Ghost Flight (13 page)

It was only now – as they prepared to head deeper into the Amazon proper – that those worries had started crowding in again.

19

Cachimbo airstrip lay deep in a densely forested valley, an impenetrable carpet of lush, tangled vegetation marching up the slopes to either side. The first rays of sunlight were starting to blaze above the ragged jungle horizon – lasers burning away the wisps of mist that clung to the treetops. The fierce tropical sun would soon burn off the cool dawn.

Those in Jaeger’s line of work said that there were only ever two kinds of reaction to the jungle: it was either love or hate at first sight. Those who hated it saw it as dark, alien and foreboding. Claustrophobic. Fraught with danger. But with Jaeger it had always been the opposite. He was drawn irresistibly to the wild, thrusting, exuberant riot of life – the awe-inspiring tropical forest ecosystem.

He was thrilled by the idea of a wilderness devoid of all trappings of human civilisation. And in truth, the jungle was neutral. It was neither inherently hostile nor friendly to humankind. Learn its ways, tune into its resonance, become at one with its essence, and it could prove a fantastic friend and refuge.

That being said, the pure, simple remote wildness of the Cordillera de los Dios – the Mountains of the Gods – was unlike anything else on this earth. And then of course there was that mystery aircraft, lying hidden in the Cordillera’s remote heart.

From above him what looked like a harpy eagle emitted a lonely, high-pitched screech. There was an answering cry from atop one of the tallest of the forest giants. It was an ‘emergent’ – a massive tropical hardwood towering some 150 feet above the dark and shadowed recesses of the forest floor. Its thrusting crown had broken through the canopy, reaching high in the battle for sunlight.

There it stood, bathed in the first rays of a glorious dawn.

King of all it surveyed.

The topmost branches offered the perfect vantage point from which the eagle could hunt his prey. Jaeger scanned the tree’s spreading vegetation, which was dusted with a delicate pink blush of flowers. It alone was in full bloom. It drew the eye – a patch of iridescent colour surrounded on all sides by a sea of deep greens.

He spotted the nest.

The eagles were a breeding pair.

No doubt there were hungry chicks to feed.

For a moment, Jaeger imagined himself as that eagle, soaring high over the jungle on wings some seven feet across. He saw himself diving over that remote and distant wilderness where the mystery aircraft lay hidden. With an eagle’s vision he could track a mouse moving on the forest floor from several hundred yards away. Spotting the site of that air wreck – the bare, skeletal branches drained of life and stripped clean of vegetation – was child’s play.

In his mind’s eye he glided overhead, the scene below him looking so unnatural. Still. Lifeless. Ghostly, even.

What had caused the forest to die like that?

What secrets –
what dangers
– did that mystery aircraft harbour?

Watching the eagles, Jaeger was reminded of the
Reichsadler
. In the hectic whirl of the last few days he’d had little time to dwell upon that cruel eagle symbol; that prophetic darkness. Odd how such a magnificent bird could represent both evil and wild freedom and beauty.

It was Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese master of warfare, who’d first coined the phrase
know your enemy
.

In the military, Jaeger had made that his mantra.

He was used to facing an enemy that he knew and understood well. One that he’d studied hard, using satellite images, surveillance photos and briefings from the world’s foremost intelligence agencies. Using signals intercepts. Employing humint – human intelligence – assets on the ground: a spy, or a source within the bad guys’ camp.

Before any mission he would assure himself that he knew his enemy intimately, so much the better to defeat him. But right here and now they were going in to face a whole plethora of potential dangers, none of which they knew or understood.

Whatever the risks were, they remained unknown.

Whoever the enemy might be, they were faceless.

Strangers.

No doubt about it, that was what had Jaeger spooked – rushing into this nameless and unknowable peril.

But at least now he’d got it straight in his head.

At least now he knew.

Having reached that realisation, Jaeger felt somewhat reassured. He turned to face the aircraft. He heard the high-pitched whine as the starter motors fired up the first of the giant turbines. Slowly, ponderously, the massive hook-bladed propellers began to turn as if they were mired in thick treacle.

A Land Rover was tearing down the rutted dirt track that sat alongside the runway. Jaeger guessed someone was coming to drive him back to the waiting plane. It pulled to a halt and the unmistakable figure of Colonel Evandro jumped out.

Six foot two, dark-eyed, lithe and athletic-looking despite his age, the B-SOB colonel had lost none of his presence during the years since Jaeger had first served alongside him. He had opted to put himself through the hell of SAS selection so that he could better shape his unit in the British regiment’s image – and Jaeger admired him greatly for it.

‘Time to head for the hold,’ he announced. ‘Your team – they’re making their final preparations for getting airborne.’

Jaeger nodded. ‘You sure you won’t be coming with us?’

The colonel smiled. ‘Truthfully? I would love nothing more. Pen-pushing is hardly my milieu. But with rank and command comes all the usual bullshit.’

‘Best I get going, then.’

The colonel held out his hand. ‘Good luck, my friend.’

‘You think we’ll be needing it?’

He eyed Jaeger for a long moment. ‘It is the Amazon. Expect the unexpected.’

‘Expect the unexpected,’ Jaeger echoed. Wise words.

Together they climbed into the Land Rover and tore back along the track towards the waiting Hercules.

20

Jaeger paused at the aircraft’s cockpit. A head poked out of the side window high above him.

‘Weather’s holding good over the DZ,’ the pilot called down. ‘Wheels up in fifteen. You good with that?’

Jaeger nodded. ‘Tell you the truth, I can’t wait. I hate the waiting.’

The aircrew was all American, and by their poise and bearing Jaeger figured they were ex-military. The Hercules C-130 had been chartered by Carson from some private air-freight company, and Jaeger had been assured that these guys were the best in the business. He had every confidence that they’d get him to the exact spot in the sky where he and his team needed to jump.

‘You got any tunes you want playin’?’ the pilot queried. ‘Like, for P-Hour?’

Jaeger smiled. P-Hour stood for Parachute Hour, the moment when Jaeger and his team would hurl themselves off the tail ramp into the howling void.

It was a long-standing tradition amongst airborne units that they’d blast out some music as they prepared for the
go-go-go
. It boosted the adrenalin and got the pulse hammering as they waited to freefall into war; or, as in this case, on a mystery journey into a modern-day Lost World.

‘Something classical,’ Jaeger suggested. ‘Wagner maybe? What’ve you got on the system?’

Jaeger’s chosen jump music had always been something of that nature. It was counter-culture, as far as his mates saw it, but the old stuff always served to centre him. And on this one he sure was going to need some centring.

He would be leading the jump, so as to guide those coming after. And he wasn’t going to be jumping alone.

Irina Narov had joined the team late – too late for Andy Smith to take her through the necessary HAHO refresher course. HAHO stood for High Altitude High Opening, a form of parachute insertion that enabled a force to drift for miles into their target. It was their chosen means of insertion for the expedition.

Jaeger was going to have to make a tandem HAHO jump, leaping into the void at 30,000 feet with another person – Irina Narov – strapped to his torso. He figured he needed a dose of calming music like never before.

‘I got AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”,’ the pilot announced. ‘Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”. ZZ Top and Motörhead. I got some Eminem, 50 Cent and Fatboy. Take your pick, buddy.’

Jaeger delved into his pocket, pulled out a CD and tossed it up to the pilot. ‘Try that. Track four.’

The pilot glanced at the CD. ‘“Ride of the Valkyries”.’ He snorted. ‘Sure you don’t want “Highway to Hell”?’

He broke into a burst of song, fingers drumming on the skin of the Hercules in time to AC/DC’s lyrics.

Jaeger smiled. ‘Let’s save it for the pick-up, eh?’

The pilot rolled his eyes. ‘You Brits – you need to let your hair down. We’ll get you guys enjoyin’ yourselves yet!’

Jaeger sensed that the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ – the theme tune to the iconic Vietnam War movie,
Apocalypse Now
– was going to prove uniquely fitting to the present mission. It was also a halfway house to the pilot’s chosen blast, and in Jaeger’s book it was always good to keep your aircrew happy.

The pilot and his crew had the difficult task of getting ten bodies kicked out of the aircraft’s hold at exactly the right point in the sky, one that would get them on to their target – a tiny patch of clear ground some ten kilometres straight down.

Right now, the pilot pretty much held Jaeger’s life – and those of his team – in his hands.

Jaeger moved around to the aircraft’s rear and climbed aboard. He let his eyes wander around the dark interior of the hold. It was lit here and there by the eerie red glow of low-level lighting. He counted nine jumpers, ten with himself included. In contrast to what he was accustomed to in the military, he knew none of them well. They’d had a few days’ preparation and that was all.

His team was fully geared up. Each was dressed in a thick and cumbersome Gore-Tex survival suit, one specially designed for HAHO jumps. It was a pain having to wear them, for as soon as they hit the steamy jungle they’d be roasting hot. But without such protection they’d freeze to death during the long drift under the parachutes through the thin and icy blue.

At their 30,000-foot jump altitude they’d be a thousand feet higher than the peak of Everest, in the permanently frozen death zone. The temperature would be minus fifty degrees centigrade and the winds at that altitude – the same as commercial airliners flew at – would be fearsome. Without their specialist survival suits, masks, gloves and helmets, they’d freeze to death in the blink of an eye, and they were going to be under their parachutes for far longer than that.

They couldn’t jump from a lower height for the simple reason that the complex glide map to get them on to their exact drop zone required them to drift beneath their chutes for forty-odd kilometres, and you could only achieve that kind of distance when dropped from 30,000 feet. Plus doing a HAHO had the added advantage of maxing out the drama for the TV cameras.

In the centre of the Hercules’ hold lay two giant toilet-roll-shaped containers. These para-tubes were so heavy that they were mounted on a set of rails that ran the length of the floor. Two of Jaeger’s most experienced jumpers – Hiro Kamishi and Peter Krakow – would strap on to the tubes just prior to the jump, so as to parachute them into the landing zone.

They were packed with the team’s inflatable canoes and ancillary equipment – stuff too bulky and heavy to carry in the rucksacks. Kamishi and Krakow would be ‘riding the tube’, as the saying went. The physical strain of doing so would be horrific, but Jaeger had a quiet confidence in the two of them.

His own task was even more challenging. But he told himself that he’d jumped tandem dozens of times before, and that he shouldn’t stress about getting Irina Narov down in one piece.

He took up a position facing his team. They were spread along the seats lining one side of the Hercules. On the opposite side sat the PDs – the parachute dispatchers, whose job it was to get them safely out of the aircraft.

With the various elements of the expedition spread halfway around the world, all would need to work to a standardised time. What Jaeger was about to do was exactly what he’d have done were this a military operation. He went down on one knee and rolled back his left sleeve.

‘Heads-up,’ he announced, having to yell above the noise of the aircraft’s turbines. ‘Confirming Zulu time.’

A row of figures fought with their bulky suits as they struggled to make their timepieces visible. Ensuring everyone had correctly synchronised their watches would be absolutely vital to what was coming.

Their team and the airship orbiting above them would at times be operating in the Bolivian time zone. The C-130 aircrew was flying out of Brazil, which was one hour ahead of Bolivia, while the Wild Dog Media production HQ in London was two hours ahead again.

It would be pointless Jaeger calling in an extraction aircraft at mission’s end if either they or it arrived at the rendezvous three hours late, due to time differences. Zulu time was the accepted global standard upon which all militaries operated – and the expedition would be doing the same from here on in.

‘In thirty seconds it’ll be 0500 Zulu,’ Jaeger announced.

Each of the figures had their eyes glued to the second hands on their watches.

‘Twenty-five seconds and counting,’ Jaeger warned. He glanced up at the team. ‘All good?’

There was a series of gestures in the positive. Eyes glowed with excitement from behind bulky oxygen masks. When doing a HAHO jump, you had to breathe a forced-air mixture, pressurised pure oxygen being pumped into your lungs. You had to start doing so before take-off, to reduce the danger of getting altitude sickness, which could rapidly disable or kill.

The masks prevented any chat, but still Jaeger felt heartened. His team looked more than ready to get down and dirty in the Cordillera de los Dios.

‘0500 Zulu in ten seconds . . .’ he counted. ‘Seven . . . four, three, two: mark!’