Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (24 page)

“I plan to sail to the Philippines direct. No stopping. It will be roughly eighteen hundred miles. I hope to do it in two to three weeks. I have my single-sideband radio and satellite phone. I’ll be in touch.”

“That’s it? That’s all she wrote?”

“Yeah, mon. That’s it. Well, at least you got to spend one night together.”

“We
slept
together.”

“You dog, you. Was it as good as you remembered? I mean, you’ve been fixated on getting this woman back into your life all these years.”

“You didn’t hear me. I said we
slept
. That’s all we did. Sleep.”

“Oh no you didn’t.”

“She hadn’t slept in two nights. She ate and she virtually passed out. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay, what now? Are you going after her?”

“No. I’m not going where I’m not wanted. I’m going to catch the first plane I can find back to the Philippines.”

“We do have our work cut out for us now.”

“Did you get the other two documents I sent last night?”

“You sent? I thought Riley sent them.”

“Well, when she fell asleep, I kinda used her phone to take snapshots and send them on to you. She doesn’t have to know.”

“Did you erase them from her sent mail?”

“What?”

“Listen, you need to leave the tech stuff to me. She’s going to know. Do you think she’ll be okay with you taking copies without her permission? Does she even have any idea what it is she has—how valuable those documents are?”

“You mean how valuable the documents
we have
are? No, this is Riley we’re talking about. She won’t mind.”

“Okay,” Theo said. “So says the man who
slept
with her last night.”

Aboard the USS
Bonefish
South China Sea

June 25, 1945

They’d been lucky so far. Ozzie knew he couldn’t count on that luck continuing, but so far, the lady had favored him. They had not encountered a single other warship on their entire trek across the South China Sea.

SubComPac would soon declare the USS
Bonefish
missing in action since she had not shown up for her rendezvous with the rest of the Hellcats on June 24. Ozzie had told the sub’s radio operator to expect this—that it was all part of their orders for their whereabouts to remain unknown. If any other US ship saw them and identified them, they’d send out a search party the likes of which he did not want to deal with. Ozzie had a plan, and being missing in action suited him just fine. He intended to send the boys on the USS
Bonefish
off to make their reappearance later. For now, he needed the ride to the Philippines for himself and Prince Masako. If the treasure really was as vast as the prince claimed, it would not be possible for one man to handle tons of material. He knew there were plenty of his OSS mates on the ground
in Luzon, and once he had located the treasure sites, he reckoned he could call on them to overpower the few Japs who remained.

The sticky part was going to be that moment of the arrival of the sub. Presumably, the prince had a loyal army waiting for his return. How many men? There was no way to know for sure, but given that all the word out of Luzon was that the core of Yamashita’s men who had retreated into the mountains of Luzon were starving, weak, and low on ammunition, Ozzie believed their odds of overpowering them were pretty good.

Ozzie was going to have to give both Westbrooke and Prince Masako just enough information to think they each knew the whole score. He would like to avoid a shoot-out when they first arrived, but in the end, they would have the firepower of those deck guns and any shoreside installation would be a sitting duck for the nimble submarine.

As it turned out, Ozzie and Westbrooke were both standing atop the conning tower when the lookout called out that he could see land. It was late afternoon and the winds were down. The sea surface mirrored the crisp cumulous clouds, and the usual humid haze had taken a breather. The bluish mountains of Luzon’s Cordillera range were visible over twenty miles away.

“I hear these are beautiful islands,” Westbrooke said as he surveyed the distant coast through the binoculars.

“Oh yeah. I spent a good bit of time here before Pearl Harbor.”

Westbrooke lowered the binoculars and turned to face Ozzie. “Really? I didn’t know you’d been stationed in the Philippines.”

“Yeah, lucky me. I was on Corregidor before the Japanese showed up. Used to work in SIS. I made it out of there just in time, too.”

“I guess you’ve been a part of all this from the start, then.”

“Yes, sir. It seems a lot longer than four and a half years ago.”

“I was still in school when it started.” Westbrooke turned back to look on the faint image of the coast ahead of them.

“Skipper,” Ozzie said. “I think we need to talk about the details of a plan.”

Without turning, Westbrooke said, “So I’m finally going to be told the details of this mission. It’s about time.”

“I’m just following my orders, sir.”

“I hate this damn secrecy, but let’s hear it now.”

“As you know, MacArthur has taken Manila, but General Yamashita has withdrawn into those mountains we see over there.” Ozzie pointed to the coast. “He has about fifty thousand troops with him and they are being supplied by Japanese submarines making drops at the port we are about to visit. Our mission is to get in there and take out the ground forces. We need to close this off as a supply line for Yamashita.”

“Okay. What do we know about the shoreside installation?”

“Very little. We got these orders due to information I got from our prisoner, Lieutenant Colonel Miyata. He says it is a very small harbor, barely big enough for this sub to enter. But they don’t have any big guns installed, so we’ll only be looking at small-arms fire. It shouldn’t be a problem to take it. Based on Miyata’s intel, I suggest a night entry. He’s given me the radio frequency and code that will make their guys think a Jap sub is coming in. They’ll light up a range. They won’t know who we are until it’s too late.”

“Our Japanese colonel seems to be uncharacteristically cooperative.”

“Well, it’s the end of the war. We know it and they know it.”

Like all the officers on the USS
Bonefish
, Ozzie had been issued a sidearm, but on the boat he never wore it. But this evening, he and Westbrooke both wore their sidearms. As the USS
Bonefish
approached the coast, Westbrooke called for full battle stations. The crew manned the deck guns. After he had the radioman send the signal, Ozzie had the
chief of the boat bring their two prisoners up to the top of the conning tower.

The moon was hidden behind a layer of clouds that had moved in after sunset, but the scent of land, that mixture of earthy vegetation and the sweet smell of rotting organisms, tingled in the noses of every man on deck. The night was so black Ozzie began to feel dizzy. It was difficult to know which way was up and he braced himself in a corner of the deck. He could not see the prince’s face, but he felt him smiling.

“Dammit, Lieutenant Colonel, you’d better not be leading this submarine into dangerous waters. You know a grounded sub is no good to you.”

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. Your submarine will be safe. I give you my word.”

Then ahead of them two white lights appeared out of the blackness, one high and the other almost at water level. Westbrooke called for a course adjustment and slowly the range lights aligned one over the other.

The skipper ordered a man to the spotlight.

“Sir,” Ozzie said, “if we light up this boat at all they will know it’s not a Jap sub.” He spoke quietly, knowing well how far voices carry across the water. “They might see our guys on the guns.”

Westbrooke told the man to stay ready on the spot awaiting his orders. He dropped the speed to three knots and called for a constant depth.

“Fifty-two feet,” a soft voice called.

“Forty-nine feet.”

Every man on deck from the gunners to the officers was straining to see something in the dark, but all they saw were the two range lights aligned one over the other. It was impossible to tell how far away they were.

“Forty-eight feet.

“Forty-five feet.

“Forty feet.”

“Ozzie,” Westbrooke said. “Tell me I should keep on this heading. Tell me you can see something out there in the darkness.”

“Thirty-eight feet.”

They heard the whispers from the men on the bow first. They saw the cliffs. But even as slow as they were moving, there was nothing they could do at that point. Then the men on top of the conning tower saw the rock walls on either side emerge out of the darkness. The sub passed under a rock arch.

Westbrooke called for all engines hard astern. All the men on the sub braced themselves for a hard grounding. Ozzie pulled his gun out of his holster and grabbed Prince Masako. He put the gun to the prince’s head.

“Depth is forty-five feet.”

Everything sounded different, close, echoey. Ozzie strained his eyes to try to make out what was out there.

The range lights blinked out as the sub’s engines drew the big boat to a stop.

Westbrooke called for the searchlight. When the brilliant light turned on, it was like turning on the sun. The light bounced off the walls around them and everything was illuminated.

Ozzie felt his mouth open even as he heard the prince chuckling.

“Welcome to the Philippines,” Prince Masako said.

The sub was floating in a pale aquamarine pool under a dome several hundred feet above them. Around the sides of the chamber, long, slender stalactites reached down from the high dome, throwing shadows like witches’ craggy fingers. On their port side was a long stone quay twice the length of their boat, with big black tires strung along the face to act as fenders. Two lone Japanese sailors in white uniforms were holding up their arms to shield their eyes from the bright light and waving at them, ready to take their lines.

“What the hell?” Westbrooke said.

“I guess we’re docking here,” Ozzie said. “Inside a cave.”

Ao Chalong
Phuket, Thailand

November 19, 2012

This was new. Benny Salim was not accustomed to failure. He didn’t have a knife in his bag, so he had searched every inch of the boat until he found a small, rusty eating knife in the bottom of the boat. He’d stripped down to his underwear and slid into the water. He worked for nearly half an hour but he could not cut through the rope. It was stretched into a tight ball around the propeller and though he sawed his little knife back and forth, it barely made a dent.

Benny climbed back into the boat and sat on the nets. He could no longer see the woman’s boat. Even her tall white sail had disappeared around the point. He pulled his bag to him and took out his phone. His cousin answered finally after many rings.

“Yes, I know it is early,” Benny said.

His cousin groaned and mumbled something unintelligible. Benny didn’t know if he was simply groggy from sleep or already high.

After he’d explained the situation, his cousin said he would come in another of his boats and bring a good knife.

“You aren’t thinking of going after her, are you?” his cousin asked.

“I have to. That is my job.”

“You’ll never find her unless you know where she’s going. Do you know where?”

“No,” Benny answered. “But your boats are much faster.”

“Yes, but I know these waters, and I would not search for such a boat. There are too many places to go, too many to hide. Maybe she is going around the southern tip of Phuket Island and up to Patong. Or she might continue north in the Andaman Sea to Burma or to the islands offshore. Or maybe she’s going down to Langkawi, or on to Singapore or down to Australia. Chasing her would be no good. Find out where she is going.”

Benny nodded, and at the same time he saw a large inflatable dinghy start up behind the very big blue boat. A suntanned young man was driving. Benny waved at him and then motioned to the shore. The young man turned the dinghy and began to head toward Benny.

“Thank you, cousin. You can send someone to get the boat.”

His cousin started speaking and Benny disconnected the call. He grabbed his pants and pulled them on. By the time the dinghy pulled alongside, he was dressed again.