphones.
“I know you think you’re being sneaky, mon,” Theo said.
Cole chuckled and shook his head. “No way you can hear me with those headphones on,” he said.
“I might be blind, but the eyes in the back of my head aren’t.”
“Amen, brother,” Cole said.
Cole turned around and headed for the stove to make himself some coffee. He needed some time alone. Time to think. He didn’t want to say anything to Theo, didn’t want to burden his friend, but Riley had missed their scheduled radio chat yesterday. He’d tried raising her boat again this morning, but still no luck. Where the hell was she? He was afraid to even consider the many possible things that could go wrong on a small sailboat in the South China Sea. If he thought about them, maybe it would make one of them true. He had to put thoughts of her out of his mind. There was nothing he could do.
The thing that most bothered Cole about this location off the island of Dalupiri was, what had the hospital ship been doing there? He couldn’t come up with a single reason why the Teiyō Maru would be in that location. Her last known port of call was Djakarta down in Indonesia. Though they had no record of it, they assumed that the hospital ship had then put in someplace in the Philippines close to this mythical megasite. There she had taken on a cargo of gold that she was supposed to transport back to the homeland. So, if she was headed home, why would she go up around the northern end of Dalupiri Island? It didn’t make sense.
For the next hour Cole studied the page he had got from Riley’s prayer gau. Not the map, but the other one with the symbols. He assumed it was some sort of key. The Japanese had wanted to be able to come back and find the treasure, but they didn’t want anyone else to be able to figure it out. Cole was lost deep in thought when he heard Theo call his name.
“Yeah?” He stood up and stretched. His back hurt from sitting for so long.
“Come here. There’s something I want you to look at.”
From habit, as soon as Cole entered the wheelhouse, he searched the horizon outside the windows. He didn’t see any ships or small boats, and the islands weren’t visible yet. “I don’t see anything out there.”
“No, not out there. Here.” Theo had pulled his big black headphones down around his neck. He pointed to the iPad he had affixed to a mount beneath the SSB radio. The tablet was connected to the radio by a cable.
“What is it?”
“I got a call on the SSB from Greg back in Subic Bay. She’d been watching the TV in the bar with Brian. She said the Japanese met office has just upgraded an area of low pressure southeast of the Philippines and named it Tropical Storm Bopha. Conditions are good for it to strengthen. I downloaded the weather fax charts from the SSB. I want you to take a look at them.”
“How far away is it?”
“It’s way out there now, like south of the Marianas and close to the equator, but it’s generally heading west.”
“Is it likely to come this way?”
“No, but this one is an odd storm. It’s late in the season and it keeps growing in spite of that.”
“So you’re worried that the storm is going to stray from the forecast path?”
“Not really.”
“Then what is it?”
Theo pointed to the screen image of a chart of the islands of Borneo and Palawan. “I reckon Riley is probably right about here, and that would put her directly in the forecast path of this storm.”
Aboard Bonefish
South China Sea
November 28, 2012
Riley pressed the button on the side of her wristwatch and the dial lit up the cockpit with a bright greenish glow. Ten more minutes until Peewee was supposed to relieve her. This business of being able to sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time was something
she’d be willing to get used to.
Her watch went dark again, and the night was restored. She still saw faint spots in her eyes, though, when she looked out into the inky night. Just that one small flash could ruin your night vision on a night like this. The low clouds hid the stars, and the only light outside the cockpit was the occasional flash of bioluminescence when one of the big swells broke into a frothy crest.
The wind had been building steadily since noon. She’d put a second reef in the main just before dark and rolled up the jib entirely a few hours ago. They were now doing better than seven knots under reefed main and staysail. The seas were growing, but they were taking them on the quarter so there wasn’t much spray.
The clunk of the aft head door closing told her that Peewee was up early for his watch. Light poured onto the side deck from the port.
Again, she was impressed by how well he was doing for a guy his age. No, she thought, for any guy. He now maneuvered around the boat at sea, swinging from one handhold to the next like a monkey in the trees. It was clear he’d spent time at sea before.
They’d passed most of their afternoons sitting at the settee table, poring over the charts of the Babuyan Islands. Peewee had taught her what some of the symbols on the sheet meant. Most pertained to land, but they’d begun to translate some of the symbols, and they were working on a hypothesis at the moment.
The head door opened and the light poured out. She turned her face aside. The light clicked off.
His face appeared in the companionway. He was wearing the black wool watch cap she had given him. “How’s it going, sweetheart?”
He smiled his crooked smile and Riley realized she had stopped seeing the scars on his face. She saw him, not the surface of his skin.
“It’s a little bouncy, but we’re making good time. We’ll be in Manila in no time if we keep this up.”
He started to climb on up the steps, but she stopped him with her palm in front of his face like a traffic cop. “Oilskins and harness, buddy. Nobody enters the cockpit at night without them.”
He looked up at her. “You know, you’re a bossy broad,” he said, then he disappeared below.
A few minutes later, Irv climbed into the cockpit wearing her second yellow foul-weather jacket and the big bulky safety harness with a built-in inflatable personal flotation device. He attached his carabiner hook to the big pad eye bolted to the side of the cabin, then looked at her and winked. “You happy now?”
“Very,” she said. “When I sail solo, I never get to climb into my bunk at night.” She lifted her shoulders and hugged herself. “It’s gonna feel good.”
“Hey, just because it’s easy to kick a man when he’s down, it doesn’t mean you should.”
She opened her mouth and aped an exaggerated look of shock. “Look around you, Mr. Peewee. You’re not down. You’re surrounded by the beauty of nature!”
He laughed. “Yeah, right. But truthfully? It’s been a good day.”
“Yeah, it has. You taught me lots about those symbols the Japanese used. It’s interesting. We’re pretty sure we know which island now. We’ll have the location pinpointed by the time we get to Manila.”
He nodded. “You may be right.”
“I am indeed.” She stood up and patted the old man’s shoulder. “And in the meantime, there’s a warm bunk down there with my name on it.” She pointed at the wheel. “It’s all yours.”
Instead of heading straight to her bunk, though, once below, Riley put a kettle of water on the stove and prepared two mugs with powdered hot chocolate mix. While waiting for the water to heat, she slid onto the seat at the chart table, leaned her head back against the bulkhead, and closed her eyes for a minute. It was comforting to go below into the safety of the cabin and to listen to the whooshing noise made by the water flowing by outside the hull and the creaking of the woodwork inside as the hull flexed. There were some sailors she knew who hated long passages, but she wasn’t one. She enjoyed this life where the world shrank down to her little ship in the middle of the big wide ocean.
She clicked on the red-tinted light, grabbed a mechanical pencil from the rack holding her nav instruments, and opened her logbook. Much as she loved her electronics, Riley still found great pleasure in recording her observations in her ship’s logbook by hand. She knew there were apps for her phone that would record her latitude and longitude via GPS with the click of a button, but this was how she had been taught to do it by her father all those years ago when she and her brother had sailed on their first sailboat named the Bonefish. Change was okay, and she usually embraced new ways, but this was a ritual she was loath to give up.
When she’d finished, she closed the leather-bound notebook and replaced it inside the chart table. Then she glanced at the SSB radio. Should she try again? Ever since she had missed the scheduled radio call she and Cole had set up, she had been listening and calling and trying to reach him. Was he sending her emails, wondering what had happened to her? If so, she wasn’t able to receive them. The same men who had held her prisoner so she couldn’t make their radio “date” had also stolen the satellite phone she’d connected to her computer to send emails. She wished now she had bought herself a Pactor modem that would enable her to send emails via the single-sideband radio, but she had decided the sat phone would suffice. She’d overlooked the cardinal rule of cruising: redundancy.
The kettle whistled and she got up and made the hot drinks for herself and Irv. After handing him his, she returned to the chart table and eyed the radio again. It couldn’t hurt to try while she drank her chocolate. She flipped the breaker on and pushed the radio’s power button. Static exploded from the speaker, followed by a high-pitched whistle. She pushed buttons to jump between the various preset frequencies. Whenever she heard voices in the ocean of static, she stopped and tried to tune them in. She found an Aussie cruiser talking to a Dutchman, but other than that, every other voice she heard was speaking a language she did not understand. After running through the presets, she went back to 8104 megahertz and almost fell off the seat when Cole’s voice came through loud and clear with almost no static.
“Bonefish, Bonefish, this is the Bonhomme Richard.”
Riley fumbled for the mike.
“This is Bonefish, do you read? Over.”
“Roger, roger. Holy crap, Riley. Is that you?”
“Roger. It’s me.”
“God! It’s great to hear your voice! I’ve been so worried about you.”
“Good to hear you, too.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
“You missed our last scheduled call.”
“Roger that. It was unavoidable.” She considered explaining more, but she didn’t want to worry him. “Everything here is A-OK now. We’re currently”—she flipped open the logbook—“located at nine degrees, nine minutes north, one hundred sixteen degrees, fifty-eight minutes east. We’re off the southern tip of the island of Palawan—only about thirty-five miles offshore, so technically we’re in Philippine waters.”
“You keep saying ‘we.’ Did you pick up a hitchhiker or something?”
Cole thought he was being funny. Little did he know. “Yeah, well, just habit, I guess. The ‘we’ is me and my boat.”
“Have you been watching the weather?”
“Negative,” she said. “Had a malfunction with my satellite phone. Can’t download any weather info.”
“You need to know that there is a tropical storm forming south of Palau. Conditions are favorable for it to build. Might be a typhoon soon, and it’s heading toward the southern Philippines.”
“Thanks for the info. We should be okay. That’s still a long way off and we’re making good time. Should arrive in Manila in three to four days.”
“Great. You keep moving and get out of the way of that thing. Does your cell phone still work?”
“Affirmative.”
“Okay. I’ll send a plane for you when you get in. I’ll text you where
to meet the pilot.”
She rolled her eyes at that. He was pretty confident she wanted to join him. “Where are you?” she asked.
“We’re up in the Babuyan Islands anchored in the lee of Dalupiri Island. Think this is the location of the Teiyō Maru marked on the map. We’ve been searching a grid with the magnetometer, but no luck. Too deep.”
“What map?” she asked. As far as she knew, she was the only one with a map.
The silence on the other end dragged out.
“Bonhomme Richard, are you there?”
“Roger. Back in Phuket. At the Shanti Lodge? After you fell asleep I sent pictures of all the documents to Theo. I assumed you wouldn’t mind.”
Riley stared at the radio. She lifted the microphone to her face, opened her mouth, then stopped. The hand holding the mike dropped into her lap.
“Bonefish, Bonefish, this is the Bonhomme Richard, do you copy?”
She heard the clank of Irv’s safety harness, and she looked up to see him leaning through the companionway to look at her.
The voice called again from the radio speaker. “Riley, come on, this is Cole. Do you copy?”
Irv said, “Your phone is ringing. You gonna answer that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It seems Mr. Thatcher thinks he’s the only one who can figure out where this shipwreck is.” She reached out and turned off the radio.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
She nodded. “They’re looking in the wrong place.”
Corregidor Island
The Philippines
November 29, 2012
Elijah ran his hand along the barrel of the huge gun mounted on the steel swivel plate set into the concrete. He tried to imagine what it had been like back when they had originally brought these guns up to the batteries. It certainly hadn’t been the parklike setting that surrounded him today. American boys had fought and died for their country on this soil, and it was now up to men like him to make sure that America remained the superpower she should be. Elijah checked his watch again. Benny was late.
Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) Page 25