The Messiah Choice (1985) (28 page)

Angelique felt the tremendous power, but she no longer feared the elements. Before Greg could stop her, she opened the door and went out onto the deck and then aft. MacDonald followed her, but could hardly stand in the crash and roar of the storm that tossed the ship like some child's toy in an immense bathtub. She, however, had no such problems, her bare feet sticking to the deck and fixing her firmly.

Both helicopters were in trouble, and clearly would have broken off if they could, but they were stuck in the midst of the ferocity. It was clear that neither would probably make it as it was, but Angelique was not going to let them go that easily. She felt supercharged, a tremendous exhilaration running through every fiber of her being. At last, again, she was not victim but in total control, and she relished the power.

She raised her arms over her head, palms out, oblivious to the wind and rain and the pitch and yaw of the ship. MacDonald and some of the crew watched as a great bolt of electricity seemed to arc down and strike those arms, and the small woman was bathed in an eerie green glow, while around her danced small globes of the same green fire.

Suddenly both hands went out in front of her, index fingers pointing at the two aircraft, and from her there seemed to shoot beams of green fire, leaping from her to the two helicopter gunships and bathing them in the same green glow. There were sounds from the aircraft that carried over even the roar of the storm, moans of protest as their power and electrical systems went out, leaving them helpless, yet suspended for a moment in that green glow.

Angelique dropped her arms to her sides, and the two helicopters crashed into the sea behind the trawler and erupted in tremendous explosions, sending bright fireballs into the sky.

MacDonald was transfixed by the display and not a little scared, but he finally moved towards her, soaked to the skin, pulling himself along on ropes rigged along the trawler for this purpose.

The green had faded and vanished and the globes of green fire shot off back into the heart of the storm and disappeared. She turned to him now, and he saw on her face an expression unlike he'd ever seen on a human being before, a wicked, self-satisfied grin and eyes lit with joy. She herself frightened him more at this moment than the enemy did.

Forward, the captain had not seen the full display but he'd seen the helicopters fall and heard their demise and he was taking full advantage of it. He brought the ship around into the wind and prepared to ride out the storm, but before he could do more than take the elementary precautions the storm clouds rolled back in unnatural motion, a reverse wave returning to its original course, and the wind died down and the rain stopped.

MacDonald stared into those strange, large brown eyes not quite daring to think, but he knew he had to snap out of it. With great effort he turned and made his way forward again. She followed him, holding on to the rope now herself but in a more casual manner than he found necessary. He opened the door and she re-entered the cabin, but he then continued on forward and entered the wheelhouse.

Garcia saw him, and saw his expression, but did not press it. "The radar is showing the storm receding rapidly to the northwest," the navigator informed him. "There are several large and small vessels but a few kilometers to the south, though. One or more must be the one they were herding us toward. What should we do? If we can see them, then they can see us."

The very news that they weren't out of danger yet seemed to jolt him out of his daze and bring him back somewhat to reality. "We can't afford to meet them, and they have this ship marked now. We have to—"

At that moment the captain let loose a string of Spanish that even MacDonald knew contained some choice expletives.

"Three small craft have detached themselves from the largest vessel and are headed our way,"

Garcia told him.

"Probably small gunboats. How close are we to the mainland at this point?"

"About thirty kilometers, senor. Over two hours in this sea. They will catch up to us before that."

He was all business now and thinking fast. This sort of situation was one in which he was at his best, and the pressure and continued danger helped shove the fear of other things back from his mind. "We're already in somebody's territorial waters. Whose?"

"Venezuela, senor."

"Get on the radio. Call the Venezuelan Coast Guard on the emergency frequency. Identify yourself, give your position, and state that you have come under sttack by pirates. Ask for protection if possible."

"But they will hear, too!"

"Yeah, I know. That doesn't matter.
Do it!"

Reception was poor; there was still a lot of electrical interference from the storm and its aftermath, but Garcia finally got through. A Venezuelan navy destroyer answered, being closest to them, and after an exchange of positions they headed for it.

There were suddenly other voices on the channel, all talking furiously in Spanish.

"They are identifying themselves as Caribean Pact Security Forces and state that they are not pirates but in pursuit of a criminal ship. They ask that the Venezuelan forces stand down and allow them to reach and board us."

They all sweated the next few minutes. MacDonald was counting on the Venezuelan captain, who now had two different versions to contend with and had to make a decision. He did, and it was the only one he could have made under the circumstances.

"Capitan
Gonsalves has replied," Garcia told him. "He says that this is all in Venezuelan territorial waters, that our registration checks out, and that the Caribbean Security Forces have no jurisdiction here, which is true. He demands that their forces break off and retreat to international waters. They are protesting. They do not like being told what to do." Garcia was grinning.

MacDonald turned to watch the radar screen. For a while, the three small blips continued to close on them, and he began to fear that they were going to take their chances with the destroyer.

He knew that on their mother ship they were radioing for instructions and calculating the odds.

"The captain is getting very upset and a little bit nasty," Garcia told him. "National pride is at stake now. He has threatened to call for air support if they do not break off immediately and vacate the area."

For a few more anxious seconds, the blips continued to close, and were now almost certainly within sight of the trawler. Then they peeled off and took a wide circle, and reformed heading back towards the mother ship. The relief and jubilation on the bridge was a tangible thing.

Now they had only the destroyer to worry about.

11

PAST AND FUTURE

Getting off the boat was tricky, but was a well rehearsed routine by now. All along the gulf coastal area were oil platforms, many in this region no longer staffed or supported but run automatically. A few were shut down entirely, either because they had played out or gotten to a low point where they were more economically kept in reserve. They stood in the water like odd prehistoric sentinels, and the trawler entered their silent domain on its way to link up with the destroyer. In the confusion of blips on any observer's radar screen, it was possible to actually stop briefly by one of the derelicts, if only for a minute or two, allowing anyone aboard to jump off.

Maria was still in no shape for this sort of thing, but she knew she had to see it out, and she explained to Angelique what had to be done.

As they came up to the small metal dock of a rusting platform, MacDonald shook hands with Garcia and then jumped over to the structure. Angelique did the same, and together they were able to pull Maria across. As soon as they did so. the trawler accelerated and swung away, still keeping close to the line of platforms though and taking it slow and easy.

"What will happen to them now?" Maria asked him.

"They'll be all right. They're a legitimate operation whose main job really is fishing—shrimp trawling, mostly—and they'll link up with the destroyer, be taken into a Venezuelan port, searched, and interrogated, then finally released. They'll head east from here along the coast to Panama, so they should be safe from retribution. Speaking of safe, we ought to get up and in.

That thick cloud cover is already starting to break up, and we'll be naked to satellite photography after that."

It was a long, desolate climb up to the top of the platform on a network of ladders and scaffolding, and the thing was covered with rust and not very inviting nor really all that safe. The superstructure had been mostly dismantled and taken away for use elsewhere, leaving only a flat top of rusting metal, but just below, between the platform and the supports, was a small area that still offered some shelter. The corridors and tiny rooms looked like those in a submarine, but a couple still had serviceable cots in them and the tiny galley obviously had been upgraded and cleaned and stocked with a limited amount of canned and dry goods and one small sink actually had water.

"Go easy on that water. It's a little rusty because of the pipes but it's good. Mostly collected rain water and hard as a rock, but it'll do until we can get off this can," MacDonald told Maria.

The place was hot enough to be almost an oven in itself, yet Angelique shivered inside it. It felt cold, dead, lifeless, and the only sign of life were the massive amounts of bird droppings that covered much of the area exposed to the outside.

"What do we do now?" Maria asked him, feeling the desolation of the place herself.

"We wait. I don't know how long. Considering the welcome, they'll be cautious in coming for us, that's for sure. We could probably go a week or ten days with the stuff that's here, but I'm afraid there's no showers and no change of clothing so it can get pretty raunchy. There's also no electricity, I'm afraid, so except for a couple of flashlights here that we'll have to be real careful using and a few camping style lanterns that are located so they won't show from the outside, that's about it. There are a few navigation lights on the platform connected to a master electrical cable running under the water, but we weren't able to find a good way of tapping them without being detected."

Angelique said something to Maria, and she translated. "She wishes to know if we must stay inside this thing all the time. It bothers her."

"No, just keep to the bottom catwalks, and get back in at the first sign of a boat or plane. After dark is best, but be careful. No lights outside, and none until you're well in here and away from any windows."

It was not a comfortable time for any of them, and least of all for Angelique, who took to spending almost all her time outside, walking the catwalks and just sitting and staring out to sea.

She felt very mixed up inside as well as out, and she tried to sort it out as best as possible.

Somehow, she'd always retained the romantic feeling towards Greg, always thought of him as her savior and perhaps eventually her lover, but she'd seen his face when he'd first laid eyes on her as she now was and she'd felt his fear of her, a fear that had only partly diminished. He was still the handsome and confident agent, it was true, but she was no longer of his people, his color, his customs and understanding. She had changed radically, and for the first time now she was feeling what that change really meant.

To make matters worse, it was clear that he and Maria were at least physically attracted to one another, a condition made worse by their close quarters and by the fact that they really had little choice but to go around nude. She felt, somehow,
betrayed
by both of them, the only two people she really had in the world. It was Greg whose affection, whose love, she craved, yet oddly, she knew that even had he been and done what she dreamed of she did not dare go far with him. Her power, her one edge over this modern world, was dependent on her remaining chaste from the pleasures of all men. And in that loneliness and jealousy she cast a spell, without ever really consciously realizing she had done so.

It was a dark, moonless night, their third on the platform, and Maria came to her at the far catwalk. Greg, as he did much of the time, was up listening to the small short wave receiver, getting the news and listening for a pickup cue at one and the same time. They conversed in Hapharsi.

"It hurts me to feel you so troubled, my mother."

Angelique stared out into the darkness, watching the lights of the other platforms and an occasional ship's light in the distance. "I ache with the knowledge that I am the only one of my kind," she responded. "Until now, I had not thought of this truly as a curse."

Maria, unbidden, began to rub Angelique's shoulders and back, and it felt good. "You must not think so. You are whole, and you feel, and you are attractive."

"I repulse the sight. Even the men of the boat reacted to me not as a woman but as some sort of strange thing, an animal."

"You are beautiful to me," Maria whispered, and with that and the sensation of the fingers massaging and caressing the energy flowed from Angelique into Maria, an energy born of tension and desire and feelings she did not understand.

Angelique did not stop it; in fact, she encouraged it, and allowed it to go quite far. But she did stop it, at last, using willpower to stop it short and dampen down the artificially raised ardor, and afterwards she felt even more unclean. It felt—
unnatural
somehow. Deep down, she was still the innocent small town Catholic girl and it just didn't seem right and proper to her, somehow.

Perhaps worse than that, it had been artificially induced, not arising out of genuine love or even attraction. It was, however, the shock to her system that she needed.

From here on in, she would be totally chaste. The desires would be there, but those were perhaps God's price for her power and mobility. She would wait, at least until this terrible curse would be broken and she was restored to herself once more. She was certain that such a thing would happen; either that, or she would die in the assault on evil and join the spirit realm herself, beyond such things.