Ghost Flight

by Bear Grylls

  ‘No!’ Jaeger shook his head violently. ‘No! There has to be a better way.’

  He cast his eyes around the warplane’s cockpit in desperation. They came to rest upon a heap of dusty bundles stowed below the navigator’s seat. Each was labeled Fallschirm. While he didn’t understand the German, he figured he knew what they had to be. He reached across and grabbed one.

  Do the unexpected.

  He waved it at Narov. ‘Parachute, right?’

  ‘Parachute,’ Narov confirmed. ‘But . . . ?’

  Jaeger glanced out of the window. The Ju 390’s speed had dropped dramatically, and he saw the first black-clad figure leap from the Black Hawk’s open doorway and spring on to the plane’s giant wingtip, landing in a crouch. Moments later, a second figure joined him, and they started moving along in a steady crouching shuffle.

  Jaeger thrust the parachute bundle into Narov’s arms and threw a second at Dale, grabbing a third for himself.

  ‘Get ’em on,’ he yelled. ‘And let’s hope that like most things German they’re bloody built to last!’

  As they struggled into the parachute rigs, a message pinged in on the Thuraya. Enemy gathered at your fuselage. Setting explosive charges.

  The black-clad operators were poised to blast a hole through the Ju 390’s central fuselage to gain entry to the hold.

  Jaeger messaged back: When all bad guys are aboard, cut us loose. Let us fall. And Raff, don’t bloody argue. I know what I’m doing.

  A message bleeped back. Affirmative. See you in Paradise.

  Thank God Jaeger had Raff aboard the Airlander. No one else would have complied with such an order so unquestioningly. That was the unique bond the two men shared, one forged over many years at the extreme end of soldiering.

  From the rear of the warplane Jaeger detected a muffled explosion. The Ju 390 shuddered for an instant, as the cutting charge blasted a man-sized hole in her skin. In his mind’s eye he could see the black-clad operators piling into the dark, smoke-filled hold, their weapons at the ready.

  It would take them several seconds to orientate themselves, and to search the aircraft’s rear for Jaeger and his fellows. That done, they’d advance towards the bulkhead and set a second set of charges. The bulkhead door, once locked, could only be opened from the inside – the cockpit side – so they’d have to blast a way through that too.

  But even so, Jaeger, Narov and Dale had only a matter of seconds remaining to them.

  ‘Okay, here’s the plan,’ Jaeger yelled. ‘Any moment now, the Airlander’s cutting us free. Like any fine aircraft released with a little forward momentum, she’ll pick up speed as she falls, then start to glide. As soon as we’re cut loose, we hurl out the rest of those,’ he jabbed a hand at the remaining parachutes, ‘and then we jump.

  ‘Do not pull your chute until you’re well into the clouds,’ he continued, ‘or the Black Hawk will be able to follow. Try to stick together and link up in the fall. Order of jump: Dale, Narov, myself. Ready?’

  Narov nodded. There was a glow of battle lust and adrenalin burning in her eyes.

  As for Dale, he looked as white as a sheet, and as if he were about to vomit his guts up for a second time. But still he gave a half-hearted thumbs-up. Jaeger was amazed at the guy: he’d been through enough to faze the most battle-hardened of soldiers, and yet he’d stood the test pretty damn well.

  ‘Don’t forget your camera, or at least the memory cards,’ Jaeger yelled at him. ‘Whatever happens now, we’re not losing the film!’

  He pulled out the remaining parachutes and stacked them by the cockpit’s side, then threw open both windows so they had maximum room to make their exits.

  He turned to Narov. ‘Don’t forget your documents, whatever they are. Get that satchel strapped on tight, and don’t let it out of your . . .’

  He was forced to swallow the rest of his words as the Ju 390 gave a sudden sickening lurch and plunged into the fall. The Airlander had released her, and for a few horrible seconds the Ju 390 seemed to shoot vertically downwards plummeting like a stone, before her wings caught the air and the drop bottomed out into a steep but breathtaking glide.

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Jaeger yelled, as he started stuffing the parachutes out of the window.

  One after another he hurled the spare Fallschirms into the howling void.

  Dale reached for the window, thrust the top half of his body through, and then promptly froze. The slipstream was tearing at his torso, but his feet seemed glued to the aircraft’s metal floor.

  Unmoving.

  Jaeger didn’t hesitate. He dropped his powerful shoulders, grabbed Dale’s legs, and lifted him with all his might, forcing him – screaming – into thin air.

  He could hear voices yelling from the far side of the bulkhead now. The black-clad operators were preparing to blast their way through. Narov jumped on to the pilot’s chair, grabbed the cockpit roof, and swung her legs through the window.

  She glanced back at him. ‘You are coming, yes?’

  She must have read the indecision that flashed through Jaeger’s eyes. For an instant his mind was back on that dark mountain side as his wife and child were stolen away from him. He hadn’t done all he could – hell, he hadn’t done anything – to search the warplane for clues as to who had taken them, and why.

  For an agonising second that voice from behind the gas mask – the voice that Jaeger had half recognised – seared through his mind: ‘Don’t ever forget – you failed to protect your wife and child. Wir sind die Zukunft!’

  Jaeger felt riveted to the spot; unable to move.

  Deep in his heart, he was desperate for answers.

  And if he abandoned the warplane, he’d maybe lost them for ever.

  ‘Get to the window!’ Narov screamed. ‘NOW!’

  Jaeger found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. Narov had whipped out a short-barrelled, compact Beretta pistol and had it levelled at his head.

  ‘I know all about it!’ she yelled. ‘They killed your grandfather. They came for you and your family. Something you did triggered them to do that. That’s how we’ll find the answers. But if you go down now, with this plane, they’ve won!’

  Jaeger tried to force his limbs to move.

  ‘JUMP!’ Narov screamed at him, her finger bone-white on the trigger. ‘I AM NOT HAVING YOUR LIFE WASTED!’

  Suddenly there was an ear-splitting roar from behind. The bulkhead blew, the cockpit filling with a blinding cloud of choking smoke. The force of the blast threw Jaeger against the side window, and it served to bring him to his senses. As he reached for the exit, Narov opened fire with the Beretta, pumping shots into the mass of black-clad figures that were surging through the opening.

  Moments later, Jaeger hurled himself out, plunging into the thin and howling blue.

  84

  An instant after he had jumped, Jaeger found himself tumbling over and over in the freefall, just as he’d done during the near-death plunge from the C-130. He forced his arms out wide and arched his body to stabilise himself. That done, he adopted the delta-track profile – arms tight by his sides, legs stretched out behind him – to get into the cloud bank as quickly as possible.

  But as the speed of his fall increased, he cursed himself for having been such a bloody fool. Narov had been right. If he’d died on that warplane, what good would it have done anyone, least of all his wife and son? He’d been an idiot to hesitate, and he’d put Narov’s life in danger. Hell, he didn’t even know if she’d made it out of the warplane alive, and there was no way he could check now – not in the crazed maelstrom of the freefall.

  The Ju 390 had been accelerating ever since the Airlander had released her. She would be speeding into the skies ahead at pushing 300 kph, like a massive ghostly dart – and he just had to hope and pray that Narov had made it out alive.

  Seconds later, he was swallowed by the clouds. As the thick water vapour enveloped him, he reached for the chute’s deployment handle, tugged hard . . . and prayed. If ever
he hoped that the Nazis had built something to last, it was now.

  Nothing happened.

  Jaeger glanced around to check he was pulling the right handle. Nothing was easy in the half-light of this swirling whiteout, especially when being thrown around like a rag doll. But as far as he could tell, the main chute seemed to be stuck fast.

  A phrase flashed through his head as the ground rushed up to meet him: look-locate-peel-punch-pull-arch. It was the drill he’d been taught years earlier, for emergency procedures in the freefall when your main chute failed.

  Same principles, different system, he told himself.

  He grabbed for what he figured was the reserve. It was an old-fashioned system, but there was no reason why it wouldn’t work just fine. It was now or never, for the ground was fast approaching. He pulled extra hard, and the reserve parachute – an expanse of German silk; silk that had been folded away for seven decades awaiting the chance to fly again – billowed into the air above him.

  Like most things German, this Fallschirm had been built with quality in mind, and it opened like a dream. In fact, it was a joy to fly under. Had Jaeger not been in such a world of turmoil right now, he might have found himself enjoying the ride.

  The Germans had used a chute design similar to that employed by British airborne units in the Second World War. It had a high-domed mushroom-shaped profile, and was stable and solid in the air – as opposed to the flatter, faster, more manoeuvrable design of modern-day military parachutes.

  At around five hundred feet of altitude, Jaeger emerged from the clouds. His first thoughts were for Dale and Narov. He glanced west and figured he could just make out the distinctive scar of a parachute at ground level, marking where Dale appeared to have made it down.

  He glanced east just as a flash of white popped out of the base of the cloud.

  Narov. It had to be. Somehow she must have made it out of the Ju 390’s cockpit, and by the look of the body slung beneath the chute, she was still alive.

  He fixed both positions in his head, then checked the ground below.

  Dense jungle, with nowhere obvious to land.

  Again.

  As he drifted towards the canopy, Jaeger spared a momentary thought for the Ju 390. From 10,000 feet, the speeding warplane could glide for scores of kilometres, but he knew she was doomed. With every second after the Airlander had released her, she’d been gaining in airspeed but losing altitude.

  Sooner or later she’d smash into the jungle at more than 300 kph. The upside was that she’d take with her those black-clad operators, for no way would the surviving Black Hawk be able to lift them off that careering warplane. And Jaeger, of course, had hurled all the spare chutes out the cockpit window.

  The downside was that she’d be lost for ever, together with the secrets she’d been carrying – not to mention her toxic cargo being strewn across the rainforest.

  But there was little Jaeger could do about that now.

  The lone unmarked Black Hawk touched down on the isolated jungle airstrip.

  The operator code-named Grey Wolf Six – real name Vladimir Ustanov – stepped down from the aircraft, satphone glued to his ear. His face was grey and drawn, the experiences of the last few hours sitting heavy upon him.

  ‘Sir, understand the situation.’ He spoke into the satphone, his voice tight with exhaustion. ‘I have myself and four others remaining from my airborne force. We are incapable of mounting any form of meaningful operation.’

  ‘And the warplane?’ Grey Wolf demanded incredulously.

  ‘A smoking ruin. Spread across several dozen miles of jungle. We overflew her until the moment she went down.’

  ‘And her cargo? The documents?’

  ‘Smashed into smoking wreckage, along with a dozen of my finest men.’

  ‘If we couldn’t get our hands on them, better they are destroyed.’ A beat. ‘So finally, Vladimir, you have achieved something.’

  ‘Sir, I’ve lost two Black Hawks, plus three dozen men—’

  ‘Worth the cost,’ Grey Wolf cut in, mercilessly. ‘They were paid to do a job, and paid well, so don’t expect any sympathy from me. Tell me, did anyone get out of that warplane alive?’

  ‘We saw three figures bale out. We lost them in the clouds. Whether any survived is doubtful. We don’t know if they had chutes, and even if they did, it’s uncharted jungle down there.’

  ‘But they might have?’ Grey Wolf hissed.

  ‘They might,’ Vladimir Ustanov conceded.

  ‘They might have survived, which means they might well have retrieved from that warplane some of the very things we were after?’

  ‘They might.’

  ‘I am turning my aircraft around,’ Grey Wolf snapped. ‘With no force remaining operational, there is no point my flying into theatre. I want you and your fellow survivors to take a holiday somewhere suitably remote and obscure. But don’t disappear. Keep in communication.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Those who survived – if there are any – will need to be found. That which we sought – if they have it – will need to be returned to us.’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch in the normal way. In the meantime, Vladimir, you may want to recruit some new foot soldiers, to replace those you have so carelessly lost. Same terms; same mission.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘One final thing: you still have the Brazilian?’

  Vladimir glanced at a figure lying on the floor of the Black Hawk. ‘We have her.’

  ‘Keep her. We may be able to use her. In the meantime, interrogate her in your own special way. Find out all she knows. With luck, she may lead us to the others.’

  Vladimir smiled. ‘With pleasure, sir.’

  From a Learjet 85 flying high over the Gulf of Mexico, the commander known as Grey Wolf made a second call. It was routed to an obscure grey office lying within a grey-walled complex of buildings, positioned deep within a swathe of grey forest in remote rural Virginia, on the eastern coast of the USA.

  The call went through to a building stuffed full of the world’s most advanced signals intercept and tracking systems. Next to the entryway to that building was a small brass plaque. It read: CIA – Division of Asymmetric Threat Analysis (DATA).

  A figure dressed in smart–casual civilian clothes answered. ‘DATA. Harry Peterson.’

  ‘It’s me,’ Grey Wolf announced. ‘I’m inbound on the Learjet and I need you to find that individual I sent you the file on. Jaeger. William Jaeger. Use all possible means: internet, email, mobile phones, flight bookings, passport details – anything. Last known location, western Brazil, near the Bolivia–Peru border.’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  Grey Wolf killed the call.

  He settled back into his seat. Things certainly hadn’t gone so well in the Amazon, but this was just a skirmish, he told himself. One of many such battles fought in a far longer war; a war that he and his forefathers had been fighting since the spring of 1945.

  A setback, certainly, but a manageable one, and nothing compared to some they had suffered in the past.

  He reached for a sleek-looking tablet computer lying on the table before him. He powered it up and opened a file, revealing a list of names in alphabetical order. He ran the cursor down the list and typed a few words beside one of them: Missing in action. If alive, terminate. PRIORITY.

  That done, he picked up an attaché case lying beside him, laid it on the table and slipped the tablet inside. He closed the lid with a resounding click, flicking the combination lock so it was securely fastened.

  On the lid of the attaché case in small gold lettering were the words: Hank Kammler, Deputy Director, CIA.

  Hank Kammler – AKA Grey Wolf – ran his fingertips gently, reverentially, over the embossing. At the end of the war his father had been forced to change his name. SS Oberst-Gruppenführer Hans Kammler had become Horace Kramer – the better to ease his recruitment into the Office for Strategic Services
, the forerunner of the CIA. As he’d worked his way up through the CIA into its highest ranks, Horace Kramer had never lost sight of his true mission: to hide in plain sight, to regroup and to rebuild the Reich.

  By the time his father’s life was cut prematurely short, Hank Kammler had decided to take up the mantle and follow him into the CIA. Kammler smiled to himself thinly, an edge of mockery creeping into his eyes. As if he would ever have been content quietly serving as a CIA man, forgetting the glory of his Nazi forefathers.

  Recently, he’d opted to recover what was rightfully his. Born Hank Kramer, he’d changed his surname formally to Kammler – thus reclaiming the legacy of his father, and what he saw as his birthright.

  And as far as he was concerned, that reclamation was only just beginning.

  85

  Jaeger settled into his seat for the short connecting flight to Bioko airport.

  The flight from London to Nigeria had been all that he’d expected – fast, direct and comfortable, although this time his budget hadn’t quite stretched to first class. At Lagos he’d boarded some clapped-out regional airliner for the short jump across the Gulf of Guinea to the island capital of Equatorial Guinea.

  The contact that he’d had from Pieter Boerke had been as unexpected as it had been intriguing. Some two weeks after bailing out of that doomed warplane as it plunged towards the jungle, Jaeger had made it out to a place of relative safety – Cachimbo airbase. And it was at Cachimbo that Boerke had managed to get a call through to him.

  ‘I have your papers,’ the South African had announced. ‘The seventh page of the manifest, just like you asked for.’

  Jaeger hadn’t had the heart to tell Boerke that the last thing on his mind right then was an obscure Second World War cargo ship that had docked in Bioko’s harbour towards the end of the war. He’d asked the coup leader to scan the papers and email them over. He hadn’t quite got the answer he’d been expecting.

  ‘No, man; no can do,’ Boerke had told him. ‘You have to come see, in person. Because, my friend, this isn’t just papers. There’s something physical. Something I can’t email or post. Trust me, man – you have to come see.’