Ghost Flight

27

Through the swirling mist he caught sight of a patch of lighter yellowish-green amidst the dark carpet of old growth that stretched to the distant horizon. Fresh vegetation. That new growth should be more leafy, springy and yielding; less likely to break and snap into jagged branch ends, like spear tips.

Or so Jaeger hoped.

He glanced at his altimeter – the one with which he’d fended off what he’d feared were knife thrusts intended to disembowel him.

Five hundred feet to go.

He reached forward and pushed down the two metal levers on his rucksack’s attachment. He felt the heavy pack drop away as the rope let it fall ten metres below him.

The last thing he did as the forest canopy raced up towards him was to punch a button on his wrist-mounted GPS – his global positioning system. Before the forest claimed them, he got it to waypoint – to mark – their exact position, for he figured they’d not be getting another chance to do so any time soon.

In the final few seconds prior to impact he concentrated on trimming the chute with the left and right toggles, so as to get himself down over that lighter patch of green.

He saw the mass of the canopy rushing up to meet him. He pulled back hard on both toggles, flaring and slowing his chute. If he could just hold it back from the stall, this was the way to burn off the speed and to ease his way through.

A moment later he heard the cracking thump as the thirty-five-kilo rucksack piled into the topmost branches, smashing them apart and disappearing from view.

Jaeger lifted his legs, bent his knees, and clenched his arms protectively over his chest and face. An instant later he felt his boots and knees penetrate the vegetation as he followed the rucksack through. Sharp branches ripped at his butt and then his shoulders before he shot past into the open darkness below.

He cannoned off some thicker branches, gasping with pain from the impact, and plummeted for several feet, before his chute ploughed into the canopy above, bringing him up short. He felt winded by the sudden deceleration. A swirling fog of leaves, broken twigs and plant matter whirled around him as he fought for breath. But as he swung backwards and forward like a pendulum, Jaeger counted his blessings a thousand times over.

He was uninjured, and he was still very much alive.

There was a second crash from above, and moments later Narov appeared beside him, likewise swinging wildly to and fro.

Slowly the atmosphere around them cleared.

Shafts of blinding sunlight streamed in through the holes they’d punched in the canopy, sunbeams dancing in the air.

In the ringing silence it was as if every living being in the jungle was holding its breath, as if shocked that two such alien creatures could have dropped in on their world.

The swaying of the chutes slowed.

‘You okay?’ Jaeger called across at Narov.

After all they’d been through, it sounded like the understatement of the century.

Narov shrugged. ‘I am alive. You are evidently alive. It could be worse.’

Like how exactly? Jaeger felt like asking. But he held his counsel. While Narov’s English was fluent enough, her Russian accent remained strong, her way of speaking oddly flat and unemotional.

He jerked his head upwards, in the direction of the freefall. He tried a winning smile. ‘For a moment there I thought you were trying to kill me. With the knife.’

She stared at him. ‘If I had wanted to kill you, I would have killed you.’

Jaeger chose to ignore the taunt. ‘I was trying to stabilise the two of us. Something snagged us at the exit, tearing my weapon loose. I almost had it sorted when you cut yourself free. Talk about a lack of faith.’

‘Maybe.’ Narov eyed him for a brief second, her face a blank mask. ‘But you failed.’ She glanced away from him. ‘Had I not cut free, we would both now be dead.’

There wasn’t a lot Jaeger could say to that. He wriggled about in his harness, trying to get a good look at the terrain beneath them.

‘Anyway, why would I want to kill you?’ Narov continued. ‘Mr Jaeger, you need to learn to trust your team.’ She eyed the jungle canopy. ‘So, the question now is – how do we get down from here? We didn’t exactly train for this in the Spetsnaz.’

‘Not like you train for cutting away from your tandem in the spin?’ Jaeger queried. ‘That knifework – that was pretty slick.’

‘I have never trained for doing that. But there was nothing else; no other option.’ Narov paused. ‘“Any mission, any time, any place: whatever it takes.” The motto of the Spetsnaz.’

Before Jaeger could think of a suitable reply, there was a tearing crack from above, like an explosion. A heavy branch crashed downwards, tumbling to the forest floor below. An instant later Narov lurched a good few feet lower, as one of the panels of her damaged chute tore apart, giving way under the pressure.

She glanced up at Jaeger. ‘So, do you have any idea as to how we get down? Other than falling? Or do I have to get us out of this one too?’

Jaeger shook his head in frustration. God, but this woman was trying. Yet after her mid-air performance with the knife, he was beginning to doubt whether she was Smithy’s murderer after all. It had been the perfect opportunity for her to slip her blade into Jaeger and kill him, and yet she hadn’t.

No harm in testing her further, though, Jaeger reflected. ‘There is maybe a way to get us out of this.’ He gestured at the tangled mess of their parachutes in the canopy. ‘But first I’m gonna need that knife of yours.’

He had his own blade strapped to his person. It was the Gerber knife that Raff had given him in Bioko. It had a special meaning for him now, for it was the blade with which he’d saved his good friend’s life. He wore it in a sheath slung diagonally across his chest. But he wanted to see if Narov would willingly hand over the weapon that had so nearly sliced his guts out.

She didn’t so much as hesitate. ‘My knife? But don’t drop it. It’s an old friend.’ She reached for the long blade, unclipped it, took the point in her hand and launched it across the short distance between them.

‘Catch,’ she called, as it flashed through the sunlight and the shadows.

The knife that Jaeger caught looked strangely familiar. For a moment he turned it over in his hands, the slender seven-inch tapered stiletto blade glinting in the sunlight. There was no doubt about it: it was similar to the one lying in Grandpa Ted’s trunk, back in Jaeger’s Wardour Castle apartment.

When Jaeger had turned sixteen, his grandfather had allowed him to unsheathe that knife, while the two of them puffed away contentedly on his pipe. The smoky, aromatic scent came back to Jaeger now, as did the name of the knife: it was stamped on the dagger’s hilt.

He checked Narov’s blade, then glanced up at her appraisingly. ‘Nice. A Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife. Second World War vintage, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘It is.’ Narov shrugged. ‘As you SAS proved back then, very good for killing Germans.’

Jaeger eyed her for a long moment. ‘You think we’ll be killing Germans? On this expedition?’

Narov’s answer – thrown back at him defiantly – echoed Great Uncle Joe’s dark words, and it was uttered in what sounded like fluent German: ‘Denn heute gehort uns Deutschland, und morgen die ganze Welt.’ Today Germany belongs to us: tomorrow, the entire world.

‘You know, it’s unlikely there are going to be any left alive on that aircraft.’ A hint of sarcasm had crept into Jaeger’s tone. ‘After seventy-odd years in the depths of the Amazon – I’d say next to impossible.’

‘Schwachkopf!’ – idiot! Narov glared at him. ‘You think I don’t know that? Why not do something useful, Mr Expedition Leader, and get us out of this mess you got us into?’