Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (5 page)

“Caleb!” he shouted when he burst through the back door after carrying Tess half the way home. She could walk on her own, but not fast enough for his taste. He wanted the gash on that leg seen to sooner rather than later. Coyotes were foul creatures.

There was no one in the kitchen. “Caleb! Where the fuck are you?” He set Tess down on the floor.

“I’m right here,” Caleb said as he limped through the doorway from the dining room. “I had to take a piss.” He reached for the dog. “Shit. What happened to Tess?”

Elijah grimaced as he shrugged off his coat. Caleb was efficient, but the man’s missing leg and Godless foul manners infuriated him. “What do you think happened? She’d be fine if you had one iota of intelligence in that heathen head of yours. The coyotes got her and
that’s on you. Now get your first aid box and fix her up or I’ll kick your no-good drunk ass back to that rehab center where I found you.”

When Caleb returned with his medical kit, Elijah lifted the dog onto the butcher block island in the center of the kitchen. Caleb cleaned the wounds and Tess watched him with unflinching eyes.

“Bring her to me when you’re finished cleaning up your mess here,” Elijah said. As he left the kitchen, he took a rawhide bone from the cupboard. He would reward the dog when she was cleaned up. With all his recent travel, Tess was spending too much time with Caleb.

Back in his game room, Elijah drank off the rest of the whiskey and moved to the bar to wash up. He pulled the bloody knife from his leather boot sheath and set it on the bar. He squirted some dish soap onto his hands and scrubbed his wrists and forearms hard. As he rinsed the suds out of the black hairs on his arms, the pink foam swirled in the water at the bottom of the stainless sink. Drying his hands, Elijah turned and admired his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He reached up and ran his fingers through his black hair, pushing the stiff hairs back into the short upswept curl over his widow’s peak.

He heard the buzz as his phone vibrated on the end table. He folded the bar towel, crossed the room, and picked up the phone. He read the new text message from his contact at Brightstone.

Come armed.

Elijah nodded and set down the phone. He walked across the room and stood in front of the large glass cabinet that displayed his collection of knives and swords. The three samurai katana were among his favorites. One was a thirteenth-century Kamakura blade and it had cost him nearly half a million. He rubbed his hand over the dark stubble on his chin, then returned to the bar and picked up the bloody boot knife. He ran his finger through the coagulating blood. Then he carefully cleaned the four-inch double-edged steel blade and slid it back into its sheath.

Aboard the USS
Bonefish
Sea of Japan

June 18, 1945

The sonar man pulled off one side of his big headphones. Although it had been more than ten minutes since the last depth charge exploded, he spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “It worked, sir. They’re leaving.”

Several men in the control room sighed audibly. Ozzie checked his watch. They’d been down listening to those damn
kabooms
for more than two hours.

The Japs hadn’t bought their ruse right away. When the bits of wood and the oil popped to the surface, it seemed they weren’t sure whether the sub was really gone or not. They had continued dropping their cans of hell. But now it looked like the waiting game was over. After no more sign of life, the destroyer was finally moving on.

It was nearly four o’clock. Ozzie was starved. He never did get that lunch, but he decided to wait and see what happened once they reached periscope depth.

“Up scope,” the skipper said.

The old man made a quick check around the horizon, then stopped.

“Destroyer bears zero-one-three, range three miles.” He stood back and folded up the handles. “Down scope.”

“You don’t mean to chase her, do you?” Ozzie asked.

“No. I don’t. Day’s almost done. We need to surface and recharge. I just want to know where to go hunting tomorrow.” He spread his arms, grasped the sides of the chart table, and looked thoughtfully at the chart. “Let’s get out of Toyama Wan for now. Put her on a heading of three-five-zero.”

Ozzie was finishing off a ham sandwich in the wardroom a couple of hours later when a crewman appeared in the doorway. “Skipper wants you on the bridge, sir.”

He nodded, then shoved the last bite in his mouth and followed it with the dregs from his coffee cup. He was tired of this war, tired of orders, and sick of the men who still believed in it. He’d joined up back in 1940 after working for his old man at the bank for a couple of years. Some of his buddies from university had suggested getting in before the rush, and he’d thought being an officer would mean he could give the orders for a change. Rah-rah guys like Commander Johnson hadn’t seen the sort of action Ozzie had, first with the Signals Intelligence Service and then the OSS. Now he just had to survive until the damned Japanese figured out they’d already lost this war.

He headed topsides.

The sky was clear and there was no land to be seen anywhere. The sun was about to kiss the horizon. When Johnson noticed him, the old man handed Ozzie the binoculars and pointed slightly right of the setting sun. “Look over there.”

Ozzie raised the glasses to his eyes. It was one lone life raft and what looked like only two men inside. One man was waving while the other, his head shaved bald and dressed all in white, sat up straight,
his back rigid. The heading of the sub was swinging around to aim for the raft.

“It looks like there are only two of them,” Ozzie said.

“Yup,” the skipper said. “I don’t like it.”

“What do you mean? You think it’s some kind of trap?”

“I don’t know exactly. My gut’s giving me warning signs, and I’ve learned to trust my gut.”

After a couple of seamen pulled the two survivors aboard, they led them up to Ozzie and the skipper atop the conning tower. The man in white was a Japanese officer. On the left breast pocket of his tunic was a bright red circular emblem trimmed in gold thread in the shape of a chrysanthemum flower. The design caught his eye, and Ozzie wondered if he had seen it somewhere before. Above that was a wide row of colorful medals. At his waist, he wore a sword. Ozzie could see that he was some high officer, but he had no idea in what branch. He’d never seen this uniform, and the insignia on his epaulettes was just as baffling.

The other one was just a boy, no more than fifteen years old, and clearly not Japanese, nor was he in military dress. Ozzie thought he looked Filipino.

The Japanese officer reached down to his belt and released his sword and scabbard. He held it out horizontally at arm’s length and offered it to Commander Johnson.

The old man coughed, took the sword, then turned back to the horizon without a word.

“They’re all yours, H2O.” The captain had nicknames for all the officers, and when Ozzie had first come aboard and introduced himself as Harold Oswald “Ozzie” Riley, the skipper had dubbed him H2O.

Ozzie looked at the two prisoners. The officer wore a hint of a smile, but the boy looked terrified. “Do either of you speak English?”

The man said, “I speak little English.” He turned and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I teach Ben here.”

“You are a naval officer?”

The Japanese man glanced at Commander Johnson, who kept the binoculars to his eyes, scanning the horizon. The man dipped his head for such a quick second, Ozzie wasn’t sure if it was a nod.

“Hai,”
the Japanese officer said.

“Your ship?”

The skipper lowered the binoculars and interrupted them. “Lieutenant, will you take our guests down below and offer them something to eat or drink? You can finish your interrogations there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ozzie ushered the prisoners down to the officers’ wardroom and told them to sit. “You must be hungry or thirsty. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

Again that slight head bob. “Please. Water for the boy.”

Once he had set the drinks out, Ozzie sat across the table from the two of them. He always carried a notebook in his hip pocket, and he took it out now with a stub of a pencil. “So, why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me who you are; then we’ll get to what you were doing out there.”

The bald officer reached inside his tunic, removed a pair of gold spectacles, and slowly slid the pieces behind his ears. He adjusted the fit, then spoke. “I am Lieutenant Colonel Miyata.” He turned to indicate the boy, who had already emptied the water glass. “This is Ben.”

Ozzie scribbled the names in the notebook. “Does Ben here have a last name?”

“If he does, I do not know it.”

“Is Ben in the military?”

“No. He is my valet.”

Ozzie raised his eyebrows and looked at his prisoner. A valet, huh?
Must be nice,
he thought. Well, this fancy-pants Jap officer was about to learn about life on a sub.

“Where are you stationed, Lieutenant Colonel?”

“We were at Manila. Since that city has fallen to your people, we are in the mountains in the north of Luzon.”

Ozzie lifted his pencil off the paper and stared at the little man. Manila. Just hearing the name brought back a flood of memories from his time there in forty-one.

He gave his head a tight shake to throw off the distraction. “So, how’d you end up out there in a raft in the Sea of Japan?” Ozzie stared at him, waiting. Again he saw that little hint of a smile travel across the man’s face.

“My mother was ill. I return home to be with her. After she die, I board a cargo ship to return to Philippines. The captain was not taking precautions. We are unaccustomed to seeing American submarines in the Sea of Japan.”

“And what was the name of this ship?”

“The
Nanshin Maru
.”

Ozzie wrote the name in the upper right corner of the page. “The two of you were the only survivors?”

“There was only one raft.”

“Okay, only one raft. But why only two guys in it?”

He’d learned to look for certain signs when interrogating prisoners to determine if they were lying or telling the truth. Ozzie tried to concentrate on the man’s face, but his eyes kept being drawn down to that bright red chrysanthemum embroidered on his tunic. He was certain he had seen that somewhere before.

“When a captain loses his ship, honor dictates that he must go down with it.”

“And the crew?”

“They would not get into the lifeboat.”

“Why not?”

The prisoner reached for his coffee mug and took a drink. As the sleeve to his tunic rode up his arm, Ozzie saw what looked like a very expensive gold watch on the man’s wrist. If he was not mistaken, that was a diamond on the face. Ozzie took in the well-manicured hands, the crisply ironed pleats on his sleeves and trousers. This guy reeked of money.

“Lieutenant,” the Japanese officer said. “My people and your people are very different, are they not?”

“Yeah, but I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“The American ideals do not exist in Japan. We have
bushidō
. The men who permitted the enemy to sink my ship were disgraced. They regained some honor in death.”

“So what makes you better than those other guys off your ship who died?”

“I am Prince Kaya Masako. Cousin to the emperor.”

Metro Station
Bangkok, Thailand

November 17, 2012

That prickly feeling around her collar was back. Riley stood in front of the ticket machine trying to make sense of the station names. She retrieved her wallet from a zippered pocket in her daypack and bought her ticket. When she turned away from the machine, she searched the faces of the crowd. She didn’t see anyone she recognized. There was no sign of the man with the Fu Manchu mustache, but the feeling persisted. What was she missing?

Riley made her way down to the platform and joined the long queue of people waiting along the painted lines that showed where the train doors would open. She couldn’t imagine Americans lining up so politely in any subway station back home.

When the train arrived, it was standing room only inside her car. She made her way to the back and got one hand onto a pole. Bending her knees slightly so she could get a good look through the windows at the crowd on the platform, Riley scanned the faces of the people scurrying by. What was setting off her internal alarms?