Ghost Flight

84

An instant after he had jumped, Jaeger found himself tumbling over and over in the freefall, just as he’d done during the near-death plunge from the C-130. He forced his arms out wide and arched his body to stabilise himself. That done, he adopted the delta-track profile – arms tight by his sides, legs stretched out behind him – to get into the cloud bank as quickly as possible.

But as the speed of his fall increased, he cursed himself for having been such a bloody fool. Narov had been right. If he’d died on that warplane, what good would it have done anyone, least of all his wife and son? He’d been an idiot to hesitate, and he’d put Narov’s life in danger. Hell, he didn’t even know if she’d made it out of the warplane alive, and there was no way he could check now – not in the crazed maelstrom of the freefall.

The Ju 390 had been accelerating ever since the Airlander had released her. She would be speeding into the skies ahead at pushing 300 kph, like a massive ghostly dart – and he just had to hope and pray that Narov had made it out alive.

Seconds later, he was swallowed by the clouds. As the thick water vapour enveloped him, he reached for the chute’s deployment handle, tugged hard… and prayed. If ever he hoped that the Nazis had built something to last, it was now.

Nothing happened.

Jaeger glanced around to check he was pulling the right handle. Nothing was easy in the half-light of this swirling whiteout, especially when being thrown around like a rag doll. But as far as he could tell, the main chute seemed to be stuck fast.

A phrase flashed through his head as the ground rushed up to meet him: look-locate-peel-punch-pull-arch. It was the drill he’d been taught years earlier, for emergency procedures in the freefall when your main chute failed.

Same principles, different system, he told himself.

He grabbed for what he figured was the reserve. It was an old-fashioned system, but there was no reason why it wouldn’t work just fine. It was now or never, for the ground was fast approaching. He pulled extra hard, and the reserve parachute – an expanse of German silk; silk that had been folded away for seven decades awaiting the chance to fly again – billowed into the air above him.

Like most things German, this Fallschirm had been built with quality in mind, and it opened like a dream. In fact, it was a joy to fly under. Had Jaeger not been in such a world of turmoil right now, he might have found himself enjoying the ride.

The Germans had used a chute design similar to that employed by British airborne units in the Second World War. It had a high-domed mushroom-shaped profile, and was stable and solid in the air – as opposed to the flatter, faster, more manoeuvrable design of modern-day military parachutes.

At around five hundred feet of altitude, Jaeger emerged from the clouds. His first thoughts were for Dale and Narov. He glanced west and figured he could just make out the distinctive scar of a parachute at ground level, marking where Dale appeared to have made it down.

He glanced east just as a flash of white popped out of the base of the cloud.

Narov. It had to be. Somehow she must have made it out of the Ju 390’s cockpit, and by the look of the body slung beneath the chute, she was still alive.

He fixed both positions in his head, then checked the ground below.

Dense jungle, with nowhere obvious to land.

Again.

As he drifted towards the canopy, Jaeger spared a momentary thought for the Ju 390. From 10,000 feet, the speeding warplane could glide for scores of kilometres, but he knew she was doomed. With every second after the Airlander had released her, she’d been gaining in airspeed but losing altitude.

Sooner or later she’d smash into the jungle at more than 300 kph. The upside was that she’d take with her those black-clad operators, for no way would the surviving Black Hawk be able to lift them off that careering warplane. And Jaeger, of course, had hurled all the spare chutes out the cockpit window.

The downside was that she’d be lost for ever, together with the secrets she’d been carrying – not to mention her toxic cargo being strewn across the rainforest.

But there was little Jaeger could do about that now.

The lone unmarked Black Hawk touched down on the isolated jungle airstrip.

The operator code-named Grey Wolf Six – real name Vladimir Ustanov – stepped down from the aircraft, satphone glued to his ear. His face was grey and drawn, the experiences of the last few hours sitting heavy upon him.

‘Sir, understand the situation.’ He spoke into the satphone, his voice tight with exhaustion. ‘I have myself and four others remaining from my airborne force. We are incapable of mounting any form of meaningful operation.’

‘And the warplane?’ Grey Wolf demanded incredulously.

‘A smoking ruin. Spread across several dozen miles of jungle. We overflew her until the moment she went down.’

‘And her cargo? The documents?’

‘Smashed into smoking wreckage, along with a dozen of my finest men.’

‘If we couldn’t get our hands on them, better they are destroyed.’ A beat. ‘So finally, Vladimir, you have achieved something.’

‘Sir, I’ve lost two Black Hawks, plus three dozen men—’

‘Worth the cost,’ Grey Wolf cut in, mercilessly. ‘They were paid to do a job, and paid well, so don’t expect any sympathy from me. Tell me, did anyone get out of that warplane alive?’

‘We saw three figures bale out. We lost them in the clouds. Whether any survived is doubtful. We don’t know if they had chutes, and even if they did, it’s uncharted jungle down there.’

‘But they might have?’ Grey Wolf hissed.

‘They might,’ Vladimir Ustanov conceded.

‘They might have survived, which means they might well have retrieved from that warplane some of the very things we were after?’

‘They might.’

‘I am turning my aircraft around,’ Grey Wolf snapped. ‘With no force remaining operational, there is no point my flying into theatre. I want you and your fellow survivors to take a holiday somewhere suitably remote and obscure. But don’t disappear. Keep in communication.’

‘Understood.’

‘Those who survived – if there are any – will need to be found. That which we sought – if they have it – will need to be returned to us.’

‘Understood, sir.’

‘I’ll be in touch in the normal way. In the meantime, Vladimir, you may want to recruit some new foot soldiers, to replace those you have so carelessly lost. Same terms; same mission.’

‘Understood.’

‘One final thing: you still have the Brazilian?’

Vladimir glanced at a figure lying on the floor of the Black Hawk. ‘We have her.’

‘Keep her. We may be able to use her. In the meantime, interrogate her in your own special way. Find out all she knows. With luck, she may lead us to the others.’

Vladimir smiled. ‘With pleasure, sir.’

From a Learjet 85 flying high over the Gulf of Mexico, the commander known as Grey Wolf made a second call. It was routed to an obscure grey office lying within a grey-walled complex of buildings, positioned deep within a swathe of grey forest in remote rural Virginia, on the eastern coast of the USA.

The call went through to a building stuffed full of the world’s most advanced signals intercept and tracking systems. Next to the entryway to that building was a small brass plaque. It read: CIA – Division of Asymmetric Threat Analysis (DATA).

A figure dressed in smart–casual civilian clothes answered. ‘DATA. Harry Peterson.’

‘It’s me,’ Grey Wolf announced. ‘I’m inbound on the Learjet and I need you to find that individual I sent you the file on. Jaeger. William Jaeger. Use all possible means: internet, email, mobile phones, flight bookings, passport details – anything. Last known location, western Brazil, near the Bolivia–Peru border.’

‘Understood, sir.’

Grey Wolf killed the call.

He settled back into his seat. Things certainly hadn’t gone so well in the Amazon, but this was just a skirmish, he told himself. One of many such battles fought in a far longer war; a war that he and his forefathers had been fighting since the spring of 1945.

A setback, certainly, but a manageable one, and nothing compared to some they had suffered in the past.

He reached for a sleek-looking tablet computer lying on the table before him. He powered it up and opened a file, revealing a list of names in alphabetical order. He ran the cursor down the list and typed a few words beside one of them: Missing in action. If alive, terminate. PRIORITY.

That done, he picked up an attaché case lying beside him, laid it on the table and slipped the tablet inside. He closed the lid with a resounding click, flicking the combination lock so it was securely fastened.

On the lid of the attaché case in small gold lettering were the words: Hank Kammler, Deputy Director, CIA.

Hank Kammler – AKA Grey Wolf – ran his fingertips gently, reverentially, over the embossing. At the end of the war his father had been forced to change his name. SS Oberst-Gruppenführer Hans Kammler had become Horace Kramer – the better to ease his recruitment into the Office for Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. As he’d worked his way up through the CIA into its highest ranks, Horace Kramer had never lost sight of his true mission: to hide in plain sight, to regroup and to rebuild the Reich.

By the time his father’s life was cut prematurely short, Hank Kammler had decided to take up the mantle and follow him into the CIA. Kammler smiled to himself thinly, an edge of mockery creeping into his eyes. As if he would ever have been content quietly serving as a CIA man, forgetting the glory of his Nazi forefathers.

Recently, he’d opted to recover what was rightfully his. Born Hank Kramer, he’d changed his surname formally to Kammler – thus reclaiming the legacy of his father, and what he saw as his birthright.

And as far as he was concerned, that reclamation was only just beginning.