Page 6 of Love in the Wild

The trek into the jungle took nearly an hour. He glimpsed a few simian-shaped shadows above him, swinging or jumping between the trees. But he didn’t aim his gun at them. He knew the dangers of ingesting monkey meat, so he would only kill them as a last resort. He climbed over the rocks, wound his way through tightly growing moss-covered trees, and chopped down thick vegetation with a machete they had brought along on the plane.

He was nearly at the river—it was only another quarter of a mile—when he heard something moving through the brush. There were some low-level foothills that had caves nearby. He had discovered a cave a week ago but hadn’t gone too far in. Ebola was often found in African caves. He didn’t want to risk contracting that virus.

Whatever was heading toward the cave was definitely big. It might be a kob. He abandoned his path toward the river and followed the sound at a safe distance.

When the sounds ahead of him stopped near the black cavernous entrance to the cave, he halted, holding his breath, but a second later, he exhaled in a rush as he heard human voices.

“This is the one, Holt,” a man said. “I saw the gold myself.”

Gold?Jacob wondered how they had found gold here.

“Bloody natives,” one man grumbled. “Burying gold in a bleedin’ cave. What’s the point of it? Well, get to work. I want to see it.”

Jacob peeled a branch out of the way of his face and saw a group of men entering the cave. They didn’t look friendly. The guns they were carrying and their general unkempt appearance, added to their talk of hidden gold, made them dangerous. They were not the sort of men Jacob could ask for help.

He slowly backed away, but not before he saw one man emerge from the cave carrying a crate. A dozen golden objects—from plates and cups to other unidentifiable items—were visible as they jutted out of the top of the wooden crate. The man set the crate down nearby, and when he left, Jacob crept closer and grasped the nearest object he could find and ducked back into the shelter of the bushes and examined it. It was an uncut diamond as big as his fist.

Good God.

Whoever these men were, they had stumbled upon an archaeological find of great importance, and they were looting it dry. The items they were stealing belonged with the descendants of the people who had put them there or, if such people no longer existed, in a museum.

I should leave now,Jacob’s inner voice warned him. But the thought of such injustice ... no. He had to leave. He couldn’t put his wife and child at risk. Not for this. He was about to put the diamond back into the crate when he felt it go warm beneath his palm, and a strange humming filled his head. Flashes of light, whispering ... voices he couldn’t quite understand, but he sensed what they wanted.

Keep the diamond. Run now!

He sank back into the foliage, tucked the diamond in a pocket of his cargo pants, and turned to run, only to barrel straight into a man. They both stumbled back. Jacob saw the man loosely clutching a rifle, and he acted fast. He threw a punch that would have made his boxing days at Cambridge look tame. The man hit the ground, out cold, and thankfully not having attracted any attention.

Jacob shook out his fist, stretching his fingers before he leapt over the fallen body and started to run. Once that man woke up, he would tell the others to come after him. Jacob had to get to Amelia and Thorne.

Jacob had gotten a quarter of a mile away when he heard faint shouts behind him. He picked up his pace. Above him, birds were chattering madly and monkeys screamed in warning. It was like the entire jungle was crying out that danger was coming.

He reached the plane and burst inside. “Amelia, grab Thorne! We have to get out of here!”

His wife grabbed their child. Jacob threw the remaining protein bars and water tablets in a bag and slung it over his shoulder. They had made it a hundred yards from the plane when they stumbled right into the path of a silverback gorilla. It thumped its chest with its fists, making a loudpok—pok—poksound as it snarled and charged them.

Jacob shoved his wife behind him and bowed his head.

“Don’t look at it. Keep your gaze down,” he warned Amelia.

She covered Thorne’s head with one hand as they backed up. The male gorilla advanced a few more paces. Jacob’s breath came fast as he tried to think and remain calm. The gorilla was pushing them back toward the plane—back toward the gold thieves. He reached a hand behind him, and Amelia laced her fingers in his in silent support.

Suddenly the gorilla’s attention lifted above them to something behind them. His lips curled back in a fresh snarl, and he started to charge at whatever he’d seen behind them.

A volley of bullets struck the animal’s chest. Blood misted in the air, and the beast collapsed dead at Jacob’s feet.

“No!” Despite their current peril, his heart ached for the gorilla’s life. With horrifying dread, he and Amelia turned around to face the true danger of the jungle.

“Jacob,” Amelia whispered, her hand still in his and her other arm holding their child to her chest.

They faced the group of armed men. A white man, young, possibly twenty or so, seemed to be the one in charge. His pale-blue eyes were so cold that they made Jacob shiver. Jacob knew that he and his family were not going to survive. There was no mercy in those eyes, only cold calculation.

“Please,” Jacob said. “Please leave us alone. We won’t tell anyone anything.” He moved protectively in front of Amelia and his child. He would, without hesitation or thought, give his last breath to protect them.

“How did you get this deep into the forest?” the young man asked. “The tours don’t come this far east.”

“Our plane crashed. We were headed for the airfield near the forest guide station.” Jacob nodded toward the direction they’d come from.

The man jerked his gun at them. “Show me.”

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