Ghost Flight

45

The secondary problem that Jaeger was grappling with was the fact that they’d always envisaged making this final part of the journey as a ten-person team. Now they were reduced to five, and he was unsure what to do with the missing team members’ kit. They’d packed their personal effects into the canoes, but there was no way to carry them onwards from here.

To leave such kit behind would be tantamount to telegraphing their acceptance that the missing team members were dead, but Jaeger couldn’t see any way around it.

He glanced behind him.

His canoe was leading, the others in line astern. There were five vessels in all, each an Advanced Elements convertible kayak – a fifteen-foot semi-foldable inflatable expedition craft. The kayaks had been parachuted in by Kamishi and Krakow, packed in the para-tubes. Each twenty-five-kilo craft folded down to form a cube measuring around two square feet, but opened out into a boat capable of carrying 249 kilos of kit.

Back at the sandbar, they’d unpacked the kayaks, inflated them with stirrup pumps and launched them into the water loaded with gear. Each vessel boasted a triple-skin rip-stop hull, for extreme puncture resistance, built-in aluminium rods for added stability, plus adjustable padded seats, allowing for long-distance paddling without getting chafed raw.

With six inflatable chambers per canoe, plus flotation bags, they were pretty much unsinkable – as they had proven on the few sections of white water that they’d encountered.

Originally, Jaeger’s plan had had five kayaks on the water, each crewed by two of his team. But with their numbers so depleted, the crafts had had the seating reconfigured so that each accommodated just one person. Dale and Kral had seemed the most relieved at not having to undergo a three-day river journey sharing the one cramped canoe.

Jaeger figured the film team’s animosity was all down to one thing. Kral resented Dale’s seniority. Dale was directing the filming, while Kral was only an assistant producer – and there were times when the Slovak’s antipathy flashed through. As for Dale, Kral’s unfortunate habit of sucking his teeth bugged him something rotten.

Jaeger had been on enough such expeditions to know how, in the crucible of the jungle, the best of friends could end up hating each other’s guts. He knew he needed to get the problem sorted, for that kind of friction could endanger the entire expedition.

The rest of the team – Jaeger himself, Alonzo and Kamishi – had bonded pretty well. There was little that made alpha males pull together more than knowing they faced an enemy as unexpected as it was predatory. The three former elite forces soldiers were united in their adversity – it was just the film crew who were bitching behind each other’s backs.

As the arrow-like prow of Jaeger’s craft cleaved a furrow through the Meeting of the Ways – golden-white water on the one side, inky black on the other – he reflected on how he’d been almost happy on the river.

Almost. Of course, the loss of the five team members had cast a dark and continuous shadow over their progress.

But this had been the kind of thing that he had looked forward to back in London – a long paddle down a wild and remote river, in the heart of one of planet earth’s greatest jungles. Here the rivers were corridors of both sunlight and life: wild animals flocked to their banks, and the air thrummed to the beat of a myriad bird wings.

Each kayak had elasticated deck lacing, providing quick access to vital gear. Jaeger had his combat shotgun meshed into that, just a hand’s reach away. If a caiman tried to cause him any trouble, he could draw and fire within seconds if needed. As matters had transpired, most had chosen to keep their distance, for the kayaks were about the biggest thing moving on the river.

At one stage that morning Jaeger had allowed his kayak to drift silently downstream, as he watched a jaguar – a powerful male – stalk his prey. The big cat had padded along the riverside, taking great care not to raise a ripple or to make a sound. He’d got to the point where he was in a caiman’s blind spot, and had swum across to the mudbank upon which the reptile was sunning itself. This was a yacare as opposed to a black caiman, so the smaller of the two species.

The big cat had stalked up the mudbank and pounced. The caiman had sensed danger at the last moment and tried to swing its jaws around to snap. But the cat was far quicker. Legs astride the caiman’s front shoulders, claws sunk deep, he’d gripped the beast’s head in his mouth, sinking his fangs into its brain.

It had been an instant kill, following which the jaguar had dragged the caiman into the water and swum back to shore. Having watched the entire hunt, Jaeger had felt like giving the big cat a round of applause. It was one–nil to the jaguar, and Jaeger for one was happy for it to remain that way.

After his earlier battle with one of the giant reptiles, and his loss of Irina Narov, he had developed a dislike of the caiman that went more than skin deep.

There had been one other joy to travelling by river: Dale and Kral’s kayaks had been positioned at the rear of the flotilla. Jaeger had argued that they were the least experienced canoeists, and so they should be kept the furthest away from any likely trouble. As a bonus, putting them at the rear had kept him well away from Dale’s camera lens.

But oddly, during the last day or so Jaeger had found himself almost missing the on-camera conversations. In a weird way the camera had been someone to talk to; to unburden himself to. Jaeger had never been on an expedition where he’d been so bereft of a soulmate; of company.

Alonzo was fine as a stand-in second-in-command. In fact, he reminded Jaeger of Raff in many ways, and with his massive physique the former SEAL would doubtless prove a superlative warrior. In time Jaeger figured Alonzo could become a good and loyal friend – but he was not his confidante; not yet, anyway.

And neither was Hiro Kamishi. Jaeger reckoned there was a lot he could share with the quiet Japanese – a man steeped in the mystic warrior creed of the East; of Bushido. But he needed to get to know Kamishi first. Both he and Alonzo were diehard elite forces types, and it took a while for such guys to drop their defences and open up.

In fact, the very same criticism could be levelled at Jaeger himself. After three years in Bioko, he was acutely aware of how comfortable he had become with his own company. He wasn’t quite the archetypal loner – the trust-no-one ex-military type – but he had become adept at surviving alone. He’d grown used to his own company, and at times it was just easier that way.

For a moment Jaeger wondered how Irina Narov would have borne up. In time, would she have proven someone he could talk to? A soulmate? He just didn’t know. Either way he’d lost her, and long before he’d been able to figure her out – if that would ever have been possible.

In her absence, the camera was an odd kind of a confidante. It came with another major downside: it had Dale attached, which meant it was hardly very trustworthy. But right now it was about all Jaeger had.

The previous evening, camped by the riverside, he’d filmed a second interview with Dale. Over the process of doing so, he’d found himself gradually warming to the man. Dale had a remarkable way of drawing out moments of real honesty from his interviewees with calmness and dignity.

His was a rare gift, and Jaeger for one was developing a grudging respect for him.

After the interview, it was Stefan Kral who’d lingered for a private chat. While he packed away the camera gear he’d proceeded to offer a mini confession about the forbidden filming episode back at the sandbar.

‘I hope you don’t think I’m telling tales, but I figured you needed to know,’ he had begun, that odd lopsided smile twisting his features. ‘That secret filming – it was Dale’s idea. He primed me with the questions, while he kept an eye on the camera.’

He had glanced at Jaeger uneasily. ‘I said it would never work. That you’d get wise to us. But Dale wouldn’t listen. He’s the big director and I’m only a lowly assistant producer, as he sees it – so he gets to call the shots.’ Kral’s words were thick with resentment. ‘I’m years his senior, I’ve done many more jungle shoots, but somehow I’m the one under orders. And to be honest, I wouldn’t put it past him to try the same trick again. Just flagging this up for you.’

‘Thanks,’ Jaeger told him. ‘I’ll be on the lookout.’

‘I’ve got three kids, and you know their favourite movie?’ Kral had continued, that crooked half-smile spreading further across his face. ‘It’s Shrek. And you know something else? Dale – he’s Prince bloody Charming. And he uses it. The world of TV media is full of women – producers, executives, directors – and he’s got them wrapped around his little finger.’

During his time in the military, Jaeger had acquired a reputation for nurturing zeros into heroes, which maybe went some way to explaining why he had a natural affinity for the underdog – and Kral was definitely the underdog in the expedition’s film crew.

But at the same time he could well appreciate why Carson had put Dale in charge. In the military you often had younger officers commanding those with far more experience, simply because they had what it took to lead. And if he were Carson, he would have done the same thing.

Jaeger had done his best to reassure Kral. He’d told him that if ever he had serious concerns, he could bring them to him. But when all was said and done, it was up to the two of them to get it sorted. It was vital they did so.

That kind of tension – that seething resentment – it could tear an expedition apart.

Beneath the prow of Jaeger’s kayak the white and the black river waters were mixing into dirty grey now, the roar of the Devil’s Falls growing into an ominous, deafening thunder. It drew Jaeger’s mind back to the relentless priorities of the present.

They needed to make landfall, and quickly.

Ahead and to his right he spotted a stretch of muddy riverbank, half hidden beneath overhanging branches.

He gave a hand signal and turned the prow of his kayak towards it, the other canoes swinging into line behind. As he thrust ahead with his paddle, he spotted a flash of movement beneath the canopy – no doubt some animal or other flitting along the shoreline. He studied the darkness beneath the trees, waiting to see if it might show itself.

The next moment a figure stepped out of the jungle.

A human figure.

Barefoot, naked except for a belt of woven bark strung around his waist, he stood in plain sight staring in Jaeger’s direction.

A five-hundred-yard stretch of water separated Jaeger from the warrior of this hitherto uncontacted Amazonian Indian tribe.