Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (38 page)

Riley leaned back on the cockpit seat and looked up at the sky. A handful of distant stars were visible now. Without looking at him she said, “You know, Irv, you asked me why I’m on this crazy quest—what I want. I remember when I was a kid when my folks were still married and my brother was still alive. We were all so close. We were a family. Now, we’re like those stars up there that may or may not exist
anymore. Where there once was a family, now there’s nothing but residual light and cold empty space. See, that’s it, Irv. That’s what I really want. I want to be part of a family again.”

“Riley, I’m sorry. I—”

“Well,” she said. “Enough of that.” She stood, slapped her hands on her thighs, then rubbed at her eyes. “Let’s get back to the plan for tomorrow. Assuming we get to the dock safely, we’ll be in quarantine until the Manila Yacht Club gets the customs and immigration people to the boat. I’ll plug my iPhone in now so it will be fully charged, and we’ll wait for the text. Cole only uses burner phones, so we can’t call him.”

“Listen, sweetheart. I know Manila. It’s my town. I got friends there. Once we’re cleared, we don’t wait on your boat. We can get lost in this city. You just follow me.”

“Okay. Hey, remember your complaint this morning about the dried egg on your fork? Well, now it’s your turn to wash the dishes.”

“
Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all
.”

He was starting to drive her nuts with these sayings of his. “Okay. I’ll fire up the engine and take in the headsail. With the engine running we won’t have any problem running the radar all night. If either one of us sees an approaching vessel, we wake the other. Hopefully, whatever surprise they have planned for us is supposed to take place on land, not out here, and we’ll be on the dock by the time the sun rises.

Northern Luzon
The Philippines

June 26, 1945

Ozzie sputtered and spit the water out of his mouth. He shook his head. The water continued to drip onto his face. He tried to turn away and blink the water out of his eyes. He saw an olive-drab sleeve and a dirty brown hand holding a canteen. Water warm as piss dribbled out of the mouth of the canteen.

“Cut it out,” he said. “I’m awake already.”

He started to sit up but the butt of a rifle slammed into the center of his chest, knocking him back and snapping the back of his head onto the ground.

“Ow, shit,” he said.

The pain at the back of his head was blinding. He squeezed his eyes shut again.

When he opened his eyes a dirt-covered face with black eyes hovered six inches above his face. He smelled hot breath that stank of cigarettes. The eyes blinked and he couldn’t help but notice how long this guy’s eyelashes were.

“What’s your name?” The voice sounded like a kid’s. Filipino accent.

“Who’s asking?”

The guy answered with another blow to Ozzie’s sternum from the rifle butt.

“Okay, okay.” Ozzie coughed and tried to catch his breath.

The sunlight burned into his eyes as the breeze waved the feathery leaves high up in the tree canopy. “Lieutenant Harold Oswald Riley, United States Coast Guard.”

The face was back. Ozzie welcomed the shade. He’d take anything to block that sunlight.

“Why’d the Japanese let you go?” The eyes were taunting him.

Ozzie blinked, trying to clear the sunspots out of his eyes. He wanted to get a better look at the face. This guy must be one of the Filipino guerrillas in the resistance movement. So they were recruiting kids now. Must be getting pretty desperate.

“Look,” Ozzie said. “I’m an American. I’m on your side. If you’ll let me sit up, I can explain.”

He was surprised then when his interrogator stepped back and grabbed one of his arms. Another person grabbed his other arm. They dragged him over to a tree and propped him up against it.

There were two of them then squatting in the dirt in front of him. His interrogator, the smaller of the two, was dressed in raggedy old US Army uniform castoffs with a web belt that cinched the blouson tight at the waist and another web belt that crossed from shoulder to waist carrying extra ammo and a couple of grenades. He wore a broad-rimmed hat with a string cinched up under his chin. The other man was shirtless, though he wore a red cotton scarf round his neck. A leather belt held up his pants and the machete he wore. They both wore dusty high boots and their faces were streaked with mud and sweat. They were speaking to each other softly in their own language as they studied him.

Ozzie reached back and felt the back of his head. He felt dampness and his hand came away bloody. Must have landed on a rock. He was wondering if he had a concussion when he heard movement in the brush behind him. With a half turn of his head, he saw that there was another body on the ground not far from him. Then he recognized it was Ben. The boy was tied up and gagged, and he was struggling against the ropes.

The shirtless one stood, walked over, and delivered a vicious kick to the boy’s ribs. He said something in Tagalog and then spit.

“Hey,” Ozzie said. “That’s not necessary. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Leave him alone.”

The shirtless one looked over at his companion.

Ah,
Ozzie thought.
Only the kid speaks English.

His interrogator stood and walked over to Ben, then turned to look at Ozzie. There was something about the way the man walked. Then it hit him.

“You’re a woman,” he blurted out.

She walked back over to him and squatted in front of him again. Now that he knew to look, he saw the swell of her breasts beneath the shirt, under the ammo belts. “Yes. And why should that matter to you? Don’t think it means I’ll be sorry if I decide to kill you.” She laughed a deep, throaty laugh. “You keep saying you will explain. I’m waiting. Why were the two of you set free with all this gold?” She pointed to the bag the prince had given to Ozzie.

“I can explain that.”

From far up the mountain on the other side of the valley, Ozzie heard the loud screeching sound of an animal or a bird. His captors exchanged a look and spoke a few words in their language. The woman turned to him.

“It looks like the others have made it back to the camp already. You can explain to them.”

They untied Ben’s feet and used the rope to bind Ozzie’s hands. Once they’d pulled both of them to their feet, the woman led the way while the man brought up the rear with his rifle pointed at their backs.

The noise they’d heard had sounded close by, but they had to walk all the way down to the bottom of a deep valley and then traverse a stream. And though Ozzie prided himself on his fitness, he had never realized just how difficult it was to walk without one’s hands and arms for balance. It wasn’t so bad at first and he was enjoying watching the woman’s ass. But then he stumbled and fell several times, and the bare-chested man seemed to get perverse pleasure out of yanking him back to his feet. Ozzie’s head ached and his mouth was parched. The going didn’t get really difficult until they started up the other side. The trail led them back and forth in switchbacks and across rock outcroppings where it was almost impossible to climb without his hands. Or without a rifle at his back. It was quite the motivator. By the time they arrived at the camp it was late afternoon, and Ozzie was starting to think he would prefer to be shot than to have to walk another step.

At first he didn’t even see the camp. The woman held up her arm and stopped walking. There was a clear space on the jungle floor ahead, but Ozzie didn’t see anything other than trees. Then he noticed movement above. When he looked up, he saw a man’s head appear in the leaves of a tree. The head was bare, the hair a light brown. He dropped a rope ladder and it wasn’t until he started to climb down that Ozzie made out the roof of the tree house, or more accurately, tree hut. The walls and roof were all made out of leafy living branches and it would take a very sharp eye to recognize that the tree was anything other than how nature had made it.

When the man reached the ground, the woman dropped her weapon and ammo belt to the ground and ran over to him. She nearly knocked him over when she leapt at him, throwing her arms and legs around him, embracing him before he even had a chance to turn around. When they kissed, her hat fell off her head and hung down
her back by the string round her neck. Thick black hair fell past her shoulders.

Must be nice getting a greeting like that
, Ozzie thought.

Above him in the branches of the trees, he began to make out other faces appearing amid the leaves. One man slid down a vine, another dropped a second rope ladder from a different tree.

When the two finally let go of each other, the woman led her lover over to inspect the two prisoners. The man wore a ragged and torn US Army uniform with sergeant’s stripes on the shoulders. When they were about fifteen feet away, the man stopped, raised his arm, and grabbed his own forehead.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Riley?”

Ozzie blinked, trying to focus. He knew the voice, but he wasn’t sure he would have recognized the man without it.

“Peewee?” he said. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

Corregidor Island
The Philippines

December 3, 2012

When his watch started beeping, Benny’s eyes blinked wide open. He threw off the green army blanket he had stolen from one of the diorama displays in the Malinta Tunnel, stood, and stretched. He had grown accustomed to snatching his sleep in these two-hour stretches. He didn’t mind waking and making his rounds anymore. He picked up the binoculars and headed for the edge of the cliff that overlooked the sea and the entrance to the bay.

He had chosen this campsite on the hill above Corregidor’s public beach because it offered a fantastic view of the channel and there was close access to bathrooms and showers. During the day there were often tourists on the beach with their picnics, and he’d been very successful at getting invited to eat with them. The moon was directly overhead and only one night past full. When he stepped out of the shadows of the trees, he felt exposed in the bright light.

There were lights from three different vessels visible. Nearly every time he looked, there was some kind of boat passing by. The biggest
was clearly a large ship. He could see the squarish shape of the containers stacked on deck. The other two vessels were mere pinpricks of light. Through the binoculars, he made out the bigger of the two. It looked like a Filipino long-liner fishing boat, headed out to search for the elusive huge tunas that feed the local demand for sushi. He shifted the glasses to the third and felt his pulse speed up.

The moonlight reflected off the single white sail. This was the second time in four days he had spotted a sailboat. The previous time it soon became apparent that the boat was leaving Manila and heading south. He thought back to the boat he had seen in Phuket. The details seemed to match. Long low cabin. No pilothouse. White hull. Single mast.

Benny checked his watch. It was twenty minutes past one. From abreast of the island Corregidor, the sailboat had to cover about twenty-five miles in to the Manila waterfront. He did the calculations and decided they would probably arrive at sunrise. They would be kept under close watch until they could clear with the authorities, and on a Sunday that would probably take a while. The first boats would start arriving here at dawn, ferrying the employees out for the day. He could arrive shortly after they did.

Over the last several days, Benny had reached a decision. Hawkes had said to call when they arrived. The man had said Benny was no longer fit to intercept them, and from experience Benny suspected that meant he would not pay, either. Benny would call Hawkes when he had the girl and the old man in his custody, and then they could renegotiate his fee.

Yesterday Benny had called his support source at the Enterprise. He explained the situation and said he needed the number to the woman’s personal phone. He knew her website from the information they had gleaned off the computer the old man had used to contact her. Two hours later, Benny had got a call from his contact. He had her number. He had already composed the text in his mind. He needed
the location, though. The earlier he got back to the city, the sooner he could scout for a quiet spot where he could take them.