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

A big white awning covered the deck, protecting the dark wood tables and wicker chairs from the effects of both Thai seasons—wet and dry. At one end of the deck, Billy Barber sat on a stool picking his guitar and nearly swallowing the microphone as he wailed “Honey, let me be your salty dog” to the three occupied tables. Riley stood next to a palm tree out in the dusky darkness. She knew he couldn’t see her yet.

Damn, he looked good. When it came time for them to part, and she reckoned that time wasn’t far off, she would miss him. His deep tan and the almost-white blond hair falling into his eyes made him look like the quintessential surfer dude. In fact, he was a Grand Prix–level professional racing sailor conditioning here in Phuket and preparing for the King’s Cup Regatta in December.

They’d met at a bar that belonged to an Aussie, a former sailor. The bar was sort of a yachtie hangout, and Billy had been telling stories about his racing success as bowman on
Merlin II
, the custom eighty-footer that belonged to some gazillionaire. Billy’s North Carolina twang brought back bittersweet memories, and Riley had been smiling as she listened to him regaling the crowd with tales of a spinnaker run on the Route du Rhum race that finishes at Pointe-à-Pitre on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. He must have thought she
was smiling at him because when he finished his story, Billy Barber came over and introduced himself. And after all the lonely, abstinent years, she’d given in to him.

It had been four years ago, back in the spring of 2008, that Riley had learned of her father’s terrible secrets and witnessed his murder. She and Cole Thatcher had gone on to share an adventure like nothing she had ever experienced—up until that day when Cole disappeared at sea while diving in the wreck of the World War II submarine
Surcouf
off Guadeloupe. Believing she might still find the love of her life alive, she raced halfway around the world trying to decipher the clues Cole had left for her: a Spanish lullaby and those engraved numbers on the French Angel coin. She’d tried every combination she could think of to break the cipher. But nothing worked. She couldn’t find him in Venezuela or the Cayman Islands. He’d mentioned the Dragon’s Triangle, but it turned out to be a big stretch of empty ocean between the Philippines and Japan made infamous by strange disappearances of ships and planes—on the exact opposite side of the world from the Bermuda Triangle, where the
Surcouf
had first disappeared.

Thailand had been her last hope.

She’d never found Cole Thatcher or his boat, the
Shadow Chaser
. The US Coast Guard no longer listed the vessel in their documentation records. It was as though the Dragon’s Triangle had swallowed Cole and his first mate, Theo, and the
Shadow Chaser
, and there was no proof left they had ever existed.

But sailing single-handed was lonely and chasing never-ending dead ends was frustrating.

And then along came Billy.
Just like that song. There was no romantic pretense between them—it was pure, no-strings-attached sex. She and Billy both knew the connection would last only until one boat or the other hoisted anchor and sailed away. And lately, she’d been itching to do just that.

The problem wasn’t that he was boring or messy and certainly not that he didn’t please her as a lover. The problem was that Billy Barber couldn’t compete with a dead man.

When Billy finished his song, Riley stepped up onto the concrete slab and crossed between the tables. He saw her and smiled. Then he turned and spoke to Roger, who walked to the other end of the bar and grabbed something next to the cash register. By the time she reached him, Billy was holding out an envelope.

“Here you go. Your letter.”

“Thanks.”

“Why don’t you stay for a drink?” he said. “My set will be over after a couple more songs.”

Riley nodded, though she wasn’t certain what he had said. She was staring at the handwriting on the crumpled envelope. Her throat tightened. Of course she knew better, but still she had allowed herself to hope. The address was printed in block letters by what looked like a shaky hand.

She slid onto a stool and placed the letter on the bar. With her elbows planted at either end of the envelope, she rested her forehead on the heels of her hands and stared at the handwritten address. It was all wrong: the handwriting, the postmark, and the name
Marguerite Riley
. No one called her that. Least of all Cole.

Roger set down an icy Singha beer next to her. Ignoring it, she slid a finger under the flap and tore the envelope open. She slid out one sheet of paper and unfolded it. The words were written in the same squiggly block letters.

Dear Marguerite Riley,

You do not know me, but I was a friend of your grandfather, Lieutenant Oswald Riley, during WWII. We were in the OSS
together. I have an antique trinket he gave to me back in ’45, the last time I saw him. I should like very much to meet you, to tell you about my friend Ozzie, and to give you this remembrance of your grandfather. I promised him I’d give this to his family, and too much time has passed. Now, I don’t have much time left and I’d like to fulfill this promise to an old friend.

I apologize for this abrupt request, but I hope you can meet me at noon on Saturday in the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok. A friend has a booth called Land of Smiles Antiques on Soi 3. I work there sometimes.

I hope you can make it. I will tell you what happened to your grandfather.

Regards,

Peewee

When her eyes got to the end of the page, they bounced back to the beginning and she read it again. And then again.

Riley was not aware the music had stopped until Billy slid onto the stool next to her.

“So what’s in the letter?”

She looked up and handed him the paper. As he read she did some quick calculations. This Peewee would certainly be in his nineties, just like Henri Michaut, that other World War II survivor she and Cole had met back in the Caribbean.

Billy chuckled when he got to the end of the page. “Peewee?” he said. “Doesn’t that sound just like a character right out of an old World War II movie? He’d be the sidekick guy you’d know was going to die before the end.”

Riley took the letter back from him and read it again. She looked up at Billy and shook her head. “I don’t get it. How did this guy find me?”

Billy shrugged. “It’s getting to be a pretty damn small world.” He waved his hand to take in the crowded anchorage. “At least half those boats out there have websites and blogs, and they’re always writing about the other boaters they meet.”

“Most ninety-year-olds aren’t reading blogs, though. You’d think he’d explain a little more. Like what does he mean—a trinket?”

“Don’t know.” He rested a hand on her bare knee.

Riley looked at the hand and quashed the impulse to brush it aside. “I wonder what he really wants from me.”

Billy shrugged. “So what do you know about this granddad?”

She shook her head. “Not much. He died long before I was born—in the Second World War.”

“Surely your dad must have said something.”

“My dad—” She coughed as though to clear her throat. Even four years after his death, she still had difficulty talking about her father. “My father didn’t talk about my grandfather much, and I was five when my grandma died. I barely remember her.”

“No family photos or anything?”

She lifted her aching shoulder, leaned her head into the pain, and then stretched her neck by looking up at the patio’s white awning. She drew in a deep breath. “My dad had one photo album with a few old black-and-white pictures in it, but he never said much about it. The only thing he ever said about the war was that my grandfather joined the Coast Guard before Pearl Harbor, then got recruited into the OSS.”

“What’s that?”

“The Office of Strategic Services. Military intelligence. My brother Mikey tried one time to find out more about our grandpa, but the records were still sealed.”

“So no idea what happened to him?”

Riley shrugged. “Dad said the military never told his mother any details. Only that Grandpa was transferred to the Pacific after the Germans surrendered in May of 1945, and then—he just disappeared.”

Aboard the USS
Bonefish
Sea of Japan

June 18, 1945

“Radar contact!”

Lieutenant Junior Grade Harold Oswald “Ozzie” Riley glanced up at the bulkhead clock in the officers’ wardroom: 1300 hours. Shit. Not again.
Lunch will have to wait
, he thought as he heard the call to battle stations. Now, the acid would go back to work on his stomach lining. Damned radar man.

It was their second radar contact today. Just over two hours ago, they had sunk a small transport. Ozzie’s job was coastal surveillance and the interrogation of any prisoners, but through the periscope he’d seen no survivors in the thick morning haze. Fortunately. At this point, he just wanted it all to be over. He was done with this war.

“Stand by tubes forward,” the skipper said. This skipper didn’t want to go home with any fish left in his arsenal. If you looked up
gung ho
in the encyclopedia, you’d see a picture of Commander Elmer Johnson.

After all he’d seen in the last four years, Ozzie thought such enthusiasm was not only ill-advised, but it was downright stupid, for God’s sake. The Krauts were done and the Japs were on the run. It was over. The Yanks knew it and so did the Japanese, especially now that US subs had penetrated into the Sea of Japan. The problem was their damned samurai honor code. They wouldn’t give up. They had to go down in flames. As an American, he didn’t get it. The point now was just to survive.

The USS
Bonefish
was due to rendezvous with the other eight Hellcat subs on the twenty-fourth—in six days—at which time they had orders to exit out of what the crew now called “Lake Hirohito,” via the La Pérouse Strait. But Johnson had only racked up two kills thus far, and he was determined to increase that number before they had to skedaddle back to Guam. Ozzie couldn’t quite believe that there was still a rah-rah patriot around at this point in the war. Not after all they’d seen.

Admiral Lockwood, ComSubPac, had dubbed this adventure Operation Barney. Nine American subs loose in the virgin hunting grounds of the Sea of Japan thanks to this newfangled invention called FM sonar. Ozzie didn’t understand exactly how it worked, but when he, a Coast Guard officer and member of the OSS Maritime Unit, had been assigned to this boat back in Guam his superiors told him the sub would be able to thread its way through the lethal minefields and enter through Tsushima Strait. Once inside, their mission was simple: Sink as many Japanese ships as possible.

Ozzie covered the few steps from the wardroom aft to the control room. Commander Elmer Johnson stood stooped over, one arm slung over a fold-down handle, his eye pressed to the periscope lens.

“Steady on one-two-zero,” he said.

Six torpedo-ready lights glowed below the firing plungers.

The executive officer repeated the range and bearing.

“Fire one!”

At the captain’s order, the sub lurched as the blast of compressed air sent the first torpedo on its way.

“Fire two!”

No one spoke until the sonar operator raised his fist over his head; then they felt and heard the distant explosion through the hull. There were smiles all round.

“Oh, shit,” Johnson said.

Now what?
Ozzie thought. He tried not to flinch at the pinch of searing pain in his gut.

The skipper straightened up to his full six foot four height, stepping aside to dodge around some low-hanging piping. Again Ozzie wondered how the hell a man of his height had ended up in submarines.

The skipper slapped the side of the periscope tube. “Down scope.” He turned to the chart table, reached out straight-armed, and placed his hands on either side of the chart. “All ahead flank. Take her down to one-nine-zero.”

The diving officer repeated Johnson’s orders and the sub rattled and groaned as she started the fast descent. All eyes were on the skipper, wondering what he had seen at the surface.

“What is it?” Ozzie asked. He was a guest aboard this boat, and he had no business questioning the captain, but military discipline had never been his strongpoint—a fact that had served him well in the OSS.

“Sank that transport, all right, about eight hundred tons. First one missed, went too deep, but the second hit amidships—broke her back. What I didn’t see through the haze at first was the goddamn destroyer escort on the other side of her.”

The skipper’s words were greeted by silence in the control room. All but Ozzie were experienced submariners, and it was clear they all knew what was coming, and it wasn’t good. Ozzie had survived this war from the start, and had every intention of making it to the end.
Back in Guam, they’d told him there was no better commander than Johnson. Now if only he could convince his stomach.

“Rig for depth charges,” the skipper said.