This story that has been made a movie starts out a page turner, in the eastern jungles of what used to be known as the Belgian Congo, presently Zaire. When the locals are reluctant to accompany an American expedition towards a mountain area they regarded as possessing evil spirits, their fears are waved off as mere African superstition. But the same night they camp at their destination, everyone is killed and their camp destroyed.
Going along with the second team is Amy, a female mountain gorilla that has been raised by a scientist (Elliot) who has taught her hundreds of words in American sign language. She has just gone through a depressive period that could not be explained except for drawings of strange buildings with semicircular doors and windows. It turns out the drawings are from her childhood past, of the ruins of a famed lost city in the African jungles that Arabs referred to as Zinj. She had been rescued very young on being found crying next to her murdered parent and now she is about seven years old, the equivalent of a human teenager.
The second team is also aided by a famed white European-African (Munro) skilled in the wars and peoples of the continent from Kenya where he was born up to Algeria, selling his skills to the highest bidder. They risk warring or hostile locals and rough rivers to arrive the ruined lost city of Zinj to find the two camps of earlier expeditions destroyed by the same mysterious creatures. (The other camp was by a competing Euro-Japanese group also gunning for the diamonds.)
The creatures are gorilla-like and so the importance of “talking” Amy to the second expedition now comes to light. Their hair is silver rather than black, they have a whispering mode of talking to each other, their eyes are colored differently, and while ordinary gorillas sleep at night, these ones do not. (Scientist Elliot believes he has discovered a new species, and can’t wait to return to America to stake his claim.) The second team is better prepared so they are able to fend the silver gorillas off the first two nights. By exploring the ruins of the lost city during the day, the team—aided by computing power in Houston—discovers that the black inhabitants of the city about 500 years before had trained the silver gorillas to use stone paddles to attack enemies and thieves. They had been trained as guards for the mines that produced the diamonds the city appeared to thrive on. With the humans all gone for unknown reasons, the new gorillas still remained to continue playing their attack roles, teaching their offspring to use stone paddles to crush the skulls of any intruders to the area.
Amy is able to stop the new gorillas from killing Elliot at one point. As it was exactly in that locality that she was born, she could understand the whispering language of the new gorillas and so is able to translate some of their words for Elliot. (The silver gorillas it were that murdered her mother years ago.) From these translations, Elliot and Ross, the female representative of the expedition firm, are able to set up a taped broadcast telling the silver gorillas in their language to leave them alone, and this becomes their saving grace when the gorillas come for a final attack on their camp.
The precious blue diamonds are eventually found the next day. But due to the recklessness of lead scientist Ross, a massive volcano siding the valley of the ruins is hastened to eruption right away. Save for a few pieces Munro kept in his pocket, they have to abandon the diamonds and everything else in a race to escape the massive volcano as it spews forth lava and ash and dangerous gases.
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