Ghost Flight (19 page)

Jaeger grabbed his medical pack and felt around for the syringes and phials. Luckily it was well padded, and most seemed to have survived the fall. He readied the first shot of ComboPen, raised it above his head and thumped the big needle of drugs into Narov’s system.

30

Five minutes later, the treatment was done. Narov was still conscious, but she was nauseated, her breathing shallow, and she was twitching and spasming badly. It had been only a matter of minutes from her receiving the bite to Jaeger getting the antidote into her, but even so, there was still a chance that the spider toxins could kill her.

Having helped her out of her bulky HAHO gear, Jaeger urged her to drink as much as she could from the water bottle that he placed at her side. She needed to keep herself hydrated, as the fluids would help flush the worst of the toxins from her system.

Jaeger himself stripped down until he was wearing just a pair of tough cotton combat trousers and a T-shirt. His clothes were soaked in sweat and still it was pouring off him. He figured the humidity here had to be plus-ninety per cent. Despite the intense tropical heat, very little perspiration would ever evaporate, for the air was already saturated with water vapour.

For as long as they were in the jungle they’d be soaked through, and it was best just to get used to it.

Jaeger paused to collect his thoughts.

It had been 0903 Zulu when they’d plunged into the canopy at the end of the monster freefall. They’d been a good hour getting down from the treetops. It was around 1030 Zulu by now, and by anyone’s reckoning they were in a whole world of hurt – one that he’d never even come close to envisaging when he’d sketched out the worst-case scenarios prior to departure.

One of his SAS instructors had once told him how ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’. Shit, that was true – and especially when it came to freefalling into the Amazon from 30,000 feet with a Russian ice queen strapped to your person.

He turned his attention to his rucksack. It was a seventy-five-litre green Alice Pack – a US-manufactured Bergen designed specifically for the jungle. Unlike many large packs it had a metal frame, which kept it a good two inches or more off the back, allowing for the worst of the sweat to run off – so reducing the risk of prickly heat, or hips and shoulders rubbing raw.

Most large packs tended to have a wide body and pouches sticking out the side. As a result, they were broader than a man’s shoulders, and would tear and snag on undergrowth. The Alice Pack was thinner at the top and wider at the bottom, with all pouches attached to the rear. That way, Jaeger knew that if he could squeeze through, then his pack would follow.

The pack was lined with a tough rubber ‘canoe bag’, which rendered it waterproof and gave it enough buoyancy to float. As an added bonus, it provided an extra layer’s cushioning to help deal with a hundred-foot drop like the one it had just suffered.

Jaeger rifled through the contents. As he’d feared, not everything had survived the fall. His Thuraya satellite phone had been stuffed into one of the rear pockets, for ease of access. It had a cracked screen, and when he tried to power up, nothing happened. He had a spare packed in one of the para-tubes that Krakow and Kamishi had jumped with, but that wasn’t a great deal of good to them right here and right now.

He pulled out his map. Fortunately, as maps tended to be, it was pretty much indestructible. He’d had it laminated, to semi-waterproof it, and it was already folded to the correct page. Or at least it would have been the correct page: trouble was, he and Narov had put down anywhere up to forty kilometres or more away from their intended landing point.

Using his rucksack as a seat, he propped himself against the buttress root, and rearranged his map to what he figured had to be the correct page. Folding your map was actually a big no-no in the military. It instantly let the enemy know what your focus was, if you were captured. But Jaeger wasn’t on operations here; this was meant to be a civilian jungle expedition, after all.

From his wrist GPS he retrieved the waypoint that he’d fed into it just moments before he’d plunged into the jungle canopy.

It furnished him with a six-figure grid: 837529.

He plotted the grid on the map – and immediately saw exactly where they were.

He took a moment to consider their predicament.

They were twenty-seven kilometres north-east of their intended landing point – the sandbar. Bad, but he guessed it could have been worse. Between them and it lay a wide bend of the Rio de los Dios. Presuming that the rest of the expedition team had made it to the sandbar as intended, the river lay between them and Jaeger and Narov’s present position.

There was no way around that river, and Jaeger knew it. Plus twenty-seven kilometres through dense jungle with a casualty wasn’t going to make for any holiday, that was for certain.

The agreed procedure if anyone failed to make the landing zone was for the rest of the team to wait there for forty-eight hours. If the missing person(s) wasn’t there by then, the next rendezvous point was a distinctive bend in the river, approximately a day’s journey downstream, with two more RV points each set a further day’s travel downriver.

The Rio de los Dios flowed in the direction they needed to go to reach the air wreck – another reason why they’d decided to make that sandbar their landing point. Travelling on from there by river should have proven a comparatively easy means to move through the jungle. But each successive RV was set further to the west, which put it further away from Jaeger and Narov’s present position.

The sandbar was nearest, which meant they had forty-eight hours in which to make it. If they failed, the main body of the expedition would move off more or less due west, and Jaeger and Narov would very likely never catch them.

With his Thuraya satphone kaput, Jaeger had no way of making contact with anyone to let them know what had happened. Even if he could somehow get it working, he doubted he could get a signal. The satphone required clear sky to see and acquire satellites, without which no message could be sent or received.

Presuming they made it over the Rio de los Dios, they would then face a further daunting trek through the heart of the jungle. Plus there was one other major problem that Jaeger was aware of – apart from the near-impossibility of Narov undertaking such a journey.

Colonel Evandro had treated the exact whereabouts of the air wreck with strictest confidence, to protect its location. He’d only been willing to pass the GPS coordinates to Jaeger in person, shortly before their departure on the C-130. Jaeger had in turn agreed to keep the location to himself, in large part because he harboured doubts about who exactly he could trust on his team.

He’d planned to brief the rest of the team on their exact route once they had boots on the ground at the sandbar – at which point they were pretty much all in this together. But when Jaeger had set the emergency RV procedure, he’d never imagined it would be
him
who failed to make the landing zone.

Right now, no one else knew the coordinates of the air wreck, which meant they could only proceed so far without him.

Jaeger glanced at Narov. Her condition seemed to be worsening. One arm was cradling the hand where she’d been bitten. Her face was slick with sweat, and her skin had taken on a sickly, deathly pallor.

He put his head back against the buttress root and took a few deep breaths. This wasn’t simply about the expedition any more: it was about life and death now.

It was a survival situation, and the decisions he made would doubtless dictate whether he and Narov got through this alive.

31

Narov’s white-blonde hair was tied off her face with a sky-blue headband. Her eyes were closed, as if she’d fallen asleep or lost consciousness, and her breathing was shallow. For a moment he was struck by how beautiful she looked, not to mention vulnerable.

Suddenly her eyes opened.

For an instant they stared into his – wide, blank, unseeing; an ice-blue sky torn with storm clouds. And then, with a visible effort, she seemed to pull her mind back into focus; back to the agonising present.

‘I am in pain,’ she announced quietly, between gritted teeth. ‘I will not be going anywhere. You have forty-eight hours to find the others. I have my backpack: water, food, weapon, knife. Get going.’

Jaeger shook his head. ‘That won’t be happening.’ He paused. ‘I get bored by my own company.’

‘Then you
are
a damn
Schwachkopf.
’ Jaeger saw the hint of a smile flicker through her eyes. It was the first time he’d seen her show any hint of emotion, apart from a thinly veiled animosity, and it threw him. ‘But it is hardly surprising you get bored by your own company,’ she continued. ‘You
are
boring. Handsome, yes. But also very boring . . .’

The hint of laughter in her eyes died in a spasm of convulsions.

Jaeger suspected he knew what she was trying to do here. She was trying to provoke him; to drive him to the point where he would abandon her, just as she had suggested. But there was one thing she didn’t appreciate about him yet: he didn’t leave his friends hanging.

Not ever. And not even the crazy ones.

‘So this is what we’re going to do,’ he announced. ‘We’re going to leave all but the bare essentials, and Mr Boring here is going to carry your sorry arse out of here. And before you protest, I’m doing so because I need you. I’m the only one who knows the coordinates of the air wreck. If I don’t make it, the mission’s over. I’m now going to give the coordinates to you. That way, you get to take over if I go down. Got it?’

Narov shrugged. ‘Such heroics. But you will never make it. All you will do is part me from my backpack, and without water and food I will die. Which makes you not just boring, but stupid also.’

Jaeger laughed. He was half tempted to reconsider and leave her. Instead, he got to his feet and dragged together the rucksacks so he could sort out the bare essentials: a medical pack; forty-eight hours’ food for the two of them; poncho to sleep under; ammunition for his shotgun; map and compass.

He added a couple of full water bottles, plus his lightweight Katadyn filter, to get them drinkable water, fast.

He took his rucksack and packed two canoe bags into the bottom, followed by lighter gear. The heavier items – food, water, knife, machete, ammo – he threw on top, so that as much of the load as possible would lie high on his shoulders.

The rest of their kit would be left where it was, no doubt for the jungle to claim.

Gear sorted, he heaved the Bergen on to his back, slinging both his shotgun and Narov’s weapon over his shoulder so they lay across his front. Lastly, he placed the three most crucial items – two full water bottles, his compass and map – in the pouches he had strapped around his waist on a military-style belt kit.

That done, he was ready.

His GPS worked on a similar system to the satphone – from satellites. It too would be next to useless under the thick forest canopy. He would have to cross almost thirty kilometres of trackless jungle via a process known as pacing and bearing, a means of navigation as old as the hills.

Thankfully, in this age of modern technology, it was a skill that the SAS still relied upon, and had all of its members master.

Before reaching for Narov, Jaeger gave her the air wreck’s coordinates – making her repeat them back to him several times over to ensure she had them memorised. He knew it would help her mentally if he reminded her that he needed her.

But there was a part of him that wondered if he really would make it: such a distance across such terrain, carrying such a weight – it would kill most men.

He bent down and took hold of Narov, raising her up in a fireman’s lift until she was face down across his shoulders. Her stomach and chest were directly on top of his pack, so that it took much of her weight, just as he’d intended. He tightened the belt and chest straps of the Bergen, drawing it closer to his torso, so that the load was spread across his entire body – hips and legs included.

Lastly, he took a bearing on his compass. He fixed his eyes on a distinctive tree lying a hundred feet ahead of him, marking that as his first point to head for.

‘Okay,’ he grunted, ‘so this isn’t how it was supposed to happen – but here goes.’

‘No shit.’ Narov grimaced with the pain. ‘Like I said, boring and stupid.’

Jaeger ignored her.

He set off at a steady pace, counting his every footfall as he went.

32

The noise of the forest closed all around Jaeger – the cries of wild animals high in the canopy; the beat of a thousand insects pulsating from the bush; the rhythmic croaking of a chorus of frogs, signalling that wetter ground lay somewhere in front of him.

He could sense the humidity rising and the sweat pouring off of him. But something else was niggling at him – something beyond the precariousness of their present predicament. He felt as if they weren’t alone. It was an irrational feeling, but one he just couldn’t seem to shake.

He did all he could to leave as little sign as possible of his passing, for as time went on he felt more certain than ever that they were being watched – the eerie sensation burning into the back of his neck and shoulders.

But movement was painfully difficult, especially with the weight he was carrying.

In so many ways, the jungle was by far the toughest of all environments to operate in. In the snows of the Arctic all you really had to worry about was remaining warm. Navigation was simplicity itself, for you’d nearly always manage to get a GPS signal. In the desert, the key challenges were staying out of the heat and drinking enough water to keep you alive. You’d move at night and lie up during the day in the shade.

By contrast, the jungle offered a plethora of dangers – ones that nowhere else could equal: fatigue, dehydration, infections, trench foot, disorientation, sores, bites, cuts, bruises, disease-bearing insects and ravenous mosquitoes, wild animals, leeches and snakes. In the jungle you were forever fighting the close, suffocating terrain, while the Arctic and desert were wide open.