Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (52 page)

When Benny was gone, Elijah called downstairs and asked them to bring a full bottle of scotch to his room. He poured himself a drink and set to work at the computer trying to learn as much as he could about caves in Luzon and the local geology. Just south of Vigan was
the broad alluvial plain formed by the mouth of the Abra River. For several miles south of that, the mountains came right to the coast. Given that Luzon had hundreds of caves and there was another underground river upstream as a tributary to the Abra, it was not inconceivable that a river had passed underground and found its way to the sea by going through the mountains there and forming a cave accessible from the ocean side.

It was late. Benny had been gone for a couple of hours. Elijah was considering going down to find a meal when his phone rang. He looked at the readout. He didn’t recognize the number.

“Mr. Hawkes? It’s Nils Skar.”

“Where are you?”

“Somewhere close to Vigan. Just a minute.” There was a muffled sound like someone handling a phone in the wind and Elijah heard voices talking. “They say this place is called Fuerte. It’s on the coast just outside Vigan.”

“How’d you get there?”

Nils recounted the story of getting caught in the captain’s cabin and jumping overboard at the mouth of the river. “I don’t know how far I walked. I was at it for several hours. Then I met these fishermen and they gave me a ride in their boat to this town. I’m using a cell phone that belongs to a guy they know here. I’ve got the camera here for you, and I sure hope there’s a photo on it.”

Nils told him the name of the bar he was calling from. Elijah said he’d be there within the hour.

Elijah knew that type of camera. It had no screen. He would need the laptop. It had an SD card slot. He shut the computer off and slipped it into the sleeve. He could leave the power cord in the room. He put the sleeve into his laptop messenger bag. There was still room in the bag. He crossed to the bedroom and unzipped his suitcase. Buried under the top layer of clothes was the sword wrapped in the cloth.
He slipped it into the computer bag. Part of the hilt stuck out the top of the bag, but covered as it was, no one would know what it was.

The directions he got at the hotel desk were impossible to follow, and he drove around in the dark peering through his wipers. As he searched for the bar, he remembered the first time he’d had to field dress a deer. It was winter and there was a light dusting of snow on the ground so he wasn’t worried about the meat going bad. He took his time and discovered the thrill of cutting flesh and watching hot blood spill steaming onto the snow. For years after, he fulfilled his needs through hunting. And what now if he could never return to the ranch?

Elijah pulled the truck to a stop in front of a small bar with a red neon sign that simply said B
AR
beneath a lit-up San Miguel beer sign. It was noisy inside and the place reeked of fish and stale beer. Filipino pop music was playing just loud enough to make the men inside have to shout to be heard.

When he spotted Nils in the center of a group of men who obviously had been buying him drinks, Elijah motioned for him to leave.

The Norwegian waved back at him, then wobbled and nearly toppled over. The little prick was drunk and didn’t want to leave.

If it were possible, he looked even worse than he had before. His clothes were still damp and his hair was matted with bits of seaweed and sand. Elijah didn’t want to touch the man, but he wanted to see the photo. Now.

He walked over, grabbed Nils by the elbow, and steered him out of the bar as the Norwegian kept up a tirade in the high-pitched, whiny voice of a child throwing a tantrum. Elijah threw him into the front passenger seat.

“You want to get paid, you’ll stay put and come with me. I’ll buy you a drink back at the hotel.”

Elijah drove back down the dark road toward Vigan. “So where’s the camera?”

Nils reached into his pants pocket and produced the boxy camera in its waterproof case. “Here. I can’t tell how the pics turned out ’cause it doesn’t have a screen.”

Elijah saw a break in the trees on the right side of the road. It probably led to the river, which he could see through occasional breaks in the foliage. He slowed and pulled off the main road.

“I’ve got my laptop in the back. Let’s just get out of traffic and have a look.”

Of course, they had not passed another vehicle since they left the bar. He swung the wheel hard over and parked the truck at the river’s edge.

He rolled the windows down before shutting off the ignition.

The night was quiet aside from the occasional whirring noise of insects in the grass. Far out in the river, they heard a plop as a fish jumped. The sky remained overcast, and though the storm had let up for the moment the night air still smelled like rain.

Elijah reached into the back of the truck and grabbed his computer bag. “Let’s see what we have.” He slid the sword onto the floor of the backseat and lifted the laptop out of the bag.

Nils struggled to open the camera’s waterproof case. “Sorry. It’s my eyes,” he said. “I don’t see well in the dark.”

“Give it to me.” Elijah opened the case and retrieved the SD card. He slid it into the side of his computer. When the machine was fully booted up, he opened the last image on the card.

It was perfect. “Well done,” Elijah said.

“If you’re happy with that, I’d like to be on my way tonight. You won’t need me anymore, right? If you could pay me, then I’ll be headed back home to Aparri.”

Elijah closed the laptop and looked at the man sitting next to him. “I could manage that,” he said. “It’s a long ride back to the hotel, though. I’m going to take a piss before we get back on the road.”

“Good idea,” Nils said, and he opened his door.

Elijah reached into the back and slid the laptop into the bag. He glanced up as he unwrapped the sword. The Norwegian was walking toward the river.

Sliding out of the truck, Elijah held the sword tight against his right leg in case the man finished too soon. He needn’t have worried. After all the beer, his stream was still splashing into the river when Elijah stopped a few steps behind him.

As he raised the sword over his head, he felt the ink on his back tingling. He took a deep breath of the rain-washed air, anticipating the rich scent he would soon smell. Then Elijah swung the sword in a downward cut at the side of the man’s neck in a move he had practiced hundreds of times at the dojo. Only this time he did not pull back at the last moment.

He was astonished when the head splashed into the water before the legs crumpled.

Northern Luzon
The Philippines

June 27, 1945

The sky remained overcast as the night drew around them, and the darkness appeared impenetrable. Ozzie wasn’t sure they’d be able to find the boat out in the bay, much less the entrance to the cave. While they had been waiting for nightfall, he’d wandered around the village and come upon a fisherman’s net with float buoys attached. With the help of Rafi’s machete, he fashioned himself a string of buoys that he could either trail behind him as he swam, causing minimal drag, or use to support him if he needed to rest during the swim.

They paddled out to the fishing boat in the canoe and Rafi started up the engine. Rafi then changed the anchor line over to the canoe before they climbed aboard the fishing boat and pointed the bow of the boat out to sea. Soon it was impossible to see the shore behind them.

Ozzie knew little of this northern part of Luzon, but he had spent time in Manila before the war started. Manila was a lively, vibrant city and he was surprised that there weren’t more lights along this coast.
He wondered if there really were no people living close by or whether they were observing a blackout.

The boat chugged along for more than an hour across a flat sea. Peewee and Rafi had a chart back in the wheelhouse and from time to time a light would flick on and they’d mark the boat’s position based on their knowledge of dead reckoning. Ozzie hoped they knew what they were doing. Finally Peewee came out of the wheelhouse carrying what looked like a thick belt.

“Here,” he said, “put this around your waist. There’s a couple of flares in here as well as a waterproof light and compass.”

“I take it I’m going to swim from here?”

“Yeah. I reckon we’re about a thousand yards off the rocks. To get to the cave entrance, you have to go through a channel of rocks. The Japs use range markers, but we can’t do that, so we want you to swim in and put flares on the rocks—one on each side of the channel.”

“It’s going to be hard to find this channel.”

“When you get in closer, you should be able to spot the cave entrance. There are some lights on in there, but they’re positioned so they don’t shine out and can’t be seen very far offshore. Use the compass. Follow a bearing in. The cave should be due east of us.”

“Don’t worry. This isn’t my first night swim.”

Ozzie stripped off his shirt, but decided to keep his pants on. They’d make swimming a little more difficult, but they were dark in color, unlike his Skivvies. He checked out the pouch in the belt, tried the flashlight, and steadied the compass. Then he sealed it up again to keep the flares dry and tied the rope connecting him to his floats round his waist.

There was a warm layer of water on top, but when he slipped all the way into the water, his feet reached down to the cooler temperature.

“Listen, buddy,” he said to Peewee. “Don’t take any wooden nickels, you hear?”

Ozzie pushed off from the side of the boat and began to swim.

So much for Filipino navigation. Ozzie had been maintaining a strong, steady crawl stroke. He stopped swimming and, while treading water, reeled in the fishing floats that trailed behind him and tucked one under his arm to keep him afloat. Then he pulled the compass out of his waistband. There was quite a bit of bioluminescence in the seawater, so he wiggled his hand and splashed around to create enough bluish light to check his bearing. He was still on course and he’d covered at least two thousand yards by now. The island of Luzon had to be up ahead somewhere. It wasn’t like he could miss it. He tucked the compass back into his waistband and faced forward, switching to the breaststroke. Only a few strokes farther, and he sensed the darkness ahead was more solid. At last, he began to make out the outline of a large rock.

He changed course slightly to his left to swim around the rock, then peered into the darkness, trying to see the main island. If it was out there, he still couldn’t see it. Squinting into the black night, he stroked his way onward and then all of a sudden, like he had just figured out an optical illusion, he saw the dimly lit oval shape of the cave opening. Just to make sure he wasn’t imagining it, he swam closer until he could make out the submarine tied up to the dock.

No men were in sight. Ozzie figured it was late and he was certain there was some kind of guard. Hopefully it was only one or two men.

Turning back seaward, he could make out the two rocks that framed the entrance to the channel. It was time to set his flares.

Climbing onto the rocks turned out to be more difficult than he thought. The stones’ surfaces were covered in a light slime that made them slippery as heck. If he tossed the flares onto the rocks, though, they’d be too likely to fall into a crevice and then become invisible. He wanted to place the flares so they were easily visible from the seaward side, but nearly invisible from the cave.

He pulled himself onto a ledge and lit the first flare. Stepping up on the rock so he could reach a dry spot, he just managed to wedge the burning flare into a crevice before he fell and cut open a gash along his forearm.

Ozzie tried not to think about the blood and sharks as he slid back into the water and pulled hard for the rock on the other side. From the other side of the channel, the rock had looked as big as the first one, but when he arrived, he saw it had been an illusion. Ozzie had thought it was farther away. In fact, the channel was only about one hundred feet wide. He tried to pull himself up onto a ledge, but he slipped. He had to light this flare before the other one burned out.

He lit it and this time when he tried to wedge it into a Y-shaped crevice, the flare rolled off and landed in the water. Luckily it didn’t burn out, but when he grabbed it and lifted it out of the water, he was in full view of the cave. He stroked one-handed back to the rock, but from the direction of the cave he heard the submarine’s Klaxon horn sound.

By the time he’d wedged the flare securely on the rock, the horn had stopped but he heard a voice shouting orders in Japanese. The mouth of the cave seemed to work like a megaphone, amplifying the sound.

Then from seaward, he heard the sound of the
San Pedro
’s engine roaring at full tilt.

Ozzie didn’t want to miss out on the action, so he slipped into the water and began stroking toward the cave entrance, making sure he was clear of the boat channel. The last thing he wanted was to get run down by the prop on the
San Pedro
.

He had covered half the distance to the cave when the fishing boat was suddenly almost on him. He was surprised by the speed she was traveling when she passed him. It was crazy to be careening along at full throttle toward a small opening in a cliff.