Ghost Flight (22 page)

He did one last thing before setting out: he grabbed a pen and marked his present position. Next to it he wrote: ‘Last known location of Irina N.’

That way, if he ever got the chance, he could return to this spot and search methodically, with time and manpower, for her remains. At least that way they’d have something to return to her family – not that Jaeger had any idea who or where her family might be.

He set off walking; walking and counting.

He moved deeper into the forest, clicking a stone from one pocket to the other with each ten paces. One hour in and it was time for his first quick gulp of water and a map check.

He marked his position on the map – two kilometres due south of the riverbank – took a bearing and pressed onwards. In theory, he could navigate his way the whole distance through the jungle to that sandbar using the simple process of pacing and bearing. Whether he’d make it or not, with two litres of water and no weaponry, was another matter entirely.

Even as his lone form was swallowed by the gloom of the dense jungle, Jaeger could sense that those mystery eyes were upon him still, watching from the shadows.

As he pushed ahead into the dark, brooding forest, his left hand gripped his pocket full of pebbles, his lips moving as they counted out his footfalls.

37

Far away, across several hundred miles of jungle, another voice was speaking.

‘Grey Wolf, this is
Grey Wolf Six,’ the voice intoned. ‘Grey Wolf, Grey Wolf Six. Do you copy?’

The speaker was hunched over a radio set in a camouflaged tent positioned at the edge of a rough and ready airstrip. To all sides lay a sagging fringe of trees, with hills in the distance rearing up against a ragged grey sky. A rank of black helicopters with drooping rotor blades lined the dirt runway.

Otherwise, it was empty.

The scenery was reminiscent of the Serra de los Dios, but somehow not the same.

Close, but not too close.

This was the South American jungle, but somewhere higher in the mountains; somewhere remote and undisturbed, hidden amongst the wild and lawless Andean foothills that rolled onwards into Bolivia and Peru. Somewhere perfect for the kind of black operation that was designed to make a Second World War aircraft disappear forever; to vanish off the face of the earth.

‘Grey Wolf, Grey Wolf Six,’ the radio operator repeated. ‘Do you copy?’

‘Grey Wolf Six, this is Grey Wolf,’ a voice confirmed. ‘Send, over.’

‘Team inserted as planned,’ the operator announced. ‘Awaiting further orders.’

He listened for a few seconds to whatever was being said. Whoever this man – this soldier – was, there wasn’t a single mark of unit or rank, or even of nationality, to be seen on his plain, drab-green jungle fatigues. To either side of him, the tent was equally lacking in identifying features. Even the helicopters lined up on the airstrip were devoid of decals, flight numbers or national flags of any sort.

‘Yes, sir,’ the operator confirmed. ‘I have sixty sets of boots on the ground. It wasn’t easy, but we got them in there.’

He listened for a few seconds to his instructions, then repeated them back to confirm he’d understood them

‘Use all means to secure the coordinates of the warplane. Spare no one in the search for its exact whereabouts. Understood.’

There was a further short burst of message before the operator gave his final response.

‘Understood, sir. Their force is ten strong, of which all are to be eliminated. No survivors. Grey Wolf Six, out.’

That done, he killed the radio call.

38

Jaeger sank to his knees, grasping his agonised, throbbing head in his hands.

He could feel his brain spinning out of control, as if it was about to burst through his forehead with the stress of the exertion.

The gnarled and twisted vegetation swam before his eyes, transforming itself into a writhing horde of fearsome monsters. He figured he was close to losing it completely. The disorientation had set in hours ago, as the dehydration had reached critical levels, followed by the ever-worsening pain and the hallucinations.

Away from the river there was very little water, and it hadn’t yet rained, which Jaeger had been banking on to revive him. His water bottles had long run dry, after which he’d been reduced to drinking his own urine. But an hour or so back he’d stopped peeing – and sweating – completely, a sure sign of imminent body collapse. Yet somehow he’d kept stumbling forward.

By force of will alone he dragged himself upright again, placing one foot in front of the other.

‘It’s Will Jaeger, coming in!’ His voice rang out – hoarse, guttural and parched, the sound echoing through the confused mass of trees ranged all around him. ‘Will Jaeger, coming through!’

He was calling out a warning to the expedition team, who should be gathered just ahead of him on that sandbar – terrain that he hoped and prayed he was now approaching, though the state that he’d been in these last few hours, he began to question if this was the right place. A small clearing in a massive expanse of jungle: his margin for error was tiny.

He pushed on with an erratic, exhausted, weaving gait, his mind screaming, but still somehow counting out the footfalls, passing the pebbles from pocket to pocket to mark his onward progress.

It was a given that no trans-jungle journey ever went strictly as the crow flies, and certainly not one undertaken by a man in his state, who’d been forced to keep moving through the night hours. Hence twenty-seven kilometres had become forty-five-plus on the ground. With barely any water, it had been a Herculean feat.

He tried the yell again: ‘Will Jaeger, coming through!’

No answer. He stood, trying to keep still and to listen, but he was swaying with exhaustion and fatigue.

He tried again, louder. ‘Will Jaeger, coming in!’

There was a moment’s silence, before a response rang out. ‘Hold your ground, or I fire!’

It was the unmistakable voice of Lewis Alonzo, the former Navy SEAL on his team, echoing through the trees.

Jaeger did as ordered, swaying once then collapsing to his knees.

A powerful, bulky form melted out of the bush sixty yards ahead of him. The Afro-American Alonzo combined Mike Tyson’s physique with Will Smith’s looks and humour – or at least that was how Jaeger had come to see him over the two short weeks he’d known him.

But right now, Jaeger was staring down the barrel of a Colt assault rifle, Alonzo’s index finger bone-tense on the trigger.

‘Step one and identify!’ Alonzo yelled, his voice thick with aggression. ‘Step one and identify!’

Jaeger forced himself to stand, taking one step forward. ‘William Jaeger. It’s Jaeger.’

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Alonzo didn’t recognise him. Jaeger’s voice was choked with fatigue, his throat so parched that he could barely croak out the words. His combats were ripped to shreds, his face swollen, red and bloodied from all the insect bites and scratch marks, and he was plastered in mud from head to toe.

‘Arms above your head!’ Alonzo snarled. ‘Drop your weapon!’

Jaeger raised both hands. ‘William Jaeger – unarmed, goddammit.’

‘Kamishi! Cover me!’ Alonzo yelled.

Jaeger saw a second figure step out from the bush. It was Hiro Kamishi, their Japanese special forces veteran, and he had Jaeger’s form pinned in the sights of a second Colt assault rifle.

Alonzo moved forward, his gun at the ready. ‘Hit the deck!’ he yelled. ‘And spread ’em.’

‘Jesus, Alonzo, I’m on your side,’ Jaeger objected.

The big American’s only response was to move in closer and kick Jaeger forward into the mud. He went down hard, spread-eagled in the dirt.

Alonzo moved around to a position behind him. ‘Answer these questions,’ he barked. ‘What are you and your team here for?’

‘To find an air wreck, identify it and lift it out of the jungle.’

‘Name of our local contact: Brazilian brigadier.’

‘He’s a colonel,’ Jaeger corrected. ‘Colonel Evandro. Rafael Evandro.’

‘Names of all the members on your team.’

‘Alonzo, Kamishi, James, Clermont, Dale, Kral, Krakow, Santos.’

Alonzo knelt down until he was staring into Jaeger’s eyes. ‘You missed one. We were ten.’

Jaeger shook his head. ‘I didn’t. Narov’s dead. I lost her when we tried to cross the Rio de los Dios to get to you guys.’

‘Jesus wept.’ Alonzo ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. ‘That makes five.’

Jaeger gazed around himself, confusedly. Surely, he hadn’t heard Alonzo right. What did he mean –
that makes five
?

Alonzo unhooked a bottle from his belt and handed it across. ‘Buddy, you would not begin to believe what we’ve been through these past two days. And for the record, you look like shit.’

‘Say the same about you,’ Jaeger gasped.

He took the proffered water bottle, opened his throat and drained it in one desperate glug. He waved the empty bottle at Alonzo, who signalled Kamishi over, and Jaeger proceeded to drain another and another, until his thirst was all but sated.

Alonzo called a third figure out of the shadows. ‘Dale, Christmas just came early! You got a green light. Roll!’

Mike Dale stepped forward, his diminutive digital video camera clamped to his shoulder. Jaeger could see the light on the front of the microphone blinking red, meaning that he was filming.

He eyed Alonzo. The American shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry, buddy, but the guy’s been bugging the shit out of me.
If Jaeger and Narov make it, I gotta be able to film their arrival . . . If Jaeger and Narov make it, I gotta be able to film their arrival.
’

Dale came to a halt a foot or so before them, sinking to his haunches, which put the camera at just about eye-level. He held the shot for a few seconds, then punched a button, the red film light blinking out.

‘Man, you could not make this up,’ Dale whispered. ‘Awesome.’ He peered at Jaeger from behind the camera. ‘Hey, Mr Jaeger, you figure you could maybe take a step back into the bush for me, and kind of come back in like you just did? Just a bit of re-enactment, ’cause, you know, I missed that part.’

Jaeger stared at the cameraman in silence for a long second. Dale. Mid-twenties, long hair, good-looking in a manufactured kind of way – never without a three-day growth of designer stubble. There was something of the preening cockatoo about him that Jaeger didn’t like.

Or maybe that was just his instinctive aversion to the man’s camera. It was so intrusive and disrespectful of any privacy – which was Dale pretty much in a nutshell.

‘Re-enact my arrival for the camera?’ Jaeger rasped. ‘I don’t think so. And you know something else? You film one second more of this and I’ll take that camera, smash it into pieces, and make you eat the lot.’

Dale held up his hands – one still dangling the camera – in mock surrender. ‘Hey, I understand. You’ve been though one hell of an ordeal. I get that. But Mr Jaeger, that’s exactly when the cameras need to be running; when things are rough as hell. That’s what we need to capture. That’s what makes for great TV.’

In spite of the water he’d drunk, Jaeger was still feeling like death, and he was in no mood for bullshit. ‘Great TV? You still think this is about making great TV? Dale, there’s something you need to grasp: this is about trying to stay alive now. Survival. Yours as much as anyone’s. This is not a story any more.
You’re living it
.’

‘But if I can’t film, there’s no TV series,’ Dale objected. ‘And the people funding all of this – the TV execs – they’re throwing good money after bad.’

‘The TV execs aren’t here,’ Jaeger growled. ‘We are.’ A beat. ‘You shoot one more frame on that thing without my say-so, your film is history. And so, my friend, are you.’

39

‘So tell me – what the hell happened here?’ Jaeger prompted.

He was sitting in the makeshift camp that Alonzo and the rest had hacked out of the jungle, where the thick vegetation met the open sweep of the sandbar. Shaded by some overhanging trees, it was about as comfortable as you could get in such terrain.

He’d managed a quick wash in the river, which snaked past as sluggish and brooding as ever. He’d pulled a daysack out of one of the para-tubes, and grabbed the bare essentials to help him recover from his epic trans-jungle journey: food rations, bottled water, rehydration salts, plus some insect repellent. As a result, he was starting to feel vaguely human again.

The expedition team – or rather, those that remained – were gathered for a communal heads-up. But there was a weird, wired tension to the air, a sense that hostile forces were prowling the fringes of the camp and lurking just out of sight. Jaeger had retrieved a back-up combat shotgun from one of the para-tubes, and he wasn’t alone in keeping one eye on the jungle and one hand on his weapon.

‘Best I start at the beginning – when we lost you guys in the freefall.’ Alonzo’s reply was delivered in the deep, rumbling tones so typical of the big Afro-American.

As Jaeger had begun to realise, Alonzo was the kind of guy who tended to wear his heart very much on his sleeve. As he continued speaking, his words became thick with regret at what had happened.

‘We lost you guys pretty quickly after the jump, so I led the stick in. We made it down good. All here, no injuries, firm and clear underfoot. We set camp, sorted our gear, agreed a sentry roster, and figured no big deal: we’d wait for you and Narov to come to us, this being the first RV.

‘It was then we kind of broke into two camps,’ Alonzo continued. ‘There was my lot – let’s say the Warrior Brigade – who wanted to send out probing patrols in the direction we figured you guys must’ve put down. See if we could help bring you in – that was if you were still alive . . . And then there was the Tree-hugger Brigade . . .

‘So the Hugger Brigade – led by James and Santos – they wanted to go that way.’ Alonzo jerked a thumb westwards. ‘They figured they’d found a riverside path made by the Indians. Well, we all knew the tribe was out there somewhere. We could feel eyes in the jungle. The Hugger Brigade – they wanted to reach out and make peaceful contact.