I’m greeted by a friendly old Malay man with a wizened face who introduces himself as Musa and looks surprised to have any visitors. “I’m afraid we’re not running any tours today,’ he says. ‘Didn’t you see the signs on your way in?”
“I’m afraid I’m not here to explore,” I say. “I’m here to see Adam Jacobs, if he’s around. I’m a friend of Zara’s.”
Musa’s face falls. “Don’t tell me you’re in on this mad scheme too. I’ll tell you what I told her. Don’t go. It’s too dangerous! You crazy young things. You’re going to get yourselves killed!”
“What?”
“You mean you’re here to bring her out of the forest?’ He sighs in relief. ‘Oh, by all means. But only if you can get back by sundown. Have you got any experience in jungle trekking?”
“Wait just one moment.’ I hold up my hand. ‘Are you telling me that Zara’s already here?”
“Oh, yes. And no. She arrived this morning. She had her father’s camera with her. And then she left – took the northwest path out into the jungle. That’s the deepest part of the forest, where the orangutans spend their nights. She said she was going to stay out there until she had proof that Martin King is poaching the orangutans.’ He makes a clicking photograph action with his fingers. ‘She’s mad, that girl. Completely mad. Doesn’t she know how dangerous those poachers are? Well, she does now. I told her. But she wouldn’t listen to me. Off she went!”
Terror clutches at my heart. “How long ago was this?”
“Oh, four hours or so.” Musa shakes his head sadly. “I tried to stop her, I did. Perhaps if I was a younger man I would be thinking differently. But there was nothing I could do.”
“Right.” I glance out at the trees. The jungle looks peaceful, full of tangled green life and dappled sunlight. A little path, marked out with wooden signposts, leads off to the northwest. It doesn’t look too difficult. If Musa didn’t look so worried, I wouldn’t be concerned at all. “I’m going in after her.”
His eyes widen. “Dressed like that?”
I’m in a black t-shirt, jeans and brogues. “I don’t have anything else.”
He shakes his head. “Let me lend you some boots from our stores. There are spiders, scorpions, all sorts of nasty creatures out there. Stay away from puddles or you’ll get the leeches on you. Don’t go in any caves. And if you see an orangutan, keep your distance. The males can really do some damage. They’re seven times as strong as a man.”
While he gets me the boots I cast my eyes over the dusty display posters up on the walls. One blares out warnings about the risk of being eaten alive by crocodiles. Apparently they found half a corpse on a riverbank not long ago. Lovely.
“Zara’s an experienced trekker. She was planning to stay out all night,” says Musa as I lace up the heavy green boots he’s brought me. “But if you’re not back by early morning I’m sending out a rescue party. Understood? Now, here’s a backpack. Water bottles, energy bars, sandwiches, torch. Make sure you keep all your food sealed or the ants will get in. Do you know how to use a compass?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Take mine, and here’s a map. Zara said she was going to Bukit Tinggi. It’s a hill with a lot of fruiting trees where the orangutans go to feed. It’ll take you three hours to get there.” He winces, a new thought striking him. “Just be careful, alright? I can warn you as much as I like about the jungle. But these poachers – they’re something different. Please just take care of yourself. Bring Adam’s daughter home safely. I haven’t even called to tell him what she’s done – I haven’t dared. Just come back, the two of you. That’s all I ask.”
“I will. I promise,” I tell him. I shake his hand. “Thanks for all your help, Musa. I’ll see you before nightfall. And Zara’ll be with me.”
I examine the map and head off into the jungle, my jeans rolled up above my knees and my borrowed boots treading heavily into the soft ground.
What the hell was Zara thinking, coming out here alone with poachers roaming the forest?
What the hell am I doing, a man who’s never set foot in a jungle before, going in after her?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Zara
I see him from miles off.
My little hideout up on the viewpoint at Bukit Tinggi is well concealed. I’ve cut down some wide leaves and branches to make myself a little den, and I can see the orangutans gently playing in the branches further down the hill. It’s the ideal location. The jungle treetops fall away beneath me all the way to the horizon. Beside me, hanging from a treebranch, my backpack contains enough food in the form of tins and energy bars to last me for three days. The camera I stole from Dad’s study hangs around my neck.
I’m prepared. Let the poachers come. I’ll get the police their evidence.
I’m holding back my laughter at the antics of the tiny baby orangutans when a movement on the path in the distance catches my eye. I grab my binoculars.
It’s a man, alright. And the park’s been closed to tourists for days. Dad sent all the staff home except a skeleton service to man the office after he got beaten up. Could it be one of them?
I munch through an energy bar and check on the approaching figure every few minutes as he weaves in and out of sight between the trees. When he finally gets close enough for my old binoculars to focus on his features, I’m not sure whether I’m hallucinating.
Is that – can it possibly be – Chance?
I nearly drop my binoculars with shock.
Abandoning my hideout, I run back to the path as fast as I can. Sweat prickles on my legs. I don’t know whether I’m panicking or filled with delight. Chance is here. In Malaysia. In the middle of the jungle. Maybe I am going crazy, just like Musa said.
I pound down the path toward him, the camera clunking against my chest.
Twenty minutes later, I’m gasping for breath, covered in sweat, and I still haven’t reached him. I’ve slowed to a walk. But I wipe the sweat from my forehead, round a corner, and…
There he is.
I whoop for joy and launch myself forwards into his arms.
It’s a sticky, messy, sweaty kiss. Almost too warm to be sexy. Somehow, though, we manage to pull it off.
My legs are wrapped around his waist. Chance spins me around in midair, grinning like a maniac.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a jungle like this?” he asks.
“I could ask you a similar question!”
“I came to find you, of course.” He kisses the tip of my nose. It’s really too warm to do much more. “I didn’t feel right about the way we left things. I wanted to come over here and sort things out in person.”
I wrinkle my nose. “James told me you were meeting with Martin King.”
“James is as bad as I am at making up excuses,” Chance laughs. Relief washes over me. I hug him again, not caring that sweat is making my shirt stick to my chest.
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” he says, putting me down on the ground. “Now, where are your things? Don’t tell me you came out here without a backpack. I promised Musa I’d get you back before nightfall.”
“Chance, no.” I fold my arms. “Did he tell you why I came out here?”
“Yes, and I think you’re crazy. What are you trying to do, take pictures of poachers? That’s a matter for the police.”
“But the police aren’t doing anything! Chance, you didn’t see what they did to Dad. They hurt him. I have to do something. I’m not going back. Not until I’ve at least tried.”
He gives me a long look. “I won’t force you.”
I clap my hands together. “Will you stay with me?”
“One night,” says Chance. “I assume they only come at night? And if nothing comes of it, you’ll come back with me.”
“One night,” I promise, grabbing his hand. “Now, come and look at my hideout. I built it myself.”
“You’re completely crazy,” he complains. “Did you know tha
t? Utterly, out-of-this-world crazy.”
“You won’t be saying that when we go to the police with photographs of Martin King’s hired thugs shooting Dad’s orangutans,” I say confidently. “Dad’s got great night vision on this camera. It’s state of the art – he uses it for work. If we can get just one shot of someone who’s connected to Martin King…”
“Yes, yes.” Chance looks worried. “It’s a good plan, Zara. Or it would be if we were private investigators, or police officers. I want you to promise me that you’ll be careful, alright? I’ll never forgive myself if I agree to this mad plan and something awful happens to you out here.”
I rise up on my tiptoes to kiss him gently. “Nothing’s going to happen,” I promise.
And I mean it.
But it’s an easy promise to make, in the peaceful sunlit jungle with birds chirruping around us and the orangutans in the distance ready for Chance to see for the first time.
I should have learnt by now. Promises are easy. Keeping them is hard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Chance
The jungle gets colder at night. At first I relished it. Now I’m wishing I had a coat. I’ve rolled my jeans back down over my legs, but there’s nothing to stop the goose bumps rising on my arms.
Besides me, Zara wriggles down inside her sleeping bag. At least she came prepared.
“You’re not cold?” she whispers, lowering her Dad’s night vision binoculars and rubbing her eyes.
“I’m fine,” I say. I rub my hand in lazy circles over her back. I have no idea what time it is. Zara sighs peacefully.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
The orangutans haven’t moved for hours, and neither have we. A while ago a deer picked its way across the hillside and we watched in awed silence, hardly daring to breathe, as it came within a whisper of our hideout. That’s the only drama that’s transpired so far.
Zara’s the first to hear the noise. She cocks her head. I feel the tension rise in her back muscles. “What’s that?”
I listen. It’s a low, growling, mechanical stutter that has no place in the jungle. Still some way off, but coming closer.
Zara hands me the night vision binoculars and I carefully ease my way to standing and look in the direction of the path. What I see there has me flinging myself back down to earth.
“Motorbikes,” I whisper. “Three of them.”
“Shit!” I can see the whites of her eyes in the dark. “They’re actually here.” She fumbles for the camera.
“Stay down, and stay quiet,” I tell her. In the distance, the motorbikes splutter to a stop.
They don’t want to disturb the orangutans. Not yet.
I think about those three men picking their way through the jungle towards us and my fists clench. Zara lays a hand on my arm. It’s killing me to lie here, to wait and watch an endangered animal get killed. But it’s all I can do.
I have to admit Zara’s plan is working out better than I thought it would. I should have trusted in her and her knowledge of the jungle. I squeeze her hand to let her know I believe in her now.
Zara gives me a grateful look and edges forward on her belly, creeping up to the very edge of the hideout. Her camera is primed and ready.
Nothing happens for the longest time. If I hadn’t seen the motorbikes with my own eyes I’d start to think we imagined the sound.
Then, soft but distinct, the tread of footprints.
They’re very close. It’s hard to judge distance in the jungle, but it feels as though any moment they might walk right on top of us.
Zara doesn’t move. She’s poised and perfect. Her body in its black and green hiking gear blends seamlessly into the jungle floor in the moonlight.
Then, ahead of us, they come into view. A little way down the hill. Three men. The man with the torch draws the eye first. His light cuts a jagged yellow line through the trees. Then one with a headtorch, looking at a map.
The third is visible only when their lights pass over him. But he’s carrying a gun.
My breath stills in my chest. I feel like crawling towards him, leaping out of the jungle like a vampire bat and wrestling that gun out of his hands. But I would never put Zara in danger like that.
I wait. She waits. The men keep walking.
Their torch glides smoothly over the jungle. Hunting out the orangutans.
Zara raises her camera and clicks the shutter. Once, twice. There’s nothing more but the softest of clicks, but it echoes like thunder in my ears.
The men keep walking, oblivious.
I’m starting to think they’re going to pass us by and it will all be for nothing. A shot of three men walking through some unidentifiable jungle in the dark won’t be enough to convict anyone. Still, Zara will have to be satisfied come morning. No-one can say she hasn’t tried. The horrible danger of this situation is becoming more and more apparent by the minute. I’m kicking myself for not throwing her over my shoulder and dragging her out of the jungle the moment I saw her this afternoon.
The men are having some trouble locating the orangutans. That’s good – I don’t want to see one of the peaceful, humanlike creatures killed.
The bad thing is that they’re shining the torch around in ever-widening circles. And they’re not nearly far away enough for my liking.
I reach forwards and tug at Zara’s ankle. I want her back here with me. Safely under the thick cover of her hideout. But she doesn’t move.
One of the men – the man with the gun – he’s got his eyes focussed on something in the bushes. He’s got the gun lowered against his shoulder. He’s taking aim.
Click, goes Zara’s camera softly. Click, click, click.
The man with the torch is pointing it just below the bushes so that the light doesn’t startle whatever unlucky animal there is inside. I start to breathe again. At least they’re not looking our way.
I haven’t banked on the man with the headtorch.
He’s looking around the forest, examining his surroundings.
He looks up the hill. The light of his torch follows his gaze. Shining directly at us.
It bounces off Zara’s camera lens like a beacon.
“Shit!” the man shouts. A British accent, just like Martin King’s. Not a local. “There’s something up there!”
The man with the gun whirls around in one quick motion. I act before I can think.
I fling myself forwards on top of Zara, covering her body with mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Zara
The gun makes almost no sound at all.
That confuses me for years afterwards. Even when I learn about silencers, about the methods poachers use to stalk their prey in the dead of night, my mind keeps returning to the lessons it’s learnt from Hollywood movies. Guns make a noise. Guns go boom.
But the bullet which enters Chance’s body makes only a sharp, strange crack that I barely even register.
He grunts on top of me and rolls off. I hardly know what’s happened. No gunshot – no problem. I’m angry, even. How could he be so stupid, to give us away like that?
Then the men come running up the hill, and torchlight reveals Chance lying on the floor with a dark stain of blood spreading over his stomach. I drop to my knees and scream.
“Chance! Chance, no!”
He props himself up on his elbow, looking at the wound with a confused expression on his face. As if he can’t quite understand that it’s part of his own body. “Zara…”
“What have you done?” I shriek at the poachers, tears pouring down my face. I press my hands into the hole in Chance’s stomach where dark blood is pumping out – quickly, too quickly. My hands are quickly soaked in sticky liquid. I know that when the light shines on them they’ll be scarlet red.
“No, Zara –” Chance is trying to sit up, pushing my hands away. I fight him. He must be in shock. But he’s shaking his head, struggling to speak through his obvious pain. “Zara – take a picture.”
I final
ly understand. Chance sinks back down, pressing his own hands against the gunshot wound, and as the poachers reach me I’m standing to meet them with my camera pointing directly at their faces.
Click. Click, click, click.
“You bastards are going to rot in prison,” I say. My voice isn’t even shaking. I’m too angry, too frightened, too drenched in adrenalin to know that I ought to be trembling and running for my life.
“Fuck, Alan, you’ve killed him,” snaps the man with the headtorch. He wrenches the gun out of his partner’s hand.
“What are you going to do now?” I demand, standing in between them and Chance. “Shoot me too?”
“Zara, stop that,” Chance groans. The men stare at me. Their faces are smeared with dirt as camouflage, but I can clearly see the fear and confusion underneath.
“Screw that. We’re not murderers. Fuck this. King’s not paying me enough – I came out here to shoot some monkeys, not people,” says Alan. “I’m sorry about your friend, alright? We’ll – we’ll just find some signal and call up an air ambulance. Then maybe you can give us the camera. Fair’s fair.”
“She’s not giving you anything,” Chance snaps. I bend down to him.
“Chance, it’s not important enough. Listen, we need to get you to hospital –”
“No.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, the other still pressed into his stomach, and staggers to his feet. “I’ll be fine. These idiots barely scratched me. But we’ve got enough evidence to send them to jail for a long, long time.”
I bite back a wail of frustration. I don’t know what game Chance is playing here. I haven’t been able to look back through the pictures I’ve taken yet – I have no idea how they’ll come out. For all I know I’ve got fifteen blurry grey pictures of my own thumb. The best case scenario is that I’ve managed to get a clear shot of someone’s face.
All that means nothing, though, if Chance bleeds to death on the walk back to the sanctuary.
Taking His Own Page 16