Riley brushed at a tear that started down her cheek. She didn’t want him to see it. “That you did, Peewee. That you did.”
“About that nickname. Let me tell you this story while I can still talk. Where’s that water?”
Riley held the bottle to his lips and he took a drink. He ran his lips over his dentures before he spoke. “Do you remember when I told you about a Filipina girl I once loved?”
Riley smiled and nodded.
“Her name was Gregoria and she fought with the guerrillas in these mountains. When we learned that the USS Bonefish was in the cave, we decided to stage a raid. Free the Americans. Gregoria stayed behind. We got a boat and went in at night. Only one of us could swim—Ozzie. He had to swim in. Light flares for the boat. The Japs saw us and fired the stern tube. Torpedo’s rudder jammed, it turned a hundred and eighty degrees and came back. Japs didn’t blow the opening to this cave. We did.”
Riley touched the side of his face. “Is that how you got this?”
He closed his eyes and inclined his head. “Only one man survived, sweetheart. It was Ozzie.”
“What?” Riley wondered if delirium was setting in. “I—”
“Shhh. Listen.” He motioned for more water, but he barely swallowed any. He just moistened his lips. “I woke up on the beach. Gregoria had pulled me out. She was supposed to stay back at camp, but she followed. She saw it all. I was unconscious, burned and drifting away. Becoming Peewee was her idea. She had his dog tag. Hard to explain how Ozzie Riley was the only survivor from a missing submarine. Better to become Sergeant Irving Weinstein. We always looked like brothers. And now, with my scars . . .”
“You’re—”
His head dipped but the answer was in his eyes.
“You’ve been living a lie all this time?”
Riley found herself looking at his face, searching for some resemblance to her own features. Was it possible? Could this man really be her grandfather?
He started coughing and Riley could tell his voice was growing weaker.
“Tell your friend Cole I knew Andrew Ketcham at Corregidor. We were both Bonesmen. What we did . . .” His voice trailed off.
His thoughts appeared to be jumping all over. How would she ever know what was true about Ozzie Riley and what was him pretending to be Irv?
He closed his eyes for several seconds, then opened them and spoke again. “Gregoria. She nursed me in the mountains, then in a village. Don’t know where. We fell in love.
“The treasure room is that way.” He moved his eyes to indicate where.
Riley peered out into the darkness. She couldn’t see much outside the shaft of light they were in. She pulled the backpack off her own back and pulled the flashlight out of the side pocket. When she clicked it on, she was surprised to see there were mounds of stuff around them in the cave. It was all rotten and moldy looking, but she saw what looked like some wood crates and some piles of fabric.
“This is camp room. Treasure next chamber. Giant gold dragon. Hollow. Small one was replica. They caught us—hidden in dragon.”
A dragon big enough to hide a man would be big indeed. And made of gold?
“What about this back door for getting out of here?”
He moved his eyes in the opposite direction. “That way. Keep right.”
“If I can get out back there, maybe I should go and try to find some help. Get you a doctor.”
“No, too late. Stay with me.” He coughed again and it sounded like his lungs were full of fluid.
She lifted his hand again in hers. It felt so odd to hold that lifeless hand. He wasn’t dead yet, but his hand appeared to be. It wasn’t fair. She’d just found her grandfather in time to watch him die.
“Maggie,” he said. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “I’m glad I got to know my granddaughters.” He closed his eyes.
“Granddaughters?” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but in surprise, she’d blurted it out.
When he opened his eyes, there was still a sparkle of humor there. She could see him summoning the strength to speak. “Gregoria got pregnant. Made me promise to name our daughter Honoria.”
He closed his eyes again and his body grew still. If not for the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest and the breathing that sounded like he was gargling water, she would think he was already gone. The rain was still falling on him, the drops collecting on his face and flowing like small rivers in the wrinkles in his skin. Riley took off her jacket and tried to make a little tent to cover his face. She took his hand again.
There was so much more she wanted to ask him. So much she wanted to know. Was it true? Was Greg her cousin? He had manipulated Riley into chasing after his Dragon’s Triangle, so it stood to reason he might have done the same with Greg.
Riley loosened the hood under his chin and pushed the fabric back from his face. She combed his thin hair with her fingers. He took a deep breath and exhaled. She waited for the next breath. Just when she thought he wasn’t going to do it, he inhaled a long, gurgling breath.
“I’m glad I had the chance to get to know you,” she said. She didn’t know if he could hear her anymore. “Maybe I’ll never understand why you did what you did. Why you waited until now to find me. Why you never came to us when Michael or my father were still alive. You know, when you wrote in your letter that you would tell me what happened to my grandfather, I never imagined it would be this.”
His eyes popped open, but they appeared to be focused on something over her shoulder. It was eerie enough to make her turn her head and look, but she didn’t see anything there.
She turned back. His eyes were only half open now.
“Grandpa?” she said.
He exhaled another long burbling breath. Only this time, he did not inhale.
Riley sat there holding his hand, brushing her fingers through his hair over and over, and she cried.
Ilocos Sur
The Philippines
December 7, 2012
“They can’t have just disappeared.” Cole put his arm around Greg to turn her around.
Greg resisted. “I saw two men coming up the trail. They’ll get both of us if we don’t get out of here.”
He knew she was right. But he had to find Riley. “I’ve got to look.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see any sign of them. They’re probably hiding and we need to do the same.”
He whipped off his backpack and dug out the satellite phone. “Can you make it back to the van on your own?”
She nodded.
He shoved the phone into her hands. “I’ll distract them. You circle around and get back to the van. Call for help.” He was worried that she would refuse to leave them, so he added, “I’ll find the others. We’re counting on you.”
She took the phone and slipped off into the brush on the side of the trail. In seconds she had disappeared from view.
Cole already had his backpack off, so he unzipped his red jacket. While he was taking it off he was scanning the forest around him. He needed a tree with strong branches, but low enough for him to climb. He spotted what he wanted, and he was glad it was on the opposite side of the trail from where Greg had disappeared.
Beneath the big tree’s canopy was a thick cluster of bushes. He jammed the red jacket deep inside, making sure that it could be seen if one looked hard enough. He spread the sleeves out, trying to make it look like a person facedown on the ground.
He slung the pack back onto his back and hid his machete at the base of the tree. Then he jumped up and grabbed one of the lower hanging branches. He walked his feet up the tree’s trunk until he could loop one leg over the branch. He climbed higher. He was standing on a branch about twenty feet off the ground and reaching for a higher branch when he saw movement through the trees. He moved his body so the trunk of the tree was between him and the two men.
By moving his head a few inches to the right he could sneak a look around the trunk. It looked like there were two of them. Both w
ore clear plastic rain ponchos. Cole recognized Benny, and he assumed the other one in the jeans and boots was Hawkes. No sign of Nils Skar. No big surprise. Nils wasn’t the hiking type.
Hawkes held a machete-like blade in his hand. Benny had his three-foot-long blowpipe.
They stopped a good distance back. Benny pointed to his own eyes with two fingers, then pointed ahead. He was communicating that he’d spotted something. Then he held his palm up flat, signaling Hawkes to stay put.
Cole wished he’d had time to get his speargun out of the pack on his back. That had been his plan. Now, he feared the movement would give him away. Right now his best weapon was surprise. Benny was coming as the advance man, which was good. Better to deal with them one at a time. Right now he had to take Benny out of the equation, and he’d only get one chance. He’d better be quick about it, too, because Hawkes would be there right on his tail.
Benny’s movements reminded him of a big cat. He was stalking the bush, walking slowly, knees bent, body close to the ground, his blowpipe at his mouth.
At first Cole feared Benny was going to approach the bush from the opposite side, but he needn’t have worried. It made sense to use the thick tree trunk as cover. And he was so focused on sneaking up on the man hiding in the bushes, it never occurred to him to look up.
When Cole jumped, he was totally focused on getting his hand on that blowpipe. Benny fell under the weight of Cole’s one hundred and eighty pounds falling on his back, and Cole knocked the pipe loose from his grip. Both men rolled in the mud. The Bornean man was fast, but Cole’s years of amateur wrestling paid off. It was only when he had Benny under control with his head in a half nelson, pinned facedown in the mud, that Cole saw the needlelike point of the dart clenched between Benny’s teeth.
Benny jerked and started to turn his head, intending to smash his mouth against Cole’s bare forearm. Cole released the half nelson and whipped his arm out of the way, and the dart plunged into the tattooed skin of Benny’s own forearm.
Cole scrambled back in the mud still on all fours.
Behind him he heard Hawkes coming through the bushes. Cole rose, intending to run, when a knife flew past his ear and stuck into the tree.
“Stop or I will kill you.”
Cole stopped.
“Put your hands on your head and turn around slowly.”
Cole did as he was told. The rain had eased up and the man had pulled the hood back off his head. He pushed his wet black hair straight back from his forehead. The sky, the woods, and the rocks were all a rain-washed gray, but this guy’s blue eyes seemed to burn with some kind of inner light. He pointed the blade at Benny, and Cole saw that it was a sword with an elaborate gold dragon designed into the hilt and blade.
“What’s wrong with him?” Hawkes said.
“He stuck himself with one of his darts. From what I’ve heard, he’ll be going into cardiac arrest soon.” At the moment, he looked like he was sleeping. Maybe he was already dead.
Cole saw no emotion in the man’s eyes. “And where are the rest of your friends?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“And I don’t believe that.”
“Look, I was cutting the trail, then I turned around and they were gone. I’d like to find them as much as you. Let’s backtrack and look for their trail.”
“Where’s your machete?”
Cole lifted his chin toward the tree.
Hawkes walked over and retrieved his throwing knife and the machete. He slid the machete under his belt, then he nodded once and waved the sword in the direction of the trail.
Cole kept his hands on his head and started back down the trail.
“I’m surprised at you guys. Blowguns and fancy swords? Isn’t that a little low-tech?”
“Don’t underestimate what I can do with a blade. Now shut up and find that trail.”
It was difficult to see anything on the wet ground with the cut branches from Cole’s own trail-making and the passage of so many people. They walked for about two hundred yards before Cole saw anything other than trampled shrubs.
He stopped. Where the large buttress root of a jungle fig tree crossed their trail he noticed a long muddy streak that cut through the leaves and headed off into the brush at the side of the trail. Cole’s best guess was that a foot had slid off that root and made that skid mark through the mud. He looked more closely and saw where the person had fallen, where the forest floor of rotting leaves had been pushed into the mud by something bigger than a foot.
“What do you see?” Hawkes asked.
“Can I use my hands?”
The man nodded.
“See that mark where something dug into the mud? I think somebody fell here.”
“Okay. I see that.”
“Step back, will you?” When he didn’t move, Cole said, “Look. I’m not going to run away. I’m seriously worried that Riley’s hurt. I want to find her.” He didn’t add that if they could find the others, he, Riley, and Irv would then outnumber this guy by three to one. And wherever she was, she still had the other speargun. If he could make enough noise, maybe she’d hear them coming. Finally Hawkes took a couple of steps back up the trail.
“They would have been walking this way.” Cole made like he was walking up the trail. “Somebody fell here. Then they heard you coming. They had to hide. Where?”
Cole examined the trail for several steps. Then he saw what looked like a barely discernible animal trail. He turned in that direction and took several steps off the main trail. He scanned the bushes until he found a broken branch at his waist level. “There.” He pointed.
Hawkes walked over and looked where he was pointing.
“This is too high for any animal to have done this,” Cole said.
Hawkes waved the sword. “Go on.”
They walked another twenty feet and Cole couldn’t find any other traces of a trail. Then he heard the muffled sound of a voice calling out. She was crying, “Cole! Help!”
If he hadn’t been following a voice that was clearly coming from beneath the ground, he might very well have fallen into the hole. The thicket of undergrowth masked the cave’s skylight completely. It was little wonder it had not been discovered before. The problem was it was impossible to know how firm the ground was around the edges of the hole.
Hawkes said quietly, “Don’t tell her I’m here. Tell her you’re coming for her.”
“Riley,” he yelled. “I’m here.”
“Cole,” she called. “Be careful. It’s at least a forty-foot drop.”
“Ask her what’s in there.”
“Riley, what do you see? Is it as big as the cave in Guadeloupe?”
She didn’t answer right away—which wasn’t surprising, given that they’d never visited a cave on that island. Cole hoped she would get the message that something was not right.
“It’s bigger,” she said. “There’s gold down here. Lots of it. Come down and see.”
Cole said to Hawkes, “She knows I have a rope in my bag.” He could see the man’s mind working. He was dying to get down there to see the gold himself.
Hawkes pulled the strap of his own pack off his shoulder and tossed it on the ground. “Get my rope as well. Tie each one to a tree with a bowline I can check. Make them both secure. We’ll go down together so I can keep an eye on you.”
While Cole tied off the ropes to two large trees, Hawkes took off his poncho and used Cole’s machete to cut away the vegetation so they could walk to the edge of the hole. Both men put their packs back on and got ready to go down into the cave.
“You know I won’t hesitate to kill you.”
“Sooner or later, I figure that’s your plan,” Cole said.
“I promise you it will be very soon if you try to escape.”
Cole gave him an injured look. “Here I am cooperating and you keep threatening me. You’ll hurt my feelings.”
“Shut up and go down that rope.”
Cole picked up a rope.
&
nbsp; “Not that one, the other one,” Hawkes said.
“Not very trusting, are we?” Cole said. He switched to the other rope.
Cole sat on the edge of the hole that was only about fifteen feet across and still partially covered with the canopy of bushes and vines. He looped his leg around the rope. The roof of the chamber was thick and though soil slipped over the edge with him, the rock held. He slid off the edge and lowered himself hand over hand, aware that Hawkes had followed a few seconds after him.
His eyes were still adjusting to the light when his feet hit the cave floor. Directly beneath the skylight, he stood in a column of light. He saw Peewee flat on his back, his glassy eyes half open and staring. No need to check for a pulse. It looked like the fall killed him.
But the old man was alone.
“Where is the woman?” Hawkes asked. He pulled a strap off his shoulder and started to dig around in his pack.
“What? Are you the one with hurt feelings now? She wasn’t here to greet you?”
Hawkes produced a small, high-intensity flashlight and directed the beam around the cave. “Go check out those boxes.”
“Can I get my light out of a side pocket of my pack?”
Hawkes nodded and, flashlight in hand, Cole started around the chamber, looking at the material on the cave floor. The crates were empty. “I know what you’re looking for and this isn’t it. Looks like these crates were for ammunition. Some food. There are some rusting empty cans here. Bedrolls. Clothes. Looks like the remains of a campsite here.”
In the center of the chamber where the pillar of light shone down from the skylight, they heard a thud and turned around in time to see the second rope fall to the floor with another thud.
From above they could hear the sound of laughter. It was Benny.
“Hawkes. Thanks for finding the cave for me.”
Cole shut off his flashlight. He didn’t want to present a target for the blowpipe. Then again, maybe those darts weren’t as lethal as the old man thought.
“You’re making a big mistake, Benny.” Hawkes had turned his light off as well. He bent down and pulled something from his boot and began walking toward the center of the chamber.
Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) Page 39
