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After reading the previous chapter through a few times myself, I had a few thoughts on how to improve things. I've tried not to wallow too much in certain situations and sequences so I can get the story moving along.

Life is good and I'm still working my way through RISE at the moment. I've got so much *less* time for PC games these days. Sigh.

If you're out there struggling with writing - always remember just to forge ahead with your current chapter. That then gives you a framework with which to work on and change as you see fit. This chapter here had around 5 or 6 read throughs for editing. Killed some paragraphs - added more to others - that's the way it goes.

This Behemoth rolls on :-)

Keep on raiding people.

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*18*

Blue Skyline Vista

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The storm waged a war upon the distant horizon. Black colossus thunderclouds rose into the sky above the sea, and drove back the sunlight as if voraciously consuming it in a battle of the sentient elements. The wind had begun to howl off the peaking waves, and the depths of the ocean had turned a mystic dark-grey - as if the doors to an evil realm had been opened, and a malevolent miasma set free. Lightning speared through the maelstrom, fluorescing white the pelting rain as it raced earthward. Only the truly brave, or stupid, would wish themselves part of it.

Joseph Sahain peered out through salt encrusted windows into the relentless rolling swells, his experienced eye reading them as another man might read a Sunday newspaper. The waves had been building steadily for the last hour, as had the wind, and he knew that their trawling net, currently riding over the sea floor some 2000m below them, would soon have to be pulled. Not doing so would almost certainly put it in danger of being lost.

Adjusting his faded blue-denim newsboy hat that covered his thick and curly grey hair, Joseph rubbed his equally-thickly bearded chin, deep in thought. Again, he flicked his aquamarine eyes across the wavetops outside, and then glanced at the windspeed figures displayed on a monitor nearby. He sighed.

Their current trawl had just ticked over into the second hour; he had hoped for more, but with the conditions worsening as much as they were, he knew he could not push his luck any further. At a length of 23.95meters (78feet), and built by Karstensens of Denmark, the Blue Skyline Vista was as tough and capable as any fishing trawler on the ocean, but sanity, and safety, dictated that he be cautious. They had veered too close to the storm in an effort to find haddock, and Joseph knew all too well when pushing one's luck became an act of stupidity.

He remembered that night, eight years ago. The night he'd lost his wife to the ocean.

There had been a storm that night as well: it had come up on them with such a sudden intensity that they had found themselves caught with several hundred meters of net still to reel in. Joseph had been seated where he was now, in the wheelhouse, trying to cosset through the winch's overheating hydraulic motor. He'd found that he could only get 10 or so meters at a time before the pressures in the hydraulic lines became far too dangerous…

"God damn it!" he'd said as he was forced to let the motor cool for what seemed like the thousandth time. He reached for the intercom. "Juliette?"

"Yes," came back her voice, the wailing of the wind through the boat's superstructure loud in the background.

"The winch motor is going to supernova if we keep this up. See if you can get the firehose on it."

"Roger that." Juliette's voice was almost indistinct now.

Joseph stole a glance through the rearward windows of the cabin, and saw Juliette's fluorescent orange foul weather jacket fight its way across the pitching deck toward the firehose reel. Although a thin woman, Juliette possessed an inner strength that Joseph had loved for many years.

The approaching waves towered upward into the night, almost lost beyond the beams of the powerful halogen lights above the cabin. Joseph did what he could to keep the Blue Skyline Vista stable, but it was a losing battle with any manoeuvre he tried.

When the next opportunity came to check on Juliette, he saw she had unspooled enough hose to make it to the base of the winch, and was trying to bolster herself against its massive base. She was tugging at her safety line - which Joseph insisted all crew wear in bad weather - it had become snagged on something.

Suddenly, the entire vessel wrenched violently sideways, as if picked up and shoved by some all-powerful force. Caught completely off guard, Joseph looked back through the forward windows in complete confusion, and his blood turned to ice.

Joseph had heard men talk of king waves at sea, but until this moment he had never actually experienced anything even remotely like what those men had spoken of. He knew now that there had been no heavy liquor colouring those tales, because what he saw now was horror itself. He barely had time to flip the switch for the ship's emergency siren, before he gripped the wheel to hang on for grim death.

The Blue Skyline Vista took the first massive wave broadside, slewing the entire vessel dangerously over onto her side, exposing both of the twin propellers to thin air. Only by utter miracle did the Vista right itself as it slipped down the rear side of the gargantuan wall of water that had assaulted them.

Thrown from the skipper's chair, Joseph slammed hard against the side console; it was as though the Vista were no more than a tiny rubber raft in a deathly system of white water rapids. Panic rose within him as he sprawled, but then as Joseph untangled himself from the console, he saw that their ordeal had only just begun, and panic gave way to terror.

The halogen lights revealed the next wave to be far bigger than the last. It loomed over them like a dark colossus in the night, surely brushing the undersides of the clouds themselves. Thinking on it later, Joseph could not credit how he had thought so fast, or so concisely. The Vista was still caught angled to the approaching wave, and he knew that if they went over it as they were, they were finished.

Instinct alone made him throw the throttles for the Vista's twin Edelstorm1500 horsepower turbodiesel engines as far forward as they would go, but with the deadweight of the net still in the water, the response was sluggish. As the gigantic hulking wave came upon them, the Vista's bow had only swung around to face it a half portion, and Joseph knew with absolute certainty their fate now hung precariously in the balance. Despite his foreboding, Joseph remained stubbornly defiant, unwilling to accept defeat.

To this day, he still remembered seeing the misted moon though the windows as the Vista clawed and bravely fought its way up the biggest wave Joseph had ever seen. He still remembered the feeling of weightlessness as the Vista somehow burst through the giant crest of the wave, seemingly in mid-air, and then the bedlam as it again rolled over perilously due to their bad angle, and still then the massive crash as the bow came slamming back down to the water and they tumbled like a cork down the back of the wave.

Bruised and battered, they survived a further three waves, thankfully progressively smaller from that point onward. Joseph was able to swing the bow around properly to meet them square on, which made things a modicum better, though still extremely perilous.

It was afterward however, when Joseph had rushed out onto the deck to check on his crew, that his world had fallen apart. He bolted straight for where he'd last seen Juliette struggling with her safety line - and found the spot empty. Frantically, he searched between air vents, the winch mountings, and the hatch covers that had been thrown open in the chaos. He eventually spied Juliette's yellow safety line washed up against the side railing.

He still remembered as if it were yesterday - finding the frayed and broken end of the safety line. Joseph and his crew then discovered the firehose dangling over the side of the Vista, and saw it dropping down into the ocean. It had unspooled to its full length, the hose reel left empty. They quickly began hauling it back with a glimmer of hope, but only found the empty tap at the end. No Juliette.

They had cut the net loose and had searched for the better part of ten days and ten nights until the Vista's fuel tanks ran dangerously low. After reporting the incident, a search helicopter had assisted, and had conducted searches for a further three days after that. Juliette had never been found, she had simply vanished into those massive waves that night.

Joseph never spoke of it - but sometimes - he thought he heard her voice on the wind, or calling out to him at the very edges of his mind. He'd never believed in ghosts or any of that hokum, and put it down to simply too many years at sea. But then, he swore he sometimes saw her about the trawler as well. Only ever momentary, and sometimes months would pass between supposed sightings. Was he going mad? She stood now on the bow of the Vista pointing out toward the storm - but his eyes had gone unclear as the memories flowed and - it was just his troubled mind he was sure.

A sudden blast of static from one of the marine band radios mounted to the ceiling bought him out of his trancelike state. He realised he'd been staring out at the storm on the horizon for what must have been several minutes, and that there was really no figure standing on the bow as he'd thought. Blinking away the memories, he took a deep breath and sought out the source of the noise - there was a faint voice, he noted, mixed in behind the heavy static.

Joseph searched the radios until he found the culprit - and stopped immediately short, and then frowned deeply. The radio making the static was an old set that he had had doctored to sit on a particular frequency. Certain radio sets could be used to dial up that frequency, but those were rare, and it had never happened - ever. Only one other person knew that frequency - and exactly who would be listening on it. Even then, she had switched to using satellite phones in recent years to call the old man when the Vista ventured further from home.

The faint voice remained almost drowned in the static - like a cheap household radio that had barely any reception. Joseph reached over and boosted the volume, then slowly opened out the squelch to see if the weak signal might improve. He closed his eyes…

"…ista - ...ine ..., this is … … over?"

He rapped his knuckle on the old rusty set hoping to jolt a little more clarity out of it….

"….line …..fire - …. out there….."

Joseph's eyes narrowed, there was no way in seven blue hells a shore-based radio signal would come anywhere near the Vista out where they were. Let alone a signal on that frequency. The faint voice held an insistent terror - or was that the disturbance making it sound that way? Joseph couldn't be sure. Nonetheless, a faint misting dread - that something was terribly wrong began to settle over him.

"…. say you're out there."

The feeling intensified…. It couldn't be…..

"This is Blue Skyline Vista," Joseph spoke clearly into the radio's mike, "you are very weak. Please re-state."

A period of silence, before…

"…f….gelfire… v ….. .. …B-17 about to fall apart!"

The last part bolted through the radios speaker suddenly overloud and clear.

What in seven blue hells?

"Angelfire?" he queried then into the microphone. It was Seheira's radio callsign.

"Dad!" Her voice was clear now, the storm's interference momentarily abated, but he could tell something was very very wrong, just as he'd feared. "You aren't going to believe this…."

Joseph's face became ashen as Seheira almost fell over her words explaining what had happened to her, and where she now was. Ordinarily, he'd have dismissed the tale as pure jive, but her voice held the same utter terror that only those scared out of their wits possessed. All the same, he said, "Are you God Damn serious?"

"I'm serious Dad," Seheira's voice came back. "We've got minutes before we'll have to ditch this plane or the fuel tanks blow."

A sudden black shape cut across a golden shaft of setting sunlight half way to the horizon, it caught Joseph's eye, and he knew instantly what it must be.

"A black jet fighter you said?" Joseph asked, referring to Seheira's almost ridiculous story.

"Yes," came her reply. "I know it sounds unbelievable but I swear it's true."

"I believe you," Joseph replied, involuntarily shaking his head as he spoke the words. "I just saw the bastard fly across the horizon."

They spoke further, and Joseph's head sank down into his hands as his daughter outlined her and her friends plans to jump from the plane right before they ditched it. Then Joseph was to come looking for them in the black seas. He knew the chances of success were absolutely razor thin, yet, frustratingly, he had no alternative to offer.

He let out a breath resignedly, but almost fumed, ill at ease. "How the hell am I going to find three people in the water out here in this maelstrom?" he paused, feeling utterly powerless. "That's if you survive the crash," he added then with a little more venom than he intended.

"Head for ground zero," Seheira replied. "The centre of the storm, only fools would look for us there."

Joseph again looked at the storm and almost raged at it in his thoughts. To go anywhere near it was inviting disaster - but Seheira was right, those who chased them would probably prefer a cold day in hell over following an old bomber into a hurricane. It was the only tactic that made any sense whatsoever, utter lunacy that it was.

"It'll be seven levels of Hell in there," Joseph said, trying to convince himself. "Got any flares, or a light of any kind?"

"We've got …. ….. … light it when we… ….."

"Losing you again," Joseph said with alarm. "Listen, we've got a net half-pulled. After that we'll be under way. Stay alive damn you!" Static came as the only reply. Joseph slammed the mike back in its cradle and swore viciously under his breath. Life wasn't done with punishing him it seemed.

"That's a tale you don't hear every day," a voice said from the doorway.

Joseph turned to see the wiry figure of Albert Carrone leaning against the doorframe, with an expression caught between extreme worry and utter incredulity.

Albert had been at sea as many years as Joseph had. They had served as deckhands together straight out of school; it had been the only job going in the sleepy fishing village of Chalkhaven Bay at the time. They'd risen through the ranks in the years after that during the heyday of fishing, when prices were good and the fish plentiful enough. Joseph had been given the wheel one day when old Lannister McRealey had woken with a raging headache, and had shown more than a little skill in the skipper's seat. Albert had been made crew overseer after preventing an all-out mutiny when a clueless businessman out of London had bought the boat and had begun throwing his weight around. Soon after that, Juliette, a penniless young woman living out of her car, had come to the docks and begged for a job.

"You heard that too?" Joseph queried. "I was hoping this was all just one of those nightmares people get." He sighed bone-wearily.

Albert shook his head. "Nope," he said simply. "I saw that bastard jet too just now. Looked pretty-freeking-bastard real to me."

Joseph nodded resignedly. "Right," he said. "If this nightmare is real let's get that net pulled and get a god's-be-damned move on."

"Way ahead of you," Albert said with a knowing grin. "Idris has it spooling up as we speak; it's probably half way up even now."

Idris Yemkov was a rotund Russian who spoke little and worked like a man possessed. Idris had spent half his life working on trawlers out of Vladivostok, before he'd taken a trip to the United Kingdom and had overnighted in Chalkhaven en-route down the west coast. He'd seen a boat there he liked, and had sat with the crew in the local watering hole drinking liquor late into the night and swapping stories. There had been a good connection and respect amongst men of the sea, which he'd liked. Three months later, when he knew Blue Skyline Vista would be in dock, he returned. Joseph had hired him onto the crew without a second's extra thought, knowing a hardworking man when he saw one.

Working for Joseph, Idris had always maintained since then, was far better than the militant shipping company he'd worked for in Russia. Getting a half decent paycheque had made him grin as much a man who'd just escaped heart surgery. Joseph couldn't help but give a half chuckle at what Al had said; the rest of the crew swore the Russian did the work of three men.

Then he became very sober.

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In record time, the net was stowed and Joseph had the Vista's bows pointed toward the dark horizon. The daylight was fading rapidly as they moved ever further beneath the massive thunderheads up in the sky. The pelting rain was relentless, misting the entire scene a malevolent white. Massive sheets of sea spray shot into the air as the Vista shot caution to the wind and ploughed headlong through the waves, that now peaked well above her roofline.

Joseph stroked his fullish beard that seemed to have gone white well before its time. He peered intently up at the clouds for any further sign of the black fighter jet he had glimpsed earlier, hoping like the devil it had disappeared. Loud thunder rolls boomed through the cabin soon after brilliant lightning lit the sky a stark electric blue. It was as though the storm took umbrage at an upstart trawler that dared to taunt it.

Albert Carrone sat nearby with eyes glued to the both the ship-board weather radar and marine radar screens. The weather radar showed an angry deep-red mass directly ahead of them, that formed a circular swirling type pattern onscreen. Al knew that the redder the screen became, the worse the conditions were, and he'd never seen quite that much red before. It worried him to be heading straight for it.

The marine radar, used to pick up other vessels nearby, suffered interference from the storm, but otherwise stayed clear. Albert's theory was that it might tag a low-flying plane or even tag it as it crashed. As dire as that thought was, Joseph had agreed it was worth a try.

Within another twenty minutes the light had faded to a dim glow. Joseph briefly considered switching on the forward banks of halogen lights, but opted against it; for the moment, they needed to remain invisible from above. He and Al both braced as the Vista's bow slammed through a deep trough between two hulking waves, and then again as the trawler bashed through the crest of the next. Both men were jolted violently in their seats.

"We'll be freeking torn apart in this hellstorm," said Al nervously, as the cab became lit with still more lightning flash.

Joseph patted the console. "Never in seven blue Hells," he said after the loud tirade of electric thunder had died. "The Vista ain't one of those cheap-ass boats built out o' toilet paper. She'll see us through."

"You better be freeking right," Al said, eyeing him suspiciously. "The freeking radar ain't even red where we are now. So it's going to get a lot worse."

Joseph would have assured him, but the old marine-band radio spluttered.

"…..line Vista…. Blue Sky…..sta this is Angelfire. Do you read? Over."

Joseph quickly snatched the set's microphone from its cradle. "Blue Skyline Vista with a half-read." Joseph replied. "Go ahead Angelfire."

"…. shot to hell again ….. abandon ….…. "

Joseph locked stricken eyes with Albert. Both men had heard enough from the transmission to get the gist. Seheira and her friends had been attacked again by the fighter jet and now had to ditch the plane.

"Roger that Angelfire," replied Joseph, returning his searching gaze to the gloomy sky outside. "We are south-east of the storm and running dark. We're about" - he shot a glance to the weather radar - "six miles from dead centre, over."

"Understood. See you….." And that was the last Joseph and Al heard.

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"God damn it!" Seheira swore in frustration. "I've lost them. If their reception was as sketchy as ours, I'm not sure how much they heard."

Lara put a hand on her shoulder. "They heard enough. It's time to make for the door chute-buddy; you've done all you can here."

"That's a very good idea," Forde growled persuasively. "That jet has killed our ailerons - or some damn thing. This fireball is cooked!" The steering yoke shook in his hands as he tried mightily to hold the plane steady.

"Can you get us on a north-easterly heading?" Lara asked. "We might bump into Seheira's dad out there."

Forde nodded. "I had the same thought. I'll give it a shot, but no guarantees." Then he hiked his thumb toward the cockpit entry. "Now get going. I'll keep her in the air as long as I can, or until I see something looking like a trawler down there."

Lara nodded and ran for the door. Seheira was about to follow, but before she moved she said, "Don't stick around here too long Forde, remember that dinner you owe me."

Forde grinned. "You kidding?" he said. "I made the reservation three days ago, I wouldn't miss it." Then he inclined his head to where Lara had just gone. "Now move your butt!" Seheira hesitated a moment, as if there was more to say, but then gave Forde a grim smile and disappeared to find Lara.

The dying warplane could only be convinced into a turn very slowly. Forde pulled on the yoke with all the strength he could muster, but the the last attack had clearly damaged something. Their altitude was dropping, with two of the remaining three engines trailing a thick black smoke. It was a miracle they were still in the air at all.

The very rough, and dark ocean was now clearly visible in the end-of-day gloom, thanks in no small part to the angry whitecaps whipping off the wave peaks in the strong wind. As the B-17's nose edged jaggedly toward the north east, Forde searched in vain for a light amid the darkness, and saw nothing. The storm was so big, he thought, that the chances of finding a fishing trawler amongst it all were extremely small. He'd known it from the beginning, but had chosen to keep the fact to himself, though he strongly suspected that Lara would have come to the same conclusion.

Precious minutes trickled by and still there was no light on the water. The altitude meter read zero, but had done so since the last attack. Not that it mattered; Forde could see their time was up. He used the intercom one last time.

"Flight's over people," He said without preamble. "I'm on my way." He threw the headset aside without waiting for a reply, took one last look at the dark and empty horizon, and then hurried through the cockpit door and down along the fuselage to where Lara and Seheira were waiting by the open rear door.

Lara saw Forde arrive, but the roar of the arctic-cold wind in her ears made speech impossible. She thumped his shoulder and gave a questioning are you ready to go thumbs up. Forde nodded and gave a thumbs up in reply, his face was stony, and his expression unreadable.

With only two parachutes, Lara had strapped herself to Seheira with some old cargo strapping they had found. It was nothing fancy, but all it had to do was hold them together for a few minutes. Lara tapped Seheira's shoulder and pointed at the door. Seheira nodded and they moved into place.

Using her fingers so Seheira could see, Lara counted down from three, and within a heartbeat they had sailed over the tail section of the B-17 and were freefalling through thin air. As they fell away, Lara looked back in astonishment at the damage the B-17 had suffered. There were whole panels missing, and the ailerons on the left wing flapped in the wind uselessly. The world war two stalwart had been outclassed by modern technology, she thought with a sudden regret, but it had done its part in keeping them alive.

Lara pulled the ripcord a moment later, and to her utter relief, a black parachute unfurled above her and filled out with air. The driving wind and pelting rain battered them however, and Lara found herself hard pressed to keep the parachute under control as they descended. Lightning speared into the wave tops nearby and the electric thunderous crackle that accompanied it was otherworldly. Lara had no doubt that if lightning struck them, it would be game over for them both.

As she grappled to control their descent, Seheira tapped Lara's side frantically and pointed off into the distance. Lara spun her soaking hair from her eyes and peered off through the rain. She frowned. There was something out there in the distance, something with a light.

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Muffai dropped the Sukhoi beneath the massive thunderheads in time to witness a massive commotion down in the water. He immediately banked the jet hard left with skilful ease, and then descended even further toward the area to see what he hoped was true. As he passed by, his gold tooth flashed with a smile when he saw the unmistakeable wing of a large airplane slip beneath the surface. He knew with certainty it was the wing of the B-17 that bitch had stolen.

Cortez would accept the loss, he knew, if it meant Lara Croft was dead. He circled the area a few minutes to make sure no flares or emergency rafts popped from the waves, though he was sure the odds of surviving such a crash would be almost nil. Added to that, if a person was out in the water in such conditions, they certainly wouldn't last long. This place was miles from shore, miles from anywhere in fact, and anybody sane would have avoided the storm like the plague.

The sukhoi's console flashed up a fuel warning. Muffai noted it, and with one final pass, his grin widened at a job well done. Cortez had raged when Lara and her friends had slipped through his fingers, and Muffai had copped the brunt of it, his life again in the balance. However, this had bought his life back again, he was sure, and he felt Cortez would be pleased. That bitch Lara had more lives than a black cat, he thought with utter venom. He was glad to be finished with her.

Muffai angled the sukhoi toward the clouds, his thoughts being to get above the storm for a leisurely trip back to the Azorean island of São Miguel. Cortez had a private airfield there and a palatial retreat that overlooked the coastal cliffs. As he wondered what cocktail to order when he landed, something caught his eye back down on the surface of the ocean. He could have sworn he'd seen a light in the corner of his vision.

Muffai peered intently at the spot where he thought he'd seen it, but only saw very dark and wind-blasted ocean now. He noted the lights in the cockpit reflecting off the canopy, and wondered if that was what he'd seen. With one last hard look at the spot, he saw nothing, and blasted up into the night.

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