Ghost Flight (14 page)

On his call, each of the team nodded their acknowledgement. They were good – synchronised to Zulu time.

No one was wearing anything other than a quality timepiece, but none had anything particularly flashy either. The golden rule was the fewer buttons and gizmos the better. The last thing you wanted was a watch with a million functions. Bulky knobs and dials had a habit of either breaking or getting snagged. ‘Keep it simple, stupid’ were words of advice ingrained in Jaeger from his SAS selection days.

He himself wore a bog-standard dull green British Army watch. It was low-luminosity, so it wouldn’t show up in the dark, and it had zero reflective or chromed metal – nothing to glint in the sunlight when you least wanted it to. During his time in the military he’d worn that watch for another reason too: it didn’t mark him out as anything other than a regular soldier.

If you were captured by the enemy, you didn’t want anything on your person that might distinguish you as being particularly special. In fact, he and his men used to sanitise themselves completely before any mission – cutting out all labels from clothing, and not carrying a single piece of ID or mark of unit or rank.

Like every soldier in his squadron, Jaeger had trained to be the grey man.

Well, almost.

Just as now, he’d made one exception to the rule. He’d always carried two photos, laminated and hidden in the sole of his left boot. The first was of his childhood dog, a mountain collie that had been a gift from his grandfather. She was immaculately trained, totally devoted, and she used to follow him everywhere. The other was of Ruth and Luke, and a big part of Jaeger refused to let their memory go now.

Carrying such photos was a big no-no on any mission, but some things mattered more than the rules.

21

Watches synched, Jaeger stepped towards his parachute pack. He wriggled into the harness, pulled the straps taut, then closed the heavy metal chest buckle with a solid thunk. Lastly, he tightened the restraining loops around his thighs. He now had the equivalent of a large sack of coal strapped to his back, and this was only the beginning.

When they’d first pioneered HAHO jumps they’d done so using a system whereby the jumper’s heavy rucksack was strapped to his back along with his chute. But that had made the jumper overwhelmingly backside-heavy. If for any number of reasons he lost consciousness during the jump, having all the weight on his back would invert him during the freefall.

The parachute was set to open automatically at a certain altitude, but if the jumper had blacked out and was falling on his back, it would open beneath him. He would drop through his own chute, which would wrap around him like a bundle of damp washing, and jumper and chute would plummet to earth like a stone.

Thankfully, Jaeger and his team were using a far newer system – the BT80. With the BT80, the heavy rucksack hung in a tough canvas bag, strapped to the jumper’s front. That way, if he blacked out, the weight would force him to fall front-first, with his face towards the earth. When the chute was triggered automatically, it would open above him – an absolute lifesaver.

The PDs fussed around Jaeger, tightening straps and making minute adjustments to the load he was carrying. This was vital. On a jump such as this, they’d drift under the chutes for anything up to an hour. If the weight was unbalanced or the straps loose, the whole lot would shift and swing about, rubbing flesh bloody and raw, and throwing the descent off-balance.

The last thing Jaeger needed was to hit the jungle with a sore and shredded groin or shoulders. In the hot and humid conditions, wounds would fester. Any such injury could spell endex – end of expedition – for the victim.

Jaeger pulled on his chunky para-helmet. The PDs strapped his personal oxygen tank to his chest and passed him his mask, which was linked to his oxygen canister by a ribbed rubber tube. He pressed the mask into his face and took a sharp intake of breath, to check that it made a good, airtight seal.

At 30,000 feet, there was little if any oxygen.

If the breather system failed for just a few seconds, he’d be a dead man.

Jaeger felt a wild rush of euphoria – the pure, cold oxygen surging into his brain. He pulled on his leather gauntlets, followed by thick Gore-Tex overgloves, to protect against the biting cold once under canopy at high altitude.

He’d jump with his weapon – a standard Benelli M4 combat shotgun with a folding stock – slung over his left shoulder, barrel downwards, and strapped to his person. It was always possible that during the jump you’d lose your backpack, in which case it was vital to still have your main weapon securely to hand.

Jaeger wasn’t expecting a hostile force to be present on the ground this time, but there was that uncontacted tribe to contend with – the Amahuaca Indians. The last sign they’d given of their presence was when they’d shot poison-tipped arrows at a group of gold prospectors who’d strayed into their forest domain.

The miners had fled for their lives, barely living to tell the story.

Jaeger didn’t exactly blame the Indians for defending their territory so resolutely. If all the outside world ever brought them was illegal gold mining, and most likely logging as well, his sympathies lay fully with the Indians – for mining and logging would cause pollution and the destruction of their forest home.

But it meant that any outsider who trespassed into the Indians’ territory – Jaeger and his team included – was bound to be seen as hostile, especially when they were dropping from the heavens right into the very heart of the tribe’s world. Truth was, Jaeger had no real idea what sort of enemy, if any, they might encounter once they hit the ground, but his training had taught him to always be prepared.

Hence why he had chosen the shotgun as his weapon. It was perfect for close-quarter combat in dense jungle. It fired off a wide cone of lead shot, so being able to see and target your enemy amongst the darkness and the vegetation wasn’t essential.

You just swung the muzzle in the general direction and let rip.

22

In truth, Jaeger hoped to hell that if they did run into that tribe, it would prove a peaceful meeting. There was a part of him that thrilled to the prospect: if anyone understood the mysteries of the rainforest, these Amazonian Indian people would – their knowledge gained over countless centuries being the key to unlocking its ancient secrets.

Strapped into his bulky gear, Jaeger shuffled over and took his seat.

He was closest to the ramp. Poised to be first out.

Narov was next in line beside him.

Strapped up, bulked out and weighed down like this, he felt like some kind of abominable snowman. It was hot and claustrophobic, and he hated the waiting.

The aircraft’s ramp whined closed.

The hold became a dark tunnel of shadow.

Like a giant steel coffin.

They had a four-hour flight ahead of them, so if all went to plan they would be over the drop zone at around 0900 hours Zulu. They’d pile out of the aircraft, ten figures clad in khaki green, faces daubed with dark camo cream, suspended beneath their matt-black parachutes.

They would be invisible, and inaudible, to any watchers as they hit the ground. It would all be high drama, which would be great for the TV cameras. But Jaeger just felt better going in low profile and unseen.

The aircraft jerked forward and began to taxi along the sun-blasted runway. Jaeger felt it slow, and then the turbines screamed to a fever pitch as it spun around on the spot, facing the direction for take-off. He felt a surge of adrenalin as the engines roared ever louder, the pilot doing his last-minute checks before releasing the brakes.

Inside the hold, the air was thick with the fumes of burning avgas, but all Jaeger could smell and taste was the heady rush of pure oxygen. Rigged up in all his HAHO gear – suit, gloves, harness, oxygen tank, parachute pack, helmet, mask, goggles – he felt horribly constrained. Trapped even.

It was hard to keep any sense of perspective.

The oxygen tended to push you into a heightened state of being – like having a massive alcohol high, but without the worry of the after-party hangover.

There was a sharp change in the howl of the turbines and the C-130 surged forward, accelerating powerfully. Seconds later, Jaeger felt it lift off and claw its way into the muggy skies. He reached behind him and plugged into the aircraft’s intercom, so he could tune in to the pilot’s chat.

It always served to calm him when preparing for a jump.

‘Airspeed one hundred and eighty knots,’ the pilot’s voice intoned. ‘Altitude fifteen hundred feet. Rate of climb . . .’

At this point, the only threat to getting in there was a storm forming over the jungle. At 30,000 feet, conditions were pretty much predictable – ice cold, windswept, but stable – whatever the weather at lower altitudes. Yet if a tropical storm blew up at ground level, it could make the landing impossible.

If there was anything more than a fifteen-knot crosswind, they’d have trouble putting down. Parachutes would be dragged sideways, their human cargo with them, and it would be doubly hazardous with their chosen landing point being so menaced by dangers on all sides.

A mighty river – the Rio de los Dios – cut through the jungle, twisting this way and that as it went. On one particularly tortuous stretch it had deposited a long, slim sandbar, which remained devoid of practically all vegetation. It was one of the few patches of clear ground in the vast expanse of jungle, hence why they’d chosen it as their point of touchdown.

But it left precious little room for error.

At one limit of the slender sandbar lay the riverbank, marked by a towering wall of jungle. If any bodies were blown off course that way, they would smash into the trees. If forced in the other direction, they’d get swept into the Rio de los Dios, the heavy weight of their kit dragging them under.

‘Altitude three thousand five hundred,’ the pilot’s voice announced. ‘Airspeed two hundred and fifty knots. Climbing to cruise height.’

‘See that break in the jungle?’ the navigator cut in. ‘We follow that river due west for the next hour or so.’

‘Got it,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘And ain’t it a beautiful morning.’

As he listened in on the chat, Jaeger felt a rush of nausea hit his throat. As a rule, he didn’t get airsick. It was getting wrapped, strapped and trapped in all the HAHO gear that he found so debilitating.

During HAHO training he’d had to undergo a series of tests to check his resistance to high altitude, low oxygen levels and extreme disorientation. He’d been placed inside a compression chamber, which had taken him up in stages to the kind of conditions encountered at 30,000 feet.

With each 3,000-foot rise in altitude, he’d had to rip off his oxygen mask and yell out his name, rank and serial number, before slamming the mask back on again.

That he’d found pretty much okay.

But then he was placed in the dreaded centrifuge.

The centrifuge was like a giant washing machine on steroids. He was spun around and around, faster and faster, until he was on the verge of passing out. Before losing consciousness you ‘greyed out’, your vision fading into a fractured kaleidoscope of grey. You needed to know when you were about to grey out, so you could recognise it on a real jump and get yourself out of the spin.

The centrifuge had been pure, puke-inducing horror.

They’d given Jaeger a video as a keepsake. Greying out was far from pretty. Your eyes bugged out like a wasp dosed with fly-killer, your face became hollowed out and skeletal, your cheeks flapped and sucked, your features distorted all to hell.

The centrifuge had come close to tearing Jaeger down and breaking him apart. A man who thrilled to the open wild, he’d hated crawling into that enclosed metal drum – that suffocating steel coffin of a machine. It had felt like a prison. Like his own grave.

Jaeger detested being locked up or in any way unnaturally constrained.

Just like now, trussed up in all this HAHO gear and waiting to make the jump.

He leaned back and closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep. It was the first rule of elite soldiering that he’d ever learned: never refuse the chance of a meal or a sleep, for you never knew when you might be getting your next.

Sometime later he felt a hand shake him awake. It was one of the PDs. For a moment he figured it had to be showtime, but when he glanced along the line of jumpers, no one seemed to be making ready for the exit.

The PD leaned closer and yelled in his ear. ‘Pilot’s coming aft to have a word.’

Jaeger glanced forward, seeing a figure step around the navigator perched on his fold-down seat at the rear of the cockpit.

The pilot must have handed the aircraft’s controls to his co-pilot, Jaeger figured. He approached and leaned over, yelling to make himself heard above the roar of the engines. ‘How you doin’ back here?’

‘Sleeping like a baby. Always a pleasure to fly with true professionals.’

‘Always good to catch a few zees,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘So, something’s kind of come up. Thought I ought to warn you guys. No idea what it means, but . . . Shortly after take-off, I got this sense we were being followed. Once a Night Stalker, always a Night Stalker, if you know what I mean.’

Jaeger raised one eyebrow. ‘You were with the SOAR? The 160th?’

‘Sure was,’ the pilot growled, ‘before I got too old and stiff to soldier any more.’

The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment – otherwise known as the Night Stalkers – was America’s foremost covert airborne operations unit. On several occasions when deep behind enemy lines with the bad guys breathing down his neck, Jaeger had found himself calling upon a SOAR combat search-and-rescue helicopter.

‘There’s no finer unit,’ Jaeger told the pilot. ‘Respect for you guys. Many a time you pulled us out of the shit.’

The pilot delved into his pocket and drew out a military coin. He pressed it into Jaeger’s hand.

It was about the size and shape of a large piece of chocolate money, of the type that Jaeger used to give Luke at Christmas in his stocking. Christmas had been a very special time for the Jaeger family; until their last – which had been mired in utter darkness. The memory of it caused Jaeger a momentary stab of pain.