Ghost Flight

40

‘Option one,’ he announced, his voice tight with the tension of the moment. ‘We decide the mission’s no longer tenable and we call in an extraction team. We’ve got good comms, this is a usable landing zone; we could conceivably get pulled out of here. We’d remove ourselves from the threat, but we’d be leaving our friends behind – and right now we have no idea if they’re dead or alive.

‘Option two: we go searching for the missing team members. We work on the assumption that all are alive until proven otherwise. The upside: we do right by our fellows. We do not turn our backs on them at the first sign of trouble. The downside: we’re a small, lightly armed force, facing one with potentially greater firepower, and we have zero idea of their numbers.’

Jaeger paused. ‘And then there is the third option: we continue with the expedition as planned. I have a suspicion – and this is only instinct – that by doing so we’ll discover what’s happened to our missing friends. One way or another, whoever has attacked us, it makes sense that they’ve done so in order to stop us getting to our goal. By continuing, we’ll force their hand.

‘This is no military operation,’ Jaeger continued. ‘If it were, I’d give my men orders. We’re a bunch of civvies and we need to make a collective decision. As I see it, those are the three options – and we need to vote. But before we do, any questions? Suggestions? And feel free to talk, ’cause the camera isn’t running.’

He cast Dale a menacing look. ‘The camera’s not running, is it, Mr Dale?’

Dale brushed back his longish, lank hair. ‘Hey, you vetoed this stuff, remember. No filming of this meeting.’

‘I did.’ Jaeger glanced around for questions.

‘I am curious,’ Hiro Kamishi remarked quietly, his English all but perfect, apart from the faint Japanese lilt. ‘If this were a military operation, which option would you order your men to pursue?’

‘Option three,’ Jaeger replied, without a moment’s hesitation.

‘Would you mind explaining why?’ Kamishi spoke in an odd, careful way, each word chosen seemingly with great precision.

‘It’s counter-intuitive,’ Jaeger replied. ‘The normal human reaction to stress and danger is fight or flight. Flight would be to pull out. Fight would be to go directly after the bad guys. Option three is the least expected, and I’d hope it would throw them: force them into revealing themselves; into making a mistake.’

Kamishi bowed slightly. ‘Thank you. It is a good explanation. One I agree with.’

‘You know, buddy, it’s not five,’ Alonzo growled. ‘It’s six. With Andy Smith, that makes six gone. Never thought Smith’s death was an accident, and even less after what’s happened.’

Jaeger nodded. ‘With Smith it makes six.’

‘So when do we get the coordinates?’ a voice prompted. ‘Those of the air wreck?’

It was Stefan Kral, the Slovakian cameraman on Jaeger’s team – his English tinged with a strong, guttural accent. Jaeger eyed him. Short, stocky, with almost albino looks, Kral was the Beast to Dale’s Beauty, with pitted, pockmarked skin. He was six years older than Dale, though he didn’t look it, and by right of seniority alone he should have been directing the film.

But Carson had put Dale in charge, and Jaeger could pretty much figure out why. Dale and Carson were birds of a feather. Dale was slick, easy and cool, and a master at surviving in the media jungle. By contrast Kral was a clumsy, somewhat nerdy bag of nerves. He was one hell of an oddball to be trying to cut it in the TV industry.

‘With Narov gone, I’ve made Alonzo my deputy,’ Jaeger replied. ‘I’ve shared the coordinates with him.’

‘And so? The rest of us?’ Kral pushed.

Whenever Kral spoke, an odd, lopsided half-smile played across his features, no matter how serious the topic at hand. Jaeger figured it was his nervousness shining through, but still he found it oddly unsettling.

He’d known enough guys like Kral in the army – the semi-introverted; those who found it tough relating to others. He had always made a point of nurturing any who made it into his unit. More often than not they’d proven to be loyal to a fault, and absolute demons when the red mist of combat came down.

‘If we vote for option three – to continue – you’ll get the coordinates once we’re on the river,’ Jaeger told him. ‘That’s the deal I cut with Colonel Evandro: once we start our journey down the Rio de los Dios.’

‘So how did you manage to lose Narov?’ Kral probed. ‘What exactly happened?’

Jaeger stared. ‘I’ve already explained how Narov died.’

‘I’d like to hear it again,’ Kral pressed, the lopsided smile creeping further across his features. ‘Just, you know, to deconflict things. Just so we’re all clear.’

Jaeger was haunted by Narov’s loss, and he wasn’t about to relive it all again. ‘It was a God-awful mess that went ugly fast. And trust me – there was nothing I could do to save her.’

‘What makes you so convinced she’s dead?’ Kral continued mulishly. ‘And not so with James, Santos and the others?’

Jaeger’s eyes narrowed. ‘You had to be there,’ he remarked quietly.

‘But surely there was something you could have done? It was day one, you were crossing the river…’

‘You want me to shoot him now?’ Alonzo cut in, his voice rumbling a warning. ‘Or later, after we cut out his tongue?’

Jaeger stared at Kral. A distinct edge of menace crept into his tone. ‘It’s a funny thing, Mr Kral: I get the impression you’re interviewing me here. You’re not, are you? Interviewing me?’

Kral shook his head nervously. ‘I’m just airing a few issues. Just trying to deconflict things.’

Jaeger glanced from Kral to Dale. The latter’s camera was lying beside him on the ground. His hand crept towards it, furtively.

‘You know what, guys,’ Jaeger rasped, ‘I got something myself that needs deconflicting.’ He eyed the camera. ‘You’ve taped over the red filming light with black gaffer tape. You’ve set it on the ground, lens facing my way, and I presume it was already filming before you put it down.’

He lifted his eyes to Dale, who seemed to quake visibly under his gaze. ‘I’ll say this one time. Once only. You pull a trick like this again, I’ll ram that camera so far up your backside you’ll be able to clean the lens as if it were your teeth. Are – we – clear?’

Dale shrugged. ‘Yeah. I guess. Only—’

‘Only nothing,’ Jaeger cut him off. ‘And when we’re done here, you’re going to wipe everything you’ve filmed from the tapes, with me watching.’

‘But if I can’t film key scenes like this, we’ve got no show,’ Dale objected. ‘The commissioners – the TV execs—’

Jaeger’s look was enough to silence him. ‘There’s something you need to understand: right now, I do not give a damn about your TV execs. Right now, there’s only one thing I care for – which is getting the maximum number of my team through this alive. And right now, we’re five – six – down, so I’m on the back foot and sliding.

‘And that makes me dangerous,’ Jaeger continued. ‘It makes me mad.’ He stabbed a finger at the camera. ‘And when I get mad, stuff tends to get broken. Now, Mr Dale: turn – it – the hell – off.’

Dale reached for the camera, hit a couple of buttons and powered down. He’d been caught red-handed, but from his sulky demeanour you’d have thought he was the one who had been wronged.

‘You get me to ask a load of idiot questions,’ Kral muttered at Dale, half under his breath. ‘Another of your dumb-ass ideas.’

Jaeger had met guys like Dale and Kral before. A few of his elite forces mates had tried to make it in their world – the world of the out-there, reality-show TV media. They’d found out too late how ruthless it could be. It chewed people up and spat them out again, like dried husks. And honour and loyalty were a rare commodity.

It was a cut-throat business. Guys like Dale and Kral – not to mention their boss, Carson – had to be driven to make it, often to the detriment of all others. It was a world wherein you had to be prepared to film people making life-or-death decisions when you had promised not to – because it went with the territory; that was what it took to get the story.

You had to be ready to put the knife into your fellow cameraman’s back, if that might advance your own fortunes a little. Jaeger hated the ethos, and that was in large part what had made him so unreceptive to the media team from the get-go.

He added Kral and Dale to the list of things he’d have to keep a close watch on here – along with toxic spiders, giant caimans, savage tribes, and now an unidentified force of gunmen seemingly intent on delivering bloody violence.

‘Okay, so – with the camera turned well and truly off – let’s move to a vote,’ he announced. ‘Option one: we pull out and abandon the expedition. All in favour?’

Every hand remained down.

That was a relief: at least they weren’t about to turn tail and run from the Serra de los Dios any time soon.