by Andy Briggs
Jane never once complained but Robbie was starting to feel weak.
“How much further? I’m exhausted!”
Tarzan answered by throwing something at Robbie. Then he leaped down, and shoved a green papaya-like fruit in his hands. “Eat!”
Robbie hesitated and only took a bite when he saw Jane eagerly crunch into one. The orange flesh inside was sweet and textured like a melon’s. The taste was unlike anything he’d eaten before. No sooner had he devoured it than he felt a surge of energy course through him, shaking all fatigue away.
Whatever it was it was a perfect natural remedy. He ate another, stashing several more in his backpack.
“Any sign of Rokoff?”
Tarzan led them down a steep trail where the trees suddenly cleared and they found themselves on the sandy bank of a wide river. Sheeta was already there, lapping water as he kept an alert eye out for danger. Tarzan pointed to a circle of charcoal, the remains of a campfire.
“Are you sure this was Rokoff?” asked Jane. “There are poachers, loggers . . . all kinds of people hiding out here.”
Robbie knelt by the ashes and poked them with a stick, revealing several plastic ration packs, which had only been partially burned. He lifted a can up. The label was barely legible but he could see a date penned on the side, in the same place Esmée always wrote when stocking the inventory.
“I’m pretty sure it’s Rokoff’s mess. This is from our camp.”
Tarzan clapped Robbie on the back, so hard that it knocked the breath out of him.
“Robbie make good hunter.”
Robbie was surprised by the compliment. Tarzan moved to the water’s edge and traced a finger over a stretch of flattened sand.
“Rokoff take boat from here.” The sand was flattened diagonally into the river, indicating they had launched downstream.
“That’s just great,” sighed Jane. “How’re we going to catch up now? We can’t swim after them.”
“But we can make a raft,” Robbie suggested. “We float the logs downstream all the time so why should it be any different?” He walked to the water’s edge and tossed a stone in.
“Robbie . . .” said Tarzan.
“Looks very deep—”
The calm river in front of him suddenly exploded in a mass of white water. Robbie felt time slow down as an enormous pair of jagged jaws punctured through the rising curtain of water—ready to snap him in half.
12
Paulvitch coughed as he inhaled the sickly cigarette fumes puffing around Rokoff’s head.
“Do you have to smoke that rubbish in here?” Paulvitch protested.
Rokoff gave him an icy stare then deliberately blew streams of smoke directly at him, sending him into another coughing fit.
“I’m going to be sick,” snapped Paulvitch, using the cuff of his sleeve to wipe the beads of sweat running down his temples. He had been complaining constantly since they boarded the boat. The stifling atmosphere in the cabin did nothing to relieve his condition.
Rokoff closed his eyes and tried to blank the man out. It wasn’t easy. If Paulvitch wasn’t moaning he was making hacking noises in the back of his throat. A small CD player whirled through a Tchaikovsky compilation. The music always buoyed Rokoff’s spirits after a particularly arduous adventure, but it was difficult to concentrate with Paulvitch’s whining and the dull thrum of the boat’s engines. Not that this had been a difficult job. All the pieces of his plan had fallen into place without incident, except for the violent demise of the local poachers he had hired, which had not only saved him money (if they were dead, he didn’t have to pay them), but also given him a first-hand glimpse of one of the most lethal creatures on earth.
Taking a rare mountain gorilla would have been a big achievement for most poachers, but for the Russian it barely registered. As a child, Rokoff became a skilled hunter in the Siberian plains, but back then he hunted out of necessity for food and skins rather than pleasure. He had pushed himself in the wilderness. Living on the edge sharpened his survival skills and developed his desire to explore the world. His school education brought with it increasing disappointment that the world had already been thoroughly explored. There were no dark places on the map, no civilizations still waiting to be discovered. But he clung on to the hope that the tales of unknown creatures and hidden subterranean worlds he’d read about really existed.
His craving for the impossible hunt was something that gnawed at him with every waking moment. As a young man he learned to pilot various aircraft just so he could search for the Yeti high in the Himalayas and the flying Ropen in Papua New Guinea. But these proved to be futile adventures that eroded his belief in the unknown. They had turned him into a bitter man, angry that the stories that had captured his childhood imagination were nothing more than fiction.
Now he had found something really incredible; something he had only heard about in legend. The White Ape. A wild man—a hunter with a survival acumen greater than his own. The ultimate prey—the ultimate challenge. Rokoff smiled to himself. The hunt was just beginning.
The scratched Tchaikovsky CD jumped and glitched, bringing Rokoff back to Paulvitch’s complaining.
“We should make Okeke pay double for dragging us to this sweatbox,” he grumbled.
Rokoff stubbed out his cigarette and stood up, mopping his brow with a carefully folded handkerchief plucked from the breast pocket of his cream linen suit.
“You possess a terrible lack of imagination, Alexis,” he said.
“And you have too much.”
“Perhaps. But which will be our undoing?”
Paulvitch scowled. He hated Rokoff talking down to him, something he did on a regular basis. He didn’t reply. Instead he sat hunched forward in his chair, propping his head in his hands and hoping he wouldn’t be sick again. Rokoff took his Panama hat from the table and used it to fan himself as he left the cabin.
•••
The ship’s hold was oppressively hot, and the drum of the engines echoed in the wide space. Rokoff’s hunting equipment was stored in one corner. Aside from his trusted Saiga rifle the rest of it was easy to replace. He had decided not to return to the logging camp because of the girl’s connection with the apes. Getting the young gorilla out of the jungle was his immediate priority and he suspected the loggers would have tried to stop him.
He knelt in front of the cage pushed against one wall. Karnath was slumped in the corner. The little ape’s brown eyes flickered wide with fear when he saw Rokoff, a reaction the Russian approved of.
“How are you, my little friend?”
Karnath had only experienced life around the other gorillas in his troop and responded with a verbal cue they used to communicate. He grunted, waiting for Rokoff to do the same back, indicating everything would be OK. Rokoff merely grinned, showing too many teeth. Karnath took the eye contact as a threat and looked away. His mind was still fogged from the tranquilizer dart Rokoff had shot into him.
“Wake up!” Rokoff thumped the cage hard, startling Karnath.
Karnath whimpered in fright. Rokoff hit the cage again, harder this time. The little gorilla tried to push himself further into the corner of the cage as Rokoff struck the bars for a third time.
“That’s waking you up now, eh? You need to be lively for your new owner or I’ll have to throw you into the river and find myself a new pet.” Rokoff enjoyed watching the fear in Karnath’s eyes. “You don’t want to put me through all that trouble again, do you?”
Karnath was used to fresh air, greenery, and freedom, but now he clamped his tiny hand over his face to block out the cold steel and acrid fumes from the boat’s diesel engines. Being far from anything comforting and familiar, he was more terrified than he had ever been.
•••
Sheer instinct saved Robbie from the attack. He jumped aside, falling to the sand. Water drenched him as the mouth tore into his backpack. The Nile crocodile’s more than four-hundred-pound bulk slammed to the ground next to him.
The attack had been so sudden that Robbie was in a state of shock. For a split second he thought he was safe. Then the huge reptile rapidly backed into the water taking his backpack with it. The beast’s immense jaws had almost severed the pack in half, breaking one strap—but Robbie’s arm was still hooked through the other one.
He yelled in terror as he was pulled backward into the river. He reached for Jane as she lunged for him. Their fingers locked—and then she was yanked to the floor and dragged across the sand until her grip slipped.
Robbie heard his name being screamed just as the frothing river closed over his head. He managed to suck in a lungful of air before water filled his mouth.
The next few seconds were a confused jumble. He felt the backpack tear from his shoulder and he was free. Frantically, he thrashed toward the surface, breaking the water a few feet from the riverbank. He sank into mud and was relieved that the water only came up to his waist. He saw Jane and Sheeta on the bank staring at him—no, not at him, but behind him.
Robbie twisted around to see Tarzan straddling the thrashing crocodile. He had one arm around the beast’s throat; his other easily pushed the animal’s elongated snout closed.
The reptile flexed and twisted, trying to throw Tarzan off. Its tail skimmed across the water, forcing Robbie to duck to avoid having his head knocked off. He didn’t realize how big the crocodile was until it arced back into the water, taking Tarzan with it.
Robbie scrambled to the bank, falling to his knees as Jane ran to him, her gaze firmly fixed on where Tarzan had vanished. She opened her mouth to call his name—just as the crocodile darted out of the river, straight for them.
Robbie stood and pulled Jane with him as they ran in a zigzag. The animal was incredibly fast in a straight line, but, as they recalled from Esmée’s lectures, it had difficulty following their constantly changing path. Robbie lost his grip on Jane as she darted to the left.
Sheeta streaked ahead. It was the first time Robbie had ever seen the panther frightened. He glanced back to see that Jane had fallen behind. The crocodile’s tooth-filled jaws opened on either side of her legs.
“Watch out!”
Tarzan shot from the water and grabbed the reptile’s tail, every muscle in his body tensing as he braced himself in the river’s mud. The crocodile was pulled to a dead stop. Tarzan heaved it backward as the jaws sliced closed—slamming together an inch from Jane’s legs.
Robbie watched in astonishment as Tarzan hauled the animal back into the water. The reptile violently writhed until it freed itself from his grip, but rather than turn and attack, it quickly headed for deeper water, sinking beneath the surface without a ripple.
Tarzan waded ashore, his ripped shorts soaked. Blood trickled from a cut on his leg inflicted by the crocodile’s hind claws. He was breathing heavily, exhausted from the struggle. He cast a critical eye over Robbie and Jane to check they were unharmed. Once satisfied, he rapidly shook his head to dislodge the water in his ears and looked back to the river.
“Now Robbie build boat,” he said, as if nothing had happened.
•••
They continued working as the sun began to set, chopping down small trees to build the raft until their clothes were damp with sweat, but after the crocodile attack, neither Jane nor Robbie dared to take a dip in the river to cool down. Felling trees with the machete was a laborious process. Tarzan watched, fascinated, as Robbie lashed the trunks together with the rope they had salvaged from his torn backpack.
Tarzan left briefly to find food, leaving Sheeta to watch over them. The panther kept high in the trees, but his presence put Robbie on edge rather than reassuring him. Without Tarzan around, it was just another wild animal.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this for a stupid monkey,” he grumbled, which provoked an icy look from Jane.
Later, taking a break, Jane talked quietly with Tarzan at the river’s edge. Robbie caught enough of the conversation to know that Jane was telling him about the Greystokes. Tarzan was clearly unimpressed.
Robbie checked the camcorder in his pocket. Luckily it was waterproof and still worked. He managed to sneak in several shots of Tarzan, carefully zooming in on his face to get his profile just as Clark had instructed. By studying photos of the Greystokes online, they’d found that Tarzan strikingly resembled his father in appearance. Robbie knew this alone was not proof enough, but it was helpful. Videoing the aircraft would be the indisputable evidence.
In the dying rays of the sun they cast their vessel out into the river. It was broad, flat, and big enough to carry the three humans, but the gaps between the logs made it look as though it was already falling apart. Robbie fastened hollow bamboo strips across the deck, trapping air to keep it afloat, and made a pair of basic oars from a dead tree.
“We’re ready to go at dawn,” said Robbie, although he was struggling to see how they could make up the time to catch Rokoff.
“No. Go now,” stated Tarzan with his usual directness. He started to push the raft into the water, but Robbie put his foot on it to stop him.
“Wait a second, we can’t navigate the river at night. We don’t know what’s out there!”
“Out there? Rocks, gimla, difficult places for boat to cross.”
“Exactly.”
“Rokoff must stop. We catch up.”
Tarzan tilted the raft to dislodge Robbie’s foot and pushed it out. It dipped in the water, but remained afloat.
“How’re we going to see where we’re going?”
Jane held up the last of the wind-up flashlights they had brought; she had been unable to locate the one that had fallen from Robbie’s pack.
“With this.” She smiled at Robbie, pleased with her foresight. Robbie was too tired to return the smile.
•••
The voyage down the river proved to be less terrifying than Robbie had anticipated. The pale moon shone down the meandering river’s path and Jane at the front sat facing forward, sweeping the flashlight beam ahead to reveal any immediate hidden dangers. Sheeta had disappeared into the jungle when they set out; Robbie was relieved Tarzan didn’t attempt to bring the cat on board too.
Robbie and Tarzan pulled on the oars, and they caught a strong current in the middle of the river that bore them silently on. Occasionally Jane warned of rocks ahead and they steered around them without incident.
Their fatigue played tricks on their eyes in the semi-darkness. Shapes loomed out of the water and several times Robbie panicked when he thought he saw a crocodile. Most turned out to be floating driftwood while others simply vanished into the gloom.
Hours passed in silence and Robbie’s arms were almost numb from rowing. He begged to rest and Tarzan reluctantly agreed. The raft continued onward caught by the strong current, and Tarzan used his oar as a rudder to round each sweeping turn. Without the steady churn of the oars, other sounds floated toward them across the river. Splashes that were uncomfortably close, the constant chirping of frogs and insects, and the occasional screeches of animals Robbie and Jane could not identify. Hungry eyes in the ominous wall of dark trees along the river reflected from Jane’s flashlight beam.
Once Robbie had rested, he took up the oar again to speed them along. He wondered how far away Rokoff was and, even with Tarzan pushing them on, he doubted they could ever catch up. None of them knew how long they would be on Rokoff’s trail. It could be days or even weeks. Compared with what little they had with them on the raft, Karibu Mji was starting to resemble a luxury resort.
Suddenly, Jane screamed as a large shape loomed in the water. Another appeared alongside. Robbie thought they were hippos and immediately lifted his oar to strike them. A cross hippopotamus could easily smash their raft apart and was deadlier than a hungry crocodile.
Tarzan’s hand shot out and pulled the oar from Robbie’s hand before he could bring it down.
“No!” said Tarzan. “Friend. Look.”
The creatures looked like a cross between a small hippo and a seal. Robb
ie and Jane could see flippers in the murky water, propelling the animals to thick clumps of floating vegetation. They would occasionally dip beneath the surface, revealing broad, shovel-like tails.
“Manatees!” exclaimed Jane. “Can I touch them?” she asked. Tarzan nodded encouragingly and Jane reached out a hand tentatively.
Robbie followed her lead and was surprised to feel soft wrinkly skin. The manatees didn’t appear to be bothered by their contact and continued swimming around the raft until they’d eaten the vegetation, before silently submerging under the black water.
Jane offered to take over rowing from Robbie for a while, and they switched places on the raft. It rocked alarmingly with the sudden shift in weight as Robbie sat down at the front, but then quickly leveled out once again.
Robbie cast the flashlight beam across the water and felt his eyes growing heavy. Behind him, Jane started talking to Tarzan, a continuation of a conversation they’d been having for a while.
“Are you sure you don’t want to know anything about your family in England?” she said in a low voice.
“Karnath family,” said Tarzan softly.
“What about D’Arnot? The Greystokes thought he was lying. I read that they even tried to have him arrested.” Tarzan never met her gaze when she spoke about the Frenchman. She could see the loss of his friend still hurt. “I think D’Arnot thought you were better off here.” She lapsed into a thoughtful silence before continuing. “And you know what? I’m starting to agree. I don’t know if the outside world is ready for you.”
While eavesdropping, Robbie was not paying attention to what lay ahead. Just then, something struck the raft with such force they were almost hurled into the water and they all cried out in alarm. Robbie’s flashlight was flung from his hand and skittered across the deck. They grabbed on to the trunks as the wood began to crack. A huge floating branch, about the size of a jeep, tore through the raft, splitting the bound timbers in a V-shape. Ropes snapped and the strong river current pivoted the raft around the sturdy limb, cracking more wood. The raft split apart under Robbie’s backside, and he hurled himself to one side.
