Hidden Sun Read online

  “Well, some of them said you were crazy because they thought that there was no treasure on the Awa Maru when it went down.”

  “Why would they think that?” he asked.

  “The Chinese mounted a major salvage operation in the late seventies with many ships and several hundred men,” said Maggie. “And they found nothing.”

  Hendrick stayed silent for a moment. “Then it must be obvious that we’re after something else.”

  Maggie face lit up in a wide smile. “There is nothing else.”

  “Have you ever heard of anyone surveying the sea bed for mineral deposits?”

  “Oh, that’s what you’re doing,” she replied. “Right.”

  Hendrick tried to keep his eyes off the sonar image that was hanging up on the wall behind the door. Maggie couldn’t see it from where she was standing, but if she walked into the room then turned around, it would be right in front of her. Joe had written in stark red letters, Awa Maru?

  “You’d better get some sleep,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  Maggie strolled slowly into the room to look out his window. She bent over and peered through the dirty glass at the storm outside while holding her blouse close to her chest to prevent him seeing any cleavage. The ship rolled and groaned, swaying with the wind and waves that pounded the vessel.

  “Pretty rough weather out there,” she said then turned to go. The sonar image sat directly in front of her, and she stared at it for several moments. A host of individual dots formed colored lines with the bends and interruptions in the lines showing a lump on the seabed. It certainly looked like a ship, or maybe just a piece of it. Hendrick closed his eyes and groaned inwardly.

  “So, how much do you think is still down there?” she asked softly.

  He was silent for a long moment. “A lot.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Frustration

  TAIWAN STRAIT

  Hendrick, Malik, and two of the Taiwanese crew sat at the galley table watching Maggie Ramsey practically inhale her dinner.

  “Pizza!” she shrieked with delight. She rammed a piece into her mouth.

  One of the galley crew pulled another pizza out of the oven and placed it on the table in front of her. Joe Malik shoved a can toward her. “Here, have a beer,” he said with a sideways look at her.

  She nodded and gurgled something that substituted for a thank you, then took a long swig of the brew. She managed to swallow the whole mouthful in record time, and immediately grabbed another piece of pizza.

  “Wow! This is great!” she bubbled. “Do you know how long it’s been since I had pizza? Or a beer? All those pirates had was fish and rice. And some other horrible squiggly things. I didn’t want to know what those were.” She began to mangle the next piece of pizza, causing the Taiwanese to giggle and talk among themselves.

  After Maggie downed her fourth piece of pizza, she slowed considerably and sipped the second beer given to her by Joe Malik. She looked at each of the men in turn.

  “So, you guys are after the Awa Maru,” she said, looking alternately at Hendrick and Malik. Joe Malik leaned back from the table and gave Hendrick an accusatory look.

  “She saw the sonar image hanging up in my cabin,” said Hendrick. “The one that you wrote Awa Maru on.” Malik rolled his eyes and said nothing while screwing up his face in annoyance.

  “Any luck yet?” she asked. She suddenly burped and bounced a little in her seat. “Oh, excuse me.”

  The two Taiwanese men laughed shrilly and riveted admiring looks on her. She coolly smiled at them then returned her attention to Hendrick.

  “I guess that’s a secret,” she said. “So, what’s the story behind this ship? Why did it have such valuable cargo anyway?”

  “I guess there’s no harm telling you about the history of the Awa Maru,” began Hendrick, ignoring the deep frown from Joe Malik in his peripheral vision. “In mid 1944, the United States was concerned about Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners of war. The U.S. contacted the Japanese and offered relief supplies for the U.S. prisoners, and in return the Japanese could receive safe passage for a ship to carry Japanese citizens and supplies back to Japan. One of the ships that the Japanese selected was the Awa Maru.

  “The U.S. delivered two thousand tons of Red Cross supplies to a Russian port in Siberia where the Japanese picked them up and transported them to Japan. The Awa Maru was much larger than really needed for the relief supplies, and the Japanese had it crammed full with supplies that their troops in Southeast Asia desperately needed. The Awa Maru completed its mission to deliver relief supplies to the POW camps in Southeast Asia with trips to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Saigon, and Indonesia. She left Singapore on March 28, 1945 and took a course back to Japan up the Taiwan Strait, then known as the Formosa Strait. The U.S. subs in the area were given orders to let the ship pass safely.” Hendrick stopped talking long enough to pop open a beer and take a swig.

  “A U.S. submarine, the Queenfish, commanded by a Commander Charles Loughlin made radar contact with the Awa Maru late on April 1, 1945 in heavy fog,” continued Hendrick. “Loughlin proceeded to very nicely put four torpedoes into the side of the ship, sending it to the bottom in minutes. Loughlin thought he had just sunk a Japanese destroyer. He ordered his sub around to pick up survivors, but the Japanese in the water shoved the lines away and swam away from the sub. This was common practice in the Pacific during World War Two. The Japanese just wouldn’t surrender.”

  “That could be interpreted as a kind of integrity,” mused Maggie. Hendrick and Malik looked at her with new curiosity.

  “Yeah,” said Malik. “The kind of integrity that gets you killed.”

  Maggie shrugged and let it go. She looked at Hendrick to tell him to continue.

  “The crew of the Queenfish picked up one survivor, Kantora Shimoda, who eventually told Loughlin that the ship he had sunk was the Awa Maru,” continued Hendrick. “This was the one ship that he was not supposed to sink. The ship was lit up with white crosses all over to identify it, but no one on the Queenfish had even seen it due to the fog. Loughlin was immediately ordered back to port to face a court martial. Apparently Admiral Nimitz, the commander of the Pacific fleet, was very worried how the Japanese would react to the sinking of an unarmed merchant ship that was supposed to get safe passage. He thought the Japanese would retaliate by abusing Allied prisoners. Loughlin claimed he was in an impossible position because he had no way to identify the ship before the attack. If he did not attack and it really was a Japanese destroyer, he’d be court martialed for dereliction of duty. On the other hand when he did attack, he was court martialed because it wasn’t the destroyer he thought it was.

  “The court found Loughlin guilty of negligence, a much lesser charge than disobeying a lawful order, which theoretically could get you a firing squad during wartime. Well, Nimitz was furious with the verdict and the light sentence, but what could he do?

  “Anyway, the Japanese started screaming that the U.S. was a pack of war criminals and demanded payment of over fifty million dollars for the ship and the two thousand people who were on board. The Chinese claimed that the Awa Maru was loaded with war materiel and treasures looted from China and Southeast Asia along with Japanese war criminals. Actually, intercepted Japanese messages, that have now been declassified, show that most of the people on the Awa Maru were technicians who were desperately needed for the war effort in Japan.”

  “How do you know the ship still has treasure in it?” asked Maggie. “The Chinese found nothing in the seventies.”

  “The Chinese didn’t have the equipment we have today,” said Hendrick.

  Malik turned and pointed a finger at Maggie. “You could still be a spy for those pirates. Just because you have my partner convinced -” He jabbed a thumb toward Hendrick. “- doesn’t mean you’ve got me convinced.”

  Maggie shrugged her shoulders good-naturedly and fixed an especially enchanting smile on Joe Malik.

  Hours later, the storm still as
saulted the ship. As Hendrick tried to get some sleep, he could hear the door open to Maggie’s cabin. It had a peculiar kind of squeak, a two-tone one that was very distinctive. She staggered down the hallway of the violently rolling ship to the head where he could hear a gurgling sound followed by coughing. Hendrick smiled to himself. If she was a spy, she would do no spying tonight after staying up to drink quite a few beers too many.

  The sounds recurred all through the night until Hendrick finally began to doze, the recurring dream sweeping him under as it did every night. He found himself back underwater hovering over the Han Gao with steel spears whizzing past his head. He swam deeper, feeling the pressure squeeze him, pressing the air out of his lungs. Lights flickered, blood flowed, and darkness filled the water. The face came out of the blackness, tight strings of flesh exuding evil, the Oriental eyes devoid of any emotion except hate. The face hovered, twisting and turning in the void, sending pressure waves against Hendrick’s body, the blood red Japanese characters, symbol of evil curling and snapping behind the face. The mouth moved, blood flowed. Hendrick struggled to see what the face was doing. Suddenly he knew as the last of his breath was driven from him.

  The face was eating.

  The next day the storm had abated, causing the ship to roll only ten degrees in contrast to the forty-five degree rolls during the night.

  “Taiwanese Navy,” Loh said and pointed off the port bow. Hendrick centered his binoculars up on the rapidly approaching ship.

  “Frigate,” said Hendrick. He squinted into the glasses. “Hull number one, one, zero, five.”

  “The Chi Kuang,” said Loh from memory. “Seventy-six millimeter gun amidships with twin forty millimeter guns on either side.” Loh had been in the Taiwanese Navy for twenty years.

  “We could have used all that fire power yesterday,” said Hendrick bitterly. “And where the hell was the Chinese Navy? I’ll be damned if I’ll give half of what we recover to those bastards.” The deal he had made with the Chinese government was half the treasure in return for naval and air protection against the pirates. Hendrick suspected that some corrupt official was impeding navy response to their pleas for help.

  Now the Taiwanese Navy was headed straight at them, possibly responding to their distress call the day before. Hendrick had been careful to clear his salvage operation with both governments so that he wouldn’t get blown out of the water. The Awa Maru was located inside the territorial waters of the People’s Republic of China, but he knew the Taiwanese also closely monitored what happened in the strait.

  Hendrick turned to see Joe Malik and Maggie Ramsey enter the bridge. She looked better than she had sounded the night before. Malik kept her out in front of him to keep an eye on her. Hendrick suspected that, in spite of Malik’s gruff front, he was fascinated by Maggie. What man wouldn’t be? he thought.

  “I hope you’re feeling better,” said Hendrick.

  She gave him a rueful look. “I didn’t get sick when I was with the pirates. What was it this time? The beer?”

  “Yeah, it’ll do it every time,” replied Hendrick. “Hope you’re ready to travel.”

  She became puzzled. “Where?”

  Hendrick pointed to the approaching Taiwanese frigate. “Our dead and wounded shipmates, and you, get to go ashore.”

  Her face fell. “Uh, listen guys, I’d rather not go with the Taiwanese Navy, if you don’t mind.”

  “Why not?” asked Malik. He gave her a hard stare.

  “Well, I don’t have my passport,” she said. “The pirates still have it.”

  “I’m sure when you tell them your story, the Taiwanese will understand,” replied Hendrick. “They’re not bad guys, really.”

  Maggie’s manner grew desperate. She stepped closer to Hendrick and jiggled a bit in the process. “Steve, please,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t want to answer any of their questions right now.”

  The way she walked toward him and slightly shook her body was one of the most lascivious movements he had ever seen. Maggie knew how to use her most potent female weapon, her sexuality. Hendrick felt a rush through him, the mental picture of her clad only in her wet underwear roaring through his mind. It angered him. He was determined not to let her affect his judgment.

  “You could tell them about the pirates. Where their base is located,” he said, his voice a little hoarse.

  “That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know where their base is. I didn’t know what course they took, or what speed they were doing from any landmarks or islands. And the Taiwanese won’t believe me. They’ll think I’m hiding something.”

  Hendrick could feel himself giving in. She had given him a pretty bad excuse for not going with the authorities, but it was just good enough to be plausible. The Taiwanese could be very tenacious when trying to get information from even their friends. Without a passport she could be held for several weeks until the government made sure of her identity.

  “So you want to hang around to see what we pick up,” Hendrick countered.

  “No, really, I’ll stay in my cabin the whole time. I swear,” she said earnestly. “I won’t ask any more questions.”

  Hendrick glanced toward Malik and saw that his partner was staring at Maggie’s backside. She’s got Joe going too, thought Hendrick. He’s no help.

  “All right,” said Hendrick in a firm voice. “In your cabin at all times, except to eat and poop.”

  “It’s a deal,” she breathed with relief. She put her arms around Hendrick’s neck and kissed him on the cheek. The softness of her lips, even on his stubble, startled him. The rush started up again, and his knees went weak. Maggie turned and ran out of the bridge on the starboard side to keep out of sight of the approaching frigate and quickly went below.

  Malik gave Hendrick a disgusted look. “Oh, brother.”

  “Yeah? Who was staring at her ass the whole time?” countered Hendrick.

  Malik put on his most exaggerated female voice, a high squeaky tone that grated on everyone’s ears. “Oh, pluhheeese, Stevie. Puuhhlleeese! I don’t want to answer any questions nooowww.”

  “Oh, God,” mumbled Hendrick. He turned to Loh with a wry smile. “You see what I have to put up with from this moron.”

  Loh smiled back at Hendrick then shook his head. “Americans,” he said with exaggerated patience.

  The Taiwanese ship pulled alongside and expertly kept station on the much smaller salvage ship. Loh stopped his engines and walked out on the port bridge wing to talk to the frigate’s crew.

  “C’mon, Joe. Let’s help get Ko and Li ready to transport,” said Hendrick. Malik nodded and followed along.

  They went down to the aft deck, picked up Li’s body and took it over to where the frigate crew was coming on board. The Taiwanese sailors expertly rigged up a high wire and transported Li’s body across the water between the two ships. The salvage crew also sent over the body of the dead pirate. Presumably they could get some clues about the pirates’ identity and maybe locate their home base. They sent Ko, the wounded sailor, over in a bos’un’s chair while a Taiwanese officer got a statement from Captain Loh. The frigate’s officers wanted them to return to Taipei to investigate the pirate attack, but Loh talked them out of it. Hendrick knew he would have to talk to the authorities at length about the battle when they finally went back to port, but was glad that they were allowed to stay at sea for the moment. They all sighed with relief as they saw the frigate pull away and head eastward.

  “I hope they come back when the pirates show up again,” said Malik. Hendrick nodded. Their savage attackers were always a half thought away.

  They had strayed several miles from their search area during the pirate attack and the subsequent storm. Hendrick and Malik went to the bridge and told Loh to get them back over what they thought was the Awa Maru.

  “I guess we’d better survey the damage in the meantime,” said Malik.

  “I’ll join you,” said Hendrick.

  Together they went about the ship
and noted the damage done to the ship and its equipment from the battle with the pirates. The squall had lessened until only a drizzle fell from the skies.

  “We lost a sonar unit,” said Malik. “Damn it! We only have one left.” They had had the sonar unit deployed behind the ship when the pirates struck. During the course of the battle, the tow cable had been severed by a stray bullet.

  Hendrick nodded in resignation. The sonar unit looked like a small torpedo about six feet long with fins near its tail. It was towed behind the ship, its side-scan sonar emitting sonar pulses that traveled out horizontally from the unit. The returns were transmitted back to the ship and sent to a personal computer, which used sophisticated software to build up an image of the sea bottom.

  They had gotten some tantalizing images of a sunken ship in the weeks that they had been searching the area. Actually the sonar showed a mound of mud that could be hiding the ship they were after. Much more work had to be done before they could send down divers to recover any treasure.

  “How’s the MAD device?” asked Malik. He referred to a magnetic anomaly detector that was also towed behind the ship, which provided detection of underwater metallic items, such as ship’s hulls as well as smaller items.

  “Seems okay,” muttered Hendrick as he looked it over for any bullet holes or other damage. “It’ll be interesting to see what this baby gives us.” They had just gotten the MAD on board recently and were aching to try it out.

  They got to work taking more sonar soundings to enhance their sonar image of what they thought was the Awa Maru. After several runs across the area, they rigged the MAD instrument for towing. They then retraced their way over the area using the MAD device to detect any metallic objects. Hendrick and Malik poured over the resulting data and tried to correlate the sonar image with the MAD data.

  “Okay,” said Hendrick after several minutes. “We’re seeing metal where we thought it to be.” He pointed to two misshapen lumps on the sonar image. “But we’re seeing smaller pieces, strung out in a line that leads up to the ship itself.”