The Hunt

50

Jaeger had had just a brief introduction to the Antonov’s aircrew, and that had been first names only. The pilot, Bill, was very clearly American. He spoke with a tough East Coast – New Jersey – accent. Jaeger didn’t doubt that he was ex-military. Dressed in the smart, iron-creased blacks, whites and reds of an ICRC pilot’s uniform, he sure looked the part.

‘Border crossing in five,’ he repeated. ‘Prepare for things to get a little interesting back there. We’ll be going in lower than a snake’s belly.’

Jaeger flashed a finger-down at Narov, Raff and Alonzo: universal symbol for prepare to lose altitude.

The Antonov’s intercom was one-way only. Any comms with the cockpit had to go via the loadie, Pete, another American. He was perched on one of the fold-down canvas seats where the bulkhead separated cockpit from cargo hold.

The Antonov began to plummet towards the moon-washed snowfields. Jaeger felt his stomach contents lurch into his throat, and fought back the gag reflex as the pilot kept losing altitude.

When it seemed as if they were about to plough into the snow and rock at some 300-plus kilometres an hour, he heard the twin turboprops emit a piercing howl. The pilot piled on the thrust, and the AN-32 pulled up, blasting the tops of the highest drifts, then sped onwards, thundering into the night.

They were down so low that the aircraft’s moon shadow was almost indistinguishable from her fuselage. As he craned his neck to get a view out the rear, Jaeger spotted thick flurries of snow kicked up by the Antonov’s four-bladed propellers, swirling madly in the slipstream.

Deep gullies opened up ahead, and the pilot slipped the Antonov into their icy embrace, throwing it from side to side to edge past dome-like outcrops blasted bare by the freezing wind. At the approach of a vast series of ridges, which rose like a snow-blasted giant’s staircase, Jaeger felt the aircraft going into a series of switchbacks, as if they were riding some runaway escalator.

Whoever the pilot was, and whichever unit he’d trained with, Jaeger figured it was time to settle back and enjoy the ride.

‘Crossing border,’ the pilot’s voice confirmed. ‘Going dark.’

Before now, theirs had been a non-covert flight, and they’d been flying through non-hostile airspace. Accordingly, the Antonov had been showing the normal lights that civilian aircraft used. Now, all had been extinguished, including any internal lighting.

Jaeger glanced around the hold. It was washed in a faint ghostly glow: moonlight reflected back from the snow rushing past just a few dozen feet below.

‘Hook-shaped frozen lake at ten o’clock,’ the co-pilot announced.

‘Check,’ the navigator confirmed. Jaeger could just imagine the guy crouched over his charts. ‘That’s Lake Le-Wen-Pu. You follow its course and it leads into the Le-Wen-Pu valley. The valley extends twenty kilometres north, with a gentle curve east.’

‘Roger,’ the pilot confirmed.

‘Oh yeah, and watch out for yaks, yurts and prayer flags tugging at the undercarriage,’ the navigator added.

Jaeger allowed himself a smile. He risked a peek out of the Antonov’s window. The navigator was right.

Any lower, and they’d be kissing the snowfields.