Ghost Flight

38

Jaeger sank to his knees, grasping his agonised, throbbing head in his hands.

He could feel his brain spinning out of control, as if it was about to burst through his forehead with the stress of the exertion.

The gnarled and twisted vegetation swam before his eyes, transforming itself into a writhing horde of fearsome monsters. He figured he was close to losing it completely. The disorientation had set in hours ago, as the dehydration had reached critical levels, followed by the ever-worsening pain and the hallucinations.

Away from the river there was very little water, and it hadn’t yet rained, which Jaeger had been banking on to revive him. His water bottles had long run dry, after which he’d been reduced to drinking his own urine. But an hour or so back he’d stopped peeing – and sweating – completely, a sure sign of imminent body collapse. Yet somehow he’d kept stumbling forward.

By force of will alone he dragged himself upright again, placing one foot in front of the other.

‘It’s Will Jaeger, coming in!’ His voice rang out – hoarse, guttural and parched, the sound echoing through the confused mass of trees ranged all around him. ‘Will Jaeger, coming through!’

He was calling out a warning to the expedition team, who should be gathered just ahead of him on that sandbar – terrain that he hoped and prayed he was now approaching, though the state that he’d been in these last few hours, he began to question if this was the right place. A small clearing in a massive expanse of jungle: his margin for error was tiny.

He pushed on with an erratic, exhausted, weaving gait, his mind screaming, but still somehow counting out the footfalls, passing the pebbles from pocket to pocket to mark his onward progress.

It was a given that no trans-jungle journey ever went strictly as the crow flies, and certainly not one undertaken by a man in his state, who’d been forced to keep moving through the night hours. Hence twenty-seven kilometres had become forty-five-plus on the ground. With barely any water, it had been a Herculean feat.

He tried the yell again: ‘Will Jaeger, coming through!’

No answer. He stood, trying to keep still and to listen, but he was swaying with exhaustion and fatigue.

He tried again, louder. ‘Will Jaeger, coming in!’

There was a moment’s silence, before a response rang out. ‘Hold your ground, or I fire!’

It was the unmistakable voice of Lewis Alonzo, the former Navy SEAL on his team, echoing through the trees.

Jaeger did as ordered, swaying once then collapsing to his knees.

A powerful, bulky form melted out of the bush sixty yards ahead of him. The Afro-American Alonzo combined Mike Tyson’s physique with Will Smith’s looks and humour – or at least that was how Jaeger had come to see him over the two short weeks he’d known him.

But right now, Jaeger was staring down the barrel of a Colt assault rifle, Alonzo’s index finger bone-tense on the trigger.

‘Step one and identify!’ Alonzo yelled, his voice thick with aggression. ‘Step one and identify!’

Jaeger forced himself to stand, taking one step forward. ‘William Jaeger. It’s Jaeger.’

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Alonzo didn’t recognise him. Jaeger’s voice was choked with fatigue, his throat so parched that he could barely croak out the words. His combats were ripped to shreds, his face swollen, red and bloodied from all the insect bites and scratch marks, and he was plastered in mud from head to toe.

‘Arms above your head!’ Alonzo snarled. ‘Drop your weapon!’

Jaeger raised both hands. ‘William Jaeger – unarmed, goddammit.’

‘Kamishi! Cover me!’ Alonzo yelled.

Jaeger saw a second figure step out from the bush. It was Hiro Kamishi, their Japanese special forces veteran, and he had Jaeger’s form pinned in the sights of a second Colt assault rifle.

Alonzo moved forward, his gun at the ready. ‘Hit the deck!’ he yelled. ‘And spread ’em.’

‘Jesus, Alonzo, I’m on your side,’ Jaeger objected.

The big American’s only response was to move in closer and kick Jaeger forward into the mud. He went down hard, spread-eagled in the dirt.

Alonzo moved around to a position behind him. ‘Answer these questions,’ he barked. ‘What are you and your team here for?’

‘To find an air wreck, identify it and lift it out of the jungle.’

‘Name of our local contact: Brazilian brigadier.’

‘He’s a colonel,’ Jaeger corrected. ‘Colonel Evandro. Rafael Evandro.’

‘Names of all the members on your team.’

‘Alonzo, Kamishi, James, Clermont, Dale, Kral, Krakow, Santos.’

Alonzo knelt down until he was staring into Jaeger’s eyes. ‘You missed one. We were ten.’

Jaeger shook his head. ‘I didn’t. Narov’s dead. I lost her when we tried to cross the Rio de los Dios to get to you guys.’

‘Jesus wept.’ Alonzo ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. ‘That makes five.’

Jaeger gazed around himself, confusedly. Surely, he hadn’t heard Alonzo right. What did he mean – that makes five?

Alonzo unhooked a bottle from his belt and handed it across. ‘Buddy, you would not begin to believe what we’ve been through these past two days. And for the record, you look like shit.’

‘Say the same about you,’ Jaeger gasped.

He took the proffered water bottle, opened his throat and drained it in one desperate glug. He waved the empty bottle at Alonzo, who signalled Kamishi over, and Jaeger proceeded to drain another and another, until his thirst was all but sated.

Alonzo called a third figure out of the shadows. ‘Dale, Christmas just came early! You got a green light. Roll!’

Mike Dale stepped forward, his diminutive digital video camera clamped to his shoulder. Jaeger could see the light on the front of the microphone blinking red, meaning that he was filming.

He eyed Alonzo. The American shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry, buddy, but the guy’s been bugging the shit out of me. If Jaeger and Narov make it, I gotta be able to film their arrival… If Jaeger and Narov make it, I gotta be able to film their arrival.’

Dale came to a halt a foot or so before them, sinking to his haunches, which put the camera at just about eye-level. He held the shot for a few seconds, then punched a button, the red film light blinking out.

‘Man, you could not make this up,’ Dale whispered. ‘Awesome.’ He peered at Jaeger from behind the camera. ‘Hey, Mr Jaeger, you figure you could maybe take a step back into the bush for me, and kind of come back in like you just did? Just a bit of re-enactment, ’cause, you know, I missed that part.’

Jaeger stared at the cameraman in silence for a long second. Dale. Mid-twenties, long hair, good-looking in a manufactured kind of way – never without a three-day growth of designer stubble. There was something of the preening cockatoo about him that Jaeger didn’t like.

Or maybe that was just his instinctive aversion to the man’s camera. It was so intrusive and disrespectful of any privacy – which was Dale pretty much in a nutshell.

‘Re-enact my arrival for the camera?’ Jaeger rasped. ‘I don’t think so. And you know something else? You film one second more of this and I’ll take that camera, smash it into pieces, and make you eat the lot.’

Dale held up his hands – one still dangling the camera – in mock surrender. ‘Hey, I understand. You’ve been though one hell of an ordeal. I get that. But Mr Jaeger, that’s exactly when the cameras need to be running; when things are rough as hell. That’s what we need to capture. That’s what makes for great TV.’

In spite of the water he’d drunk, Jaeger was still feeling like death, and he was in no mood for bullshit. ‘Great TV? You still think this is about making great TV? Dale, there’s something you need to grasp: this is about trying to stay alive now. Survival. Yours as much as anyone’s. This is not a story any more. You’re living it.’

‘But if I can’t film, there’s no TV series,’ Dale objected. ‘And the people funding all of this – the TV execs – they’re throwing good money after bad.’

‘The TV execs aren’t here,’ Jaeger growled. ‘We are.’ A beat. ‘You shoot one more frame on that thing without my say-so, your film is history. And so, my friend, are you.’