Ghost Flight (24 page)

‘But if I can’t film key scenes like this, we’ve got no show,’ Dale objected. ‘The commissioners – the TV execs—’

Jaeger’s look was enough to silence him. ‘There’s something you need to understand: right now, I do not give a damn about your TV execs. Right now, there’s only one thing I care for – which is getting the maximum number of my team through this alive. And right now, we’re five – six – down, so I’m on the back foot and sliding.

‘And that makes me dangerous,’ Jaeger continued. ‘It makes me mad.’ He stabbed a finger at the camera. ‘And when I get mad, stuff tends to get broken. Now, Mr Dale: turn – it – the hell – off.’

Dale reached for the camera, hit a couple of buttons and powered down. He’d been caught red-handed, but from his sulky demeanour you’d have thought he was the one who had been wronged.

‘You get me to ask a load of idiot questions,’ Kral muttered at Dale, half under his breath. ‘Another of your dumb-ass ideas.’

Jaeger had met guys like Dale and Kral before. A few of his elite forces mates had tried to make it in their world – the world of the out-there, reality-show TV media. They’d found out too late how ruthless it could be. It chewed people up and spat them out again, like dried husks. And honour and loyalty were a rare commodity.

It was a cut-throat business. Guys like Dale and Kral – not to mention their boss, Carson – had to be driven to make it, often to the detriment of all others. It was a world wherein you had to be prepared to film people making life-or-death decisions when you had promised not to – because it went with the territory; that was what it took to get the story.

You had to be ready to put the knife into your fellow cameraman’s back, if that might advance your own fortunes a little. Jaeger hated the ethos, and that was in large part what had made him so unreceptive to the media team from the get-go.

He added Kral and Dale to the list of things he’d have to keep a close watch on here – along with toxic spiders, giant caimans, savage tribes, and now an unidentified force of gunmen seemingly intent on delivering bloody violence.

‘Okay, so – with the camera turned well and truly off – let’s move to a vote,’ he announced. ‘Option one: we pull out and abandon the expedition. All in favour?’

Every hand remained down.

That was a relief: at least they weren’t about to turn tail and run from the Serra de los Dios any time soon.

41

‘Mind if I film?’ Dale gestured at Jaeger.

Jaeger was crouched by the water’s edge doing his evening ablutions – his shotgun propped to one side, just in case of trouble.

He spat into the water. ‘You’re persistent, I’ll give you that. Expedition leader cleans his teeth. Gripping stuff.’

‘No, really. I need to capture some of this stuff. Background colour. Just to establish how life goes on amongst . . .’ He waved a hand at the river and surrounding jungle. ‘Amongst all of this.’

Jaeger shrugged. ‘Be my guest. Highlight coming up: I’m about to wash my stinking face.’

Dale proceeded to take a few shots covering Jaeger’s attempts to use the Rio de los Dios as his bathroom. At one point the cameraman had his boots in the water and his back to the river, filming a low-level shot, his lens thrust halfway down Jaeger’s throat.

Jaeger half hoped a five-metre caiman would come grab Dale by the balls, but no such luck.

Apart from Alonzo, who’d typically wanted to go hunting for the bad guys directly, the vote had been unanimous. Option number three – to continue with the expedition as planned – had been everyone’s choice. Jaeger had had to clear things with Carson, but a short call via a Thuraya satphone had got it sorted.

Carson had made his priorities very clear very quickly: nothing was to stand in the way of the expedition’s progress. From the get-go, everyone had known and understood the dangers. All team members had signed a legally binding disclaimer, recognising that they were going into harm’s way. The five missing people were just that:
missing, until proven otherwise
.

Carson had a twelve-million-dollar global TV spectacular to keep on track, and Wild Dog Media’s fortunes – not to mention those of Enduro Adventures – were very much dependent on its success. Come what may, Jaeger had to get his team to the site of that air wreck, uncover its secrets, and if possible pull the mystery warplane out of there.

If anyone got injured or died in the process, their misfortune would be overshadowed by the awesome nature of the discovery, or so Carson argued. This was, after all, the Last Great Mystery of the Second World War, he reminded Jaeger;
the plane that never was; the ghost flight
. Funny how rapidly Carson had made the archivist’s, Simon Jenkinson’s, phrases so completely his own.

Carson had even gone as far as trying to upbraid Jaeger for standing in the way of some of the filming – which meant that Dale must have called him to complain. Jaeger had given Carson short shrift: he was in charge of the expedition on the ground, and here in the jungle his word was law. If Carson didn’t like it, he could fly out to the Serra de los Dios and take his place.

Call to Carson done, Jaeger had placed a second – this to the Airlander. The giant airship had taken a while to fly out from the UK, but it was now moving towards its point of orbit high above them. Jaeger knew the pilot, Steve McBride, from when their paths had crossed in the military. He was a good, safe pair of hands to have at the Airlander’s controls.

Jaeger had another reason to trust the Airlander’s crew absolutely. Before leaving London, he’d cut a deal with Carson: if he couldn’t have Raff with him on the ground, he wanted him as his eyes in the sky. Carson had capitulated, and the big Maori had duly been appointed McBride’s operations officer on the Airlander.

Jaeger had put a call through to the airship, getting a heads-up from Raff on all aspects of the expedition’s bigger picture. There was no further update on Andy Smith’s death, which didn’t exactly surprise him. But the one thing that was a shocker was the news about Simon Jenkinson.

The archivist had had his London flat broken into. Three things had gone missing: his file on the Ju 390 ghost flight, the iPhone on which he’d taken the recent – surreptitious – photos of the Hans Kammler file, and his laptop. Jenkinson had been spooked by the robbery, and triply so once he’d checked with the National Archives.

The reference number for the Hans Kammler file had been AVIA 54/1403. The National Archive claimed there was no record of any such file ever having existed. Jenkinson had seen it with his own eyes. He’d sneaked some photos of it on to his phone. But with his flat being burgled, and the file having been expunged from the archives, it was as if AVIA 54/1403 had never even existed.

The ghost flight now had its own ghost file.

42

Jenkinson was scared, but he didn’t seem to be running, Raff had explained. Quite the reverse. He’d vowed that he’d retrieve those photos, come what may. Fortunately, he’d stored them on a number of online cloud systems. Just as soon as he managed to get a replacement computer, he’d go about downloading them.

The news from Jenkinson could mean only one thing, Jaeger reasoned: whoever they were up against had the power and the influence to make an entire British government file disappear. The ramifications were deeply worrying, but there wasn’t a great deal he could do about it from the heart of the Amazon.

Jaeger had urged Raff to keep a close watch, and to brief him whenever they could establish communications between the ground team and the Airlander.

He packed away his wash kit, rolling it into a tight bundle. Early the following morning they would set off downriver, and space in the boats was limited. Dale had clearly filmed enough, for he powered down the camera. But Jaeger could sense him lingering, as if he wanted to have words.

‘Look, I know you’re not comfortable with much of this,’ he ventured. ‘The filming. And I’m sorry about the incident earlier. I was bang out of order. But my neck is on the line here if I don’t capture enough of this to make it work.’

Jaeger didn’t reply. He didn’t particularly like the man, and even less so after the underhand filming episode.

‘You know, there’s a quote about my industry,’ Dale ventured. ‘The TV industry. Hunter S Thompson. Mind hearing it?’

Jaeger shouldered his shotgun. ‘I’m all ears.’

‘“The TV business is a cruel and shallow money trench,”’ Dale began, ‘“a
long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs.” Probably not word for word, but . . .
Good men die like dogs
sums up the industry perfectly.’

Jaeger eyed him. ‘There’s a similar saying in my business: “The pat on the back is only ever a recce for the knife going in.”’ He paused. ‘Look, I don’t have to like you to be able to work with you. But I’m not here to break your balls either. As long as we have some workable ground rules, we should be able to get through this without killing each other.’

‘What kind of rules?’

‘Reasonable ones. Ones that you guys adhere to. Like, one: you do not have to ask my permission to film. Film as you see fit. But if I ever tell you not to, you do as I say.’

Dale nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

‘Two: if any other team member asks you not to film, you do as requested. You can come to me to query it, but in the first instance you respect their wishes.’

‘But that means everyone has a de facto right of veto,’ Dale objected.

‘It doesn’t: only I have. This is my expedition, and that means you and Kral – you’re on my team. If I think you should be allowed to film, I will come down on your side. You have a difficult and challenging job to do. I respect that, and I will be an honest arbitrator.’

Dale shrugged. ‘Well, okay. I guess I don’t have much choice.’

‘You don’t,’ Jaeger confirmed. ‘Rule three: you ever try a repeat performance of this morning – filming when you’ve agreed not to – your camera ends up at the bottom of the river. I’m not joking. I have lost five people. Don’t push it.’

Dale spread his hands in a gesture of contrition. ‘Like I said, I’m sorry.’

‘The fourth and final rule.’ Jaeger stared at Dale for a long second. ‘Don’t break the rules.’

‘Got it,’ Dale confirmed. He paused. ‘There is maybe one thing you could do, though – to make things easier from our side. If I could interview you, say here by the riverside, I could get you to recap on all of today – the stuff we weren’t allowed to film.’

Jaeger thought about it for a moment. ‘If there are questions I don’t want to answer?’

‘You don’t have to. But you are the expedition leader. You’re the right and proper spokesperson for this thing.’

Jaeger shrugged. ‘Okay. I’ll do it. But remember: the rules are the rules.’

Dale smiled. ‘I got it. I got it.’

Dale fetched Kral. They put the camera on a lightweight tripod, fixed Jaeger up with a throat microphone to get some decent sound, and with Kral behind camera framing the shot, Dale settled into interviewer mode. He sat himself beside the camera, asking Jaeger to speak to him direct and to try to ignore the lens that was staring him in the face, and to give a recap of the events of the last forty-eight hours.

As the interview progressed, there was a part of Jaeger that had to admit that Dale was good at his job. He had a way of teasing out information that made you feel as if you were just having a chat with a mate down the local pub.

Fifteen minutes into the interview, and Jaeger had almost forgotten the camera was there.

Almost.

‘It was pretty obvious that you and Irina Narov prowled around each other like lions gearing up for a fight,’ Dale ventured. ‘So why risk everything for her at the river crossing?’

‘She was on my team,’ Jaeger answered. ‘Enough said.’

‘But you went into battle against a five-metre caiman,’ Dale pressed. ‘You almost lost your life. You went to war for someone who seemed to have it in for you. Why?’

Jaeger stared at Dale. ‘It’s an old rule in my profession that you never speak ill of the dead. Now, moving on . . .’

‘Okay, moving on,’ Dale confirmed. ‘So, this mystery force of gunmen – any idea who they are or what they might be after?’

‘I’ve almost zero idea,’ Jaeger answered. ‘This far into the Serra de los Dios there shouldn’t be anyone else around other than us and the Indians. As to what they’re after? I figure maybe they’re trying to discover the location of that air wreck; maybe to stop us getting to it. Nothing else makes any sense. But it’s just a gut feeling, no more.’

‘That’s quite a proposition – that a rival force might be out there searching for the wreck,’ Dale pressed. ‘Your suspicions must be based upon something?’

Before Jaeger could answer, Kral made an odd slurping sound. Jaeger had noticed that the Slovakian cameraman had an unfortunate habit of sucking his teeth.

Dale turned and gave him the daggers. ‘Mate, I’m trying to interview here. Keep focused, and keep the bloody noise down.’

Kral glared back. ‘I am focused. I’m behind the bloody camera pushing the bloody buttons, if you hadn’t noticed.’

Great, thought Jaeger. They were just days in and already the camera crew were at each other’s throats. What were they going to be like after weeks in the jungle?

Dale turned back to Jaeger. He rolled his eyes, as if to say,
look what I have to deal with
. ‘This rival force – I was asking you about your suspicions.’

‘Think about it,’ Jaeger answered. ‘Who knows the exact whereabouts of that warplane? Colonel Evandro. Myself. Alonzo. If there is another force out there trying to find it, they’d have to follow us. Or force someone on our team to talk. We had an unidentified aircraft tailing us when we flew in here. So maybe – just maybe – we’ve been followed and menaced pretty much all of the way.’

Dale smiled. ‘Perfect. I’m done.’ He gestured at Kral. ‘Power down. That was sweet,’ he remarked to Jaeger. ‘You did a great job.’

Jaeger cradled his shotgun. ‘A little less dirt-digging would be appreciated. But either way it’s preferable to you guys sneaking about filming on the quiet.’