Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (35 page)

Ben was waiting for him at the bottom of the gangplank, and he motioned for Ozzie to follow him. Now that the lights were on throughout the caves, walking through the passages was easier. He and Ben made good time. Prince Masako was overseeing the loading of one of the large crates onto a wagon just inside the treasure chamber.

He turned when Ben spoke to him in Japanese. “Lieutenant. Here you are.”

“What’s that say on these crates, anyway?”

The prince and Ben exchanged a look. “I told you. It is the name of the ship that brought them here. It says
Teiyō Maru
.”

“No, I mean the letters and numbers—‘UO2.’ What’s that mean?”

“I cannot tell you all my secrets, Lieutenant.”

Ozzie started toward the crate, but Ben stepped in front of him and cut him off.

Then the prince said, “You are wondering if I am going to keep my promise to you.”

“Yeah, when you started shooting my men, I did start to wonder.”

“They are no longer your men. You are a free man and a rich man now. Follow me.”

Ozzie considered protesting, but decided to wait and see how the prince intended to play this out. He followed the two of them into the passage on the far side of the treasure chamber. After a half hour of fast walking, they entered another chamber not as large as either of the others. There were no stalagmites—it looked as though the Japanese had removed them to level the floor—and the stream bed that had flowed along one wall of the treasure chamber seemed to have almost dried up or gone underground here. The dirt floor was covered with cots, equipment, tables, boxes of ammunition, and clothing. Three men stood at a table where they were working with wires and batteries
and what Ozzie recognized from his work with the OSS in Europe as blocks of plastic explosive material. Aside from those working, a few men were resting on the cots. They all looked up when the prince entered. They all quickly stood at attention and bowed from the waist. No one said a word.

Off on one side of the chamber, a tent had been erected enclosing an area about twenty feet square. Ben lifted a flap to open the door and Prince Masako entered. Ozzie followed.

Inside were two cots, a table and a writing desk with paper, writing instruments, and a small lamp with a fringed shade. On the table he saw books, candles, and a square of what looked like white silk fabric.

The prince turned to Ozzie. “I spoke to my men and the news from here in the Philippines is not good. We must leave this place soon and close this chamber quickly. I will not be returning to this country for some time. In a few hours, the sun will rise, and I would like you to help Ben find his way safely home to his father’s farm near Tuguegarao. Then you will be free to join the American soldiers. Will you do that for me?”

“We had a deal, Prince.”

“Yes, and I will pay you before you leave. But now, before you leave on this long journey, Ben will take you to eat some food and rest until daybreak.”

“Okay,” Ozzie said, though he wasn’t sure the Jap food would be any good for his stomach.

“Before you go, though, I must ask you for your sodium bicarbonate. I will return it to you before you go.”

It was a strange request, but Ozzie didn’t see any reason to refuse. He reached into his pocket and handed over the bottle.

He and Ben ate some plain white rice and boiled fish, and then Ozzie stretched out on a cot. He didn’t sleep, though. He kept thinking about what the prince had said about closing up the cave and what he’d seen those men building back there. Somehow, he had to figure
out how to find his way back here—before they set off those explosives and buried the entrance to the cave for good.

One of the Jap sailors shook his shoulder. Maybe he had just dozed off. Ozzie got up and saw Ben standing with the prince outside the tent. The sailor who had awakened him motioned for him to go join them.

On the far side of this third chamber there was another passageway, and Ozzie followed them out that way. Shortly they took a much narrower route that branched off to the right. There were no electric lights in this tunnel and both the prince and Ben switched on flashlights. After about fifty yards, they came to a narrow opening, and Ozzie was surprised to see daylight filtering in through the bushes that concealed the entrance.

Ben held the bushes aside and they stepped out into a small clearing on the side of a mountain. An old man was stirring a pot hung over an open fire while another chopped vegetables on a table. High trees shaded the clearing and protected them from being spotted by passing planes.

Ben walked over to the table and collected a heavy backpack. He opened the flap and pulled out a burlap sack the size of a grocery bag and handed it to the prince. Masako turned to Ozzie.

“As promised, you are now free to go. Ben is going to lead you out to the road.” He held the burlap bag out to Ozzie. “This is the payment I promised you. There is more than a kilo of gold in here as well as diamonds and rubies.”

“Thank you.” Ozzie shook the prince’s hand. He should’ve been glad to be getting away with his life—he wasn’t sure the others would—not to mention the gold, but Ozzie had got into this whole thing with the bigger goal in mind. “There is one more thing, though, Prince Masako. On the sub you spoke about the maps to all the other
Golden Lily treasure sites. You said you had to come back to get them. What happened with that? Where are those maps?”

“They are gone, I’m afraid. Much of the treasure you have seen here arrived on the
Teiyō Maru
after I returned home to Japan. There was a small gold dragon, a miniature version of the large statue you saw. I had placed the maps inside that dragon. My remaining men were not disciplined, and the crew of the
Teiyō Maru
stole many items before they left—including that dragon. They took it when they sailed. I came all the way back here only to discover the maps are gone.”

Something about the prince’s statement was off. Why was he explaining this? “What do you mean?”

“My men heard on the radio that the
Teiyō Maru
was bombed. The ship sank. So you see, the maps really are gone.”

“Are there other copies?”

The prince smiled and touched the side of his head. “Here only. Good-bye, Lieutenant,” the prince said.

What happened next took Ozzie by surprise. The prince turned to Ben and embraced him. They stood like that for so long, Ozzie began to wonder if he should start down the mountain on his own. When Masako finally let the young man go, they both had tears in their eyes. Masako spoke softly in Japanese, then he reached into his pocket and removed the small piece of white silk Ozzie had seen earlier. Ben extended his hands, palms upward, and the prince spread the silk cloth on his hands. He reached into his pocket again and removed the gold prayer gau this time. He placed the object in Ben’s hands, folded the silk around it, and closed Ben’s fingers over the bundle. The boy bowed his head. Then the prince grabbed Ben by the back of the head, and they pressed their foreheads together. They said something in Japanese in unison. Then Prince Masako turned briskly and walked back into the cave.

Ben’s back was to Ozzie. He was fussing with his shirt and pants—probably hiding the gold object. They started off. As he followed Ben
through the forest on the downward slope, Ozzie tried to spot some sort of landmarks so he could find his way back one day, but all he saw were trees.

After they had been walking for over an hour, Ben was so far ahead, Ozzie could barely see him.

“Ben!” he called out, asking him to slow down and wait up. Then he heard something in the bush behind him. It sounded like breaking twigs. He half turned and it felt like a blinding blast exploded on the back of his head.

Aparri, Luzon
The Philippines

November 26, 2012

“Can you take the con?” Cole asked once they had cleared the river mouth and the depth sounder showed the bottom was more than a hundred feet beneath them and dropping.

He wanted to take another look at the copy of the map and the charts of the Babuyan Islands, and he needed a clear head. He was glad to be leaving Aparri behind and headed for the Babuyan Islands, but he didn’t feel very confident about the information they’d got from the Norwegian. There was something about the man that made Cole not trust him. Brian seemed to think he was all right, though.

“Sure,” Theo said. “I’ve got it.” He reached up and switched on the radar and the AIS. Cole turned back toward their living quarters aft of the wheelhouse, but he paused in the doorway for a moment to watch his friend.

Theo had modified all the electronics on board their vessel so that they gave audio signals. The AIS system gave him a readout of the name and type of commercial vessel approaching them and the vessel’s
speed, course, and their closest point of approach. The more likely scenario in these islands, however, was that the boat crossing their bow would be a small wooden fishing vessel called a
bangka
, a sort of canoe with a single outrigger, and they hoped the radar would pick it up and the fisherman would have the good sense to stay clear. If the radar detected a target, a tone would sound—high-pitched meant it was to starboard, low-pitched was to port—and the frequency of the ping told Theo how far off it was. If the target worried him, Theo could fetch Cole to take a look for whatever was ahead.

Cole watched as his friend slid a big set of headphones up onto his head and flipped open his laptop with the Braille reader. Theo’s fingers danced across the keyboard. Cole watched the screen he knew his friend could not see. In a matter of seconds, he had connected his laptop to a satellite network, used a VPN logon, connected to Spotify, and was playing his favorite soca and reggae tunes through the headphones.

“I know you think you’re being sneaky, mon,” Theo said.

Cole chuckled and shook his head. “No way you can hear me with those headphones on,” he said.

“I might be blind, but the eyes in the back of my head aren’t.”

“Amen, brother,” Cole said.

Cole turned around and headed for the stove to make himself some coffee. He needed some time alone. Time to think. He didn’t want to say anything to Theo, didn’t want to burden his friend, but Riley had missed their scheduled radio chat yesterday. He’d tried raising her boat again this morning, but still no luck. Where the hell was she? He was afraid to even consider the many possible things that could go wrong on a small sailboat in the South China Sea. If he thought about them, maybe it would make one of them true. He had to put thoughts of her out of his mind. There was nothing he could do.

The thing that most bothered Cole about this location off the island of Dalupiri was, what had the hospital ship been doing there?
He couldn’t come up with a single reason why the
Teiyō Maru
would be in that location. Her last known port of call was Djakarta down in Indonesia. Though they had no record of it, they assumed that the hospital ship had then put in someplace in the Philippines close to this mythical megasite. There she had taken on a cargo of gold that she was supposed to transport back to the homeland. So, if she was headed home, why would she go up around the northern end of Dalupiri Island? It didn’t make sense.

For the next hour Cole studied the page he had got from Riley’s prayer gau. Not the map, but the other one with the symbols. He assumed it was some sort of key. The Japanese had wanted to be able to come back and find the treasure, but they didn’t want anyone else to be able to figure it out. Cole was lost deep in thought when he heard Theo call his name.

“Yeah?” He stood up and stretched. His back hurt from sitting for so long.

“Come here. There’s something I want you to look at.”

From habit, as soon as Cole entered the wheelhouse, he searched the horizon outside the windows. He didn’t see any ships or small boats, and the islands weren’t visible yet. “I don’t see anything out there.”

“No, not out there. Here.” Theo had pulled his big black headphones down around his neck. He pointed to the iPad he had affixed to a mount beneath the SSB radio. The tablet was connected to the radio by a cable.

“What is it?”

“I got a call on the SSB from Greg back in Subic Bay. She’d been watching the TV in the bar with Brian. She said the Japanese met office has just upgraded an area of low pressure southeast of the Philippines and named it Tropical Storm Bopha. Conditions are good for it to strengthen. I downloaded the weather fax charts from the SSB. I want you to take a look at them.”

“How far away is it?”

“It’s way out there now, like south of the Marianas and close to the equator, but it’s generally heading west.”

“Is it likely to come this way?”

“No, but this one is an odd storm. It’s late in the season and it keeps growing in spite of that.”

“So you’re worried that the storm is going to stray from the forecast path?”

“Not really.”

“Then what is it?”

Theo pointed to the screen image of a chart of the islands of Borneo and Palawan. “I reckon Riley is probably right about here, and that would put her directly in the forecast path of this storm.”