Ghost Flight

26

The knife came at him in a swift, driving thrust.

But oddly, as it disappeared from view around the base of his stomach, Jaeger felt no pain. No pain at all. Instead he felt the first of the straps that held Narov to him break open, as the blade sliced through it.

Her arm reached forward, drove backwards, and again the razor-sharp knife struck home, sawing apart the tough canvas and nylon.

Once she was done slicing through the right-hand straps, Narov swapped sides. She jabbed backwards with the blade several further times, cutting away frenziedly at the left-hand ones.

A few final jabs and she was done.

With that, Irina Narov, the wild card on Jaeger’s team, spun away from him.

The moment she tore herself free, Jaeger saw her snap her arms and legs out into a star shape. As her limbs slowed her fall and she began to stabilise, Jaeger whirled past. Moments later there was a crack from above like the sails of a ship catching the wind, and a parachute flared in the sky.

Irina Narov had pulled her emergency chute.

Released of the dead weight of a second body, Jaeger’s odds of survival were suddenly far better than the near-zero they’d been five seconds ago. For a few long moments he struggled desperately to bring his own spin under control, fighting to stop the wild corkscrewing and to stabilise himself.

He was pushing two minutes into the freefall when he finally risked jerking the release cord – sending 360 square feet of the finest silk billowing out behind him.

An instant later he felt as if a giant hand was reaching over and yanking him violently upwards by the shoulders. Decelerating from a monster freefall like this was akin to driving a car into a brick wall at colossal speed and all the airbags going off at once.

Jaeger had gone from facing an imminent, onrushing, life-ending impact with the jungle to knowing that his parachute had saved him. Or rather, that Irina Narov’s slick handiwork with her knife had pretty much rescued the both of them. He glanced upwards, to check that his canopy was good. He reached with his hands, grabbed the steering toggles and gave them a series of sharp pumps, releasing the half-brakes and allowing the chute to fully fly.

Thank God it felt okay.

From the swirling, sickening maelstrom and earsplitting wind noise of the freefall, Jaeger’s world had transformed itself into one of pure calm stillness. Just the occasional flap of wind ruffled the slider panel above him. For a moment he concentrated on bringing his heartbeat under control, and on properly clearing his head, so he could relax into the glide.

He risked a glance at his altimeter. He was at 1,800 feet. He’d just completed a 28,000-foot death ride towards earth. It had taken six seconds for his chute to open fully. He’d deployed it less than ten seconds away from ploughing into the earth at pushing 200 kph.

It had been that close.

At that speed there wouldn’t have been a great deal left of him to scrape up from amongst the ferns and the rotting wood, so that his mates could bury his remains.

Jaeger stole a brief moment to scan the sky.

Apart from Narov, there wasn’t another jumper to be seen.

He flicked his aching, bloodshot eyes downwards, searching the velvety green canopy below. It was drifting up to meet him and not a clearing was there anywhere to be seen.

He figured he and Narov had to be thirty-plus kilometres away from their intended landing zone. The plan had been to open their chutes at 28,000 feet, and glide the forty-odd kilometres into that sandbar. But with their unstable exit and the murderous spin that had followed, all of that was now defunct.

Apart from the unarguably spirited and tough Narov, Jaeger had lost every other member of his team.

They were two lone parachutists drifting through the hot, steamy air, with nowhere to put down.

It didn’t get a lot worse.

For a moment Jaeger wondered if it had been his weapon that had snagged on the ramp of the Hercules, sending them into that near-fatal spin. But how could the PDs have missed it? It was their job to ensure that every jumper was free of obstructions; that nothing was hanging loose that might snag. And beyond that, he knew he’d properly tightened his shotgun prior to making the jump.

Jaeger had worked with countless PD crews over the years. Invariably, they were the ultimate professionals. They knew they held the jumpers’ lives in their hands, and that one tiny mistake could prove fatal. It was only by sheer luck – and, he had to admit it, Narov’s quick thinking – that both of them were still alive.

It didn’t make any sense for the PDs to have let his weapon flap loose on exit. It just didn’t compute. In fact, there was one hell of a lot that didn’t add up thus far. First Smithy had died – or rather, been murdered. Then they’d had that unidentified aircraft on their tail. And now this.

Had one of the PDs deliberately tried to sabotage their jump? Jaeger just didn’t know, but he was starting to wonder what else could possibly go wrong.

As it happened, a great deal – for right now he had the mother of all problems to deal with.

After chute-opening, touchdown was the next most dangerous moment – always – and especially when you had absolutely nowhere clear on which to put down. A parachute jump instructor had once warned Jaeger that it wasn’t the freefall that killed people – it was the ground that did.

Jaeger had gained a few hundred feet on Narov, once she’d cut away from him in the spin. They were reduced to a team of two now. The key priority was to keep together for the touchdown, and whatever might come thereafter. Jaeger focused on trying to slow himself, so she could catch him.

Above him, Narov executed a series of sharp left turns, as she corkscrewed downwards under her chute, rapidly losing height with each rotation. Jaeger kept trimming his own parachute, feathering his brake lines to slow his wind speed and fall.

After a few seconds he sensed a faint ruffling in the air beside him, and there was Narov. Their eyes met across the space between them. In spite of their epic mid-air ‘knife fight’, she seemed as cool as a cucumber. It was as if nothing untoward had happened.

Jaeger tried a thumbs-up.

Narov reciprocated.

He signalled that he’d lead her in to make the landing. She gave a curt nod. She dropped behind him and took up a position a few dozen metres above. They had just a few hundred feet to go now.

Fortunately, Jaeger had trained for what was coming – impact into a jungle canopy. It was far from easy to get it right. Only the most experienced jumpers could manage it. But from the trick that Narov had pulled when she’d cut free during the spin, Jaeger figured she’d stand as good a chance as any.

He searched the terrain below for a patch of canopy that seemed thinner than the rest; somewhere they could maybe break through. Most parachutists who dropped into dense jungle hadn’t intended to be there at all; they were airmen bailing out of an aircraft that had either been shot down, or had suffered some kind of mechanical problem – maybe run out of fuel.

They’d hit the canopy with no idea how to approach it, nor any training on how to survive. They’d normally suffer injuries in the impact – broken arms or legs. But worse would follow. Whilst the jumper might break through, the parachute rarely if ever did. It would snag on the topmost branches, leaving the parachutist suspended in mid-air, hanging just below the treetops.

And that very often proved the death of them.

A jumper so trapped had three options. Remain suspended in his chute, and hope for some kind of rescue. Cut himself free, with a sixty- to eighty-foot drop to the forest floor below. Try to reach a branch, if one was near enough, and climb to the ground.

More often than not, jumpers chose to remain hanging in their chutes, for the other options were approaching suicidal. Injured, disorientated, suffering from shock and dehydration, and plagued by ravenous insects, they’d stay there waiting to be rescued.

Most took a long few days to die.

Jaeger didn’t fancy that for himself, or for Irina Narov, either.