Rise of the Beast (14 page)

“We talked to one of them this morning,” said Chris. “All that he could tell us is that it’s not like any oil he has ever analyzed before, and that its properties change radically when it’s heated. When it’s cool, it’s safe to handle, but heat it just a bit and it becomes suddenly very dangerous. He said the only place they’ve found it is at the bottom of well 14.

“Yeah, well 14,” said the engineer. “There are a bunch of strange stories coming out of there.”

“Tell them about the guy who rode home with us last week,” interjected the pilot.

“Yeah,” said the engineer. “Get a load of this one. We had this roughneck who caught a ride back to Hamburg with us a week ago. I’m here to tell you, he was in a state. He went on and on about well 14 for most of the trip. To hear him tell it, you’d think that the well was more than just haunted, it was possessed. I guess he was there on the platform by himself one night, picking up some tools. The well was shut down for maintenance, I suppose. The rig lights were off. Only a couple of the deck lights were lit. Anyway, he heard a sound and went to investigate. He talked about glowing lights from a mile down, and then he heard the voices, voices coming up from well 14. One of the voices was talking to him. He said something about hearing the voice of his dead mother, crying out to him from Hell. She claimed to be on fire, burning with a blue flame.”

“His story gave me the willies,” interjected the pilot. “It was the way he told it. I tell ya, he broke down and even cried at one point.”

“Then he talked about glowing things flying out of the well,” continued the engineer. “Demons, he called them. Well, I guess he didn’t wait around for introductions. He just ran. He swore he’d never go back there.” There was a pause. “I know something happened out there last night, from what you’ve said.
Please tell me about it. I’d really like to know.”

Serena hesitated. She looked over at Chris; he nodded. Then she opened up. She told of the events at the well last night. She even told the flight crew about letters from Heaven and Hell, letters from her mother, Chris’s mother and others that they had encountered in that realm beyond death. They had been letters hand delivered to her by an angel. She had never told that story to anyone beyond Chris and, more recently, Will.

The telling left the flight crew in stunned amazement. It was a disturbing revelation. It was then that the copilot came up with some disturbing revelations of his own. He turned to the pilot. “Frank, I’m showing dropping oil pressure in the starboard engine.

The pilot looked over, even as the tachometer reading started to fall. “Damn, wasn’t that engine just serviced before last trip?”

“Sure was,” confirmed the engineer, rising from his seat and stepping between the pilot and copilot. He scanned the panel. “I’m very much afraid we’re going to lose it.”

By now, even Serena could discern the change in the sound of the engine. It sounded like it was running rough. Its pitch was dropping.

“What are our options?” asked the pilot.

The engineer walked over to his station and looked at his panel. “If I were you, I’d divert to Istanbul. I’d declare an emergency. Still, we shouldn’t have any trouble making it, even on one engine.”

The pilot nodded. “OK, let’s get all the miles out of the starboard we can before we feather it. Give me a heading and an ETA for Istanbul’s Ataturk airport while I fly the plane.” He turned to the copilot. “Hal, inform Ataturk of our situation.” Then he turned to Chris and Serena. “Folks, sorry about this, but I think you’d better buckle up, just in case. We’ll be fine, this sort of thing happens only once in a blue moon, but we have plenty of altitude and Istanbul can’t be more than 200 miles. We’ll make it on one engine; we’ll be fine. We’ll be on the ground within an hour, safe and sound. You’ll just have to wait till we get this engine fixed or catch another flight home, that’s all. Ataturk is a major international airport; you won’t have any problems.”

Chris and Serena did as requested. Their pilot sure made this problem sound routine. If they were in serious trouble, he sure didn’t show it.

“Frank, I can’t raise Ataturk,” announced the copilot. “I’ve tried them on VHF twice. I even tried Unicom; no luck.”

“We can’t be out of range,” said Frank. “Try the satellite phone to Hamburg. Have them relay the message to Ataturk.”

“GPS is out,” announced the engineer. I can’t get a heading or distance for you.”

“OK, then go on our last known position,” replied Frank, frustration now evident in his voice. “Give me a heading.”

There was a long pause. “OK,” said the engineer, “turn to heading 175; that should get us close. We should be able to pick up the coast in about 20 minutes and then we can VFR our way from there.”

The C-119 banked to the south, even as their starboard engine gave up the ghost. Before them, an impressive line of menacing-looking clouds stretched across the horizon.

“Feathering starboard,” announced the copilot.

“There’s that stationary front,” observed the pilot. “I’d taken a more northerly course to try to stay out of that stuff.”

“Now here we go straight into it on one engine,” observed the engineer.

“I can’t raise Hamburg on the satellite phone,” said the copilot.

The pilot looked at him incredulously. “I can see a failure in flight, even a double failure, but this gives us a quadruple failure. What’s wrong with this picture?”

What was wrong with this picture? Serena had a pretty good idea, though she hesitated to bring it to the crew’s attention. This was the work of Satan’s minions. In all of her years of service to the Lord, she had never seen the equal of this. She began to pray, both for the souls on board this flight and for personal guidance.

They had been on the new course less than five minutes when the port engine began to falter. They were beginning to lose altitude, even as the air became ever rougher. And all the while she prayed.

“We’re dropping below 10,000 feet,” said the pilot. “It’s looking more and more like we’re going to have to ditch.”

“In those seas?” objected the copilot.

In the midst of the growing crisis, an odor caught Serena’s senses. It made her suddenly ill. She turned around to see vapors rising from the three deadly drums near the rear of the plane. A second later, the engineer noticed it, too.

He raced back to the place where the barrels were secured by several steel straps. Already a small puddle of black, shiny ooze had dripped from the steel canisters. He touched the nearest one. “This stuff is hot!” he exclaimed. “But how can that possibly be?”

If there had been any doubts in Serena’s mind as to who was behind all of this, they had just evaporated.

The engineer literally staggered to where Serena sat praying. The cool exterior of this seasoned veteran of the air had vanished. “You know why this is happening, don’t you?”

Serena gazed into the engineer’s eyes. “I think so.”

“Eight thousand feet,” said the copilot, who was still trying to raise anyone on the radio, though in vain.

“Folks, get out your life jackets,” announced the captain. “They’re in the cabinet on the wall in front of you.”

“What can we do?” asked the engineer.

“Come on, Cal, we need you up here,” said the captain.

“We can pray,” said Serena.

“Come on, Cal,” repeated the captain.

“Serena,” said Cal. “I know you can do something.”

In that moment, Serena knew that Cal was right. More than that, she knew what it was. She immediately unbuckled her seatbelt. “You and the others have done everything that you can do, are you willing to let me try now?”

“Yes,” said Cal, not the slightest hesitation. “Come on.”

Cal helped Serena to her feet and forward into the cockpit. The pilot turned about in amazement.

“Get her back to her seat,” he demanded.

“No, she can help,” objected Cal. “Don’t you see what’s behind all of this? Even the barrels back there, barrels filled with oil from Hell’s Great Sea of Fire, are about to explode. We’re fighting the Devil here, Frank.”

“You’re talking crazy,” objected Frank. “We’re not fighting the Devil. This is just a weird series of events, triggered by a freak power surge or something. There is no Devil, and you know it.”

“Are you so sure?” asked the copilot. “Right now, I’m not. How would a power surge affect the satellite radio? It’s a self contained unit.”

“Ron, don’t you start on this, too,” objected Frank. “I need you to stay with me.”

“I am,” objected Ron. “I know what’s going to happen if we try to ditch in seven or eight foot seas. If there’s even a chance that she can do something, I’m willing to let her try.”

Frank glanced over at Serena, who now stood between him and Ron. “OK, what do you want to do? What can you do?”

Serena opened her heart before the Lord, and in a second she knew what to do. “We’re going to restart the feathered engine,” she said in a calm voice.

“But that engine is dead,” objected Frank.

“Restart it,” repeated Serena, placing her left hand on the back of the captain’s right. Her voice was calm, almost angelic.

“All right,” relented Frank, “I don’t know what good it’s going to do.”

He unfeathered the engine, threw the ignition switch, pushed the primer, and attempted to restart it. All the while, Serena’s hand was upon his. All the while she prayed in some indecipherable tongue.

By now, Chris stood behind Serena, one hand on her shoulder, the other raised before God.

The engine windmilled in the gale force winds that roared across the wing. At first, it added additional drag to the plane. The pilot applied more rudder pressure to compensate for it. Then, a growing rumble emanated from the apparently dead engine. Suddenly, in a flash of fire, the engine exploded into life. Like Lazarus, it had risen from the dead in a mighty roar. Their air speed
increased, even as the nose slowly pitched up. They were flying straight and level at just over 5,000 feet.

Then the pilot’s hand reached for the throttle of the other engine. With little more than a touch of his hand, the engine was running smoothly once more. And, of course, Serena’s hand was on his through it all.

“This is Ataturk approach control,” said a voice over the radio. “November niner three Echo, what is the nature of your emergency?”

Through a break in the clouds, the Turkish coast came into view. As quickly as the crisis had arisen, it had passed.

It took but a few minutes for the copilot to appraise flight controllers of their situation. They had experienced electrical problems, lost an engine, but they had managed to restart it. Things were under control.

In the end, they returned to their previous heading. They would continue on to Hamburg.

The rest of the flight was uneventful. It gave Chris and Serena the opportunity to share their testimony and the good news of salvation with the grateful crew. The roles of the saints grew by three souls that day. None would deny that what they had just experienced was nothing short of a miracle. Nonetheless, they vowed to keep most of what had happened to themselves. After all, who would believe their story?

As Chris and Serena parted company with their newfound friends and brothers in Christ and prepared to board the plane for London, they realized that a new chapter in their ministry had begun.

In New York, Lusan was none too pleased with the news that his spiritual assault on the plane carrying Chris and Serena Davis had gone badly. He had considered the possibility that Serena might appeal to the Father in such a crisis, had considered the likelihood of divine intervention, but he had decided to take the chance nonetheless. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Many people turned to the Father every day; they had from the very beginning. It seemed to Satan that the Father had His favorites, those whom He was more disposed to come to the aid of in a crisis. Serena certainly met that criteria.
But why her? What made her different? Why had He seen fit to deliver her from the pains of Hell and not some other lost soul?

Well, he wouldn’t dwell on that minor setback, not when the grand event at the convention center in Harlem had gone so splendidly. The new convention center had been the center point of the city reconstruction effort some years ago during the depths of the global meltdown. Now it had become a new center point, the first strategic initiative of his global crusade.

It had been Pagoni who had pulled the strings to make the center available to him on such short notice, and it had been time and money well spent. The merchandizing aspects of this new venture would pay Pagoni and his organization great dividends and improve his image as a concerned community leader.

Lusan had preached to over 8,000 fascinated attendees. Never had he been so moving, so passionate. His words alone had captured the hearts of the masses, words of a global community, of reconciliation, even of love. And he had spoken of the healing powers of the spirit. Not of the Holy Spirit, but of a sort of nebulous force that pervaded the entire universe.

Indeed, he had done more than just speak of it. People had come forward, people who had been persecuted by his minions for years, not knowing the real source of their afflictions. Some were blind, others had a form of demon-induced mental illness and nervous disorders. Lusan’s hand had alleviated their sufferings by removing the offending spirits, and he had done it before thousands of witnesses. It was a bold gambit—Satan casting out Satan, but it had worked. Come the morning, the papers and Internet would be filled with the stories of the new spiritual healer on the scene.