Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (28 page)

“What does that say?” Ozzie whispered. He pointed at the writing on one of the crates.

“It’s the name of the ship,” the prince said. “It says
Teiyō Maru
.”

The lead sailor took another step and shone the light up into another huge chamber with fantastic dripping spires reaching down at them. But what made Ozzie gasp out loud was the sight of an enormous golden dragon perched on top of a huge pile of gold bullion, the front end of his serpentine body raised into the air as though he were just about to take flight. As the others caught up to them and the beams of the two flashlights danced around the cave, they saw dozens of wooden crates and barrels covering almost every bit of the space in the chamber that must have been one hundred feet across. Prince
Masako walked over to one of the barrels and lifted the lid. The flashlight beams glinted off the mound of colorful gems inside.

“Welcome to Golden Lily,” the prince said.

Sukhumvit Cryonics Lab
Bangkok, Thailand

November 23, 2012

In the end, the old man made it easy.

Benny’s contact at the Enterprise had access to all sorts of electronic information. A world-class hacker, he could provide anything from bank statements to satellite photos. Benny had used him many times before.

The old man Irv had worked for the Enterprise for years, so they had all his information on file. It took all of two days before his name popped up. He probably thought he was being cool by not using credit cards, but this outfit where he had his appointment today had run a credit check on him. Once his name popped, Benny’s contact had hacked into this company’s computers. Benny got the call the night before, reporting that the old man had an appointment at 9:00 a.m. at the Sukhumvit Cryonics Lab.

Benny sat inside an Au Bon Pain café across the street from the lab. A bottle of water and an uneaten pastry sat on the table in front
of him. Very few people passed through the doors he watched. He was not surprised.

He had visited the place earlier that morning. When he’d first gone inside, he had no idea what cryonics was. He just wanted to check the place out to make sure that there wasn’t a back entrance that the old man could use to slip out. Benny pretended he was a lost tourist, and he asked for directions to the Terminal 21 mall. The woman behind the desk was very patient with him. He asked more questions, and then she had explained to him what their business was.

Freezing people. Benny had never heard anything like it. These people believed that by freezing themselves now, someday in the future there would be technology that would cure their bodies of old age and they would live on. Benny thought it was crazy and unnatural. And expensive.

So that was what was going on. The old man had sold the goods to the woman on the sailboat so he could get enough money to freeze himself. Benny shook his head. He’d heard of some weird things in his life, but this one topped them all.

The old man’s military side cap was always a giveaway. It made him easy to spot. The medals glinted in the sunlight. He came from the direction of the Chidlom SkyTrain station and walked more slowly than the upscale Thai crowd on this street. Benny checked his watch. The old guy was right on time.

Benny slid back his chair and threw some bills on the table. He figured Irv would be in there for a while, but getting across Sukhumvit wasn’t easy, so he wasn’t going to wait.

Once across the busy street, he positioned himself in a doorway next to the lab. Irv would probably return to the same SkyTrain station. Benny didn’t need a gun to coerce him. He didn’t need any weapon other than his bare hands with such a weak old man. He could simply threaten to break one or two of his old bones.

The old man walked out sooner than Benny had expected, but then he turned right instead of left as Benny had assumed. He was so short he disappeared into the crowd in an instant.

Benny darted onto the sidewalk and began pushing his way forward. Several women shrieked when he pushed them. He didn’t care. If the old man heard him, it wasn’t like he could run faster.

Where was he? He should have caught up to him by now. That was when he saw the old man climbing onto the back of a motorcycle taxi. The driver wore the required bright pink vest and a black ski mask. He pulled on a full face-covering helmet and kick-started the bike as the old man gripped his waist.

Benny saw that he wasn’t going to make it, so he jumped on the nearest unattended bike and fired it up. The drivers were standing on the sidewalk smoking and one of them yelled as Benny shoved it into gear and took off in pursuit.

The motorcycle taxi driver darted and dodged through the traffic like a bat in the treetops. The driver had disappeared from sight when traffic came to a halt at a red light. Benny worked his way to the front of the pack and found the old man sitting on the back of the motorbike. He didn’t turn around when Benny pulled up.

When the light turned green, they were off again and Benny found his navigation through the traffic was improving. He was able to keep the motorbike in sight this time. In about a mile, the bike pulled over and the old man slid off. While he was paying the driver, Benny parked the bike he was riding on the sidewalk and walked up behind the old man as he was positioning his garrison cap on his head.

“Hey, Irv.”

The old man turned around with his mouth open. Then he smiled. “Hello, Benny. How’d you find me?”

Benny shrugged. “That place back there. You really planning to freeze yourself, Irv?”

“Just looking at all my options, you know.”

“So, I guess you sold the Enterprise property. Not so smart, Irv.”

“Naw.” He waved his hand through the air. “I didn’t sell it. I loaned it to a friend.”

“Right.” Benny grabbed Irv by the forearm. “And now you’re going to help me get it back.”

“How you gonna find her?”

“Don’t worry. That’s my business. But Hawkes told me to be sure to bring you along. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

Changi International Airport
Singapore

November 23, 2012

Elijah sipped his scotch and surveyed the crowd that hurried through the terminal. Benny was late. Elijah had specifically told him Harry’s Bar in Terminal 3 at 2:00 p.m. It was now quarter past.

When Benny called a couple of days ago and explained his plan, Elijah decided it would be best if he accompanied Benny on this one. The old adage was proving to be true. If you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.

Elijah had secured his reputation by doing things right. It had once been a survival mechanism but he had turned it into his brand. He had been born into a poor Quaker family, and one winter day when he was five years old and his sister was sixteen, his parents had gone to take food and old clothing to a struggling parish family that lived high up in the mountains. When Elijah and Sarah awoke the next morning, they were surprised to learn their parents hadn’t returned. They never knew for certain what happened, but they believed their parents’ car must have gone off a cliff on the icy roads. If the
crash hadn’t killed them, they never would have survived the night’s freezing temperatures.

Sarah didn’t call the police. She was afraid they would take her brother away and put them in separate foster families. She was already working at a fast food place in the afternoons, and with their free school breakfast and lunch program, they survived and kept their status secret for the year and a half it took for his sister to turn eighteen. Then she filed to become his legal guardian. As his sister matured, she became more and more fanatically religious. Whenever he displeased her, he was forced to kneel in his bedroom and pray for hours. He learned to do things right the first time.

The men he worked with now expected it of him, and he would be reporting to them in three days. They were expecting good news on the Dragon’s Triangle project, and he’d better have something for them.

When he saw Benny and the old man approaching down the corridor, he didn’t like how memorable they looked. It was best in this business if you didn’t stand out. Benny was wearing some kind of motley-colored indigenous jacket over his blue jeans and carrying his tooled leather case for his blowpipe in addition to a fat old military-surplus green canvas rucksack. His long, thick hair was tied back in a ponytail held by a leather thong. The old man was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt with a string tie, green slacks that were pulled up almost to his armpits, and his old army garrison cap covered with medals and ribbons. They looked like a pair of costumed extras off a movie set.

Benny had a tight grip on the old man’s arm, and steered him over to an empty stool one seat over from Elijah. Benny sat between them.

The old man waved at the bartender, then leaned forward and pointed at Elijah’s glass. “I’ll have one of those,” he said in a too-loud voice.

“Tell him to keep it down,” Elijah said.

“Irv,” Benny said, and he raised his hand to his ear and made a twisting motion.

The old man bent down and, while working his lips over his teeth, concentrated on a small black box attached to his belt. Elijah flinched when the piercing squeal of electronic feedback erupted from the old man’s hearing aid.

“Irv,” Benny said again, but this time he dragged his finger across his neck in a chopping motion.

Surprise registered on the old guy’s face and he went back to fiddling with the box.

“He can’t hear a damn thing,” Benny said. “Not even when he makes it scream like that. The good part is we can talk freely. He can’t hear us.”

“Did you get us a boat?” Elijah asked.

“It’s all set. I’ve even got an ETA. My buddy got me a satellite photo of her boat entering the channel off Singapore yesterday. She should pass within ten to fifteen miles of Natuna Besar tomorrow.”

“It’s such a big ocean. How can you be so sure?”

“The South China Sea is full of rocks and reefs. This is the route that’s recommended to avoid ending up on those reefs. Don’t worry. We’ll find her. I’ve got two boats. They will be out searching for her starting at dawn. She won’t get by us.”

“Okay. Our flight’s in a little over an hour. We should head out to the gate.”

Aboard
Bonefish
South China Sea

November 24, 2012

Riley climbed up into the cockpit, sat on the high seat, and braced her bare feet on the fiberglass seat opposite. She leaned her head back and looked up past her dodger at the graceful curve of her mainsail’s leech, the brilliant white sail contrasting against the cloudless sky. At the top of her mast, the black wind vane pointed at a slight angle back over her shoulders.

“Sweet,” she said aloud as a wave lifted the aft quarter of her hull and she heard the
whooosh
as the white water broke around her, and her boat surfed on a diagonal down the wave. The south-southeast wind had her sailing on a broad reach, and it was her favorite point of sail. The Caliber 40 was not designed to be a racing boat, and her boat wasn’t ever going to break any speed records, but she was fast enough and especially comfortable. Riley reckoned
Bonefish
had been averaging seven knots since she’d left the Middle Channel, and yet she was only heeled over about fifteen degrees, if that.