Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (43 page)

Cole headed to the afterdeck to use the crane to lift the boat out of its chocks on the cabin top. He’d just splashed the boat into the water and was releasing the lifting harness when he heard the distant sound of an aircraft engine. He looked up and searched the sky to the south.
After several seconds, he finally located the tiny dot in the sky. He stowed the dinghy harness and returned to the wheelhouse.

“I don’t like this, Theo. It’s too many people.”

“Relax, boss. I know being paranoid is your thing, but this time, just focus on the girl.”

“No, seriously. There is a reason why we have survived and been left alone for all these years. My paranoia has served a purpose and kept us alive. I never should have contacted Riley. You know how much they want this Dragon’s Triangle. And we’ve got to stop that from happening.”

“Cole, can you see the plane?”

“Yeah. It’s about to touch down on the bay.”

“Okay, mon. Focus on the plane. Get in the dinghy and go pick them up.”

Cole sighed as the floatplane splashed down on the sparkling blue water. He guessed there wasn’t much he could do to change the situation now. Brian and the others had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

“While you’re gone,” Theo said, “I’ll put together some lunch for everyone.”

“Okay,” Cole said. But inside he was thinking,
Great, now we’ve got the blind feeding the blind.

Brian’s was the first face he saw when Cole pulled his Whaler alongside the floatplane.

“G’day, mate,” the pilot called out through the open window after he shut down the engines. “I see you’ve shaved all that hair off your face for this great occasion.”

Cole waved and rubbed his hand across his freshly shaved upper lip and chin. “Yeah, I figured the beard wasn’t worth putting up with a leaky face mask.”

Brian looked back over his shoulder into the plane, then back at Cole. Brian gave him the thumbs-up. “Right,” he said.

Then the door in the body of the plane swung open, and Cole saw Riley’s gray eyes smiling at him.

Unfortunately, that moment of elation was short-lived as he next saw who the two additional passengers were: Nils Skar and the old man, Peewee. The needle on his paranoia meter was suddenly pegged.

It only took two trips in the dinghy to get all the passengers delivered to the trawler. They got the seaplane tied off on a long line trailing behind his anchored boat. Riley and Brian were the last two off the plane.

“How was your trip?” he asked.

Brian said, “The weather was pretty good. No thunderstorms, anyway. But we will want to get back first thing in the morning if we can. I’m worried about that Typhoon Bopha. You heard the news?”

“Not much. What’s happening?”

“They say it’s causing massive devastation down in Mindanao. It’s not likely it’ll come this far north, but you never know. I’d like to get back home.”

“I can certainly understand that,” Cole said.

They were approaching the swim step of the trawler and Riley grabbed the dinghy’s painter. “I’d never have recognized the boat,” she said as she climbed out of the dinghy.

“Yeah, well, I’ve done a bit of work on her since the last time you saw her.” As soon as he’d said it, Cole wished he could take the words back. The last time Riley had seen his boat, she believed that he had just died and been entombed in the submarine
Surcouf
. Seeing his boat again must be bringing up those old memories.

Brian said, “You got any cold beer on this tub?”

“See Theo in the galley.”

Brian climbed up the ladder to the afterdeck and Riley followed him.

“Riley, could you hold up a minute?” Cole said.

She turned and waited as he climbed up and joined her.

“I’d like to have a few minutes to talk to you alone. I want to apologize to you. I overstepped. I get so—” He stopped. There was always so much to tell her but when it came time to do it, he felt like a tongue-tied schoolboy.

“Cole, I get it. It’s just as well it happened this way. It’s clarified things. Made your priorities clear. I’ve had a little taste of the way these Enterprise guys operate, and you’re right. We’ve got to stop them.”

She turned and walked away from him.

What the hell just happened?
he thought.

As Riley approached the door to the galley he heard her call out, “Yummy, I smell something cooking. Where is that Theo?”

Cole thought,
Theo! Oh, shit! She doesn’t know.
He called out, “Riley. Wait up!” But he was too late. She turned and disappeared through the doorway. He trotted up to the opening fearing the worst.

He stepped through the oval metal door and saw Brian, Greg, Peewee, and Skar all jammed onto the tufted vinyl bench seats at the dinette. They were chowing down on pizza, drinking cans of San Miguel beer, and chatting. But there was no sign of either Riley or Theo.

The sound of her voice caused him to turn his head, and he saw her standing in the wheelhouse facing forward out the front windshield. Cole walked up to join her, and it was only when he reached the threshold into the wheelhouse that he saw Theo was there with her. Riley’s back was facing Cole and of course Theo, standing opposite her, couldn’t see Cole either.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Theo, what happened?”

“Riley, it’s been more than two years now. It no longer matters how it happened. They tried to kill me and they didn’t succeed. That’s the good news.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve learned to live with it.”

“Cole didn’t say a word to me about it. I can’t believe he didn’t tell me.”

Cole eased slowly back into the passageway, but he could still hear their voices.

“Go easy on him, Riley. In some ways, it’s been harder on him than on me.”

“I don’t see how—”

“He blames himself. And because of what happened to me, he decided he had to stay away from you—to keep you safe. I know these past four years have been painful for you, but believe me, he was suffering, too.”

“Oh, Theo,” she said.

Cole peered around the corner of the bulkhead, and he saw her slide her arms around his waist and embrace him.

“Enough of this mushy stuff,” Theo said, pushing her away. “Let me introduce you to the newest member of the crew.” He leaned down and rested his hand on the head of his yellow Labrador retriever. “This is Princess Leia, or just Leia for short. Go ahead. Shake hands.”

Riley dropped to one knee. “Hey girl, shake.” Leia lifted her paw. “I’m Riley,” she said as she shook the dog’s paw. “I’m glad to discover these guys have another female in their lives.”

“So, Riley, you think what we’re looking for is here at Camiguin?”

She stood and looked at the array of instruments and screens. “Yeah. You guys have really outfitted this boat with all sorts of new toys, haven’t you?”

Theo reached up and touched a screen. The image of the map from the prayer gau appeared.

Riley looked at him. “Okay, I can see that. But what about you?”

“In this case, I’ve studied this map for so long, I don’t need to see it. But here.” He reached up on the dash and grabbed a stiff piece of paper. He handed it to her. “I developed a tactile printer that does for images what Braille does for letters. It can’t do color and it’s difficult to
read very intricate designs, but I’ve been reading nautical charts with this for over a year now.”

“You really are amazing.”

“I know,” he said. “So are you going to tell us what you figured out about this map?”

“Okay.”

“Here you are,” Cole said, stepping into the wheelhouse as though he hadn’t been skulking in the passageway listening.

Riley turned to look at him, and he saw the dampness on her eyelashes before she tried to rub it away. She shot him a look that told him he would have more to explain later.

Theo said, “Riley was about to show me what makes her think Camiguin is the place.”

“Before we get to that,” Cole said, “I’d like to know more about what Irv and Nils Skar are doing here. I don’t trust either one of them.”

“I wondered about that, too,” Theo said. “The old guy was pretty funny when I served them the pizza, but I thought Cole said he was a member of the Enterprise.”

“
Was
is the key word there,” Riley said. “I guess we’ve all had our secrets. About a day out of Singapore, I was intercepted by our friend from Bangkok. Remember Benny?”

“Intercepted? What happened?”

“He pulled alongside in a fishing boat that was a lot faster than my boat, and he shot me with one of his darts.”

“What?” Cole said.

“Yeah, the next thing I knew I woke up aboard some pirate boat at anchor off Natuna Besar, and this weird American guy named Hawkes was trying to get me to give him the prayer gau and to tell him your name.”

Cole turned away from her and swore. This was all the old man’s fault. He’d started all this. “Then what happened?”

“Irv was there with them. It seems he’s an expert crypto-analyst, and he has been working for them.”

“I knew it.”

“But listen, it’s thanks to him that I got away. We went back to my boat supposedly to fetch the prayer gau, and Irv and I managed to escape. We’ve just spent more than a week on my boat together. It was a pleasant change having company at sea.”

“You mean when we talked on the radio—”

“Yeah. He was right there next to me.” The look on her face told him she was back there in her memory. “A man his age, even a man in great shape for his age like Irv, he’s got to know his time left on this earth is short. The way I caught him looking at me sometimes—it gave me the feeling there’s more to his story than he’s letting on. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I believe him when he says he’s done working for the Enterprise. And it was thanks to his help that I figured out the map.”

Theo said, “So explain it to me. What did you figure out?”

“Hang on, now. We still haven’t heard what she has to say about that freaky Norwegian.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” Riley said. “First time I saw him was last night. I think he was eavesdropping outside the door to Brian’s office when I called you on the radio. Then he somehow got himself invited along. I can’t figure out why Brian trusts him.”

“I didn’t like him the first time we met him,” Theo said.

Riley grabbed Cole’s arm. With her other arm she pointed out the window at the front of the pilothouse. “Look. There’s a boat coming out.”

“Great,” Theo said. “That’s all we need.”

“I’d better get back to the galley quick,” Cole said, “to make sure we have our story straight.

A few minutes later the entire party was standing on the aft deck. Brian was acting as spokesperson and Greg was translating. Of the four men in the boat that came alongside, one said he was the mayor of the village, and he wanted to know what they were doing in his bay.

Technically, Theo was the owner and skipper of the
Bonhomme Richard
. Cole was just a crewman. They had all agreed that their cover story was that they were an environmental group there to take samples of the sand on the bottom of the bay. Cole had heard on the news that the Chinese had recently sent a ship to Camiguin to do some mining of the mineral-rich black sand on the bottom. The Full Fathom Five Maritime Foundation, an organization Cole and Theo had once set up and could trot out when needed, was there to make sure the Chinese did not rob the Filipino people. Brian explained all this, but the mayor still demanded they come ashore and fill out the required paperwork.

“Ask him if there’s a pub in the village,” Skar said.

The others laughed, but when Greg spoke at length in Tagalog and the mayor answered, she told them there were actually two.

Brian offered to take Greg as translator and Theo as captain into the village in the dinghy, but Peewee and Skar both wanted to go, too. In a matter of minutes, they had all piled into the Boston Whaler and pushed off for shore.

Cole turned to Riley. “It looks like it’s just you and me left behind,” he said.

Northern Luzon
The Philippines

June 26, 1945

“So you’re in the OSS? We’ve been working with those guys for years. Funny we never crossed paths before.”

“I was in Europe up until Germany surrendered. Worked as a frogman doing underwater demolitions. Then they sent me on this sub. Even though we got captured by the Japs, I still can’t tell you what my orders were. The skipper and I both hoped that if I could get out with Ben here, I’d be able to come back with reinforcements, and we could get our sub back. There are a hundred and eighty American prisoners in that cave. Are you and your men up for that?”

“Okay, Ozzie. I’ve heard your story, and I need to convene a council to explain it to the others.”

Peewee spoke in Tagalog to Danilo and the young Filipino poked Ozzie again with his rifle.

“What did you say to him?”

“Danilo’s going to take the two of you to the stream where you can wash up. After our council, we’ll eat.”

The Filipino jabbed him again and Ozzie nearly fell.

It was more than two hours later when the others arrived. The valley had fallen into deep shadow. Earlier, Danilo had escorted them to the small creek where they washed and drank their fill of water. Then he had taken them to this place on the hillside where a rock overhang made a sort of small cave. A hunchbacked old woman stood over an open fire stirring the contents of a pot and turning sticks with small birds strung on them. Under the rock ledge, the daylight was nearly gone and the faces of Ben and Danilo were tinged with the reddish-gold light from the fire.