Burning Angels

77

As he followed the route that Raff was steering, Jaeger’s mind was full of images of Ruth and Luke. The next few hours would reveal everything. For better or for worse.

The question that had been dogging him for the last three years was about to be answered. Either he was going to pull off the seemingly impossible and rescue Ruth and Luke. Or he would discover the grisly truth – that one or both of them were dead.

And if the latter were the case, he knew to whom he would turn.

Their recent missions, and Narov’s confessions – her dark and traumatic family history; her link to Jaeger’s late grandfather; her autism; their growing attachment – had drawn him perilously close to her .

And if he flew too close to Narov’s sun, Jaeger knew for sure that he would get burnt.

Jaeger and his fellow jumpers were still at altitude, and they were completely untraceable by any known defence system. Radar bounces off solid, angular objects – an aircraft’s metal wings, or a helicopter’s rotor blades – but simply bends around human forms and carries on uninterrupted. They were pretty much silent as they flew, so there was little risk of them being heard. They were dressed all in black, suspended beneath black chutes, and practically invisible from the ground.

They approached a high bank of cloud, which was piling up way out to sea. They’d already flown through one level of wet cloud, but nothing as thick or substantial as this. They had no option but to pass right through.

They slipped into the dense grey fug, the cloud becoming blindingly thick. As he drifted through the opaque mass, Jaeger could feel more and more icy water droplets condensing on his exposed skin and running down his face, forming tiny rivulets. By the time he emerged on the far side, he was freezing cold.

He picked up Raff right away, on a level with him and to his front. But when he turned to search behind, there was no sign of Narov, or any of the others.

Unlike in free-falling, when comms are impossible due to all the buffeting of the slipstream, you can radio each other when drifting under chutes. Jaeger pressed send and spoke into his mouthpiece.

‘Narov – Jaeger. Where are you?’

He repeated the call several times, but still there was no answer. He and Raff had lost the rest of the stick, and by now they were very likely out of radio range.

Raff’s voice came up over the air. ‘Let’s crack on. We’ll hit the IP and reorg on the ground.’ IP meant the impact point – in this case Copacabana Beach.

Raff was right. There was sod all they could do about losing contact with the rest of the stick, and too much radio traffic might lead to detection.

Several minutes later, Jaeger noticed Raff accelerate as he started to spiral vertically downwards, making for the island below and the small strip of beach. He made landfall with an almighty thump.

At a thousand feet, Jaeger hit the metal release levers to free his rucksack. It dropped away until it was suspended some twenty feet below him.

He heard the bulky pack thud into the ground.

He flared his chute, to slow his rate of descent, and seconds later his boots slammed into the stretch of sand, which glowed a surreal blue-white in the moonlight. He ran forward several paces as the expanse of silk drifted down, tangling in a bundle beside the sea.

Immediately he unslung his MP7 from his right shoulder and slotted a bullet into the breech. He was a few dozen yards from Raff, and he was good.

‘Ready,’ he hissed into his radio.

The two of them converged on the muster point. Moments later, Hiro Kamishi appeared out of the night sky and landed nearby.

But there was zero sign of the rest of Jaeger’s team.