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Inside Story (Book 3 of Frasier Island Series)

By Susan Page Davis

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Chapter 1

March 7, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda



“Uh, Claudia? That gorilla is looking at me.”

Claudia Gillette turned to glare at the photographer who accompanied her on her most athletic adventures. “Hush, Tommy. I knew I should have left you in Bwindi.”

She ignored the large male mountain gorilla Tommy was staring at and turned back to Dr. Bleeker, the veterinarian in charge of their expedition. Tommy was the best photographer on the magazine’s staff, but in high-stress moments he exhibited all the valor of a field mouse.

“See how the snare has eaten into the flesh on her foot.” The doctor knelt beside an adult female gorilla. “We’ll have to cut out the wire, disinfect, and stitch her up. The injury is quite severe, but we may be able to avoid amputation.”

“Will you come back again and check on her?” Claudia asked, bending over the comatose gorilla to observe the wound Bleeker exposed on the creature’s left hind foot.

“Absolutely. I’ll try to come back next week, but certainly within two weeks. If she’s not healing well, we’ll consider alternatives.”

“Uh. . .” Tommy eased around to the opposite side of the makeshift operating theater in the jungle, putting the unconscious gorilla, Dr. Bleeker, and Claudia between him and the silverback he was eyeing. “You said they’re usually peaceful, right, doctor? ’Cause that one over there looks a little testy to me.”

Bleeker glanced over his shoulder at the male, which was now only ten yards away. “Hello. Gotten closer, hasn’t he? Curious, I expect. We’ll work as quickly as we can.” He gestured to one of the local porters, who had carried a pack of medical equipment up the grueling trail for the veterinarian. “Let’s have a little light here, shall we?”

The man unpacked and set up a powerful, battery-operated light to give the veterinarian the extra illumination he needed in the shadowy rainforest floor. The tracking guide, who had helped them locate the gorilla group, and two more porters waited ten yards away, barely visible under the trees. One of the local men they had hired held a tranquilizer dart gun, but she knew Bleeker, the tracker, and the long line of administrators behind them wanted as little human interference in the animals’ world as possible.

Claudia looked up. Through the canopy overhead, she could barely glimpse snatches of blue-gray sky. They were high in the Virunga mountains—higher than she’d ever climbed before. She’d felt a little light-headed the last hour of the climb. Back in Maine, she’d scaled Katahdin twice, nearly a mile high. There’d been snow at the summit in July. If they were higher here, shouldn’t there be snow? Of course, they were much nearer the equator. She’d have to check the elevation before writing her article.

If not for the vegetation that closed them in, she’d probably have a view unparalleled in East-Central Africa. Volcanoes. Jungle spreading over the national parks, rivers pouring down steep precipices and frothing toward Lake Tanganyika.

Just for a second, she let herself absorb the thrill of being here. Few people were allowed to view the mountain gorillas in their native habitat, but here she was, not just observing them, but actually helping treat a primate patient. She reached out and touched the rough hair on the gorilla’s side. This one must weigh double what Claudia did, and could no doubt tear her apart without breathing hard.

Tommy was snapping photos and seemed absorbed in the job now. Good. She slapped a mosquito and glanced out toward the gorilla group. About a dozen animals were scattered within sight, eating and occasionally jostling each other. The juveniles chattered, now and then erupting into screams, but they kept their distance. All but the big male, who continued to watch them and pace on his knuckles and hind feet.

“Just hand me that thing that looks like needlenose pliers, would you?” Bleeker said.

She seized the tool from his array of wrapped instruments laid out on a towel and placed it in his hand. “What do you call that?”

“Needlenose pliers.”

She laughed and wrote it down.

“They have built-in wire cutters, which come in handy out here. Don’t worry, they’re sterile.” He snipped the wire embedded in the gorilla’s foot. With a steel instrument, he probed at the deep crease it had formed in the flesh. “Okay, there’s a tool that looks like a little hook.”

She found it and gave it to him. “Will she be all right?”

He shrugged, noncommittal. “I hope so. They get in these poachers’ snares, and without intervention, they get infected. They can die from it, and it’s a slow, painful death.”

Claudia winced. “They’re so. . .beautiful.”

He smiled at that. “Most people don’t think gorillas are beautiful, but I know what you mean. And their numbers are so low now that the loss of even one adult female, like this one, would be a serious blow to the population.”

He finished the surgery and stitched the wound. Somehow, Tommy managed to stay cool enough to swap lenses and keep taking pictures. Behind them, the other members of the gorilla group chattered and barked as they ate the succulent bamboo and prickly nettles that grew lush in the area. The huge silverback, the dominant male of the group, still paced back and forth, watching the humans while the rest of his group fed.

“All right,” Bleeker said at last. “If you’d just place the used instruments in this pack, I’ll take hair and blood samples, and we’ll fade back into the forest to watch until she comes to and rejoins her family.” One of the hired men began to put the light away.

Already the female was twitching. Claudia gathered the dirty tools. Raindrops found their way down through the dense foliage and spattered their clothing.

“Uh. . .”

Tommy’s uneasy utterance was drowned by a roar.

Claudia and Bleeker whipped around. The silverback stood on his hind feet, stretching to full height, rolling his head back and forth and voicing his wrath.

“Oops, let’s move!” Bleeker lifted the heavy equipment pack with seeming ease and tossed it to the porter, then grabbed his instrument case. The tracker gestured frantically from the tree line.

Tommy didn’t wait for them, but scurried for safety with his camera. As Claudia rose, she spotted a package of dressings and a towel on the ground and hesitated.

“Dr. Bleeker.”

“Leave it!”

The silverback’s roar escalated and undulated with an accompanying loud thumping. She looked back. He pounded his chest and bellowed, staring into her eyes.

She looked again toward the erstwhile operating theater. The groggy female gorilla lifted one hand and scratched her side. Near her head lay Claudia’s notebook.

Claudia gasped. She’d gotten so caught up in the surgery that she’d laid the notebook down and forgotten it. She couldn’t leave her notes behind. Even if the gorillas didn’t destroy them, the rain would. In a flash, she considered the work it would take to reconstruct her notes, not just from today, but yesterday’s session at the veterinary clinic in Bwindi.

The injured gorilla still lay prone, though she was stirring. The huge male had turned toward the more distant members of his group and challenged them with his shouts. The others hopped about, chattering and feinting runs toward him and back.

Claudia sprang forward and lunged for the notebook. She had it in her grasp when the silverback swiped at her over the body of the female with his long arm. Claudia flew backward from the blow and sprawled in the brush. Her breath whooshed out of her lungs.

Dr. Bleeker and the other locals of their expedition jumped out of the trees, screaming and waving their arms. The tracker shouldered his tranquilizer gun.

“Hold off!” Bleeker seized Claudia’s hands and pulled her to her feet. “Are you all right?”

She gulped in a deep breath. “I think so.”
He grabbed her wrist and yanked her toward the trees. When they’d gone several yards into the forest, they stopped and looked back. The porters and the tracker came flitting between the tree trunks, and Claudia leaned against the bole of large mulberry, panting and clutching her notebook to her chest. Tommy approached them from one side, roughly where they’d left him. He hadn’t run forward with the others to scare off the silverback. That figured.

Now they could barely see the big gorilla, still posturing, but only yipping and barking.

“Sorry. That’s the only warning we’d have gotten, I’m afraid,” Bleeker said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She wiped the perspiration from her forehead. “I’m fine.”

“Where did he hit you?”

She put her hand to her shoulder.

“Sore?”

“Kind of. I’ll probably have a bruise.”

“Consider yourself lucky it’s not worse. If they move away later, we’ll go back and retrieve those other things. I don’t like to leave any supplies or trash lying about. But it’s better than sustaining a casualty.”

Tommy gulped. “I told you he looked mad.”

“We’re safe here,” the tracker said.

Bleeker nodded. “Everyone just relax and drink some water. In a few minutes I’ll go forward and see if the female has regained consciousness.”

“Did you get all your samples?” Claudia asked.

“Yes. I’d have liked to observe the group a little better and collect more data on their health status, but we accomplished what we mainly came for.”

Raindrops pattered down through the foliage. Claudia slid her notebook into a plastic bag in her backpack and zipped her sweatshirt to her throat. She huddled small in the shelter of the mulberry, thankful that no one spoke of her reckless act. They sat in the shadows for fifteen minutes, talking in low tones and slapping at bugs. The falling water increased, proving it was rain, not condensation off the trees. Claudia put her hood up, but then she broke out in perspiration. She lowered it again and let the light rain soak her hair. The veterinarian left them and crept toward the gorillas again to observe the patient from a distance. Claudia looked at her watch. The afternoon was waning.

“How long will it take us to hike out?” she asked the tracker.

He grinned. “Not so long as coming in. Maybe three hours.”

She nodded. Already she was bone tired, but she felt good.

Tommy opened his pack and pulled out a wrapped granola bar.

The guide held out his hand and shook his head. “Do not eat so near the animals. It is not permitted.”

Tommy sighed and dropped the granola bar back into his pack.

“Can I turn on my phone now?” Claudia asked. Global Impact magazine provided her with a pricey, high-end satellite phone that enabled her to check in with her editor from even the most remote of assignments.

The guide shrugged. “You must be quiet. But I don’t think you can get good service here anyway.”

She smiled and dug out the device. “How about if I just check my text messages? That won’t make any noise.” Not that she was eager to contact her irksome boss, Russell Talbot, but she felt a little cut off from her usual bustling, high-tech world. She’d had the phone off for hours while immersed in the gorillas’ world.

She zipped down the line of unread messages.

Russell. We need you back by Wed.

Mya, her assistant at the magazine’s Atlanta office. R.T. fuming over early deadline. Call if U can.

Her sister Lisa, from home in Maine. R U OK? U take 2 many risks.

Russell again. You can’t chase apes forever.

Pierre Belanger, her brother-in-law, from the Navy base in Virginia. Claudia’s pulse thudded even faster than it had when the silverback roared. Pierre never called or texted her. That was her sister Marie’s province. What was wrong? She quickly opened it.

It’s a boy. Marie doing GR8.

Claudia pumped her fist and gave a silent cheer.

“What’s up?” Tommy asked.

She glared at him. He was surreptitiously eating that granola bar.

“I’m an aunt. Do we have all the photos we need?”

He swallowed. “Hey, we almost got killed, but I have excellent photos. Everything from the droopy patient to Furious George.”

Claudia smiled. “Terrific. I’m going home to see my nephew.”

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