Congo Dawn by Jeanette Windle

Author:Jeanette Windle
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FICTION / Christian / Suspense
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

The man now called Jini had seen the helicopter’s earlier arrival. Watched the mzungu warriors hefting ore bags aboard. His high perch was the same branch from which he’d witnessed the steam engine explosion. If not his original plan, one benefit of that event had been an end to the logging that had drastically reduced the rainforest camouflage separating his refuge from the mine.

He’d discovered his refuge while searching the sunken barge for weapons, food, and other useful items such as he’d recovered from disabled supply and ore convoys. The explosives he’d laid under cover of darkness had been positioned to sink the barge midchannel where its cargo could not easily be salvaged. But the river was not deep, and the barge crew had managed to snatch up any portable possessions before splashing ashore.

Two successful ambushes had ended attempts to raise a hundred tons of heavy ore sacks to the surface, Makuga’s security force adamantly refusing to risk their necks to an arrow or bullet they couldn’t see coming from the thick jungle foliage. Only after a week’s abandonment had he risked diving on the wreck. Finding nothing in the submerged wheelhouse, he’d dived deeper to slide through the jagged hole in the stern. The list of the sunken barge had piled up ore sacks along one side of the hold, leaving an open channel to swim above them. But in his search, he’d penetrated too deeply, the river water so murky once away from sunlight filtering through the shattered hull, he’d found himself in utter darkness, unable to retrace his dive.

He’d been desperate for air. Certain the Creator’s judgment had finally overtaken him. Then a last frantic lunge for freedom had brought his head out into a large air bubble trapped by the vessel’s sharp upward list just under the undamaged bow. The trapped air reeked with petroleum seeping from some fuel tank to puddle on top of the water. But to his oxygen-starved lungs, its taste was the sweetest perfume. His bearings now recovered, it had been simple to retrace his course back to the opening.

Having found nothing of value, he’d thought little further of the submerged barge until the steam engine explosion brought combat helicopters packed with mzungu warriors. By then he’d begun to feel safe in his treetop eyrie. Vicious though they were, Wamba’s de­mobilized fighters now masquerading as mine security thought like most rainforest outsiders—in two dimensions, not three. He and his companions simply lived and moved thirty meters or more above their heads, the tangle of creeper vines, mosses, and thicker lianas interweaving massive hardwoods into a single labyrinth allowing them to range widely without setting foot on solid ground except to launch ambushes against their adversaries.

Even the explosives, detonators, ropes, knives, and other items purloined from convoys were stashed only a few feet from where he now lay, inside a rotted-out hollow where branch met tree trunk, a hardwood plug wedged in tightly to shield against the thieving, clever fingers of monkey troops that shared their habitat.

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