“Take those trucks back to the cave!” the submarine commander quietly ordered a bedraggled Lieutenant, pointing to three trucks, which had arrived after the main column and parked away from the others. “I think we may have to stand off for a few days before it's safe to re-enter this harbour again. Guard them well!”
He patted the lieutenant reassuringly on the shoulder; they held a particular interest for him.
When the submarine commander had agreed to transfer the special cargo, he'd calculated the loading time required for about fifty metric tonnes plus enough space for his own personal shipment. So when one hundred tonnes was presented to him he knew at once that they would have to make a second trip to accommodate the extra crates. Even now the current gross weight was well in excess of his vessel's technical maximum capacity.
The bombing raid had conveniently interrupted the loading, providing him with a legitimate reason to terminate the exercise. Even then he found to his horror that an inordinate number of the crates had been distributed forward of the conning tower. The eight bow tubes had been loaded with torpedoes and the resulting space used to store some of the heavy crates, so even as the mooring lines were being cast off the commander ordered his crew to start redistributing the awkward boxes.
The dark submarine moved silently away from the quay just as the next hail of death started raining from the sky. Excessively low at the nose, the submarine headed slowly under its diesel engines to the open water of Manila Bay. The seamen below, sweating in the tropical heat and the cramped passageways, struggled to manoeuvre some of the heavy boxes towards the stern of the ship. The adverse trim meant that the captain had to maintain the forward hydroplanes at maximum elevation to keep the submarine's attitude level the effect however was to force the vessel's speed down to a maximum of ten knots.
Thus they sailed away from the maelstrom in the harbour and set a course for a position South West of the island of Corregidor and their rendezvous with the cruiser.
The submarine commander and the Japanese army officer who'd boarded the sub in Manila were the only people who knew the ultimate destination of the precious cargo.
It wasn't Japan.
The Imperial Japanese navy cruiser was one of only a handful of serviceable ships still operating in the area and was now charged with the responsibility for the next leg of the secret journey.
As the cargo was gradually redistributed, the submarine assumed a more stable attitude in the water and the speed increased to almost fifteen knots. They were late for their rendezvous. Reluctantly, radio silence had to be broken to allow the briefest of messages confirming their later rendezvous time.
The first pinkish streaks of dawn were creeping into the horizon as the two ships finally met and tied up together. The derricks on the cruiser were already beamed out ready with their net slings swinging gently in the swell; even as the submarine secured her lines the slings were being lowered into position over the hatches. Men scrambled around on the decks of both vessels making preparations to transfer the cargo. The commander meticulously completed his log entry, carefully noting the exact latitude and longitude of their meeting according to the navigator's dead reckoning. He carefully added the same information to his personal maps of the Philippines.
“Ready to commence transfer!” the petty officer on board the submarine called out to the commander who had just appeared on the conning tower platform, his leather map case strapped across his shoulder.
“Carry on!” he confirmed, relieved to have finally made the rendezvous and eager to divest his vessel of its excessively heavy cargo. He prepared to cross over to the cruiser, where he had arranged to meet with the captain and confirm the precise orders for the next stage of the secret journey. Seconds later the cruiser appeared to be lifted out of the water as if she were on a gigantic wave. The percussion from the first torpedo as it tore the guts of the ship apart was more devastating than the sound of the actual explosion and the accompanying shock wave, which sucked the air out of the doomed sailors' lungs.
Moments later two more torpedoes struck; their impact was almost simultaneous and the collective effect orgasmic. The magazine of the cruiser, packed with its lethal ordnance, ignited, blowing the mid-ship part of the vessel into thousands of pieces of flying metal and flesh.
The submarine secured to the cruiser on the lee side of the first torpedo's impact was not physically affected but the second and final detonation totally consumed the conning tower and mid section of the heavily laden craft. The commander, still clutching his map case, was blown cart wheeling high into the air to fall unconscious into the sea over one hundred metres away.
The submarine literally folded in two, snapping the relatively feeble mooring lines, and sank quickly to the ocean floor some sixty metres below.
The cruiser, ripped into two grotesque shattered hunks of twisted iron, sank within minutes, the two halves going into a gradual dive, spewing a great stream of debris as it plunged. Then, gripped by the ferocious current, the separate sections drifted, rolling and skidding towards the subterranean cliff where the buckled submarine had become lodged. One of the sections of the cruiser paused briefly, then gracefully slipped over the edge. It wouldn't stop until it hit the bottom of the ravine, over one thousand metres below the surface. The other half remained precariously balanced on the very edge of the chasm.
The US Attack Class submarine surfaced within minutes of the two vessels vanishing below the waves.
The scene as the commander peered over the brim of his dripping conning tower was horrific; dozens of pitiful charred carcasses littered the sea, drifting amongst dozens of singed life vests and other flotsam. The first sharks were already nudging the silent corpses, testing for resistance before tearing them apart.
There were only two live survivors to be found in the weak morning light.
“OK, Bring them on board before the sharks get them, then let's see what we've got!” the Texan voice drawled. The two men, both still unconscious, were dragged not too gently aboard. One appeared to be a deckhand from the cruiser. The other, the enemy submarine's commander, his leather map case still looped around his shoulders. The recovery crew prepared to lower the survivors gently through the open hatch in the foredeck.
Below the surface, the Japanese submarine was settling into its rocky grave; the ocean silt disturbed by its arrival was already clearing in the powerful current. A mixture of bubbles and oil continued to stream from the torn and fractured hull. There was no longer any sign of human movement; the remaining seamen had already choked their lives away inside the shattered tube.
A number of sharks were assembling and peering inquisitively at the new arrival. Several cruised silently around the wreckage, casually tasting the new flavours disturbed by the intruder.
Suddenly, as if in a final act of rebellion, the last dry electrical circuit flashed a weak arc of current. The bow tube opened silently, the release control operated effortlessly and its special self-seeking torpedo ejected gracefully from the one remaining undamaged tube. Its electric motor hummed happily, the propeller thrashing eagerly at the water. Speeding away in a cloud of bubbles, the deadly missile arched upwards in a gentle turn as the powerful current made its presence felt. Suddenly the auto-sensors detected its prey; the torpedo responded, corrected its direction slightly and then raced greedily to the kill.
The sharks, panicked by the rush of compressed air from the dying submarine, retreated well out of sight in a flash of acceleration.
The sonar man in the American submarine screamed into his microphone, “Torpedo launch Sir. One hundred metres and closing!”
The captain looked instinctively into the water surrounding his boat, shouting into his own head set at the same time, his senses numb with the reality.
“All ahead full. Give me a direction?”
“Oh God!” was the reply and the last human sound he was ever to hear. The torpedo struck the hull a few metres from the bow, exploding in the torpedo room. The chain reaction from the blast disintegrated the whole forward section of the craft, killing everyone in there and in the adjoining control room. The remains of the boat dipped forward, rapidly filling with water.
Amidst screams of panic, the surviving men scrambled frantically out through the rear hatches and the remains of the shattered conning tower. Within seconds, the submarine listed and began to sink. Like her former targets, she was so badly mutilated that she could no longer resist the inevitable ingress of the sea and vanished quickly below the waves.
The sharks, initially scattered by the explosion, soon recovered their courage and angrily returned to examine their latest tormentor.
Cruising at a safe distance around the newest settling hulk, they gradually formed into a large shoal as oil and bubbles continued to escape erratically from the dead tube. Warily, the beady-eyed predators circled, waiting patiently for their chance to examine the latest visitor to their hostile environment.
Soon their senses noted the wonderful taste of blood, followed by a familiar splashing in the water from the roof of their world: that wonderfully tantalising sound of creatures in distress. Inquisitive, some cruised gracefully to the surface, where closer cautious examination revealed the mighty feast awaiting them. Blood from the many wounded seamen poured into the water caressing their senses like a pre-lunch appetiser; soon there was more much more blood.
The screams of the terrified dying men fell on deaf ears. There would be no help, just a horrifying nightmare as the struggling survivors were systematically picked off and ripped apart.
Later that evening a native dhow heading home from its fishing ground slowed and stopped. The water was littered with hundreds of seagulls picking over the multitude of flotsam from the combined tragedies.
The collection of empty life jackets from lost vessels of all nations were all too common a sight these days and had no obvious value to the fisherman. One rather different floating object, however, caught his sharp opportunist eye. Reaching down with the boat hook, he pulled a leather map case from the water; the strap had somehow looped around an empty wooden packing case and remained afloat. He had no idea of its real purpose nor did he care.
“It may be worth something in the market,” he mused as he opened the flap. There was nothing inside; he hung it indifferently over the lifebelt by the wheelhouse door to dry and resumed his journey.
f
Almost sixty years later Oscar Nippon, an ageing Japanese businessman, sat with his younger friend and partner Greg Sing at a quayside café on the Singapore waterfront sipping cold mint tea. Oscar was tall and slim, a striking looking man in his early sixties. It was just over a year since they'd sat at the same café celebrating their safe arrival in Singapore following their hair-raising escape from Manila after completing their successful âTreasure Hunt' for a great hoard of gold and platinum. Now, amazingly, they had finally completed the legitimate sale of the precious metals they'd so successfully spirited out of the Philippines.
Their hunt for âYamashta's Gold' had been a long and tragic story, involving a costly and painful tangle with some of the Syndicate's most ferocious and violent enforcers. On top of that, they'd also had to fight off the cunning attention of corrupt local officials as well a traitor from within the legitimate law enforcement agency SONIC (Special Operations National and International Cooperation).
The purpose of their informal meeting today was essentially symbolic and to acknowledge that their promise to the partners, murdered by Syndicate agents, had been fulfilled and “possibly to exchange ideas for their own individual plans for the future” as Greg teasingly suggested.
They had been very fortunate because, even after losing a considerable quantity of the recovered bullion to the Syndicate, the remainder would eventually provide a substantial fortune for each of them, and their dead colleagues' families.
Most people would have been satisfied with this - but Greg Sing's effervescent adventurous spirit, in spite of all they had endured, wanted to pursue more of the gold, which was, he was convinced, still hidden in the Philippines.
On the other hand, the older and undoubtedly wiser Oscar was quite content and pleaded, “I need no further excitement thank you!”
The two friends sat quietly sipping their tea and reminiscing over the last two years.
It was Greg, who had always enjoyed collecting odd bits of wartime memorabilia, who had found an old map case in a street market in Jakarta. Unaware of its hidden potential at the time he took it home and enthusiastically polished and refurbished the tired old case. That was when he discovered the secret pocket in the back, which contained some faded old military maps. Because it was written almost entirely in Japanese characters, he was not initially able to decipher what the various markings really implied. His imagination in the meantime conjured up colourful Treasure Island fantasies until he was convinced that somehow he was looking at a detailed map of some of the many suspected hiding places, of the fabled Yamashta's Gold.
One hand-marked position in particular encouraged him. It was in fact the only note in English. âBingo!' it declared with a cross well away from all the other land born positions.
Some months later his dream became reality when, financed by Oscar, he eventually found the âBingo' location. It turned out to be a large cave about one hundred kilometres inland from Manila. In it were three large rusting World War Two Japanese military lorries, each loaded with rotting wooden cases filled with rough cast gold ingots.
The hoard consisted of about fifty tonnes of gold, five tonnes of silver and almost five tonnes of Platinum.
After a desperate and tragic adventure, Greg and Oscar finally managed to salvage a little over one tonne of gold and all of the platinum. It had now been converted into over fifty million American dollars.