The Sentinel (7 page)

But then something strikes the bottom of the raft. It’s the whale. There’s no doubt. The strike feels violent, but by whale standards, it’s probably just a gentle nudge. Still, Jenny starts to panic. “What’s it doing?”

“It’s just being curious,” I say.

“Its nose was covered in barnacles,” she says. “It could pop the floats, or ruin the ballasts.”

Damnit. She’s right.

A second bump sends the raft spinning in a lazy circle.
What the hell is it doing?

I return to the hatch, but there’s no sign of the whale. As we continue to spin around, I search the ocean until something larger catches my attention. “It turned us around,” I say, excitement creeping into my voice. I look back and find Jenny and Peach looking afraid. “It turned us around.”

“So?” Jenny says.

“So,” I say, pointing out the hatch. “I think it wanted to show us something.”

As I lean aside, they lean forward and see something amazing.

Land.

9

Peach and I hang out of the front of the raft, paddling like mad. Jenny sits behind us, holding onto our belts. If she wasn’t, I’d no doubt yank myself out of the raft and into the water—that’s how hard I’m paddling. We’re within one hundred yards now and my arms are burning, but I ignore the pain and the knowledge that my arms will hurt worse tomorrow. And even worse the day after that. But the idea of being on land, even the frozen wasteland ahead, is intoxicating. There might be resources. Shelter. Hell, there might be people. The Arctic North of Greenland is fairly devoid of human population, but there are hunters and adventurers that come this way. At the very least, we’ll be able to move in the direction we want—south—rather than be at the mercy of the wind and ocean currents.

As we get closer to land, the waves get bigger. We’re fighting six foot swells, digging up one side and falling down the other. Had I not been at sea for the past month already, I’d probably be seasick, but my body is accustomed to the pitch and roll of the ocean. What it’s not used to is the cold. Salt water sprays in my face, over and over. The air is at least forty degrees, but the wind is fast here where the ocean temperature meets the cold air rushing down from Greenland’s frozen core.

“We’re not going to make it!” Peach shouts.

She’s sensed the same thing I have—the waves, or maybe the tide, is fighting us. “We’re going to die if we don’t make it,” I yell back. “Now keep padding!”

I redouble my efforts and the burn is hard to ignore now, but I didn’t fight this hard and this long to sit back and let us drift back out to sea. Peach doesn’t quite see it the same way.

She stops paddling. “I can’t!” She’s got tears in her eyes. I’m bigger and stronger than her. Her arms are probably worse off than mine.

Before I can threaten to shoot her if she doesn’t start paddling again, she’s lifted up and pulled back inside. Jenny says, “Sit on her.”

I feel Peach’s weight on my ass, pinning me down. A moment later, Jenny lies down by my side and sets her paddle to the water. “I could have the biceps of Hulk Hogan and still not be able to pull my weight out of here.”

There she goes with another wrestling comment. As we dig up and over a wave, I say, “I could go for a couple of twenty-four inch pythons right about now.”

She smiles at my quotation of how the Hulkster used to describe the girth of his biceps. “You’re a wrestling fan?”

“Nah,” I say. “Child of the 80’s. Hogan was everywhere. You?”

“Child of Alabama,” she says. “I grew up on wrestling, gravy and butter. Can’t you tell?”

I’m about to laugh when the wave crests and pitches us forward. The feeling of forward momentum is grand, but the salt water rammed up my nostrils is not. I cough and blow water from my nose as my sinuses burn. Jenny got a face-full too and our conversation ends. We grit our teeth, and tag team this son-of-a-bitch ocean like The Hart Foundation, everyone’s favorite pink tights-wearing wrestling tag team.

Ten agonizing minutes later and we’re just twenty feet from a beach of smooth worn stones. But suddenly, we’re not getting anywhere.

“What happened?” I shout.

“Listen,” Peach says from inside the raft.

A wave picks us up and pushes us a few feet closer to shore. When we drop down, there is a sudden tug like we’re caught on something, and a dull scraping sound.

“It’s the ballast bags,” Peach said. “They’re dragging on the bottom.”

“How big are they?” Jenny asks.

“They hang down two, maybe three feet,” she replies.

“So we’re only in three feet of water?” Jenny doesn’t wait for a reply. She sits back in the raft, removes her boots, socks and two pairs of pants. Before I can tell her she’s nuts, she steps out of the raft and into the knee-deep frigid water. She lets out a shriek, but takes hold of two plastic handles, leans back and drags the raft toward the shore. Five feet from the stone and pebble beach, she stops. The water is only inches deep here and our waterproof boots can handle it. Peach and I jump out and help the half-naked Jenny pull the raft all the way out of the water and over the beach.

As the ballasts lose their water, the raft becomes far lighter and we make good time dragging the raft past the water line and up onto a flat stone in the shadow of a fifteen foot, gray cliff.

We dive back inside. Jenny is shivering. I dry her legs with my cloak and help her back into her dry clothes. Taking them off was smart. She’d have a hard time getting warm if she had to wait for her pants to dry. Peach rubs Jenny’s still shaking legs. Jenny lies back and grunts. “This thing was a lot more comfortable out on the water.”

I crouch next to them and say, “I’m going to take a look around.”

Neither of them looks happy about this.

“We should stay together,” Peach says.

“I’m not going far,” I say. “I just want to make sure there isn’t a hotel around the corner or a ship just off shore.”

This seems to make sense to them and they both nod. “I’ll just be gone a few minutes. Why don’t you two see about packing up all our gear so that it’s mobile?”

“Mobile?” Jenny says.

“We’re not staying here,” I say. If we follow the coast south we’ll eventually make it to Thule.”

“Thule?” Peach says. “We’re just north of the Lincoln Sea. It could take weeks to walk there. Maybe longer.”

“We’ve got food and water,” I say. “We’ll have to ration it, but we might be able to make it. Our other option is to sit here and wait for a rescue that might not be coming. I didn’t hear anyone send a distress call before leaving the bridge, did you?”

Neither of them say a word. They know the answer.

“What about the
Bliksem
?,” Jenny asks. “They might have called for help.”

“Maybe,” I admit, “But we don’t know where that explosion went off. We don’t know if any of them survived it. We can’t count on that. And both ships were prepped for spending a long time at sea. No one is going to miss us for a while.”

Jenny sighs. “Well, I’ve been meaning to lose some weight. Southwest it is.”

After taking the gun, knife and a small pair of plastic binoculars, I open the hatch and look back at them. “I’ll be an hour, tops.”

I step out and zip the hatch shut behind me. The cold feels like pinpricks on my legs. Next to fishnet stockings, jeans are perhaps the worst possible pants to be wearing in the cold and I chastise myself for even bringing them. Then again, I wasn’t planning on being marooned north of the Arctic Circle. I wrap the long black cloak around me and I’m instantly thankful for whatever weird fetish drove Chase to stow it on board. The thick wool retains my body heat and I’m quickly warmed.

It takes me five minutes to reach the cliff’s end where the rocky ground rises upwards like a staircase. I climb twenty feet up and my view of the land opens up. The barren landscape rises to a peak. Bigger than a hill, but not quite a mountain. Maybe a few hundred feet tall. But it looks easily scalable.

Before heading up, I turn around and look out at the sea. The sky is deep blue and filled with wispy clouds. The ocean is a grayer blue, and full of chop. In the distance, I see a huge iceberg and know we’re lucky to not be stranded on it instead of land. But there isn’t a ship in sight, sunken or afloat.

As I turn away from the ocean, I’m struck by a sudden feeling of rising and falling. Greenland is very seismically active, so my first thought is that I’m feeling an earthquake or erupting volcano, but there’s no sound with the motion. I feel a little sick to my stomach and drop to one knee. I breathe deeply, relaxing my body. I’ve only got about 8 ounces of water and half an energy bar in me right now, and I really need to keep it down. The feeling starts to ebb a little and I realize I’ve been at sea so long I’ve lost my land legs. I’ve heard of this happening to people. They’ll be in bed or sitting at a desk and even though everything is perfectly still, they’ll feel like they’re rolling over the waves. It’s surreal and hard on the stomach, but I push past the feeling and turn back toward the waiting climb.

My ascent turns out to be fairly easy. The stone is solid and the grade forgiving. Twenty minutes later, I reach the top and gasp. The view is amazing. I squint against the frigid wind as I look at five more wannabe mountains. A valley stretches between them, full of rocks, odd debris and…something else. I put the binoculars to my eyes and get a brief glimpse of something rectangular. But the lenses fog up fast and I lose sight of it. It looked almost like a stone foundation. Interesting, but not quite helpful enough to garner a second glance. Instead, I turn around, holding out my compass. There’s ocean to the west, which is where our raft landed. More ocean to the east. And yet more ocean to the north, which is to be expected. There isn’t any land north of Greenland, though there is plenty of solid ice, come winter. My view of the south is blocked by the tallest of the stone rises. “South it is,” I say.

As I turn to descend back to the beach, I catch sight of something moving to the southwest. A hint of something. I follow it toward the ocean and spot an aberration in the waves. I put the binoculars to my eyes again. I scan the water quickly, hoping to find the thing again. As the lenses fog up again, I find it. I only see it for a moment, but the blood red paint splattered on its hull makes the
Bliksem
easy to identify. All I can see is the bow, blackened and smoldering from fire, the last tendrils of smoke rising into the air. She apparently took a long time in sinking, but she burned as she went down. I wonder how many men were on board, and how many of them drowned or burned to death. I feel a depression setting in, but shrug it off with a sniff. I can’t worry about the dead. The best I can do for them is survive and make sure the world learns the truth…and if Captain McAfee makes it back to civilization, make sure he spends the rest of his life in jail.

10

My trip down takes me on a slightly different path, so I’m not sure where the raft is in relation to me. I creep along the edge of the cliff and see nothing. To the left and right, still nothing. Sigh. Lost in thought, I must have veered sharply off course. I’m not too concerned, I just need to hike back to the right where the cliff ends and then follow the beach back.

I shouldn’t have any trouble finding them.

Unless
, I think,
they left
.

Maybe I misread them? Maybe they duped me? Gained my trust and abandoned me?

As my fears start to take route, logic retakes control. First, I’m a fairly good judge of character, so I’m pretty certain that neither one of them would leave me to die, especially after everything we survived together already. Second, Jenny is big, and Peach is small. They’re not going anywhere fast and they wouldn’t leave (or offend) the person who not only has the compass and binoculars, but also a big fricken knife and a .45 caliber handgun.

A scream makes me jump. It came from my left. I run toward the sound.

I’m a fast runner, but the rocky terrain and my sea legs slow me down. When the second scream sounds, I’m nearly on top of it. I slow and approach the ledge. I can hear terrified whimpers now. A pair of them.

Looking over the edge, I see the bright yellow raft, but it doesn’t hold my attention for long. It’s the mammoth polar bear inspecting the raft that holds my eyes.

I hear peach say, “Be quiet! It will leave if it thinks no one’s in here.”

But she’s wrong. I can tell by the way the polar bear is swaying back and forth that it’s confused, but looking for a way in. A meal in the Arctic summer, with the ice sheets gone, isn’t always easy for a polar bear to come by. They’ll eat pretty much any meat they can find. Including people. Especially people like Jenny.

Is that mean
? I wonder.
Am I still making fat jokes
? I decide I’m not. It’s an honest assessment. Jenny would make an excellent meal for a hungry polar bear.

The bear tests the tent top of the raft with its paw. The raft jiggles and Jenny lets out an ill-contained squeal. The noise makes the bear twitch back. The raft is an enigma to him, but he knows there’s a meaty snack inside. Can probably smell them. And sooner or later, the world’s largest meat eating predator is going to overcome its fear of this bright yellow obstacle.

I consider my options. The knife is long and sharp, but I’d have to get down there to use it, and I’m not about to go mano-a-mano with a bear. The handgun is the obvious choice, but it would be loud. If there are other survivors—men from the
Bliksem
or McAfee and crew—within earshot, I’m not sure I want to announce my presence. I can’t picture either group welcoming us with open arms.

That’s when I notice the loose rocks around my feet. After mom died, the Colonel raised me like a boy. Even played catch. Taught me how to put pepper on a ball. Or a bottle of paint. Or a rock. I quickly pick up a stone that feels like it’s a good two pounds. I heave it down at the polar bear. The rock misses by a few feet, but the sound of stone hitting stone, along with its motion, distracts the bear for a moment. I pick a smaller stone, maybe just a pound, take careful aim and lob it over the edge. This one strikes the bear’s side, bouncing off its thick hide. The bear twitches slightly, confused by the impact, but I haven’t caused it any real pain.