Ghost Flight

by Bear Grylls

  After the epic journey to get here, they were left gazing at it in silent wonder.

  Even Dale had stopped filming to stare.

  Everything had been building to this moment: so much research; so much planning; so many briefings; so much speculation as to what the aircraft might actually be; and, after the last few days, so much death and suffering along the way, as well as the cold steel of betrayal.

  As he gazed upon it in wonder, Jaeger marvelled at how intact the aircraft appeared to be. He almost felt as if it simply needed that vital refuelling it had missed all those years ago, and it could fire up the engines and be ready to take to the skies once more.

  He could quite understand why Hitler had trumpeted this aircraft as his Amerika Bomber. As Jenkinson, the archivist, had declared, it looked custom-made for dropping sarin nerve gas on New York.

  Jaeger stood entranced.

  What in God’s name was it doing here? he wondered. What had its mission been? And if it was the last of four such flights, as the Amahuaca chief had told them, what was it – what were they all – carrying?

  Jaeger had only ever seen one photo of a Junkers Ju 390.

  It was an old black-and-white shot that Jenkinson had emailed to him – one of the very few images that existed of the warplane. It had shown a dark and sleek six-engined aircraft – one so massive that it dwarfed the soldiers and airmen who were busy all around it, like so many worker ants.

  It had a nose cone shaped like a cruel eagle’s head in side profile, and a raked, streamlined cockpit, with a score of porthole-like windows running along its sides. The only major differences between the aircraft shown in that photo and the one now lying before them were the location and the markings.

  That photo had shown a Ju 390 at its last known destination – a frozen, snowbound airstrip in Prague, in occupied Czechoslovakia, on a bitter February morning in 1945. Painted on each of the aircraft’s massive wings was the distinctive form of a black cross set against a white background – the insignia of the German Luftwaffe – with similar markings on the aft section of the fuselage.

  By contrast, the aircraft now lying before Jaeger displayed an equally distinctive roundel – a five-pointed white star overlying red-and-white stripes – the unmistakable markings of the United States Air Force. Those roundels were sun-bleached and weathered almost to the point of having disappeared, but to Jaeger and his team they were still clearly recognisable.

  The giant tyres on the warplane’s eight massive wheels had perished and part-deflated, but even so each reached to around Jaeger’s shoulder height. As to the cockpit, he figured it reared a good third of the way to what had once been the jungle canopy, but was now a web of dead branches high above them.

  As Carson had promised, back in Wild Dog Media’s London office, the aircraft dwarfed a modern-day C-130 Hercules – the aircraft that Jaeger and his team had flown in on. And apart from the wilted vines and creepers that trailed around the fuselage, and the fallen dead wood lying on the 165-foot span of her wings, she seemed incredibly intact – proof indeed that she had landed here.

  Sure, she showed the effects of seven decades secreted in the jungle. Jaeger could see that some of the rivets holding her skin together had corroded, and here and there a cowling or cover had fallen off an engine. The wings and fuselage were covered in a sodden carpet of mildew, and the remains of dead tree ferns and epiphytes littered the aircraft’s dorsal surfaces.

  But the deterioration was mostly cosmetic.

  Structurally the aircraft looked sound. A quick spruce-up and Jaeger figured she would be almost good enough to fly.

  There was a loud squawking from above, as a flock of iridescent green parrots flitted through the skeleton forest. It served to break Jaeger’s trance-like state.

  He turned to Narov. ‘Only one way in.’ His words were muffled by the gas mask, but via the inbuilt radio intercom they were audible. He traced a line with his gloved hand from the aircraft’s tail, along the length of her fuselage and onwards to the cockpit.

  Narov eyed him through her mask. ‘I will go first.’

  71

  With the tail wheel having deflated, the aircraft’s tailplane lay just within Narov’s grasp, but only if she used a dead tree to get a leg-up. She reached for the warplane’s upper surface and hauled herself up until she was standing on the flat of the tailplane.

  Jaeger followed. He waited for Dale, taking the camera that he passed up, and helping him on to the flat surface. Narov hurried ahead, scuttling along the dorsal surface of the warplane and disappearing from view.

  The undersurface of the Ju 390’s fuselage was flattish, the upper surface tapering to a dull ridge. Jaeger climbed on to that, and followed Narov up the aircraft’s spine, clambering around the astrodome set just aft of the cockpit, where the navigator would have sat, surrounded on all sides by a series of glass panels. It was from there that he would have taken measurements of the stars, so as to steer the aircraft across thousands of miles of trackless ocean and jungle. Jaeger noticed that some of the rubber seals around the astrodome’s windows had perished, and one or two of the panels had fallen in.

  He reached the cockpit, slithered down and joined Narov perched on the very nose of the aircraft. It was a precarious position: the ground lay some forty feet below them, straight down. The nose of the warplane was smooth and aerodynamic, yet smeared in seventy years of jungle debris. Jaeger did his best to boot the worst of it away, so he had a half-decent footing.

  Dale appeared above, camera in hand, and settled down to film.

  Jaeger pulled out a length of paracord from a pouch in his NBC suit, tossed it up to Dale, and had him sling it around the radio mast that protruded from the top rear of the cockpit. Dale dropped it back, and Jaeger fashioned two loops, so that he and Narov had something to hang on to.

  Narov was staring through one of the two front window panels. Jaeger could see the smeary marks where she’d used her gloves to try to clear away the worst of the grime, dirt and mildew.

  For the briefest of moments, she glanced his way. ‘The side window – I think it has been left unlocked. That is our way in.’

  She reached around to the side, her distinctive knife grasped in one hand. Deftly, she inserted the blade into the semi-rotten rubber that formed the seal, and applied pressure. Most such aircraft had sliding windows, so the pilots could speak to the aircrew on the runway below.

  Narov was trying to lever this one open.

  Inch by inch she prised it back, until there was a gap wide enough to lower herself through. Taking one loop of Jaeger’s paracord, she swung herself around the side of the cockpit, walking her feet along the aircraft’s flank, and kicked her legs inside. Lithe as a cat, she wriggled her hips and torso through the open window, and with barely a glance at Jaeger she was gone.

  Gripping the paracord, Jaeger swung himself around and followed after Narov, his boots landing with a harsh clang on the cockpit’s bare metal floor.

  It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

  The first thing that struck him was that he had entered some kind of time capsule. There was no smell, of course, for the respirator filtered everything out, but he could just imagine the fusty, musty aroma of the leather seats, mixed in with the acrid scent of corroded aluminium from the scores of dials that lined the massive flight panel.

  Behind him lay what had to be the flight assistant’s seat, tucked into its own cramped alcove and facing towards the rear, with a mass of dials and levers before it. Behind that again lay the navigator’s seat, thrust high into the astrodome, and beyond that in the shadows lurked the bulkhead separating the cockpit from the cargo hold.

  The interior of the warplane appeared spookily untouched – as if the aircrew had only abandoned it a few hours previously. There was a tin flask tucked beside the pilot’s seat; next to that, a mug with what Jaeger figured had to be encrusted coffee caked to the bottom.

  A pair of Aviator-type shades lay on
the pilot’s seat, as if he’d thrown them there while stepping aft to have a chat with the crew manning the hold. The entire impression was somehow so ghostly; yet what had Jaeger been expecting?

  There was something bolted above the pilot’s seat that caught his eye. It was an odd – almost alien-looking – contraption, mounted on a swivel, as if it could be dropped over the pilot’s eyes. He glanced at the co-pilot’s seat; a similar device was set above that position as well.

  He sensed Narov staring.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Jaeger queried.

  ‘Zielgerät 1229 – the Vampir,’ Narov confirmed. ‘Infrared night vision sight, as we would call it today. For making landings and taking off in complete darkness.’

  Seeing that Vampir sight clearly came as no surprise to her. But for most of Jaeger’s adult life he had believed night vision to be something invented by the American military, and only a few decades ago. Seeing a working set of such equipment here in this Second World War German plane was mind-blowing.

  On the navigator’s desk behind him, Jaeger discovered the remains of a mildewed chart, with pencil and dividers lying to one side. The navigator had clearly been a heavy smoker. A heap of semi-decomposed cigarette butts lay in a flick-out ashtray, beside a Luftwaffe-issue packet of rip-off matches.

  Tucked into what had to be the navigator’s file was an old and yellowing image. Jaeger reached for it. It was an aerial photo, and he realised almost instantly that it showed the airstrip as it must have looked when it had first been hacked out of the jungle, some seven decades ago.

  It was labelled with various German words, one of which, Treibstofflager, had the symbol of a fuel drum drawn beside it. It was the Treibstofflager that had run dry, of course, so trapping this warplane here seemingly for ever.

  Jaeger turned to show Narov, but she had her back to him, and there was something furtive about her posture. She was bent over a leather flight satchel, her hands feverishly leafing through a sheaf of documents. From her body language alone, Jaeger figured she’d got whatever she’d come here for, and that no one was about to part her from whatever was in that satchel.

  She must have sensed his eyes upon her. Without a word, she shrugged off her backpack, stuffed the satchel deep inside it, and turned towards the aircraft’s hold. She glanced Jaeger’s way. From what he could see of her face behind the mask, it appeared flushed with excitement. But there was also an evasiveness – a defensive, self-protective look – in her eyes.

  ‘Found what you’re looking for?’ he queried pointedly.

  Narov ignored the question. Instead, she gestured towards the warplane’s rear. ‘That way – if you really want to see what secrets this aircraft holds.’

  Jaeger made a mental note to tackle her over that satchel-load of documents once they were done getting the warplane lifted out of there. Time was too pressing for any such confrontation now.

  72

  Narov indicated the bulkhead. There was an oblong hatchway set into it, which had been sealed shut by a handle locked into the vertical position. An arrow pointed downwards, with the German words stamped beside it: ZU OFFNEN.

  It needed no translating.

  Jaeger reached for the handle. For a brief moment he hesitated, before slipping his hand inside his chest pouch and pulling out a Petzl head torch. He loosened its straps and pulled it on over his hood and mask. Then he reached for the lever again and wrenched it down into the horizontal position, before swinging the heavy door wide.

  All was darkness inside the Ju 390’s cavernous rear.

  Jaeger felt about with his gloved hand and twisted the glass of his head torch, switching it on. A burning blue light stabbed out from the Petzl’s pair of xenon bulbs. The twin rays pierced the gloom, playing like a laser show across the interior, catching in layers of what resembled mist lying thick across the hold.

  The mist reached out towards Jaeger, trailing ghostly tendrils all around him.

  He peered deeper inside. This far forward, the Ju 390’s hold was at least the height of two fully grown men, and even wider at its base. And as far as Jaeger could tell, the entire length of the fuselage was stacked high with cargo crates. Each was lashed to steel lugs set into the aircraft’s floor, to prevent the load from shifting about during flight.

  Jaeger took a first cautious step inside. He had every confidence in their Avon NBC kit, but stepping into an unknown hazard like this was still daunting. There was no known toxic agent that could defeat such protective suits and masks, but what if the warplane’s hold had somehow been booby-trapped?

  The fuselage sloped away from him, the aircraft sitting lower to the ground at its rear. As he gazed about, he noticed the beam of his torch catching on long filaments of silver, strung from one side of the hold to the other. At first he thought he’d discovered the hidden trip wires left behind by those who had abandoned this warplane – perhaps tethered to explosive charges.

  But then he noticed that each of the threads formed part of a larger complex of geometric patterns, spiralling in towards a dark mass crouched at the very centre.

  Spiders.

  Why were there always spiders?

  ‘The Phoneutria is also called “the wandering spider”,’ Narov’s voice cut in via the radio intercom. ‘They get everywhere. Be watchful.’

  She moved ahead of him with her knife drawn.

  Bitten once by a Phoneutria, she seemed to show no fear, slashing expertly at the webs, collapsing them before her to clear a path through. As she pirouetted from side to side, slicing at the silken threads and flicking the bodies of the spiders away, she moved with the slender grace of a ballet dancer.

  It was captivating. Jaeger traced her progress, noting her raw courage. She really was as unique – as dangerous? – as the Phoneutria she was so expertly outmanoeuvring.

  He followed the path she cut, feeling for any trip wires set at just above floor level. His eye was drawn to a massive crate lying to his immediate front. It was so large, he’d have to squeeze past so as to continue down the warplane. For a moment he wondered how they’d manhandled it onto the aircraft. He could only imagine they had used heavy vehicles to do so, driving the crate up the warplane’s rear ramp.

  As he studied it, Jaeger’s torch caught the lettering stamped on its side.

  Kriegsentscheidend: Aktion Adlerflug

  SS Standortwechsel Kommando

  Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft

  Uranprojekt – Uranmaschine

  Below that was the unmistakably dark form of . . . a Reichsadler.

  Some of the words – plus the symbol – were instantly recognisable to Jaeger, but it was Narov who would add the missing links. She knelt before the crate, tracing the words in the light thrown by her own head torch.

  ‘So, this is hardly surprising . . .’ she began.

  Jaeger crouched beside her. ‘Some of the words I know,’ he remarked. ‘Kriegsentscheidend: beyond top secret. SS Standortwechsel Kommando: the Relocation Commando of the SS. What about the others?’

  Narov read and interpreted the words, Jaeger’s head torch glinting off the glass lens of her mask. ‘Aktion Adlerflug – Operation Eagle Flight. Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft – the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the Nazis’ top nuclear research facility. Uranprojekt – the nuclear weapons project of the Reich. Uranmaschine – nuclear reactor.’

  She turned to Jaeger. ‘Components of their nuclear programme. The Nazis had experimented with nuclear power and how it could be harnessed for weaponry in ways that we had never even imagined.’

  Narov moved across to a second crate, tracing similar lines of lettering, plus a second Reichsadler.

  Kriegsentscheidend: Aktion Adlerflug

  SS Standortwechsel Kommando

  Mittelwerk Kohnstein

  A9 Amerika Rakete

  ‘So the top two lines are the same. Below that: Mittelwerk was an underground complex tunnelled into the Kohnstein mountains, right in the very heart of Germany. It was where Hitler tas
ked Hans Kammler to relocate the Nazi’s top rocketry and missiles, after their Peenemunde research centre was bombed by the Allies.

  ‘During winter 1944 and spring 1945, twenty thousand forced labourers from the nearby Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp died building Mittelwerk – from exhaustion, starvation and disease. They were worked to death, or were executed when they were too weak to serve any further useful purpose.’

  Narov gestured at the crate. ‘As you can see, not all of the evil from Mittelwerk perished with the end of the war.’

  Jaeger traced the last line of lettering. ‘What’s the A9?’

  ‘Sequel to the V-2. The Amerika Rakete – the America Skyrocket; designed to fly at over three thousand mph and to hit the American mainland. By war’s end they had working wind-tunnel versions and they had even had successful test flights. Obviously they did not want the A9 to die with the Reich.’

  Jaeger could tell that Narov knew so much more than she was letting on. It had been like this from the very start of the expedition. And now they’d made a series of mind-blowing discoveries – a secret German warplane decked out in American colours, lost for decades in the Amazon and stuffed full of what, by anyone’s reckoning, was a cargo of Nazi horrors.

  Yet nothing seemed to come as the least shock or surprise to Irina Narov.

  73

  They probed further into the darkness.

  The heat inside the fuselage was stifling, the discomfort tripled by the cumbersome suit and mask, but Jaeger didn’t doubt that the NBC kit was proving an absolute lifesaver. Whatever toxic fumes filled the aircraft, should either he, Narov or Dale have tried to enter without such protection, they would be in a whole world of hurt right now, of that he felt certain.

  For an instant, he turned to check on Dale.

  He found the cameraman attaching a portable battery-operated lamp to the top of his camera. He flicked it on – light by which to film – and the interior of the warplane was cast into stark, knife-cut light and shadow.