The Sentinel (4 page)

A shifting shadow by the maps reveals a sixth crewmember is present. I stand on my tippy-toes and see a rainbow hemp hat that often conceals a head of dreadlocks I know well. “Peach?”

She steps out of hiding. She doesn’t look angry like the others. More confused and afraid. She’s holding a video camera.

Something is definitely not right here. Whatever they’re up to, they recruited Peach to document the event and no doubt put a verbal spin on it.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear the high-pitched whine of a Zodiac. Its revving engine pulses as it bounces across the waves somewhere out in the darkness.

The radio crackles and Mr. Jackson’s voice fills the bridge. “Mates, you have about thirty seconds to put some distance between you and the
Bliksem
!”

Thirty seconds until what? Can he see how close the
Bliksem
is to striking us?

“She’s right on top of us!” Chase shouts, his voice tinged with worry. “Brace for impact!”

I take hold of a chair that’s been bolted to the floor. The ship shudders from the impact. Alarms sound.

The voice of John Nicholson, the chief engineer and one of the few people on board with whom I can have an intelligent conversation, sounds from the radio. “What the hell happened? We’ve got a hole in the hull down here! It’s above the waterline so—”

McAfee toggles off the radio, silencing Nicholson.

What the hell
?

“Get us out of here!” he yells at Jenkins.

“I doubt they’re going to hit us twice,” I say, but my subconscious has just put together a puzzle my conscious mind had yet to realize existed.

Thirty seconds.

Mr. Jackson said thirty seconds. But the man is precise like a Swiss clock. The
Bliksem
struck after only five seconds. No way he’d be twenty-five seconds off target. So what’s coming next?

“No time!” McAfee shouts.

I see a telltale warning sign that tells me things are about to go to hell. I grab Jenny, and tackle her to the floor. Everything moves slow. I see her face contort with hurt, maybe because I was rough, maybe because she felt betrayed by my action, or maybe because she’s upset that a little person like me could take her down so easily. But her face morphs into abject fear before we hit the floor.

The
boom
is louder than anything I’ve ever heard. Feels like someone just shoved fondue skewers into my eardrums. Every single window shatters. Shards of glass fly out like daggers. I see them pass over my head as I’m thrown against the far wall.

My head strikes hard. I try to shake it off, but a pain-filled fog rolls into my head. As my vision fades, I see a fireball rise up past the shattered wheelhouse windows. Armageddon has come to the Arctic.

5

I come to with a deep breath that sends me into a fit of coughing. The air is no good. Tastes of smoke. When I open my eyes, that’s all I can see. Thick gray smoke rolls through the wheelhouse like English fog. I pull my sweater up over my mouth and nose and say, “Hello?”

It seems a ridiculous thing to shout, like I’m some girl scout with a bunch of Samoas knocking on a door. So I step it up and shout, “Is anyone still here?”

The idea that I’ve been left alone to die of smoke inhalation fills me with vengeful anger. But then, maybe everyone is still here and just incapacitated? A deep, yet feminine, groan comes from nearby. I try to stand, but fall to my side.

The ship is listing. We’re going down.

I return to my hands and knees and crawl toward the groan. I find Jenny face down near the door. The air is better here. The smoke is entering from the other side of the bridge and rolling out of the door.

“Jenny,” I say. “Are you hurt?”

“Head hurts,” she says, then moves her limbs. “Nothing broken, though. What happened?”

“Explosion.”

She looks confused for a moment, then her eyes go wide. She remembers. “You saved me.”

“We’ll see about that,” I say. “We’re listing. Taking on water.”

“We’re sinking?” she asks, her voice rising with panic. She knows as well as I do that just a few minutes in the Arctic Ocean is enough to kill. If the
Sentinel
goes down, we do not want to be on it when it does. There are inflatable lifeboats and survival kits on board, but time is short and I can’t leave until I know we’re not leaving someone behind.

“I’ll be right back,” I say.

“Where are you going?” she asks. “We need to get out of here.”

“I’ll just be a minute.” I take a deep breath, then slide into the smoke. Crawling fast, I move through the wheelhouse. At first, I’m relieved I haven’t found any bodies—if there were multiple people to pull out, I’d probably die before finishing. I head for the back of the room and see an arm, limp on the floor. I crawl toward it, saying, “Hey!” But as I round the base of the map station, I see Paul Kennet’s face. A shard of glass the size of a trowel is embedded deep in his neck. A river of blood seeps from his neck and flows across the listing floor where it pools against the wall.

The smoke is thick here, so when I see the body and suck in a quick breath, smoke scratches my throat and sets me to coughing. I’m about to head for the exit when I see a second body. It’s hard to identify because of the smoke, but I catch a flash of rainbow colors and know it’s Peach. Dead or not, I can’t leave her.

Crawling over Kennet’s dead body is hard. I nearly puke twice when I feel his still warm blood soak into my jeans at the knees. But I make it to Peach and I’m glad to see no glass buried in her body. She’s small enough that I could throw her over my shoulder, but I wouldn’t make it far in the smoky gloom. So I take her by the ankle and drag her toward the door. I hear her body bumping into things as I tow her, and I cringe each time, but it’s better than asphyxiating, burning alive or drowning in freezing water, so I keep moving without looking back.

As the smoke clears and I near the door, I see that Jenny, bless her overworked heart, hasn’t abandoned me. “Is there anyone else?” she asks, and looks about ready to charge into the smoke.

“Kennet,” I say, “but he’s dead.”

Her face pales. “Dead? Are you sure? Did you check his pulse?”

I didn’t, but six inches of glass in a man’s throat generally qualifies him as a dead man in my book. But I don’t want to tell her that, so I lie. “Yeah, let’s get the hell off this ship.”

Cold Arctic air relieves my lungs as we pound down the wheelhouse stairs and return to the main deck. The first thing I notice is the angle of the deck. If I sat on my ass, I’d zip right down to the ocean, which is just a few feet below the gunwales now.
We’re going down fast
.

“Oh my god,” Jenny says.

I expect to see her looking down at the frothy ocean, but her head is turned up a little higher. I follow her gaze and find the
Bliksem
pulling away. But she’s in similar shape. A massive hole is open on her starboard bow, and a second on the aft…a portion of the ship that never touched us.

She’s going down fast too, so I certainly can’t seek any help there. Not that I can see her crew with all this smoke. Something deep in the
Sentinel
shakes beneath our feet. Maybe it’s an explosion, or air being forced out by the rushing water. I really don’t give a shit. But it spurs me into action.

I thrust little Peach into Jenny’s enormous hands and say, “Wait here. I’ll get one of the inflatables.” As I say this, Jenny’s eyes flash to where the second Zodiac had been secured. Gone.

I waste no time cursing whoever took the Zodiac and our best chance of survival and instead head for the door to the lower decks. The inflatables are kept in a locker at the base of the stairs. When I open the door, I’m struck by a burst of air, pushed out by intense pressure. It’s thick with the stink of oil, salt and thirty stinky crewmembers. It occurs to me that this was the first time this door had been opened, which means that no one on the lower decks has yet to escape. When I hop down the stairs two at a time, and land in frigid water, I see why. The interior is flooded, lit by flickering emergency lights. Three bodies float face down in the water. Everyone below decks was either killed by the explosion or quickly drowned.

“We’re sinking faster!” I hear Jenny shout. “Hurry up!”

Opening the door released the air pressure and is allowing the ship to sink faster. Whose bright idea was it to stow the inflatables below decks? Ignoring the bodies and my freezing ankles, I yank open the locker and find two inflatable lifeboats.

Two.
For thirty crew.

Son-of-a-bitch! Someone needs a good swift kick in the nuts.

I yank out one of the inflatable life rafts, which looks like a huge thick modern suitcase. Free of the locker, it falls and nearly takes my arm off. Must weigh as much as Peach! With the big suitcase out of the locker, I notice a backpack stuffed in behind it with the word “Survival” handwritten across the top in black. I have no idea what’s in it, but I snatch it and throw it over my shoulder. The ship suddenly lurches and I nearly fall into the now knee-deep water, pulled down by the heavy life raft.

Jenny screams and I run up the stairs, which are tilted so bad I’m running almost completely on the wall and I’m not running up so much as horizontally. I have to duck to get out of the exit. And when I do, I can see why Jenny screamed. The deck is nearly at a ninety degree angle to the water. She’s knee deep in water and standing on the ship’s rail. And freezing water and sinking ship be damned, she still has Peach in her arms.

“Can you step to the side?” I shout down to her.

She looks up, sees what’s in my hands and moves to the left until she slips. She catches herself, but doesn’t try to move again.

“I’m going to pop this thing open. When I do, try to reach it. I’ll have to slide down the deck after it.”

“Just do it!” she screams.

I’m not entirely sure how do to this. I’ve never used a life raft, let alone an inflatable one, but a big bright yellow tag labeled “PULL TO INFLATE” makes it idiot proof. I give the tag a yank and the suitcase explodes to life, pulls itself free of my grip and falls into the water next to Jenny. At first it looks like she won’t be able to reach it, but the octagonal raft just keeps on growing. The whole thing is bright yellow and has a tent-like roof with four clear plastic windows. A flashing strobe has already begun to blink at the pinnacle of the tent. She snags the raft, pulls it closer, opens the clear plastic hatch, tosses Peach inside and looks back up at me. “C’mon!”

There’s now a twenty foot, nearly vertical drop between me and the submerged rail. I know this could hurt, a lot, but what choice do I have? I leap out of the door and press my body against the deck, hoping friction will slow me down. I cover the distance in a flash, but never reach the rail. Jenny catches me below the armpits and tosses me into the life raft next to peach. She pokes her head in after me.

“Get to the other side of the raft,” she shouts. “Take Peach, too.”

I’m about to argue, but then she starts climbing in and I feel the whole thing start to tip toward her. I grab Peach and drag her to the far side of the raft, which is far larger than I was expecting. I suspect Jenny might weigh more than Peach and I combined, but we’ve provided enough counter balance that the raft doesn’t flip.

The raft bobs up and down as we catch our breath. A moment later a loud gurgling draws our attention out the clear plastic windows. The flashing strobe light atop our raft lights the scene like some kind of low budget horror movie. Half of the
Sentinel
is underwater and the rest is quickly sliding under the surface. Compressed air bursts from windows, blowing water and debris into the air.

“It’s pulling us in,” Jenny says, her voice a whisper.

She’s right. The suction of the sinking ship is pulling us closer. A spray of water strikes my window. I jump back and by the time I return to the window, all that’s left of the
Sentinel
and who knows how many members of the crew is gone. As our raft spins in lazy circles at the center of the submerged ship’s footprint, silence descends over the ocean.

6

The wail that breaks the Arctic silence is so frightening that I nearly fling myself out of the raft and into the ocean. The cold water would probably be less of a shock. It’s like some kind of evil banshee has just awakened next to me. Jenny adds to the scream with one of her own. We’re not going to have any trouble hailing a passing ship with these two on board.

“Paul!” It’s Peach.

“Oh my god!” Jenny chimes in.

“Paul!” She must have seen the man die and is waking to the memory as though it’s just happened. The light inside the raft is a diffuse yellow and we’re rolling over three foot swells, so she’s got to be completely disoriented and confused. Last she knew, she was on the bridge, being rammed by the
Bliksem
. Her screams are understandable.

“Oh my god!” Jenny, on the other hand, is just being annoying.

“No, no, no, Paul!”

“Peach,” I say. Her breaths come rapid fire, as hearing her name helps her brain reconnect to reality. But I can sense she’s still on the brink of madness. “Peach, it’s Jane. You’re safe.”

“What? Where are we?”

“Life raft,” I say.

“Life raft?”

“The
Sentinel
sank.”

I hear a quick intake of air. Her shaking hands cover her mouth as she tries to grasp the horribleness of the situation she’s awoken to. When she speaks, she sounds numb. “There was an explosion. Everything shook. My ears. Paul… He pushed me down. The glass… I saw it.” There’s a long expulsion of breath before she asks, “Is he…”

“He didn’t make it,” I say, trying to speak with a gentle voice, but I don’t think there’s any good way to say someone is dead.

“God,” she says, and she’s silent for a moment.

“Sorry I screamed,” Jenny says. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“How many made it off the ship?” Peach asks.