Ghost Flight (16 page)

Jaeger turned back to face the sun-whipped void.

All of a sudden the screeching racket from the aircraft’s speakers seemed to stop dead. ‘Highway to Hell’ had been cut short. There was a few seconds’ wind-blasted silence, before Jaeger heard a new burst of sound. In the place of AC/DC’s hell track, a uniquely powerful and evocative piece of music began to pulsate through the C-130’s hold.

It was unmistakable.

Classical.

Jaeger allowed himself a smile.

The pilot had needled him for a while there, but he’d come good in the end. It was Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ after all – and for the final few seconds before jump time.

Jaeger and the music went back a long way.

Before joining the SAS, he had served as a commando in the Royal Marines. He’d got himself jump-trained, and it was the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ that had been played during the ceremony when he’d gained his parachute wings. Many a time he’d hurled himself out of a C-130 along with his fellow SAS blades, Wagner’s classic composition blaring out over the speaker system.

It was the unofficial anthem of British airborne units.

And it was as fine a track as any to be jumping to, on a mission such as this.

As he steeled himself for the exit, Jaeger gave a moment’s thought to the aircraft that had been on their tail. The C-130 pilot had made no further mention of it. Jaeger guessed it had disappeared – maybe calling off the pursuit as the Hercules had crossed the border into Bolivian airspace.

It certainly couldn’t be about to interfere with the jump, or the pilot wouldn’t be letting them go.

He blanked it from his mind.

He nudged Narov forward, shuffling as one towards the open ramp. To either side the PDs strapped themselves to the airframe to avoid being torn out by the howling gale.

The secret to making a HAHO jump was to always keep a grasp on your spatial awareness; to know exactly where you were positioned within the stick of parachutists. As lead jumper, it was vital that Jaeger held them tight. If he lost someone he couldn’t exactly use his radio to call them back; the turbulence and wind noise made communications impossible during the freefall.

Jaeger and Narov came to a halt at the very lip of the ramp.

Figures lined up aft of them. Jaeger felt his heart beating like a machine gun, as the adrenalin surged and burned through his veins. They were on the very roof of the world up here, the realm of the starry heavens.

The PDs did a final visual check on each of the jumpers, ensuring that no straps were snagged or tangled, or hanging free. With Jaeger it was a case of doing so by feel, making sure that all Narov’s points of contact with him were attached good and tight.

The lead PD started yelling the final instructions. ‘Tail off equipment check!’

‘TEN GOOD!’ the rearmost figure cried.

‘NINE GOOD!’

As each figure called out his ready status, he thumped the one in front. No thump on the shoulder and you knew the guy behind was in trouble.

‘THREE GOOD!’ Jaeger felt a whack from the jumper to his rear. It was Mike Dale, the young Aussie cameraman who’d be filming him and Narov as they piled off the aircraft’s open ramp, with a miniature camera strapped to his helmet.

Before the words could freeze in his throat, Jaeger forced himself to yell: ‘ONE AND TWO GOOD!’

The line shuffled more tightly together. Too much separation in the sky and they’d risk losing each other in the freefall.

Jaeger glanced at the jump light.

It began to flash red:
get ready
.

He glanced ahead, peering over Narov’s shoulder. He felt a few strands of her loose hair whipping into his face, the stark oblong of the ramp silhouetted against the bright, snarling maw of the heavens.

Outside was a whirlwind of pure, raging, blinding light.

He felt the wind tearing at his helmet and trying to rip the goggles from his face. He got his head down and steeled himself to drive forward.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the red light burn green.

The PD stepped back: ‘GO! GO! GO!’

Suddenly Jaeger was thrusting Narov forward, driving her ahead and then diving into thin air. As one they tumbled into the snarling emptiness. But as they left the open ramp, Jaeger felt something catch momentarily, the force of it snagging and then tearing loose, serving to throw them violently off balance.

He knew instantly what had happened: they’d made an unstable exit.

They’d been thrown off-kilter and they were going into a spin.

This had the potential to be really bad.

Jaeger and Narov were sucked through the churning maw of the aircraft’s slipstream, the violent turbulence throwing them over and over faster than ever. Spat out of the aircraft’s wake, they began to plummet towards earth, twisting round and round like some giant crazed spinning top.

Jaeger tried to focus his mind on counting out the seconds before he could risk opening the chute.

‘Three thousand and three, three thousand and four . . .’

But as the voice counted out the beats inside his head, he realised things were rapidly worsening. Rather than stabilising, the spin just seemed unstoppable. It was the nightmare of the centrifuge all over, only now it was happening at 30,000 feet and for real.

He tried to gauge how fast they were rotating – to see if he could risk pulling the chute. The only way to do so was by counting how rapidly the air around them turned from blue to green to blue to green and back again. Blue meant facing the sky, green meant the jungle.

Blue-green-blue-green-blue-green-bluuue-greeeeeen-blueeeennnnn . . . Aaarrgggh!

Right now Jaeger was struggling to remain conscious, let alone get a grip on the view.

25

The jump plan called for them all to link up in the freefall, and to pull their chutes on Jaeger releasing his. That way they’d descend pretty much as one, gliding into the landing zone good and tight. But being in tandem and with the spin catapulting them across the heavens – already they were starting to lose the others.

They plummeted towards earth, spinning faster and faster with the fall. As the air speed increased so did the G-forces, the wind tearing at Jaeger’s head like a raging hurricane. He felt as if he were strapped on to some giant out-of-control superbike, which was powering down a corkscrew-shaped tunnel at pushing four hundred kilometres an hour.

With the wind-chill factor, the temperature had to be minus 100 degrees. And as the spin became ever more violent Jaeger could sense the grey-out creeping into the edges of his frozen eyeballs.

His vision blurred and fuzzed. He felt himself gasping for breath; for oxygen. Burning lungs struggled to drag in enough gas from the bottle. His sensory awareness – the ability to judge where he was, or even who he was – was rapidly slipping away.

Beside him his combat shotgun was slamming about like a baseball bat, the folding butt cracking blows into his helmeted head. It had been fastened tight to his side, but somehow it had been ripped loose in the freefall, and it was making them even more unstable.

Jaeger was on the verge of losing consciousness now.

And he didn’t want to imagine what state Narov was in.

With his pulse juddering inside his skull and his mind reeling from the dizziness and disorientation, Jaeger forced his scrambled mind to focus.
He had to stabilise their fall.
Narov was relying on him, as was every jumper in the stick.

There was only one way to stop the spin.

Now to do it.

He drew his arms in close to his chest, then flung both them and his legs into a rigid star shape, bracing his back against the unbearable forces that were threatening to tear him limb from limb. Muscles screamed against the pain and the pressure. He let out a piercing cry of agony as he held the pose and tried to anchor the two of them in the razor-thin air.

‘Aaaaaarrggghhhhhh!’

At least no one would ever hear him scream, for they were alone on the very roof of the world up here.

With arms and legs thrust out rigid to make four anchors, his body arched through the hopelessly light atmosphere. The frozen air howled all around him as his limbs locked with the pain. If only he could hold the star shape for long enough to stabilise their crazed corkscrew descent, they might just get through this alive.

Gradually, slowly, agonisingly, Jaeger began to sense the revolutions decreasing.

Finally, he and Narov stopped spinning.

He forced his frazzled mind to concentrate.

He was facing the blinding blue.

Blue meant sky.

He let out a string of curses.
Wrong way up
.

The two of them were dropping at a murderous speed with their backs to the earth. Every second brought them 300 feet nearer to a pulverising impact, as they plummeted towards the thick jungle. But if Jaeger pulled the chute in their present position, it would open below them. They would fall through it, tearing towards earth like a pair of corpses entombed in a shroud of tangled silk.

They’d smash into the forest at pushing four hundred kilometres an hour.

Dead men.

Or rather one man and one woman, locked in a killer embrace.

Jaeger changed position, forcing his right arm in close to his side. He threw his opposite shoulder over, trying to flip the two of them around. He needed to get them facing green. Urgently.

Green meant earth
.

But for some reason all the manoeuvre seemed to achieve was the very worst result of all – the violent twist sending them back into the spin.

For a moment he was on the very brink of panic. His arm reached involuntarily for the release cord of his chute, but he forced himself to stay his hand. He forced himself to remember how they’d tested this repeatedly with a specially made dummy, during trial jumps.

If you opened the chute in the spin, you were asking for trouble. Big time.

The lines would wrap themselves up tight, like a kid spooling up spaghetti on a fork. Not good news.

As the spin intensified, Jaeger knew that the full grey-out was almost upon him. This was meltdown time. It was like the centrifuge on steroids, only at extreme high altitude and with no off button. His vision started to blur and fuzz, his mind drifting further and further away from him. He was on the verge of blacking out.

‘Focus!’ he snarled.

He cursed himself, trying to free his head of the blinding confusion. ‘FOCUS!
FO-CUS
.’

Every second was precious now. He needed to flick himself back into the star shape, and get Narov to do the same. They’d stand a far better chance of stabilising like that.

There was no way of communicating with her, apart from body language and hand gestures. He was about to grab her arms and signal what he wanted when his frazzled senses realised that she had started struggling violently against him.

Amidst all the blinding confusion, something flashed silver-bright through the clear and glistening air
.

A blade.

A commando-style knife.

Thrusting towards him, ready to drive into his chest region.

In an instant Jaeger knew what was happening. It was impossible, but it was for real. Narov was preparing to stab at him with her knife.

Carson’s warning flashed through his mind:
Never to be found without her knife. Or crossed.

The blade drove at him in a savage thrust.

Jaeger managed to block it with a parry of his right arm, using the tough altimeter that he had strapped to his wrist to take the impact. The blade glanced off the thick glass, nicking into his Gore-Tex sleeve as it did so.

He felt a jabbing stab of pain in his right forearm.

She’d cut him with the first blow.

For a few desperate moments he continued to block and parry, as Narov slashed wildly with the blade, again and again and again.

She swung once more, stabbing much lower this time and clearly going for his guts. Jaeger’s arm – frozen like a block of ice – was a split second too slow.

He failed to parry the thrust.

He tensed for the punching agony of a blade slicing deep into his abdomen. It didn’t much matter where she stabbed him.

If she opened him up here, plummeting to earth at a thousand feet or more every three seconds, he was a dead man.

26

The knife came at him in a swift, driving thrust.

But oddly, as it disappeared from view around the base of his stomach, Jaeger felt no pain. No pain at all. Instead he felt the first of the straps that held Narov to him break open, as the blade sliced through it.

Her arm reached forward, drove backwards, and again the razor-sharp knife struck home, sawing apart the tough canvas and nylon.

Once she was done slicing through the right-hand straps, Narov swapped sides. She jabbed backwards with the blade several further times, cutting away frenziedly at the left-hand ones.

A few final jabs and she was done.

With that, Irina Narov, the wild card on Jaeger’s team, spun away from him.

The moment she tore herself free, Jaeger saw her snap her arms and legs out into a star shape. As her limbs slowed her fall and she began to stabilise, Jaeger whirled past. Moments later there was a crack from above like the sails of a ship catching the wind, and a parachute flared in the sky.

Irina Narov had pulled her emergency chute.

Released of the dead weight of a second body, Jaeger’s odds of survival were suddenly far better than the near-zero they’d been five seconds ago. For a few long moments he struggled desperately to bring his own spin under control, fighting to stop the wild corkscrewing and to stabilise himself.

He was pushing two minutes into the freefall when he finally risked jerking the release cord – sending 360 square feet of the finest silk billowing out behind him.

An instant later he felt as if a giant hand was reaching over and yanking him violently upwards by the shoulders. Decelerating from a monster freefall like this was akin to driving a car into a brick wall at colossal speed and all the airbags going off at once.