Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (19 page)

Aboard the Ferryboat
Gulf of Thailand

November 18, 2012

Riley hadn’t seen another vessel in a couple of hours, not since they’d left the mouth of the river and cruised out into the Gulf of Thailand. She checked her watch. It was past four in the morning. She hadn’t slept all night. Hadn’t slept much on the train the night before, either. This had been one of the longest days of her life. Although technically it was Sunday morning, it wouldn’t feel like a new day until the sun came up.

She’d spent the first few hours stretched out on one of the benches at the stern of the boat watching the lights pass by on the banks of the river and trying to sleep. She couldn’t silence her mind. Not that her thoughts were coherent. She’d spent four years hoping to find him alive and now that she had, she didn’t know what to say to him. Maybe four years was just too long. Or maybe a part of her knew that if they did get back together, she’d have to tell him what she’d learned about that day in Lima and her part in it all.

Finally she’d walked forward and told Cole she would take the helm, and he should try to get some sleep. He’d spread out on the box over the engine compartment and then nodded right off like a good seaman. She envied him that. Sleeping while under way on overnight passages was always a struggle for her. On her single-handed crossings, she got most of her sleep during the daylight hours.

Cole had to know she was waiting to hear his story. And she figured he wasn’t exactly eager for the opportunity. Why hadn’t he contacted her? So much time had passed, and she had so many questions. Or maybe he knew more about
her
past than he was letting on. Perhaps the reason he’d stayed away was because he knew the truth about Lima, and now he was finding it difficult to tell her so.

After going over the charts on her iPhone a few hours earlier, they had decided to head for the Mae Klong River. If they kept this speed up, they should arrive around sunup. There were a few fishing boats and squid boats out on the gulf, but nothing that had come within half a mile of them. Keeping a lookout wasn’t hard, just boring. She wished this boat had an autopilot. She wanted to go back and watch him sleep.

“Hey, Magee.”

She jumped. She hadn’t heard him approach.

“How are you doing?” He leaned on the dash at the front of the boat and looked out over the bow. They were running with the wind and there wasn’t much breeze over the boat.

“Too much time to think on night watches,” she said.

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

They both stared out into the black night. There was no moon and they were too far away from land to see any lights there. The sky was ablaze with stars. She was awkward with him, while he looked rested and relaxed.

“Riley, remember that first time you and I sailed your boat at night around the island down in the Saintes?”

She couldn’t hold the smile back. She loved hearing him speak her name. “Yeah. We saw dolphins.”

“I knew that night that I was falling in love with you.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. They were on a boat alone at sea, and he hadn’t touched her. She felt her stomach muscles tense. Maybe now he would tell her why he had kept his distance all these years.

“So what changed?”

His head whipped around and the worry lines in his forehead were etched deep. “Nothing changed.” Then he looked away. “Well, I didn’t change. The world did.”

“Cole, where the hell have you been for the last four years?”

She hated his silence. After what felt like forever, he said, “I had to keep you safe.”

She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she heard the long exhale. “That was you that day in Cherbourg, wasn’t it? Dressed up like a homeless Vietnam vet?”

One corner of his mouth turned up, and she wished she could see the dimple beneath the beard. “You didn’t recognize me. It was a hell of a disguise to fool you.”

He made it sound like a game. It hadn’t seemed fun to her. “I followed the clues. I went back to my boat and took off down to Puerto La Cruz in Venezuela. From there to the Cayman Islands. I crossed the Pacific looking for the Dragon’s Triangle. Even after four years,
you
are what brought me to Thailand. You gave me that damned recording. Let me know you were alive, and then it was like you broke your promise.” She felt her chin trembling, and she bit her lower lip to regain control. “I solved all the puzzles you gave me, but you weren’t there.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She turned her back to him. It was his turn now. The silence dragged on, and she could feel him watching her. She kept her eyes
forward on the inky blackness beyond the glow of the boat’s red and green running lights.

“It’s hard to know where to start.”

She nodded, but said nothing.

“I still don’t know how I got out of that sub. I remember putting the box I’d found into the cargo net on the
Enigma
. While I was out of sight of the video camera, I opened the box. The lock had rusted and it broke after one punch from my fist. I grabbed the pouch and stuffed it inside my wetsuit. I checked my dive computer, and I knew I was running short on time. Then when I was back in front of the video cam, I felt the sub shudder and something hit me. I remember trying to find the camera again and signing to you as the water got all cloudy. I partially inflated my buoyancy compensator, and then that’s it. Nothing more.”

She turned around and the look on his face made her chest ache. “I saw your sign,” she said. She held up her hand with the thumb and pinkie raised in the sign for
I love you
.

He looked at her hand and then his eyes locked on hers. She rocked back on her heels, then turned away.

“I washed up on the beach at Îles de la Petite Terre,” he said. “I guess I must have swum part of it. Like I said, I don’t remember.”

He had been so close by. “Just like Henri Michaut did when
Surcouf
first sank. I should have thought of that. I should have searched there.”

“No. I wasn’t there long. Our old friend Henri had sent some of his family to pretend they were fishing off Petite Terre while we searched for the
Surcouf
. They saw me crawl onto the beach. I couldn’t remember anything. They helped me into their boat and took me to the Princess Margaret Hospital in Dominica.”

“I called all the area hospitals.”

“They had me admitted under a false name. You remember how paranoid Henri was. There was a hyperbaric chamber there. The doctor
said in addition to decompression sickness, I had a severe concussion. He told me the amnesia wasn’t unusual with that kind of traumatic brain injury and diving accident. A few days later when I started remembering about the
Surcouf
and you and Theo, Henri told me about what had happened. There’d been a boat collision, a volcanic eruption on Montserrat, and an earthquake—hell of a trifecta. Then he said the authorities in Guadeloupe had declared me dead.”

“And you decided to just go with that.”
Without giving me a second thought.

He winced, catching her tone. “No, it wasn’t like that.”

“Like what? What did I say?”

“Riley, I’m sorry. I know I’ve caused you pain. But it was about what I’d found. When they got me to the hospital and stripped me, they found the diplomatic bag I’d tucked inside my wetsuit. It was rubberized canvas and weighted with lead—but the documents inside were dry.”

“Operation Magic.”

“That’s right. The hospital staff gave it to Michaut’s granddaughter, and we opened it when I was released. I did a little research on the web while I was recuperating in Dominica, and what I discovered scared the crap out of me. I knew there were men out there who would kill for what was in those documents. I wanted to keep you safe.”

“You were protecting me.”

“Right! And I have been ever since. I’ve kept an eye on you. That disguise in Cherbourg? That wasn’t the only time. I had to see you.”

“So, all those times when I thought I was going crazy, when I thought I saw you—sometimes I was right?”

He grinned. “Nah, you never spotted me. I mean,
they
never found me either, so don’t feel bad.”

Riley expelled her breath like something between a cough and a groan. She shook her head. “So who the hell appointed you my protector? Why would I trust you with my life when you couldn’t trust
me with yours?” She handed him her iPhone. “Here are the charts. Here’s the wheel.” She stepped back and he grabbed the helm. “It’s your watch. I’m going to get some sleep.”

She heard him calling her name as she walked aft to the engine cover and stretched out. She didn’t answer.

Sea Gypsy Village
Phuket, Thailand

November 18, 2012

Benny paid the cabdriver the ridiculous fare for the trip from the Phuket airport to the Sea Gypsy Village south of Ao Chalong. When the vehicle pulled away, he joined the tourists strolling down the road browsing the fish market stalls selling brightly colored reef fish, prawns, spotted crabs, squid, and green mussels. In clear plastic bags shelled oysters, clams, and dozens of other sorts of shellfish floated in seawater like flesh-filled water balloons displayed atop plastic bins filled with ice. Shoppers haggled in loud voices and tourists tried on shell necklaces.

Benny’s destination was on the other side of the touristy section of the village, so he walked at a brisk pace. Where the road plunged down the hill to sea level, a mud and sand beach was crisscrossed with the stern lines of the dozens of wooden fishing boats anchored just a few feet offshore, their upturned prows pointing out to the bay. The road turned to dirt at the bottom of the hill and there under the trees, the boat builders worked repairing old leaking planks and crafting new
vessels. They applied new coats of brilliant-colored paint and sparkling clear varnish.

His people, the Dayak, were waterborne folk. They had lived on rivers before immigrating to the city, and boatbuilding was taught from one generation to the next. One group from his clan had emigrated and settled here in Phuket. They now built boats in the distinctive Thai style. As he walked down the hill, he saw the characteristic red headband and the tattoos covering the back and arms of the man squatting next to a half-finished hull. One of the other workers nodded at his clansman, then pointed at Benny.

The man stood and turned. Benny saw the hand-rolled marijuana cigarette dangling from his lip. The man smiled, lips tight, eyes squinting, and the end of the cigarette flared red.

“Good to see you, Iban,” Benny said.

“And you, Benjamin.”

They shook hands.

Benny explained what he needed and Iban took him down to the water’s edge to show him a selection of boats.

“I will need to anchor, perhaps for a few days, so I would like some nets to sleep on and a tarp. If you could have one of the women bring me two days’ food, I will pay.”

Iban shouted orders to a young boy playing with the shavings under the hull. The boy took off running toward the village.

A couple of hours later, Benny was motoring north in a bright blue fishing boat, the bow piled high with provisions. Iban’s woman had sent enough food for him to live for a week. He hoped it wouldn’t take that long. In the stern of the boat was a small charcoal cooker. The engine was an air-cooled automotive engine on a pivot with the prop at the end of a long shaft. Iban had shown him how to operate it. Benny preferred the old ways. Back home when he was a boy and they lived with his grandfather, his people poled their canoes on the river. He
recognized the necessity of the big engine but he didn’t like the noise and smell, and he did not feel proficient in its use.

His contact at the Enterprise had been able to provide him with the name of the woman’s boat and a general description, but there were many white sailboats anchored off the Ao Chalong Yacht Club. He had a tourist map of the area and the yacht club was marked on the shore. That was where the old man had contacted her. He would watch for her to arrive from that direction once he located the boat.

Benny worked out a search pattern and traveled throughout the anchorage for thirty minutes before finding the one boat with the name
Bonefish
on the transom. Homeport Annapolis, Maryland.

He throttled the engine down and approached slowly. The sun had just set, but there was still enough light for him to see that the sailboat was boarded up and padlocked. He had beat her here, and that pleased him. He motored several hundred feet away from her boat and dropped his anchor over the side. He opened up the bundle of provisions to discover what he would eat for his evening meal, then settled down to wait for the woman to return to her boat.