The Hunt

51

Jaeger braced himself at the Antonov’s open ramp.

Normally when preparing to jump from such an aircraft, you had the reassuring form of a bulky parachute strapped to your shoulders as the slipstream tore at your clothing and howled around your ears.

Not tonight.

All Jaeger had strapped to his back was his light-order bergen: even their weapons were packed into the para-tubes. The Antonov’s airspeed was incredibly slow – seventy knots, Jaeger figured – so it felt little worse than driving down a motorway with the window down.

He reckoned the snowfield flashing past below was no more than forty feet away.

It felt close enough almost to touch.

The Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains were so remote that there was no official agreement as to how far the range extended. But what the maps could agree on was the highest peak – Mount Nyenchen Tanglha itself, at 7,162 metres. Plus there were some 7,080 glaciers, covering 10,700 square kilometres of terrain.

In short, a lot of snow and ice.

Snow and ice: there was a big difference between the two as far as this insertion was concerned. Tonight they needed to seek out just the right kind of snow.

Jaeger had picked the spot off a satellite photo, with the help of some of Brooks’s finest meteorological experts. As he crouched at the open ramp, waiting for the loadie to give them the go-go-go, he prayed that he’d got it right.

The risks in what they were about to attempt were legion. Only Raff and Jaeger had ever made such a drop before, and then only during a series of highly experimental SAS arctic warfare exercises.

The loadie flicked two fingers in front of each of their faces. Two minutes to go. He was fastened to the Antonov’s side with a thick canvas strap, just in case anyone lost it at the last moment and tried to drag him with them.

‘One minute!’ he yelled.

Jaeger bunched closer to the pulk and the steel drop containers, which were perched on the open ramp. He shook out the tension in his arms and shoulders, stamped his feet and beat his hands together. He needed maximum flexibility in his limbs for what was coming.

‘Thirty seconds!’ yelled the loadie.

Jaeger’s eyes were glued to the jump light, which was set to one side of the ramp. Moments later it changed from red to green. This was it: show time.

He dropped his shoulder and drove the pulk off the end of the ramp and into the open void, as to either side of him Alonzo and Raff shoved out the steel containers.

For the briefest of instants he was aware of the objects silhouetted against the gleam of the snow, and then he followed in their wake, leaping off the ramp. As he tumbled into thin air, a part of his brain was yelling at him to pull his chute, even though he knew he didn’t have one.

He felt himself buffeted by the slipstream as he fought to maintain a crouched position, legs pulled up beneath him and locked there with his arms. It was the kind of poise you’d adopt to bomb your mates in a swimming pool. By trial and error it had also proved to be the best kind of body stance for what was coming.

Jaeger had just the briefest of instants to wonder what madness had possessed him to jump when his feet hit the snowdrift. The impact was surprisingly soft and silent, and moments later sixty-five kilos of Will Jaeger had ploughed deep into the spongy white mass, disappearing completely from view.

He lay on his back in a foetal position and gazed at the heavens above him. It felt like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon: he could see the shape his falling body had cut through the snow’s surface, etched against the stars and the moon.

Jumping into snowdrifts: only the Brits could have dreamt up such an insane means to deploy into hostile territory. Yet tonight, for Jaeger at least, it seemed to have worked just fine. He’d made a near perfect landing in soft snow and was unhurt.

The boffins had assured him that on this flat, open, windswept plateau on the northern scarp of the mountains, the drifts would likely be a good eighteen feet thick.

Jaeger figured he’d sunk ten feet into this one.

The challenge now was to get out again.