Burning Angels

by Bear Grylls

  ‘It doesn’t sound enough for a lifetime’s hatred,’ Kammler remarked. ‘What kind of supplies are we talking about?’

  ‘I was popping pills – the kind athletes use to up their speed and endurance. The SAS claims to encourage lateral thinking. To value a maverick, outside-the-box mindset. What a load of horseshit. If that wasn’t lateral thinking, I don’t know what is. They didn’t just bin me from selection. They reported me to my parent unit, which meant I got thrown out of the military for good.’

  Kammler inclined his head. ‘You were caught using performance-enhancing drugs? And it was Jaeger who shopped you?’

  ‘For sure. He’s a snake.’ Jones paused. ‘Ever tried getting work when your record shows you’ve been thrown out of the army for doing drugs? Let me tell you something: I hate snakes, and Jaeger’s the most self-righteous and venomous of the lot.’

  ‘It’s fortunate then that we have found each other.’ Kammler ran his gaze eye along the ranks of cherry trees. ‘Mr Jones, I think I may have work for you. In Africa. On certain business I have under way there.’

  ‘Where in Africa? Generally I bloody hate the place.’

  ‘I run a game ranch in East Africa. Big game is my passion. The locals are slaughtering my wildlife at such a rate it is heartbreaking. The elephants in particular, for ivory. The rhinos too. Gram for gram, rhino horn is now more valuable than gold. I’m looking for a man to go out there and keep a careful eye on things.’

  ‘Careful ain’t my hallmark,’ Jones replied. He turned over his massive, gnarled hands, balling them into fists like cannon balls. ‘Using these is. Or better still, a blade, some plastic explosives and a Glock. Kill to live; live to kill.’

  ‘I’m sure there’ll be ample need for those where you’ll be going. I’m looking for a spy, an enforcer and very likely an assassin, all rolled into one. So what do you say?’

  ‘In that case – and the money being right – I’m on.’

  Kammler stood. He didn’t offer Steve Jones his hand. He didn’t exactly like the man. After his father’s tales about the English from the war years, he was loath to put his trust in any Englishman. Hitler had wanted Britain to side with Germany during the war; to cut a deal once France had fallen and unite against the common enemy: Russia and communism. But the English – stubborn and wilful to the last – had refused.

  Under Churchill’s blind, mulish leadership, they had refused to see sense; to understand that sooner or later, Russia was going to become the enemy of all free-thinking people. If it weren’t for the English – and their Scots and Welsh brethren – Hitler’s Reich would have triumphed, and the rest would be history.

  Instead, some seven decades later, the world was awash with deviants and misfits: socialists, homosexuals, Jews, the disabled, Muslims and foreigners of all types. How Kammler despised them. How he hated them. Yet somehow these Untermenschen – sub-humans – had worked their way into the highest echelons of society.

  And it was up to Kammler – and a few good men like him – to bring about an end to all this madness.

  No, Hank Kammler would be reluctant to put his faith in any Englishman. But if he could use Jones, then use him he would – and on that level he decided to throw him an extra bone.

  ‘If all goes well, you may get to have a final crack at Jaeger. To see your thirst for revenge finally quenched.’

  For the first time since they’d started talking, Steve Jones smiled, but there was no warmth in his eyes. ‘In that case, I’m your man. Bring it on.’

  Kammler rose to leave. Jones held out a hand to stop him.

  ‘One question. Why do you hate him?’

  Kammler frowned. ‘In my position, I get to ask the questions, Mr Jones.’

  Jones wasn’t a man to scare easily. ‘I told you my reasons. I figure I deserve to hear yours.’

  Kammler gave a thin smile. ‘If you must know, I hate Jaeger because his grandfather killed my father.’

  28

  They’d broken off the Falkenhagen briefing for food and rest. But Jaeger never had been one for a lot of sleep. The past six years he could count on the fingers of one hand the nights he had enjoyed a full, unbroken seven hours’ kip.

  It had proved just as difficult to sleep now, for his mind was stuffed to bursting with all that Uncle Joe had told them.

  They reconvened in the bunker, Peter Miles taking up the thread. ‘We now believe the 1967 outbreak in Marburg was Blome’s attempt to test the Gottvirus on monkeys. We think he had succeeded in making the virus airborne – hence the lab workers becoming infected – but in so doing he had vastly reduced its potency.

  ‘We watched Blome closely,’ Miles continued. ‘He had several collaborators – former Nazis who’d worked with him under the Führer. But after the Marburg outbreak, their cover was at risk of being blown. They needed somewhere remote to brew up their cocktails of death, somewhere they would never be found.

  ‘For a decade we lost track of them.’ Miles paused. ‘Then, in 1976, the world said hello to a new horror: Ebola. Ebola was the second of the Filoviridae. Like Marburg, it was said to be carried by monkeys and to have somehow jumped species, to humans. Like Marburg, it emerged in central Africa, near the Ebola River – hence its name.’

  Miles’s eyes sought out Jaeger. They drilled into him. ‘To be certain of an agent’s potency, you have to test it on humans. We are not identical to primates. A pathogen that kills a monkey may have no effect on a human. We believe Ebola was a deliberate release by Blome, as a live human test. It proved to have a 90 per cent lethality. Nine out of ten of those infected died. This was deadly, but it still wasn’t the original Gottvirus. Clearly Blome and his team were getting close. We presumed they were working somewhere out of Africa, but it is a vast continent with many a wild and uncharted place.’ Miles spread his hands. ‘And that’s pretty much where the trail went cold.’

  ‘Why didn’t you question Kammler?’ Jaeger interjected. ‘Drag him into a place like this and find out what he knew.’

  ‘Two reasons. One, he’d attained a position of real power within the CIA, just as many former Nazis had in American military and intelligence circles. And two, your grandfather had no choice but to kill him. Kammler had learnt of his interest in the Gottvirus. The hunt was on. There was a fight to the death. Kammler lost, I’m glad to say.’

  ‘So that’s why they pursued my grandfather in turn?’ Jaeger pressed.

  ‘It is,’ Miles confirmed. ‘The official verdict was suicide, but we have always believed that Brigadier Ted Jaeger was killed by those loyal to Kammler.’

  Jaeger nodded. ‘He’d never have taken his own life. He had far too much to live for.’

  When Jaeger was still in his teens, his grandfather had been found dead in his vehicle, a hosepipe through the window. The verdict was that he’d gassed himself, due to the cumulative trauma of the war years. But few in the family had ever believed it.

  ‘When all seems lost, it often makes sense to follow the money,’ Miles continued. ‘We began to trace that trail, and one path did indeed lead us to Africa. Other than Nazism, former SS General Kammler claimed to have one major passion in life: wildlife conservation. At some stage he had purchased a massive private game ranch, using what we believe was money looted by the Nazis during the war.

  ‘After your grandfather killed General Kammler, his son, Hank Kammler, inherited that game ranch. We feared he was carrying on his father’s secret work there. For years we watched, monitoring the reserve for any sign of a hidden germ laboratory. We detected nothing. Nothing at all.’

  Miles eyed his audience, his gaze coming to rest upon Irina Narov. ‘And then we heard about a lost Second World War plane lying in the Amazon. As soon as we learned of the type of aircraft, we knew this had to be one of the original Nazi Safe Haven flights. And so Ms Narov joined your Amazon team, in the hope that that warplane might reveal something – a clue to lead us to the Gottvirus.

  ‘It did indeed yield clues. But almost of
more importance, your search flushed out the enemy; it forced them to show their hand. We suspect that the force that hunted you – the force that still hunts you – is under the command of Hank Kammler, SS General Kammler’s son. He is presently the deputy director of the CIA, and we fear he has inherited his father’s mission – to resurrect the Gottvirus.’

  Miles paused. ‘That was our state of knowledge as of a few weeks ago. Since then, you have rescued Leticia Santos, who was being held by Kammler’s people, and in rescuing her you seized her captor’s computers.’

  Click. Flash. Miles threw up an image on to the bunker’s wall.

  Kammler H.

  BV222

  Katavi

  Choma Malaika

  ‘Keywords retrieved from the Cuban island kidnap gang’s emails,’ he continued. ‘We’ve analysed the chatter, and we believe the messages flow between the boss of the kidnap gang – Vladimir – and Hank Kammler himself.’

  Miles waved a hand towards the image. ‘I’ll start with the third word on the list. Amongst the documents you discovered in that Amazon warplane, there was one that revealed a Nazi flight routed to a place called Katavi. Kammler’s game ranch is situated on the western fringes of the African nation of Tanzania, near a certain Lake Katavi.’

  ‘Now, why would a Nazi-era Safe Haven flight be routed to a stretch of water? Consider that second item on the list: BV222. During the war, the Nazis had a secret seaplane research centre at Travemunde, on the German coast. There they developed the Blohm and Voss BV222, the largest aircraft operated during the war.

  ‘This is what we now believe happened. At war’s end, Tanzania was a British colony. Kammler promised the British a wealth of Nazi secrets in return for their protection. So they green-lit a flight to the ultimate Safe Haven – Lake Katavi – using a BV222. SS General Hans Kammler was on that flight, as was his precious virus – either frozen, or in a kind of desiccated powder form – though of course that was one secret he would never reveal to the Allies.

  ‘When the British decolonised East Africa, Kammler lost his sponsors – hence his decision to purchase a vast expanse of land around Lake Katavi. And there he set up his laboratory – somewhere to develop the Gottvirus in absolute secret.

  ‘Of course, we have no proof that this germ laboratory exists,’ Miles continued. ‘If it does, it has perfect cover. Hank Kammler runs a bona fide game reserve. It has all the trappings: game guards, a top conservation team, a plush safari lodge, plus an airstrip for flying clients in and out. But the last item on our list offers a final clue.

  ‘Choma Malaika is Swahili – the language of East Africa. It means “Burning Angels”. Within Kammler’s game ranch there happens to be a Burning Angels Peak. It sits in the Mbizi mountain range, to the south of Lake Katavi. The Mbizi mountains are densely forested and almost completely unexplored.’

  Miles flicked up another image. It showed a jagged-rimmed mountain towering above the savannah. ‘Now of course, the existence of those keywords in the email chatter and the existence of a mountain of the same name could just be a bizarre coincidence. But your grandfather taught me never to believe in coincidences.’

  He stabbed a finger at the image. ‘If Kammler has a germ warfare lab, we believe it’s hidden deep beneath Burning Angels mountain.’

  29

  Peter Miles ended his briefing by calling for a brainstorming session, utilising the vast military expertise in the room.

  ‘Stupid question,’ Lewis Alonzo began, ‘but what’s the worst that can happen?’

  Miles eyed him quizzically. ‘The Armageddon scenario? If we’re faced with a madman?’

  Alonzo flashed his signature smile. ‘Yeah, a real nutter. A fruitcake. Not pulling any punches – tell us.’

  ‘We fear we are facing a germ agent that just about no one would survive,’ Miles replied darkly. ‘But only if Kammler and his people have worked out how to weaponise it. That’s the nightmare scenario: a worldwide release of the virus, with enough simultaneous outbreaks so no government has the time to develop a cure. It would be a pandemic of unprecedented lethality. A world-changing – a world-ending – event.’

  He paused, letting the chilling import of those words sink in. ‘But what Kammler and his cronies may be intending to do with it – that’s another guess entirely. An agent like that would be priceless, obviously. Would they sell it to the highest bidder? Or somehow blackmail world leaders? We just don’t know.’

  ‘Couple of years back, we war-gamed some key scenarios,’ Alonzo remarked. ‘Had the top guys in from US intelligence. They listed the three foremost threats to world security. The absolute numero uno was a terror group acquiring a fully functioning weapon of mass destruction. There are three ways they could do that. One, buy a nuclear device off a rogue state – most likely a former Soviet bloc country gone to rack and ruin. Two, intercept a chemical weapon being moved from one state to another; so maybe sarin gas from Syria, en route to disposal. Three, acquire the necessary technology to build their own nuclear or chemical device.’

  He eyed Peter Miles. ‘Those guys sure knew their stuff, and no one ever mentioned some crazed son-of-a-bitch offering a ready-made germ weapon to the highest bidder.’

  Miles nodded. ‘And for good reason. The real challenge is to deliver it. Presuming they’ve perfected an airborne version, it’s easy enough to board an aircraft and wave around a handkerchief liberally sprinkled with the dry virus. And remember, one hundred million crystallised viruses – that’s the populations of England and Spain put together – would cover the full stop at the end of your average sentence.

  ‘Once our man’s shaken out his handkerchief, he can rely on the aircraft’s air-conditioning system to do the rest. By the end of the flight – let’s say it’s an Airbus A380 – you’ve got some five hundred people infected, and the beauty is that not a soul amongst them will know it. Hours later, they disembark at London Heathrow. Big airport, crammed with people. They board buses, trains or tubes, spreading the virus via their breath. Some are in transit to New York, Rio, Moscow, Tokyo, Sydney or Berlin. In forty-eight hours, the virus has spread across all cities, nations and continents . . . And that, Mr Alonzo, is your Armageddon scenario.’

  ‘How long’s the incubation period? How long before people realise something’s wrong?’

  ‘We don’t know. But if it’s similar to Ebola, then it’s twenty-one days.’

  Alonzo whistled. ‘That’s real badass shit. You couldn’t design a more fearsome agent.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Peter Miles smiled. ‘But there’s one catch. Remember the man who boarded the Airbus A380 with a handkerchief spiked with one hundred million viruses? He’s got to be some kind of a guy. In infecting the people on that aircraft, he’s also infecting himself.’ He paused. ‘But of course, in certain terror groups there is an abundance of young men ready to die for the cause.’

  ‘Islamic State; al-Qaeda; AQIM; Boko Haram.’ Jaeger listed the usual suspects. ‘There’s any number of similarly minded crazies out there.’

  Miles nodded. ‘Which is why we fear Kammler may sell the agent to the highest bidder. Some of those groups have a practically unlimited war chest, and they certainly do have the means – the suicidal human means – to deliver the agent.’

  A new voice cut in. ‘There is one problem with all that. One flaw.’ It was Narov. ‘No one sells such an agent to anyone without possessing the antidote. Otherwise they’ll be signing their own death warrant. And if you have the antidote, the man waving the handkerchief would be immune. He would survive.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Miles conceded. ‘But would you like to be that person? Would you want to rely on that vaccine – one that in all probability has only ever been tested on mice, rats, monkeys? And where is Kammler going to get live humans on whom to try out his vaccines?’

  At the mention of human testing, Miles’s gaze flicked across to Jaeger, as if drawn to him irresistibly. Almost guiltily. What was it about human testing that kept forcing the man
’s attention his way? Jaeger wondered.

  His habit of doing so was starting to get Jaeger seriously spooked.

  30

  Jaeger figured he’d tackle Miles on the human testing issue later. ‘Right, let’s cut to the chase,’ he announced. ‘Whatever Kammler’s planning to do with his Gottvirus, this Katavi ranch is the most likely location to nail it down, right?’

  ‘That’s our understanding,’ Miles confirmed.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’

  Miles glanced at Uncle Joe. ‘Let’s just say we’re open to all suggestions.’

  ‘Why not simply go to the authorities?’ volunteered Alonzo. ‘Send in SEAL Team Six to bust Kammler’s ass?’

  Miles spread his hands. ‘We have tantalising clues, but we don’t have anything like proof. Plus there is no one we can absolutely trust. Power has been infiltrated at the highest echelons. Certainly the present director of the CIA, Dan Brooks, has reached out to us, and he is a good man. But he has concerns, even up to the level of his own President. In short, we can only rely on ourselves; on our network.’

  ‘Just who is that network?’ Jaeger queried. ‘Who exactly is this we you keep referring to?’

  ‘The Secret Hunters,’ Miles replied. ‘As formed after the Second World War and kept alive until today.’ He gestured in Uncle Joe’s direction. ‘Sadly, the only one of the originals left is Joe Jaeger. We are blessed that he is still with us. Others have taken up the reins. Irina Narov is one.’ He smiled. ‘And we are hoping for six new recruits in this room today.’

  ‘What about funding? Backup? Top cover?’ Jaeger pressed.

  Peter Miles grimaced. ‘Good questions . . . You’ll all have heard about this Nazi gold train that’s recently been discovered by a bunch of treasure hunters, hidden beneath a Polish mountain. Well, there were a lot more such trains, most from the looting of the Berlin Reichsbank.’

  ‘Hitler’s treasury?’ Jaeger prompted.