Ghost Flight

43

Night falls quickly in the jungle.

With the approach of darkness, Jaeger slapped on insect repellent and tucked his combat trousers well into his boots to stop any creepy-crawlies from sneaking in during the night hours. He’d sleep like that – fully clothed, boots on, and with his combat shotgun cradled in his arms.

That way, if they were attacked during the hours of darkness he’d be good to fight.

But none of this could entirely defeat one diehard adversary here in the Serra de los Dios – the mosquitoes. Jaeger had never seen such monsters. He could hear their fierce whine as they circled his body like mini vampire bats, intent on wreaking blood-sucking, disease-ridden mayhem. And sure enough, they could chomp through his combats; Jaeger could feel the odd one driving its tiny insect jaws in.

He climbed into his hammock, his limbs burning with exhaustion. After his fight to save Narov, and his solo trek across the jungle, he was utterly, utterly spent. He had barely rested at all the previous night. He didn’t doubt that he would sleep the sleep of the dead, especially as Alonzo had promised to keep guard all through the hours of darkness.

The former SEAL had set a sentry routine, so that there would be eyes on the jungle all night long. If anyone needed to leave their sandbar camp for any reason – even to take a crap – they had to do so in pairs, buddy-buddy fashion. That way, everyone had back-up in case of trouble.

A thick and velvety darkness enveloped the sandbar, and with it came a cacophony of night-time sounds: the mindless rhythmic beat of the cicadas – preeep-preeep-preeep-preeep – which would continue until sunrise; the bumbling, fizzy thud of massive beetles and other flying things cannoning about; the all but inaudible high-pitched shrieks of giant bats swooping across the water, hunting on the wing. The air above the Rio de los Dios was thick with them, wings beating the darkness. Jaeger could see their fleeting forms silhouetted against the faint glow of the stars that filtered through the feathery treetops. Their ghostly shapes contrasted markedly with the eerie, pulsating glow of the fireflies.

Those fireflies peppered the silken night like bursts of falling stardust. All along the riverbank they formed a blur of fluorescent blue-green, dipping in and out of the trees. And every now and again one would disappear – phffutt; a light being snuffed out – as a bat swooped and plucked it from the air. Just as four of Jaeger’s team had been plucked from the shadows of the forest by a dark and ghostly force.

Alone in the night hours, Jaeger found himself besieged by the doubts he’d kept hidden during the day. They were barely days into this and already he was five people down. Yet somehow he had to rescue his expedition’s fortunes, and in truth, he didn’t know how he was going to do that.

But this wasn’t the first time he’d been so deeply in the shit, and he’d always managed to turn things around. He had an inner strength born of such situations, and a part of him thrived on the uncertainty and the overwhelming odds.

Of one thing he was certain: the answers to everything – every misfortune that had befallen them – lay deeper in the jungle, at the site of that mystery air wreck. That was the one thing that kept driving him onwards.

Jaeger kicked his feet higher in the hammock, and reached to unlace his left boot. He removed it, delved deep and pulled something out of the insole. He flashed a torch across it briefly, the light and his eyes lingering on the two faces that stared up at him – the green-eyed, raven-haired beauty of a mother, and the boy who was Jaeger’s spitting image standing protectively at her side.

Some nights – many nights – he still said a prayer for them. He’d done so during the long and empty years in Bioko. He did so tonight, lying in a hammock slung between two trees on a sandbar on the Rio de los Dios. At that distant air wreck he knew there would be answers, and perhaps even the ones he most longed to learn – about what had happened to his wife and his boy.

Jaeger rested, cradling that photo.

As he drifted off to sleep, he sensed somehow that a truce had been declared in whatever war it was they were fighting here. For the first time since parachuting into the Serra de los Dios, he couldn’t detect any watchers – any hostile eyes in the jungle shadows.

But he sensed also that this was a temporary lull. The first skirmishes had been fought. The first casualties suffered.

The war proper was only just beginning.