Ghost Flight

76

Jaeger stood in the fringes of the jungle speaking to his team – Lewis Alonzo, Hiro Kamishi, Leticia Santos, Joe James, Irina Narov, and Mike Dale – who was still filming – plus Puruwehua, Gwaihutiga and their fellow Indians. He’d removed his gas mask so he could talk, though he was still wearing the rest of the cumbersome NBC suit.

‘Right, you all know the score,’ he announced, his voice thick with tension and exhaustion. ‘We’re about to start the lift. The Airlander crew figure they may need an hour to work the warplane free. That’s the time I’m asking you to buy us. Do all you can to hold off the bad guys, but no heroics. Mission one: let’s all stay alive. And remember – just as soon as we’re gone, break contact and get the hell out of here.’

Jaeger glanced at the giant airship, which seemed to fill the sky above them. The Airlander was an awe-inspiring sight. It hovered less than one hundred feet above the broken bone ends of the dead canopy, like the belly of some huge white whale suspended in the clouds.

It was four times the length of the Ju 390’s fuselage, and ten times its width – the airship’s bulbous hull being filled with some three and a half million cubic feet of helium gas.

It simply dwarfed the warplane that lay beneath it.

The Airlander’s pilot could risk bringing her no lower, for the topmost branches of the dead forest thrust skywards like jagged spear tips. The airship had an intelligent skin that could heal itself if holed, but multiple wounds would cause her real trouble.

Plus, there was that unknown toxin leaking out of the Ju 390, and no one aboard the Airlander fancied getting danger-close to that.

As per Raff’s last data-burst message earlier that morning, there were no drones in the immediate vicinity. Their decoy – the kayak carrying the tracking device and cell phone – seemed to have drawn the surveillance a good distance north of here. It put the Predator out of video range of the Airlander, which in any case was hidden from view by 8,000 feet of cloud cover.

But an electronic intercept of the airship’s radar signature was still possible, as was an infrared trace of her hotspots – not least her four propulsors. All it would take was one such pick-up and the Predator would be on to them. Time was of the essence, more than it had been since the very start of the expedition.

It was the morning of day eleven, and if all went to plan, it was to be their last before arriving back in comparative civilisation. Or at least it was for Jaeger, Narov and Dale. Over the preceding hours, he and his team had been immersed in a race against time, not to mention their unknown enemy.

The previous evening, a lone Amahuaca Indian runner had reached their location with worrying news: the Dark Force was less than eighteen hours away. If they continued marching overnight, they would arrive even sooner. That force consisted of sixty-odd operators, and they were heavily armed.

The Indians shadowing them had tried to frustrate their progress, but blowpipes and arrows had proven no match for machine guns and grenade launchers. The main force of Indians would keep tracking and harassing them, but there was only so much they could do to slow their progress.

Since then, Jaeger and his crew had worked feverishly, during which time several things had become clear. First, whatever toxic cocktail was leaking out of the warplane, it appeared to be some form of irradiated mercury plasma. But it was nothing that Jaeger could identify any more specifically, for it appeared to be a threat unknown to his detection kit.

That kit worked by comparing a detected chemical signature with a known index of agents. Whatever this was, it appeared to be completely off the scale. And that meant that no one could risk going anywhere near without wearing a full set of protective gear.

Second, while the Airlander had been able to lower a pair of lifting harnesses – Jaeger and team getting them slung beneath the points where the Ju 390’s wings met the fuselage – there was no way she could lift the team out of the jungle as well.

The Airlander had the means to winch each person up the two-hundred-odd feet to the airship, but there simply weren’t enough NBC suits – or the time – to enable them to do so. The Indians had sent out a series of runners all through the night. The last had arrived just after first light, with the warning that the enemy force was two hours away, and closing fast.

Jaeger had been forced to accept the inevitable: his team would have to split up. The main body – Alonzo, Kamishi, Santos and Joe James, plus Puruwehua, Gwaihutiga, and half a dozen Amahuaca warriors – would take up blocking positions between the warplane and the bad guys.

Gwaihutiga volunteered to lead the charge. He would depart with most of the Indian warriors, to set up the first ambush. Puruwehua, Alonzo and the rest would form a second blocking group, nearer to the wreck. In that way they hoped to buy those doing the lift-out some much-needed time.

As to Jaeger, Narov and Dale – they were going to ride in the Ju 390, as the Airlander dragged her free from the jungle. Or at least that was the plan.

Dale had been an obvious choice, as someone needed to film the raising of the aircraft. Jaeger had been chosen because the expedition leader needed to stick with its objective – the warplane. Leticia Santos had argued that she should be the third person to ride in the aircraft, for she was a Brazilian, and – arguably – the aircraft had been found on Brazilian soil.

For a while Narov had fronted up to Santos, making it clear that no one was about to part her from her precious warplane. Jaeger had ended things by pointing out that Santos should probably stick with her foremost mission, which was safeguarding the Indian tribe.

He’d also made the salient point that the three of them – Jaeger, Dale and Narov – were already suited up, and that shifting about the NBC masks, gloves and suits would risk contaminating whoever was changing into and out of them. The threat was real, and it made sense for those already in the suits to be those to ride the warplane.

At that, Santos had reluctantly agreed.

‘Alonzo, I’m leaving you in charge.’ Jaeger continued with his briefing. ‘Puruwehua has promised to do all he can to get you guys out safely. You’ll return to the Amahuaca village and trek into the land of the neighbouring tribe. That tribe has contact with the outside world; they’ll send you on your way home.’

‘Got it,’ Alonzo confirmed. ‘Puruwehua, we’re in your hands.’

‘We will get you home,’ Puruwehua replied simply.

‘All being well, we three will ride the warplane all the way to Cachimbo,’ Jaeger announced. ‘En route I’ll warn Colonel Evandro to prepare a cordoned-off landing area, where the Ju 390 can be set down and kept in isolation, at least until her cargo can be made safe.

‘It’s a fourteen-hundred-kilometre journey, so it should take the Airlander a minimum of seven hours, especially with that thing in tow.’ Jaeger jerked a thumb in the direction of the Ju 390. ‘As long as SS General Hans Kammler and his cronies didn’t overload her, the lift should be doable, in which case we’ll be at Cachimbo by this evening.

‘I’ll send a one-word message in data-burst once we get there: “SUCCESS”. Hopefully you’ll have enough of a signal somewhere en route to receive it. No message means something’s gone wrong, but at that point your sole priority has to be to get yourselves safely out of here and on your way home.’

Jaeger glanced at his watch. ‘Right, let’s get moving.’

It was an emotional parting, but time kept the goodbyes short and sweet.

Gwaihutiga paused briefly before Jaeger.

‘Pombogwav, eki’yra. Pombogwav, kahuhara’ga.’

With that he turned and was gone, leading his men off at a fast jog, a war chant rumbling from his throat and being taken up by his fellow warriors, reverberating powerfully through the trees.

Jaeger glanced at Puruwehua questioningly.

‘Pombogwav – it means “farewell”,’ Puruwehua explained. ‘You have I think no direct word for eki’yra. It means “my father’s son”, or “my older brother”. So, “farewell, my older brother”. And kahuhara’ga you know: so, “farewell, the hunter”.’

Not for the first time since he’d met this tribe, Jaeger felt truly humbled.

Puruwehua proceeded to force upon Jaeger a magnificent parting gift: his blow-dart pipe. Jaeger was hard pressed to think of anything suitable in return. Finally, he settled on his Gerber knife – the one with which he’d fought on Bioko’s Fernao beach.

‘This knife and I have history,’ he explained, as he strapped it around the Amahuaca Indian’s chest. ‘I once fought with it far away in Africa. It saved my life and that of one of my closest friends. You I now count among my closest friends – you and all your people.’

Puruwehua drew the knife and tested the keenness of the blade. ‘In my language – kyhe’ia. Sharp, like a spear cut lengthways.’ He glanced at Jaeger. ‘This kyhe’ia – it has drawn the blood of the enemy. It will do so again, Koty’ar.’

‘Puruwehua, thank you – for everything,’ Jaeger told him. ‘I promise one day I’ll return. I’ll come back to your village and share the mother of all monkey roasts in the spirit house – but only if you spare me the nyakwana!’

Puruwehua laughed and agreed that he would. No more shots of psychotropic snuff for William Jaeger any time soon.

Jaeger turned to each of his team in turn. He saved an extra-warm smile for Leticia Santos. She in turn grinned at him and blew him a big Brazilian kiss.

‘Be careful, no?’ she whispered close to his ear. ‘And especially of that… that ja’gwara, Narov. And promise – come pay me a visit next time we have the Rio carnivale! We’ll get drunk together and go dancing!’

Jaeger smiled. ‘It’s a date.’

With that, the team, commanded by Lewis Alonzo but led by the Amahuaca Indians, hoisted their packs and weapons and disappeared into the jungle.