Ghost Flight

56

A good way behind, the Amahuaca village square was largely silent and deserted now. But a lone figure lingered in the open.

He glanced at the dawn sky, moving a few paces to where there was practically zero tree cover and maximum privacy. He pulled something from his pocket – a Thuraya satphone – placed it on a tree stump and squatted down in the undergrowth to wait.

The phone bleeped once, twice, then three times: it had acquired enough satellites. The figure punched speed-dial, followed by a single digit.

The phone rang twice before a voice answered. ‘Grey Wolf. Speak.’

Kral’s teeth showed a thin smile. ‘This is White Wolf. Seven have left with two dozen Indians, heading due south back towards the falls. From there, they take some route known only to the Indians, west towards the target. I couldn’t speak before now, but I have managed to give them the slip. You can do your worst.’

‘Understood.’

‘I can confirm it is SS Oberst-Gruppenführer Kammler’s warplane. Contents more or less intact. Or as good as can be expected after seventy-odd years.’

‘Understood.’

‘I have the exact coordinates of the warplane.’ A pause. ‘Have you made the third payment?’

‘We have the coordinates already. Our surveillance drone found the plane.’

‘Fine.’ A shadow of irritation flitted across Kral’s features. ‘Those I was given are: 964864.’

‘964864. They match.’

‘And the third payment?’

‘It will be in your Zurich account, as arranged. Spend it quickly, Mr White Wolf. You never know what tomorrow may bring.’

‘Wir sind die Zukunft,’ Kral whispered.

‘Wir sind die Zukunft,’ the voice confirmed.

Kral killed the call.

The figure on the other end cradled the receiver against his neck, letting it rest there for a long moment.

He glanced at a framed photo on his desk. It showed a middle-aged man in a grey pinstriped suit. The face was hawkish, the nose aquiline, the eyes arrogant yet rakish, speaking of untrammelled power and influence – something that had given him a casual confidence in his own abilities long into old age.

‘At last,’ the seated figure whispered. ‘Wir sind die Zukunft.’

He placed the receiver back to his ear, and punched ‘0’. ‘Anna? Get me Grey Wolf Six. Yes – right now, please.’

He waited for a beat, before a voice came on the line. ‘Grey Wolf Six.’

‘I have the coordinates,’ he announced. ‘They match. Eliminate them all. There are to be no survivors – White Wolf included.’

‘Sir, understood,’ the voice confirmed.

‘Keep it clean; at a distance. Use the Predator. Keep it deniable. You have the tracking unit. Use it. And trace their comms systems. Find them. Eliminate them all.’

‘Understood. But sir, beneath the canopy, we’ll have problems tracking them from the air.’

‘Then do what you must. Unleash your dogs of war. But they are to get nowhere near that warplane.’

‘Understood, sir.’

The seated figure killed the call. After a moment’s thought, he leaned forward and tapped the keyboard of his laptop, bringing it out of sleep mode. He composed a short email.

He pressed ‘send’, then leaned back in his chair, fingers knitted behind his head. On the wall behind him was a framed picture showing a photo of his younger self, wearing the distinctive uniform of a colonel in the American military.

Under the guidance of the Amahuaca Indians, it took Jaeger and his team less than half the time to retrace their route to the Devil’s Falls. They arrived at the bank of the Rio de los Dios just a kilometre or so downstream from where they had cached their expedition gear.

Puruwehua called a halt beneath the fringes of the forest canopy, where a permanent cloud of spray seemed to fog the air. He pointed into the river mist – a sharp precipice sliced through the rock before them, carved by the rushing waters over countless millennia. He had to shout to make himself heard above the deafening roar, as the Rio de los Dios tumbled nearly a thousand feet to the valley below.

‘That way – there is a bridge to the first island,’ he announced. ‘From there we swing by rope. Two rope swings to two further evi-gwa – land islands – and we reach the far side. There, a rock-cut passage runs down the face of the falls, one carved long ago by our forefathers. One hour – maybe less – we will be at the base of the falls.’

‘From there – how long to the air wreck?’ Jaeger queried.

‘At Amahuaca speed, one day.’ Puruwehua shrugged. ‘At white-man speed, a day and a half, no more.’

Jaeger moved to the lip of the precipice, eyes searching for the first crossing. For a while he failed to find it, so well was the bridge concealed. It took Puruwehua to point it out to him.

‘There.’ His arm stabbed downwards, indicating a tiny, rickety-looking structure. ‘Pyhama – a vine rope that we use for climbing the trees. But it makes for a fine river bridge also. It is covered over by the leaves of the gwy’va tree, from which we get the wood to make our arrow shafts. Like this, it is almost invisible.’

Jaeger and his team shouldered their packs and followed the Indians as they slithered down the cliff face to the start of the crossing. Before them lay a crazy-looking, precipitous rope bridge spanning the first mighty chasm. On the far side it was attached to a rock island, the first of three perched on the very lip of the falls.

The noise of the waterfall prevented any talk here. Jaeger followed Puruwehua, the first of his team to set foot on the perilous structure. He grabbed the vine-rope handrails on either side, forcing himself to step from woven cross rope to cross rope, which were spaced a man’s stride apart.

For a brief moment he made the mistake of looking down.

Two hundred feet below, the brown and angry waters of the Rio de los Dios thundered past, before churning into a maelstrom of seething white and gushing into the abyss. Jaeger figured it was best to keep eyes front. With his gaze firmly fixed on Puruwehua’s shoulders, he forced his feet to continue shuffling forward.

He was approaching the halfway point on the bridge, with most of his team bunched up behind him, when he sensed it.

With zero warning, an impossibly sleek projectile ripped apart the river mists swirling above them, the howl of its passing clawing into his ears. It tore through the centre of the rope bridge, a millisecond later ploughing into the Rio de los Dios far below and exploding in a massive gout of blasted white water.

Jaeger stared transfixed as the plume of onrushing destruction tore upwards – the noise of its eruption pounding in his ears and echoing back and forth across the chasm.

It was all over in less than a second. The bridge was left swinging violently to and fro, as figures clung to it, eyes wide in terror. Jaeger had called in enough Hellfire missile strikes to recognise the high-pitched, tortured howl of the weapon – yet this was the very first time he had ever been the target of one.

‘HELLFIRE!’ He screamed out a warning. ‘HELLFIRE! Get back! Back to the bank! Get under the trees!’

In the strange but signature way that time seemed to slow down in life-threatening combat, Jaeger felt as if he were living a hundred years for every second. His mind processed a thousand and one thoughts as he shovelled figures ahead of him, getting them to make for the cover of the jungle.

This far into the Brazilian Amazon – they were in the extreme west of the state of Acre, in the department of Assis Brazil, right on the Peruvian border – he figured it could only be one sort of warplane flying above them. It had to be a pilotless drone, for only that would have the range and the loiter time to orbit over the jungle for long enough to have found them.

Jaeger knew how long a Predator – the most common drone used by the world’s more advanced militaries – would take to rearm and reacquire its target. The very act of firing a Hellfire tended to wobble the aircraft, breaking up the video link with the unmanned warplane’s remote operator.

It would take around sixty seconds to stabilise and to re-establish firm video contact.

The next AGM-114 Hellfire – and most Predators carried a maximum of three – would be ready to fire any moment now. Depending on what altitude the Predator was orbiting at – most likely 25,000 feet – the missile might take as long as eighteen seconds to reach earth – which was the maximum time that Jaeger had remaining.

The first Hellfire had failed to detonate when it struck the rope structure, cutting through a strand of the bridge like a knife through butter.

But second time around they mightn’t be so lucky.

The last figure – the chief’s eldest son – came clambering back across, Jaeger shoving him towards the riverbank. He turned himself now, heading for the safety of the jungle, boots scrabbling at the rungs underfoot, the forest coming closer with every footfall.

‘GET INTO THE TREES!’ he screamed. ‘GET UNDER THE TREES!’

The canopy wouldn’t shield them from a Hellfire strike. There was little that could do that. But the Predator would find it next to impossible to see through the carpet of thick vegetation, which would prevent it from acquiring a target.

Jaeger kept running, rung to rung, the last man remaining on the bridge.

Then the second missile struck.

He felt the jolt of its impact an instant before the howl of its descent drilled into his ears – for the missile travelled at Mach 1.3, faster than the speed of sound. It exploded in the very centre of the bridge, the skeletal structure dissolving into a ball of boiling flame, razor-sharp shards of shrapnel ripping through the air all around him.

Moments later, he felt himself falling.

With his last reserves of strength Jaeger spun around, grabbing hold of the handrails, locking his arms around them and bracing for the impact. For a second or so his half of the bridge dropped vertically, before the end still attached to the wall of the chasm pulled up short, dragging what remained in a violent whiplash towards the rock face.

Jaeger tensed his body into a block of steel.

He struck the wall of rock, the crushing blow ripping the skin from his forearms, as his head was catapulted forward by the impact.

His forehead hit with a terrible crack.

A blinding burst of stars rocketed through Jaeger’s brain, and an instant later his world turned dark.