by Emma Castle
She grinned and pointed at the dense miles of spreading Ugandan forest far below them. “See? Look at the jungle.” Thorne squirmed and stretched up in his seat to peer out the oval window. Amelia stroked a hand down his dark hair. It was silky as a baby’s, even though Thorne was three years old as of last week.
Thorne pointed a tiny finger at the window. “Mummy!”
“Yes, Thorne, that’s the jungle.”
“Monkey!” He looked down at the child’s picture book in his lap, where it said, M is for monkey. Then he focused back on the window.
“Jacob, how much farther is it?” Amelia asked her husband.
Jacob turned to face her from the seat next to the pilot. His dark hair and vivid blue eyes were a mirror image of their son’s. Thorne looked like her a little too, around the mouth, especially when he smiled. That pleased Amelia, because Jacob always said it was her smile that he dreamed about whenever he closed his eyes. Amelia had never imagined she could love someone as much as her husband, but she did. Jacob and Thorne were her entire world.
“We’ve got about another hour until we get to the airstrip,” Jacob guessed.
Charlie, their hired pilot, nodded. “He’s right, about an hour.”
“Tomorrow we’ll see the monkeys,” Amelia said to her son. She turned the book’s pages until she got to the letter G. A picture of a gorilla was below the letter.
“Gorilla.” She spoke the word slowly and clearly.
Thorne planted his palm on the picture and said loudly, “Monkey!”
“Gorilla,” she said again.
The child turned serious eyes to hers and then said, “Go-willa.”
“Close enough.” Amelia chuckled and reached up to finger the necklace at her throat. It was a small gold chain with a gold ginkgo leaf. Jacob had given it to her on the night he proposed. She’d gotten a ring, of course, a lovely princess cut diamond that was a family heirloom, but Jacob had said he wanted to give her a gift that was special, and this most certainly was.
From the beginning she and Jacob had been a perfect match, both in love with wildlife and conservation. Because of his family’s wealth, they had been able to build a center near Bwindi Impenetrable Forest for park guides and guests to rest and relax before making the trek into the woods to see the gorillas.
They had also donated a large sum of money to support anti-deforestation efforts and a police force to protect the shrinking population of mountain gorillas. For the first time since she had been pregnant with Thorne, they were able to return to Africa, the cradle of civilization.
For as long as Amelia could remember, she had felt a pull to this beautiful continent. It was one of the few places that still held mysteries unseen by human eyes. It wasn’t a desert plain—it was mountainous, with depressions and shallow lakes, waterfalls, and rivers.
Amelia had studied the varied geography on the continent while at university. The mountains fed the major rivers, causing the waterways to bleed into undulating savannas until they fell in a series of rapids and waterfalls into narrow gorges and coastal plains.
The rivers themselves were not navigable for any great distance. Travelers, traders, soldiers, and explorers from ancient times to present day had all failed to penetrate the interior heart of Africa.
Amelia could feel that heart beating, steady as a drum, calling her to come closer, to seek out answers deep in the misty mountains. Legends were born and made here. Amelia wanted to be among them, to explore and discover, conserve and protect.
Thorne continued to turn the pages of the book, speaking the words softly to himself in his toddler voice that was sometimes more gibberish than real words. He was a quiet child. He spoke little, but she knew he was smart. He was already learning to recognize the letters and their sounds, and he was even sounding out a few simple words in his picture books.
The plane suddenly dropped a little. Amelia’s heart jumped in her chest, but then she chuckled. Thorne squealed in delight.
“Heavens, what’s the matter, Charlie? You didn’t let Jacob take over flying, did you?”
Charlie held tight to the controls. “No, we seem to have hit a draft.”
The plane jerked, and Amelia checked her seat belt and Thorne’s, making sure they were secure.
“Are you buckled in?” Jacob called back to them.
“Yes.”
“Good. Hold on—”
The plane’s engine suddenly sputtered, and the plane tipped down. The engine reengaged for a brief few seconds before giving out again. But it was too late. The plane dropped out of the sky toward the jungle below.
The next few seconds happened in flashes. Smoke—screams—plummeting—trees—crash—silence.
Amelia coughed as she woke in the thick darkness. For a second, she couldn’t remember what had happened. She strained to see anything as her eyes adjusted to the dark. A soft whimper beside her made her flinch.
“Mummy . . .” Thorne’s voice came from somewhere beside her.
“Hold on, darling,” she said and unfastened her seat belt. The inside of the Cessna was becoming clearer as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. They must have landed below the canopy of hagenia trees.
She unclipped Thorne’s seat belt and felt around his tiny face. “Are you hurt, my love?” she asked, searching for any injury. He shook his head.
“Jacob! Charlie!” she called out.
There was a cough at the front of the plane. “Darling?” Jacob’s voice, rusty sounding, came back to her.
“Charlie?” she called out again, but no sound came from the pilot’s chair. A massive tree had pierced the window between the two seats in the front of the plane.
Her husband reached over and clapped a hand on Charlie’s shoulder, giving the man a gentle shake. He didn’t respond. Jacob picked up the man’s wrist and put two fingers against his skin.
“No pulse,” Jacob said. He turned Charlie’s head slightly, exposing the part of his skull that had been caved in by the tree limb. “Christ . . .” Jacob closed his eyes briefly and exhaled a heavy sigh.
Amelia covered her mouth with her hands as grief squeezed her heart. Poor Charlie.
Jacob unclipped his belt and climbed through the narrow aisle over fallen luggage toward them. “Are you and Thorne okay?”
“Yes, we’re all right.” She pulled Thorne onto her lap. “What happened?”
“The engine gave out.” Jacob ruffled a hand through Thorne’s hair and kissed Amelia on the forehead. “Thank Christ you’re all right.”
Jacob turned to the door on the side of the plane and twisted the handle. After a few seconds it groaned and gave way. A wave of heat and humid air filled the cabin. Jacob stuck his head out into the jungle.
“I think we’re still a long way from the airstrip. It looks like the plane made it all the way to the ground, but we won’t have to worry about it being unstable if we move about the cabin.” He pulled his head back inside and glanced around. “Look for the first aid kit. There might be a flare gun and some supplies.”
Amelia tucked their son back into his seat and helped Jacob search the cabin.
“At least we have food,” she said. They had brought a few weeks’ worth of provisions. She had insisted on having dried edibles packed on the plane before they left London.
“I found the satellite phone,” Jacob said with a relieved sigh. “I’ll call Cameron.” He dialed his younger brother’s number back in London.
“Damn. It went to voice mail,” he muttered. “Cameron, it’s Jacob. Our plane crashed somewhere west of the Bwindi airstrip. I need you to call the number of the forest guides that I sent you in an email last week. Have them start looking for us right away. Make sure—” Jacob stopped abruptly. “Bloody hell.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The message shut off.” He ended the call and turned off the phone to preserve the battery.
Amelia located the first aid kit and Jacob’s handgun, which was safe in its case with a box of ammuniti
on.
“I want us to sleep inside the plane. It’s the safest place. I’m going to move Charlie’s body outside and bury him, if I can. When they find us, we can retrieve his remains then. I’ll find the multitool. It should have a pickax on one end.”
Amelia nodded in agreement. She didn’t like thinking about Charlie’s body being out there where it might attract animals and insects, but they had to stay safe. A corpse close to them would only increase the risk of predators, not to mention infection and disease.
“Let me help you.” Amelia checked to make sure Thorne was in his seat. She cupped his face and gazed into his big blue eyes. “Stay here, honey. Mummy and Daddy will be right back.”
She joined Jacob at the front of the plane. The cockpit window was smashed into fractured pieces like frosted glass. Charlie’s limp body sagged back in the seat, and Jacob leaned forward and hugged him as he lifted him up. Then he moved the body toward her. Amelia shivered as she took the man’s wrists and backed her way out of the plane’s door. She and Jacob carried the pilot a good distance from the plane, but they kept the plane in their sight as they laid him down.
Jacob dragged his fingers through his dark hair and met Amelia’s gaze. “We can’t dig a deep grave, not without shovels. The small ax will have to be enough. It has a sharp-edged scoop on the other end.”
Amelia had no words. It was an unspeakable tragedy to leave their pilot’s body to the elements and wild animals, but what choice did they have?
She reached out and clasped her husband’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry, Jacob.” She could see the pain in his eyes. He was a man with a heart deeper than the ocean. He loved all living things and valued all life.
Jacob led her away from Charlie’s body back to the plane. They stopped just outside the cabin, listening to the cadence of the jungle, the hum and chirp of insects, the blend of wild, exotic birds and monkeys, oblivious to the disaster that had just happened. Jacob and Amelia exchanged a long, meaningful glance. It was as if the jungle was beginning to swallow the plane and the three surviving passengers whole.
Jacob gently gripped her hips, pulling her to him, and she wound her arms around his neck. He embraced her, hugging her to him, and brushed his hand up and down her back.
“We’re going to get through this. Cameron knows were alive. He won’t stop looking for us. Until then, we can have a proper family adventure. Just think: Lofty and Cameron would have a good laugh if they were here with us.”
Amelia chuckled shakily. “Lofty thinks everything is an adventure.” She thought of Jacob’s old schoolmate, the Earl of Lofthouse, whom everyone called Lofty, and the idea did give her a bit of spark back. Lofty was a delightful man with a sense of humor and a taste for expensive brandy. He, Cameron, and Jacob had been thick as thieves as boys.
She nodded. He was trying to keep things light, but emotions rolled through her like a building storm. Her husband and child were in an ancient forest, possibly unreachable for any rescue, and she didn’t know how to protect them. Danger was everywhere.
The next two weeks of living in the downed plane were not easy. Jacob Haywood kept a close eye on his wife and child, making sure they were safe at all times.
He also purified their water from a nearby river by mixing it with a solution that contained iodine and chlorine dioxide tablets, which killed off some giardia parasites. Thorne always made a face when he had to drink the tablet-treated water, but he would look at Jacob, and with a little weary sigh he would drink the water. The boy never complained, even when his small belly grumbled with hunger. Most days Jacob felt like a failure. He and Amelia both had staved off eating whenever possible to give more food to their son, but it was time he started trying to hunt. Uganda had an antelope species called the kob, which lived in these forests. With any luck he could find some, or fish in the river that he’d found not too far from them.
“Darling?” Jacob retrieved his gun from the case inside the cockpit where he’d hidden it out of Thorne’s sight for safety.
Amelia was sitting in one of the seats with Thorne, reading the jungle alphabet book to him. “Yes?”
“I’m going to go hunting, and maybe I’ll fish in the river. Stay here with Thorne. I should be back in a few hours.”
She stood and lifted Thorne into her arms. “Jacob, I don’t know if that’s safe.”
He was almost too big to hold like that, but Jacob had the sudden urge to have his child in his arms. He held out his hands, and Amelia passed him the toddler. Thorne rested his cheek on Jacob’s shoulder as he cradled the boy, pressing his own cheek on the child’s head.
A realization dawned on him as he swayed the little boy in his arms. Someday he would be holding Thorne for the last time. At some point the boy would be too big, too old for this. Was this the last time? Would Jacob even be aware of it when that last time he held his son came and went? A chill crept along his arms and the back of his neck. It felt like someone had stepped over his grave.
He held Thorne a moment longer before he gave him back to his wife. Amelia offered him a wistful smile, but her eyes were heavy with concern.
“I’ll be back soon,” he promised and kissed her quick and hard.
“Be careful,” Amelia warned as he stepped into the jungle that awaited him outside the security of the downed Cessna.
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 loud pok—pok—pok sound 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.