Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (36 page)

Aboard
Bonefish
South China Sea

November 28, 2012

Riley pressed the button on the side of her wristwatch and the dial lit up the cockpit with a bright greenish glow. Ten more minutes until Peewee was supposed to relieve her. This business of being able to sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time was something she’d be willing to get used to.

Her watch went dark again, and the night was restored. She still saw faint spots in her eyes, though, when she looked out into the inky night. Just that one small flash could ruin your night vision on a night like this. The low clouds hid the stars, and the only light outside the cockpit was the occasional flash of bioluminescence when one of the big swells broke into a frothy crest.

The wind had been building steadily since noon. She’d put a second reef in the main just before dark and rolled up the jib entirely a few hours ago. They were now doing better than seven knots under reefed main and staysail. The seas were growing, but they were taking them on the quarter so there wasn’t much spray.

The clunk of the aft head door closing told her that Peewee was up early for his watch. Light poured onto the side deck from the port.

Again, she was impressed by how well he was doing for a guy his age. No, she thought, for any guy. He now maneuvered around the boat at sea, swinging from one handhold to the next like a monkey in the trees. It was clear he’d spent time at sea before.

They’d passed most of their afternoons sitting at the settee table, poring over the charts of the Babuyan Islands. Peewee had taught her what some of the symbols on the sheet meant. Most pertained to land, but they’d begun to translate some of the symbols, and they were working on a hypothesis at the moment.

The head door opened and the light poured out. She turned her face aside. The light clicked off.

His face appeared in the companionway. He was wearing the black wool watch cap she had given him. “How’s it going, sweetheart?”

He smiled his crooked smile and Riley realized she had stopped seeing the scars on his face. She saw
him
, not the surface of his skin.

“It’s a little bouncy, but we’re making good time. We’ll be in Manila in no time if we keep this up.”

He started to climb on up the steps, but she stopped him with her palm in front of his face like a traffic cop. “Oilskins and harness, buddy. Nobody enters the cockpit at night without them.”

He looked up at her. “You know, you’re a bossy broad,” he said, then he disappeared below.

A few minutes later, Irv climbed into the cockpit wearing her second yellow foul-weather jacket and the big bulky safety harness with a built-in inflatable personal flotation device. He attached his carabiner hook to the big pad eye bolted to the side of the cabin, then looked at her and winked. “You happy now?”

“Very,” she said. “When I sail solo, I never get to climb into my bunk at night.” She lifted her shoulders and hugged herself. “It’s gonna feel good.”

“Hey, just because it’s easy to kick a man when he’s down, it doesn’t mean you should.”

She opened her mouth and aped an exaggerated look of shock. “Look around you, Mr. Peewee. You’re not down. You’re surrounded by the beauty of nature!”

He laughed. “Yeah, right. But truthfully? It’s been a good day.”

“Yeah, it has. You taught me lots about those symbols the Japanese used. It’s interesting. We’re pretty sure we know which island now. We’ll have the location pinpointed by the time we get to Manila.”

He nodded. “You may be right.”

“I am indeed.” She stood up and patted the old man’s shoulder. “And in the meantime, there’s a warm bunk down there with my name on it.” She pointed at the wheel. “It’s all yours.”

Instead of heading straight to her bunk, though, once below, Riley put a kettle of water on the stove and prepared two mugs with powdered hot chocolate mix. While waiting for the water to heat, she slid onto the seat at the chart table, leaned her head back against the bulkhead, and closed her eyes for a minute. It was comforting to go below into the safety of the cabin and to listen to the whooshing noise made by the water flowing by outside the hull and the creaking of the woodwork inside as the hull flexed. There were some sailors she knew who hated long passages, but she wasn’t one. She enjoyed this life where the world shrank down to her little ship in the middle of the big wide ocean.

She clicked on the red-tinted light, grabbed a mechanical pencil from the rack holding her nav instruments, and opened her logbook. Much as she loved her electronics, Riley still found great pleasure in recording her observations in her ship’s logbook by hand. She knew there were apps for her phone that would record her latitude and longitude via GPS with the click of a button, but this was how she had been taught to do it by her father all those years ago when she and her brother had sailed on their first sailboat named the
Bonefish
. Change
was okay, and she usually embraced new ways, but this was a ritual she was loath to give up.

When she’d finished, she closed the leather-bound notebook and replaced it inside the chart table. Then she glanced at the SSB radio. Should she try again? Ever since she had missed the scheduled radio call she and Cole had set up, she had been listening and calling and trying to reach him. Was he sending her emails, wondering what had happened to her? If so, she wasn’t able to receive them. The same men who had held her prisoner so she couldn’t make their radio “date” had also stolen the satellite phone she’d connected to her computer to send emails. She wished now she had bought herself a Pactor modem that would enable her to send emails via the single-sideband radio, but she had decided the sat phone would suffice. She’d overlooked the cardinal rule of cruising: redundancy.

The kettle whistled and she got up and made the hot drinks for herself and Irv. After handing him his, she returned to the chart table and eyed the radio again. It couldn’t hurt to try while she drank her chocolate. She flipped the breaker on and pushed the radio’s power button. Static exploded from the speaker, followed by a high-pitched whistle. She pushed buttons to jump between the various preset frequencies. Whenever she heard voices in the ocean of static, she stopped and tried to tune them in. She found an Aussie cruiser talking to a Dutchman, but other than that, every other voice she heard was speaking a language she did not understand. After running through the presets, she went back to 8104 megahertz and almost fell off the seat when Cole’s voice came through loud and clear with almost no static.

“
Bonefish, Bonefish
, this is the
Bonhomme Richard
.”

Riley fumbled for the mike.

“This is
Bonefish
, do you read? Over.”

“Roger, roger. Holy crap, Riley. Is that you?”

“Roger. It’s me.”

“God! It’s great to hear your voice! I’ve been so worried about you.”

“Good to hear you, too.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, we’re fine.”

“You missed our last scheduled call.”

“Roger that. It was unavoidable.” She considered explaining more, but she didn’t want to worry him. “Everything here is A-OK now. We’re currently”—she flipped open the logbook—“located at nine degrees, nine minutes north, one hundred sixteen degrees, fifty-eight minutes east. We’re off the southern tip of the island of Palawan—only about thirty-five miles offshore, so technically we’re in Philippine waters.”

“You keep saying ‘we.’ Did you pick up a hitchhiker or something?”

Cole thought he was being funny. Little did he know. “Yeah, well, just habit, I guess. The ‘we’ is me and my boat.”

“Have you been watching the weather?”

“Negative,” she said. “Had a malfunction with my satellite phone. Can’t download any weather info.”

“You need to know that there is a tropical storm forming south of Palau. Conditions are favorable for it to build. Might be a typhoon soon, and it’s heading toward the southern Philippines.”

“Thanks for the info. We should be okay. That’s still a long way off and we’re making good time. Should arrive in Manila in three to four days.”

“Great. You keep moving and get out of the way of that thing. Does your cell phone still work?”

“Affirmative.”

“Okay. I’ll send a plane for you when you get in. I’ll text you where to meet the pilot.”

She rolled her eyes at that. He was pretty confident she wanted to join him. “Where are you?” she asked.

“We’re up in the Babuyan Islands anchored in the lee of Dalupiri Island. Think this is the location of the
Teiyō Maru
marked on the map. We’ve been searching a grid with the magnetometer, but no luck. Too deep.”

“What map?” she asked. As far as she knew, she was the only one with a map.

The silence on the other end dragged out.

“
Bonhomme Richard
, are you there?”

“Roger. Back in Phuket. At the Shanti Lodge? After you fell asleep I sent pictures of all the documents to Theo. I assumed you wouldn’t mind.”

Riley stared at the radio. She lifted the microphone to her face, opened her mouth, then stopped. The hand holding the mike dropped into her lap.

“
Bonefish, Bonefish
, this is the
Bonhomme Richard
, do you copy?”

She heard the clank of Irv’s safety harness, and she looked up to see him leaning through the companionway to look at her.

The voice called again from the radio speaker. “Riley, come on, this is Cole. Do you copy?”

Irv said, “Your phone is ringing. You gonna answer that?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It seems Mr. Thatcher thinks he’s the only one who can figure out where this shipwreck is.” She reached out and turned off the radio.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.

She nodded. “They’re looking in the wrong place.”

Corregidor Island
The Philippines

November 29, 2012

Elijah ran his hand along the barrel of the huge gun mounted on the steel swivel plate set into the concrete. He tried to imagine what it had been like back when they had originally brought these guns up to the batteries. It certainly hadn’t been the parklike setting that surrounded him today. American boys had fought and died for their country on this soil, and it was now up to men like him to make sure that America remained the superpower she should be. Elijah checked his watch again. Benny was late.

The damned savage excelled only at the most basic skills—tracking and killing people—but lacked the finesse required to do anything that required an intellect. If only he could just let Benny kill them both and be done with it. Elijah hated all this waiting.

He lifted the binoculars that hung round his neck and focused them on the freighter that inched past the island. Through the lenses he could make out the tiny men on deck. These glasses would suit his purpose.

Where was Benny? Surely he didn’t get lost. There was a big sign along the roadway that identified this place as Hamilton Battery. Corregidor was nothing if not well marked and all the drivers knew every landmark. The Filipinos had turned the entire island into one big museum. He took a couple of steps over to the edge of the cliff and looked out across the bay toward some other small islands to the south. Any boat entering Manila Harbor from the south would pass by here.

He had come out here a couple of days earlier with Esmerelda, and they had taken a private tour. She explained to him that some of the locals eschewed the ferry and instead came out on their own boats. There was a jitney bus service to get around on the island, and they went to the beach on the south side. But no one was supposed to stay on the island overnight.

Riding around on the jitney bus with mobs of Filipino tourists was not going to work for him. He had hired one of Esmerelda’s friends who worked on the island as a guide to be his driver for the day. Elijah had sent him away while he waited for Benny.

The crunch of footfalls on the rocky surface of the battery made Elijah turn. Benny was strolling over to the edge of the cliff like he didn’t have a care in the world. As always he carried that leather satchel of his, a constant reminder of his ability to deliver a quick death. Elijah was surprised he had not heard the vehicle that had dropped Benny off out here.