Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2)

by Christine Kling

  “Somebody want to help me with this?” Cole said. “Damn thing’s heavy.”

  At the sound of his voice, Riley rushed down the short ladder to the aft platform.

  Nils Skar appeared at her side. He bent down and reached for the statue. “Could that be because it is made of gold?” he said.

  Riley saw the look on Cole’s face and quickly stepped between Nils and Cole. “I’ll take it,” she said.

  Cole was right. The statue was damn heavy, and though it was completely overgrown with aquatic plants and crustaceans, the head, forearms, and tail made it plenty clear what it was. She climbed back up the ladder and set the heavy object down on the back end of the cabin. Greg appeared at her side with a plastic wash basin half filled with water. Riley set the artifact in the basin.

  “Look,” Greg said, “where you touched it there. You knocked some of the nasty brown slime off.”

  The color of the metal beneath shone through.

  “Just like that freak said,” Greg whispered.

  Riley looked around for him. Nils was standing back at the stern, leaning against the bulwark. He nodded at her when their eyes met. She turned away. Peewee was leaning on the cabin on the other side of Riley and he stared at the statue with a faraway look on his face.

  “Should we clean it up?” Riley asked.

  “Whoa,” Cole said as he bounded up the ladder from the swim platform aft. “My find, my cleanup job.”

  He was still wearing his full wetsuit and his face bore the red, round circle from where his face mask had pressed into his skin. His hair was dripping wet. He leaned in and kissed her with his chilled lips. “It’s not what I’d hoped for, but at least it’s something.” He squinted up at the sun overhead, then unzipped the front of the wetsuit. “Damn, it’s hot out here.”

  Behind him Brian was peeling off his own wetsuit. “That’s your fault for kissing your girl when you’re still kitted up.”

  Cole grinned at her and said, “It’s worth the risk.”

  Theo said, “You know, I get nervous when it gets this quiet with no wind. I’m going to go check the weather.”

  Irv reached over and touched the statue almost reverently. “Where did you find it?”

  “In the captain’s cabin, just like he said. The captain was in there, too. I almost had a heart attack when I saw the skeleton on the floor with the arm bones scattered around this thing. The guy must have drowned closed up in his cabin holding onto it. Wait till you see the video from my head cam.” Cole tossed his wetsuit onto the deck and took the brush and cloth from Greg. The growth washed off easily in most places.

  Irv said, “The Teiyō Maru probably went down in four or five minutes. They had this honor code called bushidō. A captain who lost his ship was disgraced. He knew he had to go down with the ship and he wanted to take his stolen treasure with him.”

  Cole had brushed off most of the algae, and though it would need to be polished and restored, the head with the open mouth, the clawed forearms, and the rippling scaled back were clearly exquisite. He paused in his cleaning and turned to look at the old man. “What makes you think it was stolen?”

  “That’s why the Teiyō Maru got the code name Dragon’s Triangle. That is the treasure.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look on the bottom of it. The statue is hollow. You should find a door.”

  Cole turned the statue over and Riley saw the thin outline of what looked like a crack in the metal. “There,” she said.

  “Somebody get me my dive knife!” Cole yelled.

  Brian jumped down to the aft platform and handed it up to Riley. She passed the knife to Cole.

  “Irv, if you know so much about this, what’s supposed to be in here?”

  “That’s why this is considered the mother lode. Hidden in there are maps to all the Golden Lily sites in the Philippines.”

  Cole got the tip of the knife wedged into the crack, and with an effort the door popped open. Brown water flowed out. Cole looked up and said, “Maybe it’s not so bad. I see what looks like oil-soaked canvas. If the maps are there, maybe they’re still okay.”

  He pulled out a corner of the parcel and gently wiggled the rest loose. The oilskin parcel was wrapped with some kind of string that fell apart when he pulled on it. Cole set the parcel down on the cabin top and flipped it over once. Then he turned it again. At the last turn, brown pulpy water sluiced out across the white paint.

  Cole tried to pick up one of the bigger lumps of paper pulp but it broke apart in his hand. “Well, shit,” he said.

  “You can say that again, mate,” Brian said. “Salt water plus paper equals shit.”

  Peewee took off his hat, sighed, and rubbed his sleeve across his forehead. He looked terribly old and tired, Riley thought. Whatever it was that had been burning inside him just seemed to flicker out. He turned around and leaned against the bulwark for support.

  “Hey, guys,” Theo called from just outside the wheelhouse. “We need to get out of here and find some kind of shelter. Typhoon Bopha, which was heading away from the Philippines, has started to curve back. If it keeps turning, it will be headed straight for northern Luzon.”

  Northern Luzon

  The Philippines

  June 27, 1945

  By the time Ozzie returned to the rock overhang, only Danilo was still there waiting for him.

  “Ben and Lieutenant Marcos?” Ozzie asked.

  Danilo made a sweeping motion with his hand to indicate they were on their way. At least that had been taken care of. Then Danilo motioned for Ozzie to follow him.

  They walked back through the trees. He never would have guessed they had arrived at the tree houses, but suddenly there was a rope ladder there. Danilo grabbed a dark wool blanket that was hanging from one of the rungs and he threw it at Ozzie. The Filipino pointed at the ground.

  Ozzie pointed at himself and then at the ground. “You’re saying I’m supposed to sleep down here on the ground?”

  The man grunted and started to climb the ladder.

  “What about the spiders and the snakes?”

  The man didn’t answer. Ozzie reached out to grab Danilo’s boot and got a glancing kick at the side of his head in return. Then the ladder was gone, pulled up into the trees.

  He wrapped the blanket around him, sat on the ground, and leaned against the trunk of the tree. The noises of the forest around him grew louder the longer he sat there. He’d slept no more than a couple of hours at most in the last forty-eight hours, but his eyes remained wide open. It was going to be a long night.

  A hand grasped his shoulder and shook him. Ozzie tried to move his head, but his neck was so stiff he could barely move. Then a boot connected with his ribs.

  “Get up, princess.” It was Peewee’s voice, but it came from too far away to be connected to the boot. “You sleep on the ground too long, you’ll get crud up your ass.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. He glared at Danilo, who stood over him wearing a half smile. Ozzie threw off the blanket and tried to stand. It was going to be a process. He rolled his head around and stretched out his legs.

  The sky was already gray with the coming dawn. When he got to his feet, he saw they were working to bring down equipment from the tree house he’d been sleeping under. There were four rucksacks and the men were filling them with ammunition belts, magazines, and grenades. It looked like they were planning quite a party.

  “We’ve got a long hike ahead of us,” Peewee said. “It’s going to take us the better part of the day to get to this village on the coast. Rafi’s going to meet us there with the boat. Head on over to the kitchen now. We’ll eat first, and then we’ll take off.”

  Breakfast consisted of strongly garlic-flavored rice washed down with a hot dark liquid that was supposed to pass for coffee. The day had already turned hot, and it was only an hour after sunrise.

  When they returned to the campsite, each of the four men took a backpack.

  “What do you want
me to carry?” Gregoria asked.

  “This is not your mission. Somebody’s got to stay here and watch over the camp.”

  “Why? You’re taking every last bit of ammunition we have.”

  “There’s still the radio. And all that gold we got off him and the kid,” he said, pointing his thumb at Ozzie.

  Ozzie shrugged, but inwardly he was glad to know for certain they had taken the prayer gau from Ben.

  “If we don’t come back,” Peewee told Gregoria, “we need you to call and let somebody know the sub coming out of that cave has Japs, not Yanks, in charge. Whatever it is they want to get back to Japan must be pretty damn important for them to send a royal prince to highjack a US submarine. We can’t let that cargo make it back to Nippon.”

  Peewee put his arm around her shoulder and walked her a short distance away. They spoke in soft murmurs. Ozzie saw Peewee lift his dog tag chain over his head and he slid it down her dark hair. He tucked the dog tags into her cleavage and then the two of them embraced. When they separated, Gregoria climbed up into one of the trees and disappeared.

  By Ozzie’s best account, they had four M42 machine guns and the Thompson. Peewee told him they had the most ammo for the M42s because they were able to use captured Jap ammo in those. The plan was to head into the cave in the dark and try to join forces with the Americans. Hopefully, with their firepower and by outnumbering the Japanese, they would be able to retake the submarine.

  They hiked up and down more mountains than Ozzie could count. Aside from a brief stop along a stream to eat their lunch of now cold rice, they kept up a steady pace. The other men conversed in Tagalog, but Peewee never said a word to Ozzie during the trek.

  It was close to sundown when they first spotted the village. They had been able to see the ocean through the trees off and on all day, but they never got any closer. Ozzie reckoned they had been traveling south parallel to the coast. The houses they first saw on the outskirts of the village looked abandoned. They saw no livestock and the fields looked overgrown.

  Late in the afternoon the sky had clouded over and they had been cooled off by a thunderstorm. They were all drenched to the skin now.

  Before entering the main part of the village, they stopped behind an abandoned house and stood with their backs to the wall. Manolo made that same birdcall Ozzie had heard when Gregoria first captured him. A similar call came back in return.

  “Rafi,” Peewee said. The men didn’t lower their weapons, but they walked more confidently into the street that ran through the few houses that made up the small village.

  “Where is everybody?” Ozzie asked as they walked past house after empty house.

  “The Japs came through here over a year ago and scared them all off. They didn’t want people living too close. That’s how we found out about the cave. When we heard they’d forced out the villagers, we started nosing around to see what was going on. Coastal lookouts said they’d seen boats head north up the coast from here and then disappear.”

  When they reached the beach, they saw a forty-foot fishing boat anchored offshore. Ozzie could make out the name San Pedro painted on the bow. Rafi was standing next to a small canoe that looked like a smaller version of the big boat. Both had outriggers, but the fishing boat offshore was planked, not a dugout, and it had a small wheelhouse in the back. What looked like a smokestack came up through the roof of the wheelhouse.

  Peewee looked oddly nervous as he eyed the canoe.

  “Don’t tell me you still can’t swim?” Ozzie said. It was something he had razzed his friend about every summer of their childhood. Peewee had loved to sail in the small boats they built, but he always wore a life jacket. Ozzie told him he’d never get any girls if he was the one wearing the Mae West.

  “I like being on the water, not in it. That’s what I got you for.”

  “Oh, really? You didn’t fill me in on that part of the plan.”

  “Yeah, well, you might want to grab something that floats before we take off. You’re going to be in the water for a while.”

  The Babuyan Islands

  The Philippines

  December 5, 2012

  With the weather about to turn bad, Brian said he wanted to get to Subic Bay to get his plane locked down. Cole told Riley they didn’t have the speed to make it all the way back to Subic, so he thought they should take the Bonhomme Richard back to Aparri.

  While Greg ran Brian back to his anchored plane, Cole and Theo gave orders to the rest of their passengers to get all the dive gear stowed and make the boat ready for an overnight passage at sea. Typhoon Bopha could be on them in forty-eight hours if it stayed on its present course.

  When Greg returned, Riley helped her hoist the dinghy into its chocks on the aft end of the cabin and tie it down while Cole and Theo lifted anchor. The sun was nearly setting when they turned away from Camiguin Island and set a course for Dialao Point on the northwest corner of Luzon. Cole said if they continued to make eight knots all night, they should be at Aparri by dawn.

  Cole called a crew meeting in the galley and assigned the watches for the night. With two to a watch, he would have eyes on Nils and Irv, since he didn’t trust either one of them. Greg and Theo took the first watch and offered to make dinner as well. When the crew scattered, Cole took Riley by the arm.

  “Could I interest you in a glass of wine?” he asked.

  “That sounds good. I was going to stand outside for a while to enjoy the sunset.”

  “I’ll meet you on the aft deck.”

  When she stepped outside, it was that time of the evening when the sun is about to set and the light has a golden cast to it. She walked to the aft deck and leaned on the railing, her hair whipping around her face in the wind.

  She heard him walk up behind her and stop. Turning her head, she looked at him over her shoulder. He had a glass of pinot noir in each hand and his teeth were blazing white against the coppery glow of his skin.

  “What are you up to?” she said.

  “I’m taking mental pictures of you on my boat in this magical light and storing them for when we are old and gray.”

  “For when I get old and ugly, you mean?”

  He laughed and handed her a glass. “No, you’ll never be ugly. When we’re both in our nineties, I’m sure you’ll still be the most beautiful woman I know.”

  She clinked her glass against his. “Keep this up and I might just stick around until I’m ninety.”

  They stood then in a comfortable silence watching the waves and the seabirds. The sun kissed the horizon and sank into the sea.

  “Are you terribly disappointed?” she asked after a while.

  “About the dive?”

  She nodded.

  “No, it’s still out there. I’m certain of it. I’ll find it eventually—before they do.”

  “Ah. It’s them again.”

  He chuckled. “One of the many reasons I like having you around, Magee. You keep me on my toes. They aren’t just shadows for you anymore, are they?”

  “Their Mr. Hawkes is a particularly nasty piece of work. I’m all for making sure he doesn’t get what he wants.”

  Cole took a long sip of wine. After he swallowed, he said, “Being inside that ship this afternoon certainly did feel creepy.”

  “I guess. Seeing those bones?” She shivered. “I’m glad it wasn’t me.”

  “I’m not a superstitious type, but there was something down there that felt, I don’t know. Ominous. That’s not quite the right word. Evil, maybe?”

  “Knowing some of the atrocities that both sides engaged in, I think evil is a word that would fit.”

  “After that business with Nils telling me what to look for and then finding it—it felt spooky.”

  “How did he know?”

  “I intend to have a nice long talk with him and your buddy Irv in the morning before we reach land. I want to know how both of them know what they know. Say—later tonight when you’re on watch with the old man, why don’t you see what you can
learn?”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  Greg appeared out the side door of the wheelhouse. “Hey, captain. Sorry to bother you. Theo’s got a question for you.”

  Cole’s eyes met Riley’s and she saw disappointment. “Duty calls.”

  “It’s all right. It’s getting chilly anyway. I’m going to head into your cabin.”

  “Our cabin,” he said, and he turned and walked forward.

  When Riley closed the door to the cabin, the boat was starting to pitch and roll in the swells. She was afraid to set down her wineglass, but she wanted to look again at the prayer gau and the documents within. Maybe she would be able to figure out something to help Cole find this Golden Lily treasure mother lode site.

  With her glass held tight in one hand, she searched through the pockets of her backpack until she felt the silk cloth. She pulled out the artifact rolled up in the cloth covering and took it over to the desk. She sat down in the chair, unrolled the silk, and set it aside. She was struggling to keep the gold tube from rolling off the desk without letting go of her wineglass when she heard a knock at the door.

  The noise startled her and her hand jerked. A splash of red wine hit a part of the silk and made an oblong pool across the desk.

  “Shit,” she said as she looked around for a box of tissues or paper towels or anything to clean up the mess before it rolled onto the floor.

  The knock came again. “Coming,” she called. She pushed back the chair and stood. She tilted back the glass and drained the rest of her wine. I can’t spill any more if my glass is empty, she thought.

  She reached for the door handle. Peewee stood outside with his hat in his hand.

  “Can we talk?”

  She laughed. “I thought those were the words men most hated. Come on in. Excuse me while I clean up here.” She left the door open and returned to the desk.

  The old man came in and sat on the edge of the bunk while she rummaged through the drawers. She found a legal pad and tore off several sheets of paper to mop up the wine. It wasn’t the most absorbent material, but she finally had the desk clean. She blotted the piece of silk between two sheets and was sad to see the fabric had discolored to a strange brown in some places, while the rest was pink from the wine. The brown tint was probably due to age.