Cole knew how much this long-awaited return to Virunga meant to Musamba and the Kambale brothers. The rebel fighters controlling the park had been messing with their country’s future for too long. There was a hardened resolve in his colleague’s dark eyes that Cole hadn’t seen before. Sure, they were there first for the gorillas, but the expression made him realize Musamba probably wouldn’t be completely opposed to using the Pneu-Dart in his own defense. Only difference between shooting a gorilla and shooting a human was that the much smaller rebel might never wake up.
“I will stay here with Marna to watch the helicopter.” Proper Kambale’s French-accented English was surprisingly good, given its status as the fourth language in his repertoire. “You three must go now to discover what has died and find our gorillas. We will stay on the radios, yes?”
“Yep, sounds good,” Cole said. “We need to get our eyes on some gorillas and then hurry on back out of here. You good, Marna?”
“We’ll be fine.” There it was again, the playful smile that made it hard to focus on anything else. “Just don’t make us wait too long!”
“No danger of that,” Cole said. “Much as I love Virunga, definitely don’t feel like messing around with its current human residents.”
He followed Innocence and Musamba into the forest.
At least not with only this crew to back me up.
It had been seven months since anyone from the park staff or the Gorilla Doctors had laid eyes on Virunga’s mountain gorillas, and they had no idea how the critically endangered animals were being affected by this constant violence. There were supposed to be over two-hundred of them in the park, almost a quarter of the world’s total population, but Cole didn’t know how well they could survive without the intensive protection and monitoring that was responsible for bringing the species back from the brink of extinction over the last forty years. Ever since the naturalist Dian Fossey—and her film version Sigourney Weaver—made them famous with
Gorillas in the Mist
, the mountain gorillas were enduring favorites of conservation organizations and animal lovers all over the world. Unfortunately, even their fame couldn’t protect them from the violent human conflicts that were an almost constant presence.
The last visit to the park came at the official invitation of General Ntaganda himself, head of the M23 militia, a group of disaffected Tutsi soldiers who at the time were reigning supreme over the various other rebel organizations in the region. Cole remembered the general as a media-whore with a misguided public relations sensibility. He repeatedly emphasized that his soldiers were specifically instructed not to harm the gorillas, all while openly profiting from an illegal charcoal industry that was quickly destroying their last remaining home range. The invited team, including Cole, the Kambales, and several Fossey Fund trackers, was able to account for all three habituated mountain gorilla families during that visit, but since then the fighting had gotten completely out of control.
There were rumors that a new group had entered the fray, eager to take over not only the charcoal production but also the much more valuable mineral mines in and around the park. Unlike most of the factions vying for control of the area, the new fighters had shunned any media attention and were shrouded in a seemingly self-imposed mantle of mystery.
“You really think it could be Kony and his gang of misfits?” Cole had asked Marna the week before over a couple big bottles of Primus. The glass and labels on Rwanda’s most popular beer were clearly recycled one too many times, but that didn’t take away from the refreshment it provided after a long day sweating in the forest. “All the guys from Virunga seem to think he’s finally found his way out of the Central African Republic—even managed to do some recruiting along the way.”
“I seriously doubt it.” Marna took a long slow drink. “Ever since your president sent those military advisors to hunt the lunatic down, he’s apparently done a pretty tidy job of staying under the radar. Why choose now of all moments to risk entering the mess across the border?”
Military advisors, right. Wonder where Jake and his guys are now, anyway?
Cole had thought, before answering her with a sarcastic smile, “Well, a few million bucks in black market minerals has been incentive enough for plenty of other guys through history, right? Why should poor old Joe miss out on all that?”
Innocence had given Bonny a long leash, and she trotted along an overgrown trail leading through the thick forest, her nose alternating every few seconds between the soft earth below and the pungent air above. Another quick burst of automatic weapons fire cut through the silence, clearly startling Musamba from his steady pace just a few steps ahead of Cole. This time the faint popping was answered by several louder explosions. Some of these militias were made up of Congolese army defectors, and they had brought halfway decent artillery into the mix.
“You okay there, doc?” Cole said. “Sounds like we’ve got some serious firepower in the park this morning.”
“Yes, and that was quite a bit closer than the first bunch.”
Dr. Musamba had grown up and attended university in the capital city of Kinshasa. He spent most of his career working as a consultant on animal health and agriculture to various international development organizations intent on spending their millions in his country, and his English was flawless. Cole knew the sharp and proper enunciation of each word had evolved out of years of friendship with a never-ending stream of idealistic young foreigners like himself—men and women from all corners of the wealthy world, coming with dreams of saving the Congo from itself.
But they always left disappointed. Not Cole, though. He was working hard to be different. After a year playing witness to and occasional participant in an unending series of impossible battles in Afghanistan, how could he not?
“Everything alright, boys?” Marna’s voice crackled over the radio at Cole’s belt. “You’re out of sight now and those guns are making us jumpy back here.”
Cole dropped the large net he had been dragging through the undergrowth and smiled to himself as he tried to think of a witty response.
Why does that South African accent
have to be so damn sexy?
And the girl behind the voice didn’t make it any easier. Her classic Dutch features, easygoing humor, and confident competence were difficult to resist.
But Cole had not come to Africa for romance. Just the opposite—he’d been hoping it would be an escape, a time to focus on his research, forget about military life for a while, and recover from the disastrous relationship he’d left behind. Marna was making this resolution way too difficult.
He opted for brevity over wit. “Roger that,” he answered. “We’re doing just fine so far.”
Cole picked up the heavy-duty butterfly net and continued dragging it through the brush along his right side. It was already filling up with a variety of flies, mosquitos and other more alien insect species disturbed by its movement. In his left hand, he held a large white flannel flag tied onto a broom handle. The flannel was perfect for gathering ticks, easily fooling them into thinking it was some tasty mammal walking by.
“Not the most glamorous part of my job,” he had admitted to Marna a few weeks earlier. “But someone’s got to do it. Do you realize how many diseases are carried by these creepy crawlies?”
“Right, and this is how you’re gonna find the next Ebola?” Marna said, a little too cynically for his liking.
“Exactly.” He left it at that. Let her be skeptical—she’d come around eventually
.
Cole was pretty faithful in taking these decidedly low-tech tools of the trade with him every time he went out trekking. He first learned the method during a summer project combing the manicured forest paths of Martha’s Vineyard. A vet school professor had recruited him as an enthusiastic young student to do the legwork in figuring out why this glamorous holiday island off the coast of Massachusetts was seeing far more than its fair share of tick-borne diseases. Rich people didn’t like worrying about scary diseases like tularemia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Lyme. It was too great a price to pay for the simple task of taking their fat Labradors out for a summer stroll in the woods.
Even though he hadn’t come up with an answer worthy of publication in
Science
or
Nature,
Cole caught the research bug and had been looking forward to getting back in the field for a long time. And now, Africa.
After an hour of insect hunting in these tropical forests, he usually had enough bugs to keep his team busy in the lab for a couple of days. First they had to identify each and every little creature, pulling out a variety of South African field guides and local university publications to make up for the fact that no one cared enough about Congolese insects to merit the production of a full textbook.
The more interesting part came next. Each little test subject was dropped in a pricey machine—kind of like a miniature food processor—and combined with just the right cocktail of chemical solutions. Turn the blender on for a few seconds, push the eject button, and out popped a one milliliter vial of genetic stew that could then be searched for any number of known and more mysterious disease agents.
Although Cole didn’t mind the insect work, it didn’t excite him in same way as trapping and tranquilizing animals from the seemingly boundless menagerie of mammalian species endemic to the region. After nine months on site, he had obtained blood and tissue samples on everything from the tiny chisel-toothed shrew to the majestic African elephant, with a whole bunch of bizarre-looking bats and vicious little monkeys in between.
These samples went into the same mini-food processor to produce their own molecular smoothies, and Cole had already identified some intriguing new viruses. Would one of them be responsible for humanity’s next big pandemic, just like so many others jumpstarted by the zoonotic transmission of an unknown pathogen from animals to humans? Another HIV, Ebola, or SARS? Much as he hoped not, this was exactly how it happened, time and time again. The whole point of the project was to learn about these viruses before they made the lethal jump out of their natural habitat. His role with the mountain gorillas was just icing on the cake of this whole year. An almost inaccessible dream of an experience that every animal lover, biology major, and veterinarian would have killed for, and he was right there living it.
“We’re getting close,” Dr. Musamba said quietly.
“I think Bonny agrees.” Cole noticed that Innocence was having a hard time keeping the strong young dog at a controlled walk as she pushed her way through a lush patch of nettles. The overwhelming scent of death was now at a gag-worthy level, but Cole was no virgin when it came to the wonders of decomposing flesh.
He remembered two dead rhinoceroses in Kruger National Park, poached overnight for their precious horns and left to rot in the searing South African sun that faithfully rose the next morning. It was the first day of a three-week internship during his last year of vet school, and he already had a nasty case of travelers’ diarrhea. Thank you, Johannesburg street vendor, but that
braai
—grilled lamb chops—was definitely worth it.
Forensic investigations can’t wait for a vet student with a weak constitution, though. So he’d jumped in a Land Cruiser with the rest of the team and bumped along twenty miles of backcountry safari track just hoping he wasn’t going to be sick and ruin an otherwise decent first impression with his veterinary idols. At about fifty yards out, a giant cloud of scavenging vultures lifted off the rhino carcasses and sent a wafting aroma that hit Cole just at the point where he couldn’t hold it in any more. Fortunately, everyone else was so intent on scoping out the surroundings that they didn’t seem to notice as he crept off into the bush to find some relief.
That scent of the two aging rhino corpses was about equal to what Cole smelled now.
Innocence Kambale stopped suddenly.
“
Oh, mon Dieu
.”
The trail opened ahead of them into another small clearing, but Cole couldn’t initially see what caused the park ranger’s uncharacteristic exclamation. He stretched to his full height, peering over the two shorter men.
“Damn.”
A coarsely-haired black shape lay motionless in a packed-down circle of green vegetation.
There’s no way that gorilla is still alive
. It would have heard them approaching and sounded the alarm long before they were close enough to get a visual. Not only that, Innocence and Bonny were familiar enough with the gorillas’ stealthy movements that they would have already identified the presence of a family group foraging in the area.
The ranger let loose some low grunting sounds, gorilla-speak meaning something like,
Just so you know, there are some friendly humans approaching.
No reason to surprise the animal in case it was really only sleeping. The three families of mountain gorillas in the Mikeno sector of Virunga National Park had all been habituated to human observation over almost ten years, and the relational understanding that the Kambales had with them was uncanny to an outside observer. It was as if the gorillas knew they had to subject themselves to the
oohs
and
awws
of the camera-toting tourists in order to secure their continued existence as a species.
Cole and the other veterinarians, on the other hand, were always a bit jealous of this unspoken camaraderie. The gorillas were smart enough to recognize every well-meaning vet who had ever been involved in an unwanted medical procedure, and they were especially wary when they spotted the dart gun. Smart as they were, these still very
non
-human primates could not seem to understand that the veterinary interventions were only being done to save their lives.
The lack of any response to Innocence’s grunts confirmed Cole’s fears. Not only confirmed them, but widened them into something he hadn’t even considered. One dead mountain gorilla could not be responsible for the stench of death permeating this whole section of forest. He had thought for sure it must be an elephant, or maybe a couple of them, slaughtered and half-butchered by rebels a few days ago for the tusks and whatever meat they could carry back to camp. But a gorilla, one of their gorillas—that idea had not even crossed his mind.
What if there are more?