Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (54 page)

Cole stopped and turned around. “Water break,” he said.

“All you gotta do is stick out your tongue,” Peewee said.

Cole ignored him. He’d been able to hear how hard the old guy was breathing. He didn’t want him having a heart attack out in the middle of nowhere. “How’s everybody doing?”

“What you really want to know is”—Irv paused to catch his breath—“is the old guy gonna croak on you.”

“Well, you got me there, Irv. You aren’t, are you? Gonna croak, I mean?”

“Not if I can help it. But you know what they say,
False confidence often leads into danger
.”

Cole cocked his head at the old man. “If you’re trying to tell me something, just come out and say it.”

The old man just opened his water bottle and took a long drink, and Riley stepped in. “That’s just an endearing habit of his, Cole. Ignore him.”

After another half hour, they came to a flat stretch, but the brush was thick and the rain came down in sideways-driven torrents. Cole’s machete was losing its edge. The brush just bent under his blows. The rain was seeping in around his hood and he was drenched through and through. Water had filled his hiking boots, and even with thick socks his feet were sliding around and he knew he’d have blisters soon.

He stopped hacking at the bushes. He’d heard something odd, even with all the noise of the rain. Maybe they should wait for this rain band to pass. He should ask Riley to check on her phone how much farther they had to go. He turned around.

There was no one behind him.

How long had it been since the last time he’d turned around? He’d been so focused on trying to cut their way through the undergrowth.

“Riley?” he shouted. He saw the bushes dancing farther back. He started to step toward them when Greg came hurtling at him from around a large tree. She almost ran into him, but managed to pull back just in time. Bent over, hands on knees, she was panting. Water streamed off her yellow hood.

Cole reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Where are the others?” he shouted.

Greg stood up and put her hands on her hips. Her face looked pained. “I don’t know,” she said. “I turned around and they were gone.”

Mountains of Ilocos Sur
The Philippines

December 7, 2012

Riley peered out of the thick bushes. She still couldn’t see anybody, but she was certain she’d heard a voice. Irv started to move, but she touched his shoulder with one hand and with the other held her finger to her lips. She knew he was hurting, but if he made a noise now, they might end up dead.

It had started when Irv slipped and fell. They had already fallen a bit behind the others. Poor Peewee just couldn’t keep up, but he was too stubborn to ask them to slow down. The rain was coming down so hard that Riley was walking with her red foul-weather jacket hood cinched up tight around her face. She walked with her head bent forward so she could watch the ground, and so the water didn’t run into her eyes.

She saw the odd movement in her peripheral vision and looked up in time to see his left foot had slid off a root and his ankle twisted. The old man toppled forward and hit the ground hard. Riley feared he might have broken a hip. She rushed forward and knelt beside him.

When she looked ahead, she couldn’t see either Greg or Cole. Some instinct prevented her from calling out to them. She helped Peewee into a sitting position and she saw the way his face tightened when he moved. She pointed to his ankle and he nodded.

That was when she was certain she heard a voice. She’d probably heard something earlier, but it hadn’t registered on her consciousness the way it did this time. The voice came from behind them and it wasn’t that far away.

Riley turned her head and looked up the trail in the direction Cole and Greg had gone. With his machete, Cole was leaving a trail like a mini-bulldozer. Peewee had been slow before, but now with the twisted ankle they would never be able to stay ahead of their pursuers. She looked around, trying to decide what her alternatives might be.

There was the speargun in her pack. She could try to shoot at them. The problem was there would be more than one and she had only one spear. She was expecting all three: Benny, Nils, and Hawkes.

Then she noticed, about six feet ahead, a small animal trail that took off to the right. That direction eventually would lead to the very steep side of the mountain, but maybe it would get them far enough off this main trail to avoid detection by the men behind them.

With her thumb she motioned that they were going to stand. Peewee grimaced, but nodded. Riley stood first, then she squatted and got his arm over her shoulder while she put her arm under his waist.

He weighed so little. She wondered how he had managed to make it this far. She pulled him to his feet. He was shorter than she was, so she walked hunched over and practically carried him.

When she came to the spot where the trail branched, she stopped and pointed to show him what she planned to do. Then she took a very large step.

“Lift both feet,” she whispered, and he bent his knees. He was surprisingly light. She swung her foot forward in another large step. “Now put your good foot down.” Lifting his arm off her shoulder,
she placed his hand on a tree for support. She picked up some wet leaves and scattered them over the two footprints. The rain pounded the leaves flat. Riley resumed her position supporting Peewee and they traveled another fifteen feet before they heard a loud crash in the bushes no more than fifty feet away.

She pulled Peewee down into a crouch. They crawled into a thicket of vines that grew over some waist-high bushes. They both wore bright red jackets, so they needed as much cover as they could find.

So now they lay there listening and watching, afraid to move.

Then she heard a voice again, but this time it came from the opposite direction and it was calling her name.

Peewee’s head whipped around and looked at her. His lips mouthed the name, “Greg.”

Riley nodded.

Then they heard a man yell, “Stop!” And there were footsteps. Running. Away from them.

Riley crawled out and pulled Peewee with her. She had to get the old man to a safe place. Then she could leave him and go help the others. She got him to his feet and hurried farther back away from the trail.

She was walking fast toward what looked like an open circle at the center of a patch of bushes, with Peewee’s good foot hitting the ground on about one of every three of her strides. His arm across her shoulder was setting her old wound on fire. She gritted her teeth and pushed forward as fast as she could. She had to get back to help Cole and Greg, and she was almost there.

Her left foot must have caught on a vine. The next thing she knew her body twisted and her leg brought her to a fast stop and she fell to the ground in the patch of vines and bushes. Peewee kept right on going. She saw his arms fly up, then disappear. She heard his voice calling out for several long seconds. It sounded like he was falling. Then all she heard was the rain.

She unhooked her foot and crawled forward and then she heard the crack of green branches breaking, and she too was falling out of the gray rain, through the bushes into the dark. Her hands clawed at the vegetation and her right hand found a mat of vines, which she dug her fingers into. Her arm yanked straight, her shoulder screaming against the weight of her body, but she was hanging, not falling, about six feet down into a hole.

Riley looked down and tried to make out what was beneath her. The two bodies falling through the shrubbery had created a hole and allowed a shaft of weak light into it. She blinked, trying to get her eyes to adjust, and then saw the red jacket on the floor below her. The body looked very small. He was a long way down.

She reached up with her left arm to try to get another handhold on the matted clump of vines. Her shift of weight caused some of the roots above to let go and she was showered with rocks and soil. Her body dropped another three or four feet, but then the vines held.

“Irv?” she called out.

He didn’t move. It was still a very long way down. Her fist and shoulder ached. She couldn’t stay there forever. Should she try to go up or down?

The decision was made for her. She tried to grab the vines again with her left hand and this time some more roots let go and dropped her down another six or eight feet. Then she felt the roots breaking and she was calculating how far she was going to fall when the whole thing let go and she dropped the remaining twenty feet to the floor of the cave.

Riley bent her knees when her sneakers hit the floor and she rolled onto her side, doing her best to protect her head with her arms. She brought with her a mass of vegetation, which landed on top of her a second after she hit the floor. She pushed the plants off her, brushed
off some of the dirt, and went to Irv. He was on his back and his eyes were closed.

She put two fingers on his neck and felt for a pulse. It was weak, but he was alive. She pulled his backpack out from under him, opened it, and got out a bottle of water. She put the pack under his head to raise it and poured a little water on his face.

His eyes fluttered, then opened. He tried to smile. “Maggie,” he said. He’d never called her that.

“Irv, look,” she said. She waved her arm in a half circle. “You found the cave.” The cool, damp air smelled like wet clay, and droplets of rain continued to fall on them from the skylight at the top of the chamber above them.

“Guess I did, sweetheart.”

Riley’s eyes were gradually adjusting to the dim light. The chamber they were in was quite large and somewhat oval in shape. There were both stalactites and stalagmites, she wasn’t even sure which was which, but the spiky spires that reached down from the ceiling were the longest.

“Come on. Let’s get you up.” She lifted his arm, but it was totally limp. He didn’t move anything other than his face.

“That’s not gonna happen. I’m all broke up inside. This is it for me.”

Riley lifted the limp hand to her lips and kissed it. “No, Cole will be here soon with the satellite phone and we’ll call for help. We’ll get a medevac chopper and take you to Manila. They’ll fix you up.”

“Listen, there’s nobody wants that more than me. The man upstairs must have a sense of humor to take me today.”

“What do you mean?”

“Today’s date?”

“Oh,” she said when she realized what he was talking about. “December 7. Pearl Harbor Day.”

“From then till now, I’ve been determined to cheat death. But now that it’s here, I’m not afraid of it anymore. I did better than most.”

Riley brushed at a tear that started down her cheek. She didn’t want him to see it. “That you did, Peewee. That you did.”

“About that nickname. Let me tell you this story while I can still talk. Where’s that water?”

Riley held the bottle to his lips and he took a drink. He ran his lips over his dentures before he spoke. “Do you remember when I told you about a Filipina girl I once loved?”

Riley smiled and nodded.

“Her name was Gregoria and she fought with the guerrillas in these mountains. When we learned that the USS
Bonefish
was in the cave, we decided to stage a raid. Free the Americans. Gregoria stayed behind. We got a boat and went in at night. Only one of us could swim—Ozzie. He had to swim in. Light flares for the boat. The Japs saw us and fired the stern tube. Torpedo’s rudder jammed, it turned a hundred and eighty degrees and came back. Japs didn’t blow the opening to this cave. We did.”

Riley touched the side of his face. “Is that how you got this?”

He closed his eyes and inclined his head. “Only one man survived, sweetheart. It was Ozzie.”

“What?” Riley wondered if delirium was setting in. “I—”

“Shhh. Listen.” He motioned for more water, but he barely swallowed any. He just moistened his lips. “I woke up on the beach. Gregoria had pulled me out. She was supposed to stay back at camp, but she followed. She saw it all. I was unconscious, burned and drifting away. Becoming Peewee was her idea. She had his dog tag. Hard to explain how Ozzie Riley was the only survivor from a missing submarine. Better to become Sergeant Irving Weinstein. We always looked like brothers. And now, with my scars . . .”

“You’re—”

His head dipped but the answer was in his eyes.

“You’ve been living a lie all this time?”

Riley found herself looking at his face, searching for some resemblance to her own features. Was it possible? Could this man really be her grandfather?

He started coughing and Riley could tell his voice was growing weaker.

“Tell your friend Cole I knew Andrew Ketcham at Corregidor. We were both Bonesmen. What we did . . .” His voice trailed off.

His thoughts appeared to be jumping all over. How would she ever know what was true about Ozzie Riley and what was him pretending to be Irv?

He closed his eyes for several seconds, then opened them and spoke again. “Gregoria. She nursed me in the mountains, then in a village. Don’t know where. We fell in love.

“The treasure room is that way.” He moved his eyes to indicate where.

Riley peered out into the darkness. She couldn’t see much outside the shaft of light they were in. She pulled the backpack off her own back and pulled the flashlight out of the side pocket. When she clicked it on, she was surprised to see there were mounds of stuff around them in the cave. It was all rotten and moldy looking, but she saw what looked like some wood crates and some piles of fabric.