Ghost Flight

65

When Jaeger was relieved of his watch duty, he found that someone else around the camp was still awake – Leticia Santos.

He wandered over, figuring he’d remind her to check for leeches. Santos was already on top of the problem, and she found his obvious discomfort – especially when he suggested she might want to check her female parts – highly amusing.

‘Eight years with B-SOB, five with FUNAI,’ she reminded him. ‘I’ve grown used to checking around those areas!’

Jaeger smiled. ‘That’s a relief. So why the move?’ he asked, crouching down beside her. ‘From hunting bad guys to saving Indians?’

‘Two reasons,’ Santos replied. ‘First, I realised we can’t stop the narco gangs unless we protect the jungle. It’s where they run their drugs and where they hide. And to do that we need the help of the Amazonian tribes. Brazilian law says that their lands – their forest home – have to be protected. So, if we can contact and safeguard the Indians, it’s also the key to saving the Amazon.’

She eyed Jaeger. ‘If this was your country and you possessed this great wonder – the Amazon rainforest – would you not also want to safeguard it?’

‘Of course. And the second reason?’ Jaeger prompted.

‘I lost my marriage due to my work with B-SOB,’ Santos answered quietly. ‘A career in special ops is never a recipe for a long and happy marriage, no? Always on call. So many secrets. Never able to plan anything. So many cancelled holidays, birthdays, anniversaries. My husband complained I was never there for him.’ She paused. ‘I don’t want my daughter to grow up and level the same accusation at me.’

Jaeger nodded. ‘I get that. I left the military shortly after I started a family. But it’s a tough one, for sure.’

Santos glanced at Jaeger’s left hand; the only adornment was a single gold band. ‘You are married, yes? And with children?’

‘I am. One son. Though… Well, it’s a long story.’ Jaeger stared off into the brooding jungle. ‘Put it this way – they’re lost to me…’ His words petered out to nothing.

Santos reached out and placed a hand on his arm. Her eyes searched his face with undisguised warmth. ‘To be alone is hard. If you ever need a friendly ear – you know you can count on me.’

Jaeger thanked her. He got to his feet. ‘We need to get some rest. Dorme bem, Leticia. Sweet dreams.’

Jaeger awoke hours later, a sweaty bundle of screaming.

His hammock was swinging wildly to and fro, from where he’d been thrashing about, fighting the monsters that so often seemed to assail him in his dreams.

It had been a repeat of the nightmare – the one he’d last had in his Wardour Castle apartment. Again it had taken him up to the very moment of his wife and child being snatched away from him – and then an impenetrable wall had crashed down.

He gazed around: the darkness was so complete that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. Then he heard it: movement. Someone – or something – was creeping through the thick bush.

His hand slipped out of the hammock and felt for his combat shotgun.

A voice came to him from the darkness. ‘It is Puruwehua. I heard you screaming.’

Jaeger relaxed.

In a way, he wasn’t surprised that his cries had woken the Indian. Puruwehua had slung his hammock adjacent to his own. And far better him than some of the others – for Jaeger trusted the Amahuaca warrior just about as much as he trusted anyone right now.

Puruwehua squatted beside him. ‘The lost memories – they are in there, Koty’ar,’ he remarked quietly. ‘You just need to allow yourself to unlock them; to go there.’

Jaeger stared into the darkness. ‘Every returning soldier and failed father has nightmares.’

‘Still, you carry much darkness,’ Puruwehua told him. ‘Much pain.’

Silence for a long second.

‘You have light?’ Puruwehua prompted.

Jaeger switched on his head torch, keeping it shielded inside the hammock so that it cast a faint greenish glow. Puruwehua handed him a cup, brimful with liquid. ‘Drink this. A jungle remedy. It will help you.’

Jaeger took the cup and thanked him. ‘I’m sorry to have woken you, my warrior friend. Let’s rest, and be ready for tomorrow.’

With that he drained the contents dry. But the calm he was expecting never came.

Instead, he felt an immediate burst of pain to the inside of his skull, as though someone had kicked him hard in the eye socket. Moments later, his senses started to fail. He felt hands holding him down, and Puruwehua’s distinctive voice murmuring soothing words in his Amahuaca dialect.

Then, quite suddenly, the insides of Jaeger’s eyelids seemed to explode into a kaleidoscope of colours, fading gradually into a bright yellow canvas.

The image intensified and became clearer. Jaeger was lying on his back in a tent, two sleeping bags zipped together, warm and cosy with his wife and child beside him. But something had woken him, pulling him out of a deep sleep into the cold reality of a Welsh winter.

His head torch played across the yellow canvas above as he tried to zero in on the disturbance and the threat. All of a sudden, a long blade came thrusting through the tent’s thin side. As Jaeger went to react, fighting his way out of the constrictions of the sleeping bag, there was a hiss from a nozzle thrust through the opening.

Thick gas filled the tent, knocking Jaeger backwards and freezing his limbs. He saw hands reach in, dark faces clad in respirators above them, and moments later his wife and child were dragged out of the warmth and into the darkness.

They couldn’t even scream, for the gas had incapacitated them as much as it had Jaeger. He was helpless; helpless to defend himself, or, more importantly, his wife and child.

He heard the snarl of a powerful engine; the cry of voices, the slamming of doors, as something – someone – was dragged towards a vehicle. With a superhuman force of will he made himself crawl towards the knife slash in the tent. He thrust his head outside.

He caught barely a glimpse, but it was enough. In the glare of headlights reflecting off a dusting of frost and snow he saw two figures – one slight and boyish; the other lithe and female – bundled into the rear of a 4x4.

The next moment, Jaeger was grabbed by the roots of his hair. His head was forced upwards, so that he was staring through the glass eyelets of a gas mask into hate-filled eyes. A gloved fist hammered out of the darkness with massive force, slamming into Jaeger’s face once, twice, three times, blood from his broken nose spattering across the snow.

‘Take a good long look,’ the face behind the mask hissed, as he twisted Jaeger savagely towards the 4x4. The words were muffled, but still he caught their meaning, the voice somehow sounding chillingly familiar. ‘Get this moment burned into your brain. Your wife and child – they’re ours.’

The mask bent lower, so the front of the respirator was pressing into Jaeger’s bloodied features. ‘Don’t ever forget – you failed to protect your wife and child. Wir sind die Zukunft!’

The eyes were wide behind the glass eyelets, pumped with adrenalin, and it struck Jaeger that he knew the face behind that manic gaze. He knew it, yet at the same time he didn’t know it, for he couldn’t put a name to those hate-twisted features. Moments later the horrific scene – the unspeakable memories – faded, but not before one image had lodged in Jaeger’s mind irrevocably…

When finally he came back to his senses in his hammock, Jaeger was feeling utterly drained. The most abiding image of the attack hadn’t exactly surprised him. In his heart he’d been expecting it; dreading it. He’d feared it was there, embedded in the darkness of that snow-washed Welsh hillside.

Etched into the hilt of the knife that had sliced through the tent was a dark iconic image: a Reichsadler.