Ghost Flight

23

Jaeger leaned back and tried to sleep, but he felt strangely restless. Any which way he looked at it, he didn’t have a clue what to make of that unidentified plane. He stuffed the pilot’s Night Stalkers coin deep into his pocket, his hand brushing against a folded piece of paper. He’d almost forgotten it was there.

Shortly before leaving Rio de Janeiro, he had received an unexpected email. It was from Simon Jenkinson, the archivist. With Jaeger taking neither laptop nor smartphone on the coming expedition – they’d have zero chance of electricity or a mobile signal where they were heading – he’d printed out a copy.

He ran his eye over the message again now.

The National Archives, based in Kew, west London, contained vaults of documents from the workings of the British government reaching back over many centuries. You were free to go and view them in person, but you had to order copies of any you wished to take away and study further. It was strictly forbidden to copy them yourself.

The fact that Jenkinson had sneaked photos via his iPhone impressed Jaeger greatly.

Clearly the archivist had hidden reserves of steel.

Or maybe the documents had just seemed so extraordinary – so ‘mind-blowing’, as Jenkinson had put it – that he hadn’t been able to resist breaking a few rules.

Jaeger had downloaded Jenkinson’s attached photo. It had shown a blurry image of an intelligence briefing from Britain’s wartime Air Ministry. Across the top was stamped in red: MOST SECRET – ULTRA: To be kept under lock and key and never to be removed from this office.

It read:

Jenkinson had added an explanatory note to the effect that the LKW Junkers was an alternative Nazi designation for the Ju 390.

Jaeger had googled the word ‘plenipotentiary’. As far as he could discern, it meant a special emissary granted extraordinary powers. In other words, Kammler had been Hitler’s right-hand man and go-getter, empowered to do whatever was necessary.

Jenkinson’s email was tantalising. It seemed to suggest that Hans Kammler had been tasked to remove the Nazis’ key weaponry at the end of the war, putting it out of reach of the Allies. And if Jenkinson was right, the means to do so may well have been a squadron of giant Ju 390 warplanes.

Jaeger had emailed Jenkinson asking for a sense of what the entire Kammler file might signify. But he’d received no reply, or at least not before he’d boarded the flight into the heart of the Amazon. He had had to reconcile himself to getting no further clarification – or at least not until the expedition was complete.

‘P-Hour minus twenty.’ The pilot’s announcement broke Jaeger’s reverie. ‘Weather reports good and clear; approach course unchanged.’

There was a bitterly cold draught blowing through the aircraft’s hold. Jaeger bashed his frozen hands together to try to work some life into them. He’d kill for a steaming cup of coffee right now.

The Super Hercules was some 200 kilometres east of their release point. Via a bunch of mind-boggling calculations – taking into account the wind speed and direction at 30,000 feet and all altitudes in between – they’d calculated the exact point in the sky from which they needed to jump.

From there, it would be a forty-kilometre glide into the sandbar.

‘P minus ten,’ the pilot intoned.

Jaeger got to his feet.

To his right he saw a line of figures likewise levering themselves off their seats, stamping stiff legs to drive out the cold. He bent and clipped his heavy rucksack on to the front of his parachute harness, using a series of thick steel clips – carabiners – to do so. When he jumped, the pack would be left hanging from his chest, suspended on a pulley system.

‘P minus eight,’ the pilot announced.

Jaeger’s pack weighed in at thirty-five kilograms. He had a similar weight of parachute gear strapped to his back. Plus he was carrying fifteen kilos of weaponry and ammo, and the oxygen-breathing system.

Approaching ninety kilos in all.

More than his own bodyweight.

Jaeger was five foot nine and lithe with it, every inch honed and toned muscle. People tended to think of elite forces types as being monsters, true man mountains. Sure, there were some – like Raff – who were simply massive, but a greater proportion were like Jaeger: leopard-slim, fast and deadly.

The lead PD stepped back so they could all see him. He flashed up five fingers: P minus five. Jaeger couldn’t hear the pilot any more; he’d unplugged from the intercom system. From now on the jump would all be done via hand signals.

The PD held up his right fist and blew into it. His fingers opened as he did so, like a spreading flower. He held up five fingers, flashing them twice. It was the signal for wind speed at ground level: ten knots. Jaeger breathed a sigh of relief. Ten knots was doable for making the landing.

He busied himself tightening straps one last time and double-checking his gear. The PD flashed three fingers in front of his goggled face: three minutes to the jump. It was time to link up with Irina Narov for the tandem.

Jaeger turned to face the rear of the Hercules. He shuffled ahead, lifting his heavy rucksack with one hand and using the other to hold himself steady against the aircraft’s side. He needed to get as near to the ramp as possible before his fellow jumper was strapped on.

From up ahead he heard a dull and hollow thunk. It was followed by a mechanical whine and an icy inrush of air. The ramp had cracked open and begun to lower, and with each foot a howling gale blew ever more powerfully into the hold.

As he moved closer to the churning slipstream, Jaeger half expected to hear the first notes of Wagner blasting out of the aircraft’s speakers. It was around now that the pilot would normally start the music.

Instead he caught a burst of wild and savage guitar riffs, followed an instant later by the thumping percussion of drums. Then the high-pitched manic voice of the lead singer of an iconic heavy rock band cut in…

It was AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’.

The pilot was a Night Stalker all right: he’d clearly decided they were going to do this his way.

The maniacal chorus struck up just as the lead PD manhandled a figure towards Jaeger: Irina Narov – ready for the strap-on.

Highway to hell…

The pilot – plus the song’s very title – seemed to be suggesting that Jaeger and his team were on a one-way trip to damnation.

Were they? Jaeger wondered. Were they heading into hell?

Was that where this mission was taking them?

He hoped and prayed that a far better fate awaited them in the jungle.

Yet a part of him feared they were jumping into the worst kind of torment amongst the Mountains of the Gods.