Ghost Flight

22

In truth, Jaeger hoped to hell that if they did run into that tribe, it would prove a peaceful meeting. There was a part of him that thrilled to the prospect: if anyone understood the mysteries of the rainforest, these Amazonian Indian people would – their knowledge gained over countless centuries being the key to unlocking its ancient secrets.

Strapped into his bulky gear, Jaeger shuffled over and took his seat.

He was closest to the ramp. Poised to be first out.

Narov was next in line beside him.

Strapped up, bulked out and weighed down like this, he felt like some kind of abominable snowman. It was hot and claustrophobic, and he hated the waiting.

The aircraft’s ramp whined closed.

The hold became a dark tunnel of shadow.

Like a giant steel coffin.

They had a four-hour flight ahead of them, so if all went to plan they would be over the drop zone at around 0900 hours Zulu. They’d pile out of the aircraft, ten figures clad in khaki green, faces daubed with dark camo cream, suspended beneath their matt-black parachutes.

They would be invisible, and inaudible, to any watchers as they hit the ground. It would all be high drama, which would be great for the TV cameras. But Jaeger just felt better going in low profile and unseen.

The aircraft jerked forward and began to taxi along the sun-blasted runway. Jaeger felt it slow, and then the turbines screamed to a fever pitch as it spun around on the spot, facing the direction for take-off. He felt a surge of adrenalin as the engines roared ever louder, the pilot doing his last-minute checks before releasing the brakes.

Inside the hold, the air was thick with the fumes of burning avgas, but all Jaeger could smell and taste was the heady rush of pure oxygen. Rigged up in all his HAHO gear – suit, gloves, harness, oxygen tank, parachute pack, helmet, mask, goggles – he felt horribly constrained. Trapped even.

It was hard to keep any sense of perspective.

The oxygen tended to push you into a heightened state of being – like having a massive alcohol high, but without the worry of the after-party hangover.

There was a sharp change in the howl of the turbines and the C-130 surged forward, accelerating powerfully. Seconds later, Jaeger felt it lift off and claw its way into the muggy skies. He reached behind him and plugged into the aircraft’s intercom, so he could tune in to the pilot’s chat.

It always served to calm him when preparing for a jump.

‘Airspeed one hundred and eighty knots,’ the pilot’s voice intoned. ‘Altitude fifteen hundred feet. Rate of climb…’

At this point, the only threat to getting in there was a storm forming over the jungle. At 30,000 feet, conditions were pretty much predictable – ice cold, windswept, but stable – whatever the weather at lower altitudes. Yet if a tropical storm blew up at ground level, it could make the landing impossible.

If there was anything more than a fifteen-knot crosswind, they’d have trouble putting down. Parachutes would be dragged sideways, their human cargo with them, and it would be doubly hazardous with their chosen landing point being so menaced by dangers on all sides.

A mighty river – the Rio de los Dios – cut through the jungle, twisting this way and that as it went. On one particularly tortuous stretch it had deposited a long, slim sandbar, which remained devoid of practically all vegetation. It was one of the few patches of clear ground in the vast expanse of jungle, hence why they’d chosen it as their point of touchdown.

But it left precious little room for error.

At one limit of the slender sandbar lay the riverbank, marked by a towering wall of jungle. If any bodies were blown off course that way, they would smash into the trees. If forced in the other direction, they’d get swept into the Rio de los Dios, the heavy weight of their kit dragging them under.

‘Altitude three thousand five hundred,’ the pilot’s voice announced. ‘Airspeed two hundred and fifty knots. Climbing to cruise height.’

‘See that break in the jungle?’ the navigator cut in. ‘We follow that river due west for the next hour or so.’

‘Got it,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘And ain’t it a beautiful morning.’

As he listened in on the chat, Jaeger felt a rush of nausea hit his throat. As a rule, he didn’t get airsick. It was getting wrapped, strapped and trapped in all the HAHO gear that he found so debilitating.

During HAHO training he’d had to undergo a series of tests to check his resistance to high altitude, low oxygen levels and extreme disorientation. He’d been placed inside a compression chamber, which had taken him up in stages to the kind of conditions encountered at 30,000 feet.

With each 3,000-foot rise in altitude, he’d had to rip off his oxygen mask and yell out his name, rank and serial number, before slamming the mask back on again.

That he’d found pretty much okay.

But then he was placed in the dreaded centrifuge.

The centrifuge was like a giant washing machine on steroids. He was spun around and around, faster and faster, until he was on the verge of passing out. Before losing consciousness you ‘greyed out’, your vision fading into a fractured kaleidoscope of grey. You needed to know when you were about to grey out, so you could recognise it on a real jump and get yourself out of the spin.

The centrifuge had been pure, puke-inducing horror.

They’d given Jaeger a video as a keepsake. Greying out was far from pretty. Your eyes bugged out like a wasp dosed with fly-killer, your face became hollowed out and skeletal, your cheeks flapped and sucked, your features distorted all to hell.

The centrifuge had come close to tearing Jaeger down and breaking him apart. A man who thrilled to the open wild, he’d hated crawling into that enclosed metal drum – that suffocating steel coffin of a machine. It had felt like a prison. Like his own grave.

Jaeger detested being locked up or in any way unnaturally constrained.

Just like now, trussed up in all this HAHO gear and waiting to make the jump.

He leaned back and closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep. It was the first rule of elite soldiering that he’d ever learned: never refuse the chance of a meal or a sleep, for you never knew when you might be getting your next.

Sometime later he felt a hand shake him awake. It was one of the PDs. For a moment he figured it had to be showtime, but when he glanced along the line of jumpers, no one seemed to be making ready for the exit.

The PD leaned closer and yelled in his ear. ‘Pilot’s coming aft to have a word.’

Jaeger glanced forward, seeing a figure step around the navigator perched on his fold-down seat at the rear of the cockpit.

The pilot must have handed the aircraft’s controls to his co-pilot, Jaeger figured. He approached and leaned over, yelling to make himself heard above the roar of the engines. ‘How you doin’ back here?’

‘Sleeping like a baby. Always a pleasure to fly with true professionals.’

‘Always good to catch a few zees,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘So, something’s kind of come up. Thought I ought to warn you guys. No idea what it means, but… Shortly after take-off, I got this sense we were being followed. Once a Night Stalker, always a Night Stalker, if you know what I mean.’

Jaeger raised one eyebrow. ‘You were with the SOAR? The 160th?’

‘Sure was,’ the pilot growled, ‘before I got too old and stiff to soldier any more.’

The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment – otherwise known as the Night Stalkers – was America’s foremost covert airborne operations unit. On several occasions when deep behind enemy lines with the bad guys breathing down his neck, Jaeger had found himself calling upon a SOAR combat search-and-rescue helicopter.

‘There’s no finer unit,’ Jaeger told the pilot. ‘Respect for you guys. Many a time you pulled us out of the shit.’

The pilot delved into his pocket and drew out a military coin. He pressed it into Jaeger’s hand.

It was about the size and shape of a large piece of chocolate money, of the type that Jaeger used to give Luke at Christmas in his stocking. Christmas had been a very special time for the Jaeger family; until their last – which had been mired in utter darkness. The memory of it caused Jaeger a momentary stab of pain.

The SOAR coin felt cold, thick and heavy in his hand. It had the unit’s badge displayed across one face, with their motto on the other: Death Waits in the Dark. It was a tradition in the American military to give your unit coin to a fellow warrior, one for which the British military sadly didn’t have an equivalent.

Jaeger felt honoured to have that coin, and he was determined to carry it through the coming expedition.

‘So, I did a three-sixty-degree scan,’ the pilot continued. ‘Sure enough, some kind of small civilian aircraft had powered over the horizon and was keeping track with us. The longer it stayed there, hanging in my blind spot, the more certain I was we had a tail. It’s still there, keeping maybe a good four miles back, and we’re an hour-twenty into the flight.

‘Figure from its radar signature it’s somethin’ like a Learjet 85,’ the pilot continued. ‘Small, fast, ultra-slick private passenger jet. You want me to dial them up and ask them what the hell they’re doing sticking their nose up our ass?’

Jaeger thought about it for a second. Typically, an aircraft behaving like this one would be on a surveillance mission – trying to discover what the guys in front might be up to. Many a war had been won or lost on the strength of who had the best intelligence, and Jaeger for one never liked to be spied on.

‘Any chance it’s a coincidence? Maybe a commercial flight that happened to be on the same vector and cruise speed as us?’

The pilot shook his head. ‘Not a hope. Learjet 85 cruises at up to forty-nine thousand feet. We’re at thirty thousand – jump height. Pilots always fly at different altitudes, to de-conflict the airspace. And a Learjet cruises a good hundred knots faster than a Herc.’

‘Any way they can cause us trouble?’ Jaeger queried. ‘With the jump?’

‘Learjet versus a Super Hercules.’ The pilot guffawed. ‘I’d like to see ’em try.’ He eyed Jaeger. ‘But he’s hanging back and sticking in our blind spot. Make no mistake – we got us a tail.’

‘Let’s just leave them thinking we don’t know they’re there. Gives us more options that way.’

The pilot nodded. ‘Guess so. Keep ’em guessing.’

‘Maybe it’s a friendly agency?’ Jaeger suggested. ‘Keen to see what we’re up to here?’

The pilot shrugged. ‘Could be. But you know what they say: presumption is the mother of all screw-ups.’

Jaeger smiled. That had been one of their favourite sayings in the SAS. ‘Let’s assume whoever’s tailing us isn’t Santa Claus with a sleighload of presents. Keep a close eye. Let me know if anything changes.’

‘Got it,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘Meantime, we’ll keep it straight and steady, so you can grab some more zees.’