The Greystoke Legacy by Andy Briggs

Author:Andy Briggs [Briggs, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6293-1
Publisher: Open Road

11

News of Anil’s death dropped morale further when the exhausted search party returned to Karibu Mji in the early hours of the morning. Esmée organized hot food and blankets as everybody gathered to listen to their story. The clash with Tafari’s men was greeted with dark looks between the loggers. Getting any further mixed up with the insurgents was something none of them relished.

Any thoughts of heading to the town for help were quashed when Esmée told them that the jeep had stopped working. This time sabotage wasn’t suspected, just the humid conditions the machinery was expected to endure. The supplies needed for the repair had all been damaged in the fire and none of the men possessed the same engineering proficiency as Robbie.

Robbie tried to press the matter of the mysterious third party holding Jane to Clark and Archie but, in their tired condition, they didn’t want to speculate as to who that could be. They just hoped that Jane was alive, somewhere.

Sleep was sporadic, and Robbie kept tossing from side to side in the hammock in his tiny shack. With no air-conditioning, the room was cloyingly warm. After two hours of restless sleep, Robbie sat up and splashed bottled water over his face, but the warm water did little to refresh him. He glanced around his hut, which was empty aside from a few changes of clothes. He had no possessions, not even a photograph of his sister, as he’d never had the time or opportunity to print one and now her face was consigned only to memory; in particular the image of her lying pale and dead. Try as he might, Robbie couldn’t focus on Sophie’s smiling, lively face. He was left with only a nightmare for a companion.

Instead he thought of Jane. She rarely smiled, her lips usually downturned, forehead furrowed as she vented her disgust with the jungle. On the few occasions she did smile, or even more infrequently, laughed, her eyes had lit up and Robbie had seen a blonde version of his sister.

He couldn’t just sit and do nothing. Running blindly into the jungle had proved to be a stupid mistake that had cost a man his life. Several times now, Archie had assured him that it wasn’t his fault, but Robbie wasn’t convinced by the reassurances.

Robbie gave up trying to sleep and decided to walk around the camp. It was still morning, and everybody was taking the opportunity to rest. After being in the heart of the jungle, he had grown used to the constant chitter of birds, insects, and monkeys. Here, there was nothing, not even the dull thump of the generator, which had been shut down to conserve the little fuel that hadn’t been consumed by the fire.

Robbie crossed to the operations hut, a small open-sided building that looked more like a beach hut, with a counter running along one side. It was from here Clark and Archie would pay the men or assign rotations for the next few days’ logging.

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