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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 wil
l 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 BANTAYAN ISLAND ARCHIPELAGO
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.
