Typhoon Fury

50

Light from the cavern’s roof opening was now streaming through the shutters over the window, and Beth’s stomach was already grumbling for breakfast. She was almost finished appraising the paintings and still couldn’t believe the incredible bounty of stolen artwork that Locsin and his group had amassed. It was like the best Christmas morning ever, despite her predicament. She could open one of the best museums in the world with what was inside this single room.

In addition to every one of the stolen Gardner paintings, she had seen works by Van Gogh, Raphael, Gauguin, and Cézanne that had been missing for years, as well as items by Renoir and Monet from an auction house theft. There were only three more to appraise out of the sixteen. The piece she was inspecting now was a small oil painting from Picasso’s cubist period. It was the least valuable artwork she’d seen because it was so small, but it would still likely fetch a million dollars if it went back to auction.

She had been making notes on a pad with a pencil. She added up her estimates, and the total of all of the paintings ran close to half a billion dollars on the open market. However, because they couldn’t see the light of day without being confiscated, they would be worth only a tenth that in the underground trade. Fifty million dollars was still a huge sum, but she’d bet there would be plenty of Russian oligarchs or Saudi sheiks willing to part with a bit of their oil money to get their hands on these masterpieces.

Dolap was still intently playing with an app on his phone, which she’d seen was a puzzle game when she’d gotten up to use the bathroom. His half-full coffee mug was on the table. She was ready to put her plan into motion, but she cringed thinking about what she had to do.

Beth had positioned the tube that had held the Picasso in exactly the place she wanted.

She nodded at it and said, “Can you hand that to me?” She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she continued to jot on the notepad.

Dolap reluctantly looked away from his game and leaned forward to pick up the tube. He handed it to her, and when she took it from him, she pushed it into the coffee mug, tipping it over. Coffee spilled across the table, splashing onto the Picasso.

Beth screamed at the same time Dolap leapt to his feet. She swung the tube around as if in a panic and slapped the phone out of his hand. He barely noticed because he was so concerned with the painting.

She dropped the tube and jumped out of her chair.

“What have you done?” she shouted.

“It’s not my fault!”

“It was your coffee, wasn’t it?”

He looked at her in terror when he realized what Tagaan would do to him if he found out that Dolap was responsible for ruining one of the valuable paintings.

He pleaded with Beth, “What can we do?”

“I think we can still save it, but I need some cloth towels right now.”

Dolap charged toward the bathroom, but Beth stopped him. “Not the paper towels in there. Bath towels. Clean.”

He would either have to take her with him and draw unwanted attention or leave her alone in the trailer to get them. He was paralyzed with fear and indecision.

Beth clapped her hands and pointed at the door. “We don’t have much time before the coffee seeps into the canvas! Hurry! I want to save it as much as you do. I’m not going anywhere.”

He nodded and dashed through the door, locking it behind him.

Beth picked up the Picasso and let most of the coffee drain off as she set it aside. She wasn’t too worried about the damage, not only because she was willing to sacrifice the artwork if it saved her neck but also because she suspected the coffee would probably just run off the oil.

She got down on her knees and frantically searched for Dolap’s phone. She spotted it in the corner and snatched it up. It was still unlocked, paused on the game.

The icons at the top of the phone showed no bars for a cell signal. She didn’t know if that meant the cave didn’t have cell service at all or just not in this part of the cavern, but, either way, she wasn’t going to be able to call for help. There was, however, an icon for Wi-Fi service.

She checked the contact list for the phone’s own number, then quickly opened the email app and typed in a message to Raven’s address. Beth had no idea how much time she had before Dolap came back, so she kept it short.

Raven, this is Beth. In a huge cavern but don’t know where. Track this cell number to find me.

She added Dolap’s phone number to the end and hit SEND.

As soon as the message was gone, she went to the SENT folder and deleted the message. Then she opened the game up again and put it back in the corner just as she heard footsteps pounding toward the door.

Dolap yanked the door open and thrust a pile of towels in her arms before locking the door behind him.

While she patted the painting dry, he found his phone, looked at it briefly, and put it in his pocket. He watched her with concern.

“Well? Can you save it?”

“I think you were quick enough to salvage it.”

He looked at her with a deadly serious expression. “If you tell Tagaan about this, I will kill you.”

Beth shook her head. “Why would I want to tell him? He’d probably kill both of us.”

That seemed to put him at ease. He picked up some of the tubes that she’d already looked through and went to the back of the building.

When she was satisfied that the Picasso was dry, Beth rolled it back up and sealed it in the tube, then wiped down the table so she could get back to work.

Dolap returned and took his chair again. Beth pressed her hands down on the table so that he couldn’t see her shaking from the adrenaline rush of getting away with her plan.

Now all she could do was try to stay alive long enough for the cavalry to arrive.

The process of digging through the hole in the side of the Pearsall had gone faster than Gerhard Brekker had anticipated and by midmorning they were able to explore the interior of the sunken U.S. warship.

During the night, Brekker had downloaded the schematics for the Fletcher class destroyer from a website dedicated to cataloging World War II ships. That let them narrow their search to the rooms on the ship where cargo would most likely have been stowed.

The crew areas were divided roughly in half fore and aft, with the fire rooms and engine rooms in the center of the ship. They’d never reach the stern without significant work, but they could search the bow section fairly quickly.

Most of the organic material had disintegrated in the warm salt water, so Brekker saw no clothes or bodies, not even skeletons. Fish and crabs had found a way into the ship, but there was no sunlight for coral to grow in the interior.

They found a mess hall, with metal dishes and silverware rusted but still intact. They also happened upon the ammunition magazine for one of the forward guns. The steel casings of the shells were corroded, and some of the rounds had come loose from their bins, piling onto the floor. Brekker warned his men not to touch them in case the explosives inside were still active.

By the time their air was exhausted, they had made it through two storerooms, with no luck, marking doors with a large X if the room inside had already been visited.

The dive team had to surface twice more, during the tedious search, to exchange air tanks. By the afternoon, the clear skies were growing ominous as the first tendrils of clouds from Typhoon Hidalgo approached from the east. The gray overcast didn’t deter the fishing boat in the distance, one of several they’d seen the past couple of days, and a ferry lumbered by, a few miles away, making one of its last trips before the storm arrived. If Brekker didn’t find anything before sundown, they’d have to withdraw and seek calm waters out of the storm’s way.

However, on the next dive they struck gold.

The most forward cargo room was one of the two boatswain’s lockers. Brekker forced the hatch open to find that it had been cleared of the tackle and rigging that would normally be stowed there. The room would have been easily isolated from the rest of the ship so that the crew wouldn’t be able to see what was inside.

If any cardboard boxes containing files had been in the room, they had rotted away long ago.

But the real prize was still there.

Twenty orange plastic barrels the size of beer kegs were grouped along the bulkhead, although any ropes lashing them in place had crumbled away. Unlike contemporary Tupperware, these barrels were opaque, so it was impossible to see what was inside until they got them to the surface. One of them had overturned, and the lid popped off. If it had contained Typhoon pills, they had dissolved in the water.

But judging by the weight of the other barrels, they definitely held something. Brekker instructed his men to attach one of the neutral buoyancy floats that they had brought along to the barrel closest to the hatch. Once it was secured to the barrel, Brekker filled the float with air from his tank using his octopus regulator. When the barrel was floating, Brekker took it in tow and swam toward the exit hole. His men stayed behind to retrieve two more barrels.

When they reached the surface, the watchman on board the yacht hauled the barrels aboard with the minicrane usually used to transfer Jet Skis in and out of the water.

Brekker got out of the water and took off his gear while the men toweled off the three barrels. As soon as they were dry, Brekker carefully pried open the lid of the first one. It came off with a pop just like a tub of Tupperware straight out of the fridge.

The top of the barrel was filled with cotton batting, as white as the day it was vacuum-sealed inside. Brekker tore it away to reveal thousands of pills etched with the Typhoon logo. All of them were intact and looked as if they’d been packed away yesterday.

Brekker’s men slapped each other on the back and let out a whoop. One of them said with awe, “How many do you think are in there?”

Brekker thought about the large bottle that held the vitamin supplements he took daily. “I’d estimate there are roughly a hundred thousand pills in here.”

A cheer went up from the five men. With nearly two million of the pills to be brought up and sold to the highest bidder, they all knew they’d be very rich very soon.

“Should we still plant the explosives?” one of them asked.

Brekker nodded and looked at the acoustic trigger that would be used as an underwater detonator. It would send out an audio pulse that could be detected by the receiver miles away, allowing them to retreat to a safe distance before setting off the explosion.

“If anyone ever comes looking for the Pearsall,” Brekker said, “we don’t want them to know we took the barrels. Put most of the bricks in the ammo magazine. It should tear the entire ship apart.”

Locsin watched the yacht with a telescope while his men continued working the nets on the fishing boat as if they were hauling in a catch. From this distance, the image was fuzzy, but he could tell they had pulled something from the water. He had never seen Gerhard Brekker during the fight in the fire truck warehouse, but he could see which man was ordering the others around. Locsin recognized a fellow leader when he saw him.

After returning to Negros Island, his translator had skimmed the Japanese files and found nothing in the papers relating to a formula for Typhoon. It was mostly notations and data about the experiments that the Japanese had performed on Filipino captives who they’d been using for drug tests. If it hadn’t been for the discovery of the Pearsall’s location, the dig on Corregidor would have been a complete bust.

He handed the telescope to Tagaan, who watched the activity on the yacht and asked, “Should we take them now?”

Locsin shook his head. “Not until we think they’re finished. We might as well let Mr. Brekker do all the work.”

“What about Juan Cabrillo’s ship? Do you think they’re really coming?”

Locsin grinned. “I know they are. Are you ready for them?”

“Fifty Kuyog drones are prepped and operational.”

“And the bait?”

Tagaan nodded.

“Excellent,” Locsin said, taking back the telescope and surveying the horizon. “Now all we need is a target.”