Ghost Flight

18

It was first light.

Approaching time to fire up the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules and take to the skies. The rest of Jaeger’s team was locked and loaded. Good to go. They were strapped into the aircraft’s fold-down canvas seats, plugged into the on-board oxygen-breathing system, and psyching themselves up for what they knew was coming – the plunge from the roof of the world into the unknown.

Now was the time when Jaeger took a last few moments for himself, just as the mission – or in this case, the expedition of a lifetime – was about to get airborne.

They were poised to go wheels-up.

Green-lit. Green for go.

No turning back. Committed beyond all reason.

These were the final minutes before the struggle for survival would become all-consuming. Jaeger headed further down the airstrip, seeking a few seconds’ privacy – no doubt the last he’d get in the days and weeks that lay ahead. He’d done this in the world of the military elite. He did it now, as he steeled himself to lead this expedition deep into the Amazon.

They were flying out of Brazil’s Cachimbo airport, which lay in the heart of the Serra do Cachimbo – the Smoking Pipe Mountains. Cachimbo was equidistant between Rio de Janeiro on the Atlantic coastline and the far western extremities of the Amazon – making it the midway point in Brazil to their intended destination.

It was all too easy to forget how massive Brazil was as a country, or how vast was the Amazon basin. Some 2,000 kilometres east of Cachimbo lay Rio de Janeiro; some 2,000 kilometres west lay that mystery warplane, in the furthest reaches of the rainforest. And pretty much everything in between was dense jungle.

Reserved exclusively for military operations, Cachimbo airport was the perfect launching point for their insertion into that real-life Lost World. As a bonus, Colonel Evandro, the B-SOB commander, had decreed that there would be no filming prior to take-off. He’d argued it was too sensitive, due to all the special missions he ran out of Cachimbo. In truth, he’d done so at Jaeger’s request, for Jaeger was sick to death with having a camera stuck up his nose 24/7.

The camera crew had been with the expedition team for the best part of two weeks now, filming their every waking moment and desperate to catch the barest hint of any unfolding drama. Jaeger was far from used to the constant in-your-face intrusions.

To make matters worse, he’d had Irina Narov to deal with – his supposed deputy, and, as he saw it, the chief suspect in Andy Smith’s murder. While the rest of his team had seemed to welcome Jaeger’s presence among them, Narov had done little to hide her hostility.

The blonde Russian bombshell seemed to resent his presence from the get-go, and her abrasiveness had begun to get on his nerves. It was almost as if she had expected to lead things once Andy Smith had been done away with; as if somehow her ambitions had been thwarted.

Jaeger’s broken toes and fingers, courtesy of Black Beach Prison, were still paining him. They were strapped tight with bandages, and he reckoned he was fit enough to make it through whatever was coming – as long as he could avoid Narov sticking the knife in when his back was turned. He couldn’t quite fathom her hostility, but he figured in the cauldron of the jungle all would be revealed.

There had been one other expedition dynamic that hadn’t escaped his notice. From the very start sparks were flying between Leticia Santos, the Brazilian team member, and Irina Narov. Jaeger figured it was a classic case of two beautiful women and an all-too-predictable catfight.

Yet a part of him couldn’t help but think that although they were jealous of each other, somehow he was the source of their jealousy and the tension.

He forced the thought from his mind. It had rained during the night and he caught the distinctive smell of a fresh, cool tropical downpour falling upon hot, sun-baked earth. It was unmistakable. It transported him back to his first time in ‘the trees’, as the SAS referred to the jungle.

Jungle training was a core part of SAS selection – the brutal trial that each soldier was required to pass before making it into the unit. From day one in the trees, Jaeger had realised he had a natural affinity with jungle living. He figured it was the dense undergrowth, the mud and the rain that struck a chord – reminding him of messing about outdoors as a kid with his father. Trying to survive endless days of mud, rain and low, claustrophobic jungle forced a man to improvise, and Jaeger liked to wing it – to be forced to think smart on the move.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the moist, musty, earthy air filling his lungs.

This was the time he took to tune in to his inner voice, his warrior’s sixth sense.

He’d always listened to it, ever since those days spent scrambling over the hills around his childhood home in rural Wiltshire, or the weekends camped in the forest, surviving off his wits and the wild.

Under his father’s guidance he’d learned to catch trout with his bare hands – running his fingers through the gently rippling water, moving them slowly along the fish’s cold, scaly sides, ‘tickling’ it into submission, before whipping it on to the riverbank lightning-fast. He’d learned how to set snares for rabbits and to build a watertight basha – a shelter – out of what you could find in your average British woodland.

Back then the inner voice had proven itself worthy of his attention, reminding him of the natural order of the wild. And as an elite soldier in later years, that same instinct had served to put steel in his soul. During Officer Week on SAS selection, he’d gone against the plan of every other candidate, to universal ridicule – but the inner voice had felt strong and he’d trusted it. He’d been proven right when he was one of only two officers to pass selection that brutal winter.

That inner voice had always served to centre him.

Or at least it had done until now.

For some strange reason this endeavour had Jaeger seriously spooked, which didn’t make a blind bit of sense. The coming expedition wasn’t some kind of mission deep behind enemy lines, outnumbered and outgunned. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was eating him.

Most likely it was Andy Smith’s death, and everything that had followed.

Prior to flying out of the UK, Jaeger had attended Smithy’s funeral, but even as he’d stood alongside Dulce and the children paying his respects, it had felt wrong in his guts. Afterwards, he’d caught a beer with Raff at the wake. It was there that the big Maori had shared with him one crucial detail about the way in which Andy Smith had died.

There had been no sign of forced entry to his hotel room. As far as the police were concerned, he’d let himself out of his own accord, climbed the hills in a drunken stupor and leapt to his death. But if it wasn’t suicide, then Andy had clearly made no attempt to stop his killers from entering his hotel room.

That suggested that he knew them.

It suggested that he knew them and trusted them.

They’d been staying at the remote Loch Iver Hotel, in the midst of a storm-lashed January. It had been pretty much empty of guests, bar the expedition members – and that in turn suggested that the killer had to be amongst Jaeger’s team.

In short, he or she was very likely in their midst.

Jaeger had his suspicions as to who it might be. But he’d kept quiet, largely because he hadn’t wanted to alert any of the team to the fact that he or she might be a suspect. Other than Irina Narov, the only ones he hadn’t warmed to were the cocksure and gobby Mike Dale, plus Stefan Kral – the camera crew – but it made zero sense for them to be Smithy’s murderers.

With his inherent distrust of all things media, Jaeger had found Dale and Kral to be all mouth and no substance. In return, they’d clearly found him distinctly spiky and uncooperative whenever they’d stuck their camera in his face. Andy Smith would surely have proven more easy-going, malleable film material, so they’d be the last people to want him killed off.

Every which way he looked at it, Jaeger remained convinced that the answer as to how and why his friend had been murdered – for he felt convinced it was murder – lay somewhere deeper in the jungle on the coming expedition. He felt an urgent need to get going now. It was time to get boots on the ground and to prove this thing once and for all.

Jaeger wasn’t in the habit of doing things by halves. Once he’d agreed to lead the expedition, he’d thrown himself into it wholeheartedly. He’d had to pick up from where Smithy had left off and hit the ground running. The frenetic preparations had consumed his every waking moment, leaving precious little time for anything else.

He’d only just managed to grab a quick phone call with his parents prior to departure. A few years back they’d retired to Bermuda – to permanent sunshine, the odd hurricane and the joys of tax-free living. During a rushed call he’d told them the basics: that he was back from Bioko; there was no news on Ruth and Luke; he was off to the Amazon on an Enduro Adventures expedition; plus he wanted to come and visit, to ask them more about Grandpa Ted’s life, and also about how he’d died.

He’d promised his parents he’d get out to see them soon and signed off the call. He’d left his suspicions about Grandpa Ted’s death unsaid. It felt wrong to raise them over an echoing phone line. Such a conversation needed to be held face-to-face. As soon as he was finished in the Amazon, he’d catch a flight to Bermuda.

Jaeger and his team had been in Brazil for a week now, hosted by Colonel Evandro and his B-SOB teams. Over that time the Brazilian warmth – both of character and of climate – had soothed the worst of his fears. Gradually the lurking sense of darkness that had gripped him in the UK had faded from his mind.

It was only now – as they prepared to head deeper into the Amazon proper – that those worries had started crowding in again.