Gray squinted at the spread of jungle to either side. The beams of his jostling headlamps revealed nothing but impenetrable dark walls. He slowed the ATV to a crawl.
Faraji waved toward a slight break in the forest ahead.
“That’s the road to the lake we’re looking for?” Gray asked. “You’re sure?”
He nodded vigorously. “Ndiyo.”
Kowalski leaned forward from the rear bench, which he shared with the biology postgrad, Benjie Frey. The big man had been dozing on and off during the trek here, but he never relinquished his hold on his DARPA weapon, the flat-nosed Shuriken. Gray had his own weapon slung over his shoulder, a large KelTec P50 handgun. The fifteen-inch-long semi-automatic pistol held fifty rounds, each capable of piercing body armor from two hundred yards away.
Kowalski scowled as they pulled up to the turnoff. “That don’t look like any road. More like an overgrown rut.”
Gray didn’t disagree. If not for Faraji, he would have easily missed the gap between the two towering palms. The track was thickly overgrown, showing not even a footpath through the thick vegetation. It looked as if no one had passed through here in ages. Then again, these jungles grew at a riotous pace, quickly filling in an empty place in a frenzied competition for resources.
“That the way,” Faraji insisted.
Gray had to take the kid at his word. He didn’t even have satellite navigation to guide him. Shortly after leaving the camp, he had stopped and disabled the vehicle’s GPS system so they couldn’t be tracked. With the level of corruption here, he couldn’t trust that someone in the military might alert the enemy.
Gray shifted back into drive and made a sharp turn onto the side path. The giant tires had no difficulty riding over the undergrowth. Still, their pace quickly became a slow, bumpy crawl as the way forward grew narrower. A tight squeeze between a pair of giant cedars scraped most of the paint off the sides of the ATV.
“Hope you weren’t planning on getting your deposit back,” Kowalski groused from the back seat, peering over his shoulder.
Gray didn’t object to the big man’s looming presence, not even the reek of the cigar butt smoldering between his teeth. He wanted all eyes on the trail. While the headlamps helped illuminate the way forward, that way became more and more difficult to discern. By now, the overgrown path looked nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding jungle. Still, Faraji assured them they were on the right trail.
Benjie squeezed forward, too. His eyelids blinked rapidly in a nervous tic. “Maybe we should stop and wait for sunrise. Make sure we don’t get totally lost in the dark.”
Throughout the journey, the biologist had been keeping a wary watch on the jungle. Gray understood the young man’s apprehension. Benjie had to be worried about what the forest hid, especially after the events of last night: the attack by the baboon tribe, the chaos and bloodshed that followed.
“We need to keep moving,” Gray said. “Another series of storms is due to hit the area. We can’t risk getting bogged down if the rain becomes heavy.”
Gray had other reasons for haste, too. Any delay in their search meant more lives would be lost. Plus, he was all too cognizant of the unknown enemy dogging their efforts.
With no other choice, he continued into the night. As he did, the forest awoke around them. Scores of bats flitted through the beams of their lights. Something large—maybe a boar—barreled across the brush ahead and vanished into the dark. Over the rumble of the ATV’s diesel engines, sharp screeches and haunting howls reached them.
Faraji finally leaned forward and pulled the windshield back into place, sealing the vehicle.
“About time,” Kowalski grumbled.
Gray forged ahead. They crossed a dozen swollen streams and mucked their way through swampy grounds. He weighed the difficulty of the task ahead, to follow William Sheppard’s historical trail to some lost kingdom, a place considered cursed by the local tribes. The effort seemed impossible. The Congo basin, with its jungles and savannas, covered over a million square miles, roughly half the size of the continental United States. It could hide almost anything. The difficulty would be finding what was buried here.
He remembered the last of Sheppard’s photos. It showed a pair of vine-encrusted pillars that flanked a dark crack into a forested cliff. He pictured the two words scrawled on the back: Mfupa Ufalme. The Kingdom of Bones.
With each passing mile, his anxiety grew.
Even if we find the place, will it offer any answers?
He found himself pressing harder on the accelerator, setting a faster pace. The ATV rumbled and rattled through the jungle. At one point, a huge gray monitor lizard, easily seven feet long, sped away from their path, glaring back at the ATV. It looked prehistoric, reminding Gray of the agelessness of this forest. It was as if they were falling back in time.
Faraji reached over and grabbed his arm. “Okapi ziwa!”
The kid pointed toward a distant glint of moonlight off of water. Gray had thought it was another stream. But as he drove closer, the dark mirror grew wider and brighter. Its edges spread into the surrounding forest. The recent monsoons must have overflowed the lake’s banks.
Gray slowed as he approached the shore. He had originally imagined the place would be no more than a large pond, but the lake covered tens of acres. A haze of gnats and mosquitoes hovered over its flat surface. At their approach, a whole battalion of frogs leaped and splashed into the lake. A huge white heron took off from a nest in the reeds and swept slowly over the water.
“Is this the place?” Kowalski asked.
Faraji nodded, “Okapi ziwa.”
Benjie shifted forward. “It’s so big. Where do we even begin our search? It could take us days.”
Gray knew the biologist was right. He left the ATV engine idling and pulled out the sheaf of seven photos, now protected in a waterproof sleeve. He removed the topmost picture and compared the lake in the photo to the view ahead. He searched for telltale landmarks that might confirm the two were indeed the same. In the old picture, a large boulder sat at the lake’s edge. A similar rock in the shape and contour poked out of the flooded lake near the north bank.
Faraji was right. This is definitely the place.
He flipped the picture over and again studied the sketch of an okapi at that lake’s edge, knowing the drawing had to be important.
Gray frowned, unable to discern its significance. Still, Sheppard must have led them to this lake for a reason. But what could it be? He suspected the answer was beyond his ability to solve. But hopefully not for another.
He twisted in his seat. “Faraji, the Reverend Sheppard tailored his clues for your people.” He brought the photo higher. “Does this sketch mean anything to you? Does it offer any hint at where we should look for his next clue?”
Faraji bit his lower lip and squinted at the drawing. He finally simply shrugged helplessly. “Maybe Woko know more. Not me.”
The boy winced with shame, maybe guilt.
Gray recognized the weight being placed on the boy’s shoulders. The loss of the shaman—Faraji’s mentor—clearly ate the boy’s confidence.
Still, Gray refused to give up. The image of the okapi had helped identify this lake, one known only to the Kuba. It was here that the tribe had once hunted that rare giraffid. In the sketch, the okapi even had chain around a hind leg, indicating its capture.
Gray tapped a finger on that chain and closed his eyes. He tried to discern Sheppard’s intent in drawing it. He pictured the tribe hunting and capturing one of the okapi, of them securing it in place, but where would that happen?
Then he suddenly knew.
He opened his eyes and stared hard at Faraji. “Did your people keep a camp here? Somewhere along the shore where they would regularly stay? Where they might bring any animals they had captured or killed?”
Faraji nodded. He turned and pointed along the curve of the southern bank, to where a snaking stream emptied into a wide cove in the lake. “We make camp over there. Good fishing and hunting. Very good.”