“You didn’t see McAfee or Chase?” she finally asks.
“Nope,” I say, and had planned to leave it at that, but Jenny chimes in.
“The assholes left us to go down with the ship. Took the last Zodiac.”
“They haven’t come looking for us?” she asks, a tinge of disbelief in her voice. She idolized Captain McAfee and supported his hardcore stance on saving whales.
“They either capsized and drowned,” I say, “or made for land and didn’t look back,” which seems the more likely of the two options, but I keep that to myself. “We’re on our own.”
That sinks in like an iron anchor and no one speaks for fifteen minutes. I sit with my arms crossed over my chest. It’s chilly inside the life raft, but I think it must be made of something that retains heat because I’m not freezing. My feet are frigid from being wet, so I sit up with my back against the firm side of the raft and pull my shoes off. As I’m working off my soaked socks, a bright light blossoms from the center of the octagonal tent.
I look at the bright light and see Peach sitting back down. The light is a bright blue-ish LED tap light. I wouldn’t have known it was there if Peach hadn’t turned it on. I glance at Jenny lying down on the floor, eyes closed, head on arms. Sleeping. She’s got her shoes off too, and her socks are draped over them.
“You know we don’t need that, right?” I say, looking up at the light. “This far north, we’re in the land, or sea, of perpetual sun.”
“Knowing we have something with power kind of makes me feel better. Stupid, I know, but…” Peach shrugs and then points to the ceiling. “You can hang your socks up there.”
A few vinyl lines are strung taut across the ceiling. Seems the maker of this life raft thought of everything. I drape my socks over the line, then take Jenny’s massive wool socks and hang them next to mine.
“Thanks,” Peach says.
“I’ve just hung up a pair of socks that smell like a dead fish that’s been in the sun too long, and you’re thanking me?”
She laughs and I’m glad to see her smile. “For saving me.”
“We’re not saved yet,” I say. When her smile fades some, I make a mental note never to pursue a career as a motivational speaker. Hello everyone, odds are most of you will never achieve your dreams, five of you will be killed in motor vehicle accidents by the end of the year, two of you will serve jail time and at least one of you will give birth to a child who has three potential deadbeat fathers, the best of which has just five teeth.
“It’s ironic,” she says and I wonder if she’s heard my mental ramblings.
“What is?” I ask.
“You saving me,” she says.
“Why’s that ironic?” I can’t imagine an answer to this question that makes any sense. I would have pulled anyone off that ship, even Captain Crazy.
“Do you know why we were roommates?” she asks.
“Luck of the draw?”
“Chase decides who bunks with who,” she says, and a theory starts to form in my mind, but she fills in the blanks before I’ve fully figured it out on my own. “I was spying on you. Watching you. Reading your journal. Your notes.”
I frown, feeling supremely violated. I’d kept one journal tracking the actions of the Sentinel and a second that was personal. They’re both at the bottom of the ocean now, but there were things on those pages I’ve never told anyone.
“Sorry,” she says, and at least appears honestly ashamed. Still, there’s no way I’m going to offer an “It’s okay,” because it’s decidedly not okay. “They knew who you are. Who you really are. I’m pretty sure that’s why they let you on the crew.”
“Thought they could win me over?” I ask.
“Maybe,” she says with a shrug. “I’m not really sure why they let someone like you on board.”
Someone like me? I’ve heard Peach talking about other anti-whaling organizations like the WSPA and Greenpeace, and while she doesn’t think they’re being proactive enough, she respects them. She wouldn’t see me as a threat.
“And who am I?” I ask. “Really?”
“They told you me you work for the U.S. government.”
I let out a guffaw that makes Jenny twitch. Peach looks at me like I’m crazy. “Relax,” I say. “We’ve only been at sea for like an hour. I’m not going to eat you. Yet.”
My humor doesn’t help. Her stare has intensified. “Look, did you see the WSPA Greenland Whaling Investigation video they released a few months ago? Found all the whale meat in grocery stores? Revealed the whalers in Greenland were making a nice profit?”
“Yeah,” she says. “They broke the IWC’s rules. It was a solid investigation and part of the reason McAfee decided to come here.”
Great, I think, this really is all my fault, but I continue with my dramatic reveal. “Remember the redhead with the baseball cap and sunglasses?”
“She was brilliant, yeah, but—”
“She’s not a redhead,” I say. “She’s got short black hair and a—”
“That was you?” she asks loudly, but doesn’t wait for confirmation. “You’re WSPA?”
“Going on ten years,” I say.
I can see she’s confused as hell, but she shakes it off. Despite her hero abandoning us in the Arctic Ocean, she’s still clinging to the idea that McAfee wouldn’t lie to her. “That’s your cover story.”
“You read my journal,” I say.
“Skimmed.”
“Come across the name Michael Stone?”
She forms a half-word argument, but something clicks in her mind. “You date the director of the WSPA?”
“Dated.Past tense. He asked me to marry him. I said no. And now I’m in the Arctic Ocean, in a life boat.”
“That sucks,” she says.
“I know, right? I should have said yes.”
“No, I mean that I thought you were some spook or something.”
“I know,” I say. “Just messing with you. Hey, now that we’re being honest, since we barely have room to lie side by side, can you do me a favor and not turn our lifeboat into a shithole?”
She laughs again. It’s good to hear someone laugh.
“I kept the room like that so you wouldn’t see my camera.”
Now it’s my turn to be surprised. When my jaw drops open, she says, “Don’t worry, you never did anything worth keeping. Sleeping mostly.” My eyes go wide when I see her hold up a small video camera. “When something needs to be recorded for the media, they call me. Know that I can spin it if needed. An edit here, a—” She sees my shocked expression. “What?”
“You have the camera?”
“It was on my hand when I woke up,” she says. “I strap it on pretty tight because McAfee has a pretty strict ‘you break it, you bought it’ policy. Why?”
“Were you recording when I came onto the bridge?”
“Yeah, McAfee knew you were coming. Asked me to record it.”
“What?” This makes no sense. “Why did he want to record me?”
She shrugs. “All I knew is that he wanted to record something and told me to start when he saw you coming.”
I can tell she doesn’t have a real answer, so I file the question away for another time and ask, “Does the camera still work?”
She looks down at it and says, “Huh.”
“What?”
“It’s still recording.” She switches the camera off.
I hold out my hand. “Mind if I take a look?”
Peach looks unsure.
Jenny suddenly sits up. “I’d like to see that, too.”
Peach and I turn toward her, surprised by her sudden rising.
“What?” she asks.
“You were awake that whole time?” I ask.
“It’s a defense mechanism. The guys on the Sentinel are all a little…gabby. Like to talk after sex. So I’ve learned to play dead when I don’t feel like talking.”
Peach lets out a pffft laugh that she was clearly trying to contain. “I do the
same thing,” she says.
I clear my throat, all business. I move my open hand closer to Peach. “The camera. Now.”
7
We huddle around the camera as it powers up. We’re like bunch of tweens at a sleepover—except that we’re lost in the Arctic Ocean and we’ll likely die slowly. But hell, that’s what some sleepovers feel like, too.
Jenny’s suddenly struck by a thought. “Hey, how come we’re not flipping over?”
She’s right. We’re all sitting on the same side of the raft and haven’t capsized.
“The raft has a ballast system,” Peach says. “There are four ballast bags attached to the bottom of the boat. The water in them will keep us from flipping.”
“Good to know,” Jenny says, happy to let it go there.
But I can’t help but wonder, “How do you know so much about the raft?”
She squirms a little, but says, “I’ve spent some time on one before.”
Jenny understands the implications of her statement before I do and gasps. “You were in the Galapagos?”
Ahh, the Galapagos, I think. The Sea Sentinel organization, of which the Sentinel is the flagship, has a year round presence in the Galapagos, hounding fishermen who illegally catch sharks just for their fins—a delicacy in parts of Asia. Last year there were reports of a confrontation at sea. Witnesses said that two boats collided and sank, but no survivors were found. The identities of the ships are officially a mystery, but with one of the Sea Sentinel’s Galapagos fleet missing, they were always suspected. But after an investigation revealed no missing people from the Sea Sentinel organization, they were cleared.
Until now.
The implications of this stun me. Sea Sentinel has murdered people. And Peach was part of it. She sees my growing rage.
“I didn’t know they died,” she says, eyes beginning to water.
“But you didn’t say anything when you learned they had,” I say. “Did you?”
“He told me I would go to jail,” she says, and the tears break free.
“Who told you?”
“McAfee.”
“He was there?” I ask. McAfee usually goes after the big PR campaigns. Whales mostly.
“Thought we were being too soft,” Peach says “Took charge for a month.”
“And rammed a fishing boat.”
She nods. “But it wasn’t the Bliksem and we weren’t the Sentinel. Both ships just fell apart. We had a crew of ten. All of us made it into the life boat and spent a day at sea before Chase picked us up in a second boat.”
“And they’ve been holding it over you since?”
She sniffs and wipes her nose. “That’s why I spied on you.”
“And why you were on the bridge.”
Another nod. “They know…they know I won’t say anything.”
I start to feel bad for Peach. Despite her heart being in the right place, she fell in with people who value animals over people and who had no qualms about controlling her with fear. “Will you testify against them?”
She looks terrified by the idea.
“Look,” I say. “With everything I’ve seen and heard, if we survive, we can both testify against them and put them in jail for what they’ve done. You’ve been used and manipulated. You’re a victim, not a murderer. I guarantee you won’t do time.”
A weight lifts from her shoulders and the tears return. “Thanks…but…what about the whales?”
“What?” I ask.
“Who will stand up for the whales if the Sentinel isn’t around?”
I nearly smack her upside the head, but take a deep breath and explain, “The Sentinel’s actions are turning public opinion against anti-whaling organizations. Public opinion determines what laws are put in place. And those laws might very well make the anti-whaling community the villains. Right now, the law is on our side, and yeah, whales are being killed, but far more whales will be killed when all anti-whaling organizations are shut down or have their hands tied by expanded yearly quotas. That’s why the WSPA sent me here. If we can prove the Sea Sentinel is an extremist group and shut them down, we can get back to making lasting progress against the whalers.”
She sits back and says nothing, absorbing what I’ve told her. I’m mostly impressed with the amount of chutzpah I put into my speech. Seems there’s some whale-hugger in me after all.
“Umm,” Jenny says. “The camera is ready.”
I’d totally forgotten about the camera in my hand. I pop open the 2.5 inch view screen and hit the play button. After two seconds of black screen, there’s five seconds of my room. The picture is framed by clothes. The angle of the image and the purple and white stripped sock helps me identify the location as a shelf in the far corner of our room that’s been covered in clothes from day one. I shake my head and sigh.
“That’s so Single White Female,” Jenny says, and I’m glad we have a similar sense of humor. She’ll help keep me sane over the coming days.
Peach inches closer, sees the image on screen. She offers another apology, but I’m not listening. The image has changed. It’s a white linoleum floor covered with black shoe scuffs. I hear Chase’s voice. Then McAfee’s. The camera pans up. The bridge.
For ten minutes, we watch the inner circle of the Sentinel go about their business without a care in the world. McAfee’s talking on the bridge phone, which is a satellite phone capable of calling other ships or someone on the other side of the planet. His face looks serious, but his conversation is private. He hangs up and turns toward Chase. “We might have a problem. The Bliksem is closing on our position.”
“Was Jackson sp—”
“Get as many people on deck as possible. If they get close, throw everything we have at them. Get them to turn away.”
“Turn away?” Chase asks.
McAfee furrows his eyebrows. “Do it, Chase. Now.”
“Yes, sir,” Chase says, then picks up the bridge phone and dials a three digit extension.
“The next ten-ish minutes is when they started throwing the meat,” Peach says from next to me. “You can fast forward through it.”
But I don’t. And when the first chunk of bloody whale meat slaps up against the bridge window and slowly slides out of view, I nearly laugh. Not so much because whale meat on a window is funny, but because of the abject horror that ripples through the bridge crew when they realize what’s just happened. There’s screaming and wailing like some dear family member is being tortured in front of them. The terror strikes everyone, except for McAfee. He’s looking out the bridge’s front window.
At me, I think.
When he turns back toward the camera, I see a glimmer of a smile for a split second. Then it’s gone and he finally registers the meat on the side window. He curses loudly, almost like he knows it’s what’s expected of him, but his mind is elsewhere.
And that’s when I arrive. The camera turns toward me as I burst onto the bridge looking pissed and a little arrogant. I look a little bitchy, I think.
Jenny chuckles next to me when she sees herself step onto the bridge behind me and cross her arms. “I was doing my best Andre the Giant impression,” she says, and I wonder how someone so young knows who Andre the Giant is. But I think she’s from one of the southern states, so maybe she has a brother who’s into wrestling. Then again, maybe she’s into wrestling.
The scene plays out as I remember it. McAfee goes manic. I’m sarcastic. As we get close to the explosion, I feel Jenny and Peach both tense up next to me. We all know it’s coming.
Mr. Jackson offers his thirty-second warning.
And nearly thirty seconds later, McAfee shouts, “No time!”
Then it happens—the telltale sign that sent me into action.
McAfee covers his ears and ducks. I pause the image.
“Holy shit,” Jenny says.
“He knew,” Peach adds. “That son-of-a-bitch knew!”
“But why did he have you record it?” Jenny asks.
“Because he wanted to f
rame someone else for it,” I say. “Someone he had collected, or fabricated, evidence against. Someone they’d been watching. Someone who wasn’t who she said she was.”
“You,” Peach says.
I nod. “I’m his scapegoat.”
Jenny has a hand over her mouth. “That’s why he said those things about you when you came on the bridge.”
“And I didn’t deny anything,” I say.
“But the tape condemns him,” Jenny notes.
“Nothing that can’t be edited out in post,” I say and turn to Peach. “Right?”
She gives a slow nod and then surprises me by saying, “Play the rest.”
She never stopped recording, so there could be some graphic images, but then I realize it might reveal what happened to the rest of the bridge crew. I hit play.
The explosion happens right away and all three of us jump. The raft bobs in the water, but doesn’t come close to tipping thanks to the ballast system. The view of the bridge becomes a pixilated mess as Peach falls to the floor. The camera lands on its side. A second later, we all jump again as Garret falls into view. His eyes are wide. Blood pulses over the large shard of glass in his neck.
We watch him die.
It’s something I’ll never forget—seeing the life wink out of his eyes—and something I hope to never see again. As the first tendrils of smoke wisp into the picture, voices rise up. Our view is of Garret’s dead face, but the scene is easy to imagine.
“Get up!” It’s McAfee. “Let’s go.”
“Where’s Chase?” says someone.
“Over here,” Chase says.
“We need to abandon ship, right now,” McAfee says.
Smoke comes in heavy now.
Someone starts coughing.
“What about the others?” Chase asks.
“Dead,” McAfee says, and it’s hard to tell if he really believes it or if he’s just saying it to get people moving. But then, with a flurry of footsteps, they’re gone. After another minute, I hear myself coughing. Then a muffled conversation between Jenny and me. Nearly another minute passes. The smoke hangs thick in the air. And I crawl into view, my face contorting with disgust as I crawl over Garret’s body. The video shakes and bangs and becomes fairly unwatchable as I drag Peach toward the doors. The rest of the rescue plays out this way and I stop it once we’re all safe on board the life raft and Jenny whispers, “It’s pulling us in.”
THE SENTINEL (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) Page 4
