The Inca Prophecy

11 Water Wolves

Three hours before Nina saw the horrible newscast in Scotland, Sam was trying to pull the throttle back from the grip of the disturbed pilot.

“Stephen! Pull up!” he bellowed through his clenched teeth. Sam’s face was blood red as he strained to wrestle the stick from the irrational pilot, but Stephen’s strength was unnatural. His eyes were frozen in front of him as he leaned on the cyclic to nosedive with the machine, heading straight for the luxury yacht. From the yacht, Peter was the first one to notice that the oncoming drop was not going to turn out as planned.

“Mr. Purdue! Mr. Purdue, there’s something wrong. Look!” Peter shouted with great urgency, trying not to present the panic he truly experienced. Purdue’s tall, lean body hurried closer, shading his eyes from the sunrays to better evaluate the emergency. Screams came from the women on deck and faintly Purdue heard Amelie reiterate, “I can’t swim! Oh God, what if they fly into us?”

“The boat will explode with the helicopter, woman,” the mechanic growled as he scuttled with Jeff to gather the life jackets and retrieved the Panic Bag. “So either you suck it up and put this on, or you die in a blazing propane inferno. You choose.”

“Hey, go easy,” Jeff told him as he went to help Amelie get her lifejacket on.

Out of the beautiful blue sky, the approaching helicopter careened madly, diving at an alarming speed.

“Collision is inevitable,” Purdue said loudly as he kept his eyes on the tumbling aircraft. “Sam, you have to jump. Sam, I hope you have the good sense to jump.”

“Mr. Purdue, I hate to throw orders at you,” Captain Solis said, clasping his hand firmly on Purdue’s shoulder, “but you have to come with us now! Now!”

Lamenting his friend’s fate, Purdue reluctantly ran to the back of the yacht with the others to get his life jacket on. He fumbled through his hard cases and grabbed a plastic, waterproof trunk he could not leave without.

“Launch the raft! Launch the raft!” the skipper commanded, keeping his voice stern and devoid of the fear he felt. He pushed everyone ahead of himself before boarding. “Alright, cut the painters!”

They took too long to manage viable distance between the doomed vessel and their escape raft. Suddenly, the clap of a furious rotor blade connected with the boom first, and moments later obliterated the stern hull panels. The nose of the helicopter penetrated the starboard cabin and hull, driving through the obscenely expensive vessel like a scalpel. A hellish scream ensued from the seizing engine as the collision ripped it free of the assemblage. It was a death rattle, the prelude to an unholy charge of fire that instantly ruptured the entire vessel and sent its innards hurling.

The mechanic didn’t see the shrapnel of steel and bolts speeding towards him. On impact of the two crafts he was already dead. A split second passed between the explosion and the flying steel, giving him no time to avert catastrophe. Amelie screamed as the man’s blood drenched her and Peter, but they didn’t count on the aftermath of the tragedy. From the combustion of the engines, the fire and debris ripped through the rescue raft, leaving them all to the mercy of the water.

Amelie shrieked madly, against the advice of the others.

“Keep still, Amelie!” Hannah cried. “You’re going to drown if you don’t calm down.”

“Amelie, hang on,” Jeff said. “I’m coming to get you, alright? But you have to relax!”

He paddled toward her, his own face scarred by second-degree burns from the explosion. Purdue watched in disbelief as his crew wept and wailed from the accident, all injured. Most of all he was deeply devastated by Sam’s lot, and in such a brutal manner as well. He didn’t want to cry. It was the farthest thing from who he was, but he could not help it. Purdue could not help but feel responsible for the lives of the people who had already perished for his endeavors.

The raft was askew in the frail support of the water’s surface. Hannah looked at Purdue from where she was treading water. “He’s dead too, Mr. Purdue.”

“W-w-ho?” Purdue forced.

“Captain Solis. That piston went right through his chest plate,” she reported coldly, too shocked to emote. “He just made a hiccup next to me and then sank away with a hole in his chest.”

The hysterical stewardess tempted her own fate, clawing at Jeff with such fury that she came out of her life jacket. He tried to hold her up, while attempting desperately to retrieve her vest. Every time Jeff’s fingertips touched the bobbing jacket, the current would spirit it away in a spiteful waltz. Determined as he was, he couldn’t sustain the flailing Amelie much longer, not with her frantic movements, cries, and weight bearing on him. Instead of chasing the floating vest, he elected to pursue a fragment of the helicopter that had drifted nearer to them. This he managed to get hold of with a weary arm, and with much labor he brought it closer for Amelie to use as a buoyant haven. “Hold on to this, okay? You’ll be fine.” But she was hysterical, repetitively screaming that she could not swim.

An alien sensation took hold of Purdue, one he had not felt more than three times during his entire life. Hopelessness. Looking at the shattered machinery, the black smoke, and the strewn debris splattered with blood, he was witnessing a disaster he had no control over, a catastrophe he could not reverse. His eyes were lined red, wet for his sorrow where he dangled from a chunk of fiberglass that used to be part of his brand new yacht. As he surveyed the disaster, money was the last concern he felt for the destruction of his latest purchase.

Hannah had been about to tell him all the grand old tales of secret battles before it all went to shit, and Amelie had been flirting with him before she became a heap of shrieking panic. Peter was silent. He was looking past Purdue, remaining still as best he could. Maybe he dealt with shock in a different way. They were all hurt, some worse than others. Besides the mechanic’s unfortunate departure and the skipper suffering a similar fate, Peter had a few broken ribs and a broken nose. Jeff’s face was burned badly and his bald head had been left a molten mess. Purdue himself had a dislocated shoulder and whiplash from the leap to the rescue raft just before the explosion.

Jeff was losing his fight against the downward current coupled with Amelie’s fearful grasps. He was holding on to the orange sheet of helicopter debris he’d acquired for both of them to stay afloat, but Purdue could see the diver’s arms were numb. Slowly but surely he began to dip beneath the lapping swells in his failure to paddle. The intense effort he’d been putting into saving the stewardess had taken its toll, rendering his muscular arms leaden and powerless.

“Wait, Jeff, I’m coming to you,” Purdue said suddenly as he noticed the rapid decline of the diver’s abilities.

“No, I’m okay, sir,” Jeff assured through gulps of water.

“Nonsense,” Purdue replied, trying to sound hopeful. His long body slipped into the water to come to Jeff’s aid, but swimming with one functional arm was proving to be too much. “I’m coming, Jeff. Just give me some time to get there,” he persisted as he figured out a way to bind his injured arm in order to swim. But when he looked up Jeff was gone.

“Jeff?” Amelie called. “Oh my God, Jeff!”

Peter looked upset, but he remained quiet. The wreckage was still burning in full force behind them, but Peter could see past the flames and billows of black rising from it.

“Mr. Purdue,” he said, but his voice was weak in the hiss of the waves and the Amelie’s cries and Purdue could not hear him at first. “Mr. Purdue!” he attempted a second time, this time getting his employer’s attention.

“Yes, Peter,” Purdue called back at him over the mounting swells that became colder and darker as the sun neglected the sky, which was quickly falling under the blanket of dusk. The crewman pointed to a point beyond the wall of fire. While they observed the large dark shadow approaching on the other side of the fire, another dark shadow meandered toward them from under the water. Covered in the mechanic’s blood, Amelie’s wild thrusting and kicking was luring the inevitable into their midst. Hannah saw it briefly from her vigil on top of the damages raft, but it was too late.

“Oh sweet Jesus!” she screeched in horror as the shark dragged Amelie under. Her screams were instantly doused as the water swallowed her up. Purdue and Peter swung around to see Amelie’s arm snap back from the sheer force of the taking. Peter’s eyes froze in horror, his mouth wide open to scream at the macabre sight, but not a sound escaped him. Purdue’s heart stopped. He had to do something, but with the other object showing up, he had problems coming at them from both directions.

Hannah was sobbing, pulling her legs in against her chest. In the falling dark she pinched her eyes shut. She did not want to see what was coming her way. If it was going to take her down she wouldn’t give it the honor of screaming, yet she waited in paralyzed terror for the moment of impact. Only the whisper of the waves gave her some peace before she was to die, while her thoughts turned to the annoying brother she would give anything to see again.

Through the rush of the restless ocean and the crackle of the oil fire Hannah imagined that she could hear the approaching killing machine, teeth bared and tail whipping from side to side. The heat of the flames nearby was no solace for the cold depths she was preparing herself for. Hannah hoped that the thing would kill her with one bite instead of slowly drowning her in the lonely waters below while it used her as a chew toy.

The impact came. She felt a quick bother against her upper arms before she cared to open her eyes. Hannah’s rake thin body was seized with such vigor that she had no time to scream. The rope tightened like a lasso around her and two pairs of strong male arms ripped her upwards off the water. From the leeward side of the fishing boat the whole crew stood at the ready to peck up the survivors of the collision. Hannah fainted, but they briskly moved her below deck to their makeshift infirmary where they kept their supplies and medical kits. Peter and Purdue followed, although they were cogent and able to board with minimal assistance.

The captain of the boat was a kind man with pale blue eyes, much like Purdue’s. He wore a knitted hat and sported a substantial bushy beard that covered his fat cheeks like a forest of black and gray.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked Purdue.

“I have a dislocated shoulder, mostly. The rest are just scratches and bruises,” Purdue reported. “Where is Hannah?”

“The lady?” the man asked.

Purdue nodded. “Yes, did you get her in time?”

“Sí, we did,” the man smiled. “It was a close call or she would be fish fodder now.” He was a bit too cheerful in recounting Hannah’s brush with death, Purdue thought, but perhaps the man did not mean to be insensitive. “Oh, my name is Vincent, by the way. Vincent Nazquez. And you are?”

“David,” Purdue introduced himself. “Thank you so much for picking us up. Without you we would have been done for.”

“Of course. You’re welcome, David.” Vincent bowed his head courteously. “But now, let us get your arm sorted out.”

The flag that adorned the boat was the same Purdue had seen through the binoculars earlier that day when he refused to admit what it was. They were on the same boat that had refused to acknowledge them before on a radio identification call. Suddenly Purdue felt as if he had only escaped the sharks to be eaten by wolves.