The Sentinel Read Online Free PDF

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