Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (29 page)

Riley patted the teak-topped coaming she was leaning against. “You go girl,” she said aloud.

It was great to be sailing again after the windless trip down from Phuket to Singapore. She’d motorsailed the majority of those first three or four days, meeting many fishing boats and dodging ships in the straits off Singapore. The flat water and dry cockpit had allowed her to work long hours and she’d been able to get her draft proposal sent off that morning.

Now it was pure bliss with the engine off and a relatively empty ocean. No more noise and heat from the engine room or worried calculations as to whether or not her fuel would last. She could hear the creaking of the lines stretching in the puffs of wind, the rushing sound of the water sliding past her hull. In the distance, she saw three or four white birds circling over a spot in the ocean, and occasionally she could even hear the sound of their cries. They were hunting fish, no doubt.

Birds, fish, all were signs she was approaching land.

She slid back behind the wheel and checked her instruments. The chart plotter told her she had twenty-one miles to go to her waypoint off Natuna Besar, an island that belonged to Indonesia. The plotter showed an ETA of two o’clock. She would pass within eleven miles of the island, and since it had a mountain over three thousand feet high, she should be able to see it in the next hour or two. She’d read in one of her cruising guides that lots of sailors broke up their trip by stopping here, but that there wasn’t much on the island. The people fished and farmed, and the capital city, Ranai, had some stores, fuel, and provisions. Stopping wasn’t in her plans, though.

Riley checked the other instruments. Her autopilot was humming right along, doing a great job of keeping the boat on course. The boat did tend to slew around a bit in these long six- to eight-foot swells, making her compass do a drunken dance under the plastic dome, but the course averaged out. She knew she couldn’t steer any straighter.
The wind-speed indicator showed the wind was maintaining the steady sixteen to twenty knots. And the sea beneath the boat was so deep it did not register any depth on her fathometer.

For the moment, the conditions couldn’t be better, and she hoped to sight land soon to confirm her position. In the meantime, she should rustle up something to eat. She slid across the seat toward the companionway stairs.

Riley moved around her boat with ease, often not even aware of the fact that she was holding on in a bouncing, swaying environment. It usually took her a day or two to get her sea legs, but once she got over that initial queasiness, she got her appetite back.

She checked her sprouting jar. The alfalfa sprouts were bright green. She’d have her salad for lunch. She groped her way to her canned-food locker behind the port settee and dug around inside. Water chestnuts, black olives, and a jar of artichoke hearts. Add to that a slice of the bread she’d baked two days ago and a bottle of cold water and she would be set.

Thirty minutes later Riley had plugged her iPhone into the stereo, and she had some tunes playing from a CD that Billy had given her. It was by a bluegrass group called the Mountain Girls and Riley appreciated the intimate voice of the lead singer. She climbed into the cockpit with her food and settled on the low seat to enjoy her meal.

As she munched her salad, Riley thought about Cole. Once she got past Natuna Besar, she’d have about a thousand miles left to go. If she kept winds like this, she’d make it in a week.

When she finished her lunch, Riley stood in the companionway and examined the horizon through the window of her dodger. There were some low clouds ahead, but she was pretty sure she could make out the hard shape of the island. She was only fifteen miles off now.

She descended the steps, dropped her dishes in the sink, grabbed the binoculars off the chart table, and headed back topsides. She stood on the top step with her elbows resting on either side of the hatch
and searched off her port bow. It was definitely the sloping sides of the island with the mountaintop shrouded in clouds. She lowered the binoculars and scanned the horizon for ships.

That was when she saw it. A small fishing boat appeared on the top of a swell and then disappeared into the trough. For a minute or so she had trouble spotting it again, but when she did find it, the boat was quite a bit closer. It wasn’t as small a boat as she had originally thought. When she’d first sighted it, the boat looked like it would cross her bow, but then they changed back onto a converging course. The boat had the high bow typical of all the boats she’d seen in Southeast Asia, and it was painted with bright yellow, blue, and red stripes. Set back toward the stern there was a small deckhouse.

Undoubtedly this was going to be another attempted shakedown for booze and cigarettes or anything else she might have to share. Through the binoculars, she saw at least two men standing out on deck. There was probably at least one more in the deckhouse at the steering station. Though she had been approached by half a dozen boats already on this trip, and none of them had proved menacing, her training wouldn’t permit her to do nothing as they approached.

Riley went below and collected her dive knife, the Geco flare gun, and the can of wasp and hornet spray. The steel flare gun shot twenty-five-millimeter flares that would probably kill a man if shot within a certain range. It was beefier and more accurate than the American plastic-variety flare gun. The insect spray was designed to take out a whole nest, and it shot a stream up to twenty-two feet away. She’d never had to use it, and she hoped today wouldn’t be the first time. As a last precaution, she pulled her crossbow out of the forward hanging locker and nocked an arrow into it and cocked it. She slipped it under the covers on the forward cabin bunk.

When she emerged back on deck, she was surprised to see how close the boat had drawn. It was approaching at ten o’clock off her port bow and only a thousand yards separated them. One of the two men
standing on the foredeck had a line coiled in his hand. It was attached to a grappling hook that he held ready to throw in the other hand. This was no ordinary fishing expedition. The sea was too rough for them to pull alongside her boat. One or both of the boats would be damaged. These guys were pirates.

She had to prevent them from boarding her, to scare them off. It was the first time she had ever fired the flare gun. She’d intended to put one across their bow, but the orange ball of fire passed very close to Mr. Grappling Hook. He dodged it and shouted something, and then motioned to the boat’s driver. Riley could see the man through the windows on the front of the cabin. He wore a red bandana as a headband and he was shoving the wheel over as their boat passed hers going in the opposite direction. Then they slowed, turned across her wake, and then began to overtake and move up alongside her boat.

She reloaded and raised the flare gun to fire again. This time she would aim more carefully. There were no more than fifty feet separating the two boats as the pirates matched her speed. It was a wooden boat and from the sound of the engine, it sounded like an old gasoline one-cylinder. She wanted to scare them, not kill them. She was sighting down the barrel of the flare gun when she felt a sting in her upper arm. She looked at her bicep and saw the feather tail of a dart. The grappling hook thudded aboard and caught on one of her turnbuckles. The flare gun dropped out of her hand, and her arm dropped to her side, numb, lifeless. She felt dizzy.

Then she saw him step out of the deckhouse. Black hair streaked with gray, Fu Manchu mustache, the blue ink of tattoos on his forearms. He was holding the blowpipe in one hand and smiling at her.

With her good arm, she lifted the can of insect spray, aimed it at the grappling hook man pulling the line attached to her boat, and sprayed. She heard him scream just before she passed out.

Aparri, Luzon
The Philippines

November 24, 2012

Cole watched the depth sounder as he brought his boat up the Cagayan River so as to avoid the shoal patch in the center just inside the river mouth. It was late in the evening, and he was losing the last of the day’s light. The river water was a dark muddy brown, though, so even with good light he wouldn’t have been able to spot any shallows. He dropped the anchor in sixteen feet and felt satisfied when he backed the boat down and the anchor set well. He was ready for a good meal and some rest after the 350-mile trip up from Subic Bay.

The town of Aparri advertised itself as a jumping-off spot for trips out to the Babuyan Islands, which lay some thirty to fifty miles offshore, but considering what Cole could see from the river—wood shacks, unpainted cinderblock buildings, trash, and stray dogs—the place didn’t look like a tourist mecca to him. Cole wasn’t getting a good vibe about the place. But after having no luck whatsoever with figuring out the map and key on their own, Brian had suggested they visit an old friend of his in Aparri, so here they were. They’d head
ashore in the morning and locate the man Brian referred to as the Norwegian Psychic.

After making certain they were securely anchored, Cole shut down the engine and went to the galley to find Theo. He found him sitting on one of the settee bench seats with Leia asleep at his side. The table was covered with papers, Theo’s laptop, and his special Braille machine. Theo had designed a machine that embossed raised areas of the page like Braille writers do, but he made his dots much sharper pixels. He said it took four of his pins to create one Braille dot. The end result was that he was able to emboss papers with two-dimensional designs. This enabled him to read maps and charts, to read schematic diagrams, and to work on the map and code key that Cole had sent him while Riley was sleeping. He was able to connect his embossing graphics machine to his laptop via USB and then he could print out a copy he could read with his fingers.

“So what do you say, Theo? Tell me you’ve had a breakthrough.”

“Not really. This thing we’re calling a map—it’s more like a children’s drawing. I’ve graphed it and run it through a program that is trying to match it to the nautical charts of the Babuyan Islands, but one of the problems is that we don’t know what the scale is. And, of course, it is hand-drawn so it’s bound to be inaccurate. Even the computer’s drawing a blank. There are five major islands and dozens of smaller ones out there. That’s way too big an area to search.”

“We’ll go ashore in the morning. Hopefully this friend of Brian’s will be able to help us out.”

“I don’t know,” Theo said as he started to clear off the table. “Brian didn’t exactly effuse with his recommendation.”

The next morning Cole used the crane to lower the Boston Whaler dinghy into the water. When they rebuilt
Shadow Chaser
and turned her into the
Bonhomme Richard
, Cole designed the transom so that
it could fold down and create a swim platform and workdeck aft. It was easier for getting in and out of the dinghy and for loading and off-loading gear. He and Theo climbed in. Leia followed and lay down at Theo’s feet. She was the only dog Cole had ever seen who didn’t insist on riding up on the bow.

It had rained hard earlier that morning, but the day remained overcast and so humid Cole’s shirt was soaked through before he even started the outboard engine. Theo wore a small messenger bag with the strap crossing his chest, and he put his arms over the bag to shield it from any rain or spray.

The way to the town was up a smaller tributary river. The buildings were pretty sparse at first, but about half a mile in they got to the downtown marketplace and there the riverbanks were solid with buildings. They saw lots of boat traffic around them and most of the people smiled and waved. Cole tied up the Whaler at the market where concrete steps led from the water up to the busy marketplace. He got out the cable and lock and secured the dinghy to a rusty iron ring set into the concrete wall.

As they passed through the food vendors in the market, Cole kept up a running commentary describing what he was seeing to Theo, who kept one hand on Cole’s arm, the other on Leia’s handle.

“The ground is muddy and there are puddles everywhere. Can’t avoid them; try not to slip. We’re passing through the local fruit and vegetable market. It’s inside a courtyard of sorts. There’s no roof overhead, but each vendor has slung some sort of plastic tarp over his or her space with another tarp on the ground that marks the outline of the stall. Some of the produce is stacked in little pyramids, like the potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. Several women have flats of fresh eggs, too. Now we’re heading through an entrance gate and out to the street.”

“Are there any full-sized taxis?”

“Nope, just tricycles.”

Theo sighed. “I’m not taking the dog on my lap this time. It’s your turn.”

Cole motioned to the driver of one of the tricycle cabs—which were really motorcycles with a small aluminum pod of a sidecar. Dozens of them were parked along the street outside the market. The driver jumped up and mounted his bike.

“The Ryan Hotel?”

The driver nodded.

“I think he knows where to take us. Time to climb in.”

Theo was a six-footer and slender, while Cole wasn’t as tall, but stocky. He always felt like an idiot when they stuffed themselves and the seventy-pound Lab into this favorite mode of Filipino transport. The seat was only four to five inches higher than the floor. Their knees were at the level of their ears, and the ceiling was so low Theo couldn’t straighten up his neck.