Ghost Flight (37 page)

It had to be tough keeping such equipment functioning in these kind of conditions. Dale was religious about his evening kit-cleaning ritual, and many were the nights when he’d fallen into an exhausted sleep holding his camera like a kid would a teddy bear.

‘Dale, you don’t look too good,’ Jaeger prompted.

A head appeared over the side of the hammock. The cameraman’s face looked horribly pale and drawn. Jaeger didn’t doubt that Dale had yet to discover his load of leeches, for only by changing out of his wet gear would he do so.

‘Just so totally knackered,’ Dale muttered. ‘Gotta clean my gear and sleep.’

Nine days in the jungle had taken a heavy toll. Doubly so on Dale, who was tasked to film the entire expedition in addition to being a part of it. Whereas the others found a little time for basic body hygiene, Dale seemed to spend every spare moment cleaning his gear, changing batteries and backing up whatever he’d filmed on to a spare drive.

Plus he had all the extra weight of the film equipment to carry. On several occasions Jaeger had offered to share the burden, but Dale had demurred. His excuse had been that he needed his kit close at hand, but in truth Jaeger figured that he was just a proud and determined operator – and he respected that.

‘You’ve got to change into dry gear,’ Jaeger told him. ‘If you don’t, you’re finished.’

Dale stared, a crushing fatigue etched in his eyes. ‘I’ve hit the wall. Truly hit the wall.’

Jaeger delved into one of his pouches, pulling out a high-energy bar – part of his emergency rations. ‘Here – get that down you. Plus there’s one other thing you’ve got to deal with right now. No way to break this to you gently: leeches.’

It was Dale’s first close encounter with the revolting parasites, and it would prove a particularly traumatic one. Due to his habit of stopping regularly to film, and often crouching on the wet forest floor to get a low-angle shot, he’d presented the easiest of targets. As a result, he had a bumper harvest.

Jaeger offered him the lighter. As a horrified Dale went about burning off the leeches, Jaeger struck up a conversation to help get his mind off the task at hand.

‘So, how’s it been without Kral?’

Dale glanced at him. ‘Truthfully?’

‘Truthfully.’

‘The downside – I’ve got more weight to carry, ’cause Kral and me spread it across the two of us. The upside – I don’t have that ugly leech carping on the whole time, bitter, angry and self-centred. So on balance, I’m better off.’ He smiled, exhausted. ‘But I could do without
these
leeches.’

‘One thing’s for sure – the two of you were on shaky ground from the very start. What was it with you guys?’

‘Tell you a story,’ Dale muttered, as he put the flame to another fat leech. ‘I’m an Aussie by birth, but my dad sent me to a fine English boarding school – a place where they beat any residual Aussieness out of me along with my accent.

‘The school was renowned for its sport. Trouble was, I hated the staples – rugby, hockey and cricket. Was crap at them too. In short, I was a resounding disappointment to my father. There were only two things that I excelled at. One was rock-climbing; the other was using a camera.’

‘A fellow rock jock; that was my thing at school too. It’s a good skill to have in this kind of game.’

‘My dad’s a high-flying Sydney lawyer,’ Dale continued. ‘When I refused to follow him into the law and opted for a media career, he reacted like I’d been caught dealing drugs or something. Cut me off. So I threw myself into the shark pool of the London media, to doubly mess him up.

‘I had no option but to sink, swim or get eaten. I chose to specialise in remote-area and high-risk filming. But it’s a hand-to-mouth existence. Totally. Kral could afford to run at the first sign of trouble. I can’t. Not if I want to prove the naysayers –
my father
– wrong.

‘High-risk adventure filming – it’s what I do. If I quit when it gets too lively, what do I have? Nothing.’ Dale fixed Jaeger with a very direct look. ‘So screw Kral, with his resentment and his envy. But truth be told – I’m shitting myself out here’

De-leeching done, Jaeger volunteered to cover Dale’s watch duties so he could get a full night’s rest. For once, the Australian agreed to the offer of help. Somehow it seemed to signal that the most unlikely of friendships was being forged between the two of them.

As he sat his first sentry, staring into the night-dark forest, Jaeger found himself wondering if he’d misjudged the man. Dale had an independent, maverick streak and a think-outside- the-box mentality – the kind of qualities that Jaeger had valued in his men when in the military.

Had they travelled different life paths, it was just conceivable that Jaeger might have ended up as the war cameraman, and Dale the elite forces warrior.

More than most, Jaeger knew how a man’s destiny could turn on a dime.

65

When Jaeger was relieved of his watch duty, he found that someone else around the camp was still awake – Leticia Santos.

He wandered over, figuring he’d remind her to check for leeches. Santos was already on top of the problem, and she found his obvious discomfort – especially when he suggested she might want to check her female parts – highly amusing.

‘Eight years with B-SOB, five with FUNAI,’ she reminded him. ‘I’ve grown used to checking around those areas!’

Jaeger smiled. ‘That’s a relief. So why the move?’ he asked, crouching down beside her. ‘From hunting bad guys to saving Indians?’

‘Two reasons,’ Santos replied. ‘First, I realised we can’t stop the narco gangs unless we protect the jungle. It’s where they run their drugs and where they hide. And to do that we need the help of the Amazonian tribes. Brazilian law says that their lands – their forest home – have to be protected. So, if we can contact and safeguard the Indians, it’s also the key to saving the Amazon.’

She eyed Jaeger. ‘If this was your country and you possessed this great wonder – the Amazon rainforest – would you not also want to safeguard it?’

‘Of course. And the second reason?’ Jaeger prompted.

‘I lost my marriage due to my work with B-SOB,’ Santos answered quietly. ‘A career in special ops is never a recipe for a long and happy marriage, no? Always on call. So many secrets. Never able to plan anything. So many cancelled holidays, birthdays, anniversaries. My husband complained I was never there for him.’ She paused. ‘I don’t want my daughter to grow up and level the same accusation at me.’

Jaeger nodded. ‘I get that. I left the military shortly after I started a family. But it’s a tough one, for sure.’

Santos glanced at Jaeger’s left hand; the only adornment was a single gold band. ‘You are married, yes? And with children?’

‘I am. One son. Though . . . Well, it’s a long story.’ Jaeger stared off into the brooding jungle. ‘Put it this way – they’re lost to me . . .’ His words petered out to nothing.

Santos reached out and placed a hand on his arm. Her eyes searched his face with undisguised warmth. ‘To be alone is hard. If you ever need a friendly ear – you know you can count on me.’

Jaeger thanked her. He got to his feet. ‘We need to get some rest.
Dorme bem
, Leticia. Sweet dreams.’

Jaeger awoke hours later, a sweaty bundle of screaming.

His hammock was swinging wildly to and fro, from where he’d been thrashing about, fighting the monsters that so often seemed to assail him in his dreams.

It had been a repeat of the nightmare – the one he’d last had in his Wardour Castle apartment. Again it had taken him up to the very moment of his wife and child being snatched away from him – and then an impenetrable wall had crashed down.

He gazed around: the darkness was so complete that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. Then he heard it: movement. Someone – or something – was creeping through the thick bush.

His hand slipped out of the hammock and felt for his combat shotgun.

A voice came to him from the darkness. ‘It is Puruwehua. I heard you screaming.’

Jaeger relaxed.

In a way, he wasn’t surprised that his cries had woken the Indian. Puruwehua had slung his hammock adjacent to his own. And far better him than some of the others – for Jaeger trusted the Amahuaca warrior just about as much as he trusted anyone right now.

Puruwehua squatted beside him. ‘The lost memories – they are in there, Koty’ar,’ he remarked quietly. ‘You just need to allow yourself to unlock them; to go there.’

Jaeger stared into the darkness. ‘Every returning soldier and failed father has nightmares.’

‘Still, you carry much darkness,’ Puruwehua told him. ‘Much pain.’

Silence for a long second.

‘You have light?’ Puruwehua prompted.

Jaeger switched on his head torch, keeping it shielded inside the hammock so that it cast a faint greenish glow. Puruwehua handed him a cup, brimful with liquid. ‘Drink this. A jungle remedy. It will help you.’

Jaeger took the cup and thanked him. ‘I’m sorry to have woken you, my warrior friend. Let’s rest, and be ready for tomorrow.’

With that he drained the contents dry. But the calm he was expecting never came.

Instead, he felt an immediate burst of pain to the inside of his skull, as though someone had kicked him hard in the eye socket. Moments later, his senses started to fail. He felt hands holding him down, and Puruwehua’s distinctive voice murmuring soothing words in his Amahuaca dialect.

Then, quite suddenly, the insides of Jaeger’s eyelids seemed to explode into a kaleidoscope of colours, fading gradually into a bright yellow canvas.

The image intensified and became clearer. Jaeger was lying on his back in a tent, two sleeping bags zipped together, warm and cosy with his wife and child beside him. But something had woken him, pulling him out of a deep sleep into the cold reality of a Welsh winter.

His head torch played across the yellow canvas above as he tried to zero in on the disturbance and the threat. All of a sudden, a long blade came thrusting through the tent’s thin side. As Jaeger went to react, fighting his way out of the constrictions of the sleeping bag, there was a hiss from a nozzle thrust through the opening.

Thick gas filled the tent, knocking Jaeger backwards and freezing his limbs. He saw hands reach in, dark faces clad in respirators above them, and moments later his wife and child were dragged out of the warmth and into the darkness.

They couldn’t even scream, for the gas had incapacitated them as much as it had Jaeger. He was helpless; helpless to defend himself, or, more importantly, his wife and child.

He heard the snarl of a powerful engine; the cry of voices, the slamming of doors, as something – someone – was dragged towards a vehicle. With a superhuman force of will he made himself crawl towards the knife slash in the tent. He thrust his head outside.

He caught barely a glimpse, but it was enough. In the glare of headlights reflecting off a dusting of frost and snow he saw two figures – one slight and boyish; the other lithe and female – bundled into the rear of a 4x4.

The next moment, Jaeger was grabbed by the roots of his hair. His head was forced upwards, so that he was staring through the glass eyelets of a gas mask into hate-filled eyes. A gloved fist hammered out of the darkness with massive force, slamming into Jaeger’s face once, twice, three times, blood from his broken nose spattering across the snow.

‘Take a good long look,’ the face behind the mask hissed, as he twisted Jaeger savagely towards the 4x4. The words were muffled, but still he caught their meaning, the voice somehow sounding chillingly familiar. ‘Get this moment burned into your brain. Your wife and child – they’re ours.’

The mask bent lower, so the front of the respirator was pressing into Jaeger’s bloodied features. ‘Don’t ever forget – you failed to protect your wife and child.
Wir sind die Zukunft!
’

The eyes were wide behind the glass eyelets, pumped with adrenalin, and it struck Jaeger that he knew the face behind that manic gaze. He knew it, yet at the same time he didn’t know it, for he couldn’t put a name to those hate-twisted features. Moments later the horrific scene – the unspeakable memories – faded, but not before one image had lodged in Jaeger’s mind irrevocably . . .

When finally he came back to his senses in his hammock, Jaeger was feeling utterly drained. The most abiding image of the attack hadn’t exactly surprised him. In his heart he’d been expecting it; dreading it. He’d feared it was there, embedded in the darkness of that snow-washed Welsh hillside.

Etched into the hilt of the knife that had sliced through the tent was a dark iconic image: a
Reichsadler
.

66

Puruwehua kept a vigil besides Jaeger’s hammock all through the lonely night hours. He alone understood what Jaeger was going through. The drink he’d given him was laced with
nyakwana
, the key to unlocking so many powerful images buried deep in the mind. He knew the white man would be shaken to his very core.

At dawn, neither spoke about what had happened. Somehow it didn’t need words.

But the whole of that morning Jaeger was moody and withdrawn, trapped inside the shell of the memories that had resurfaced. Physically, he set one foot in front of the other as he trekked through the damp and dripping jungle, but mentally he was in an entirely different place, his mind entombed within a shredded tent on an icy Welsh mountainside.

His team couldn’t help but notice his change of mood, though few could fathom the reason. This close to the air wreck – its discovery now within their grasp – they had expected Jaeger to be utterly energised; to be leading the charge. But quite the contrary: he seemed locked in a dark and lonely place that excluded all others.

It was pushing four years ago now when his wife and child had disappeared. Jaeger had been training for the Pen y Fan Challenge – a twenty-four-kilometre race over the Welsh mountains. It was Christmas, and he, Ruth and Luke had decided to spend it in a novel way, camped out in the Welsh foothills. It had been the perfect excuse to be together in the mountains – something that little Luke loved – and for Jaeger to get in some extra training. It was their family adventure combo, as he’d jokingly told Ruth.