Burning Angels

by Bear Grylls

  ‘Megachiroptera,’ Narov whispered. ‘Also called the flying fox. You can see why.’

  ‘Flying wolf, more like.’ Jaeger shook his head in disgust. ‘Definitely not my favourite animal.’

  Narov gave a silent laugh. ‘They rely on their keen sense of sight and smell to locate food. Normally it is fruit. Today they obviously thought it was you.’ She sniffed ostentatiously. ‘Though I am surprised. You smell like shit, Blondie.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ Jaeger muttered. ‘And you smell truly delectable, of course.’

  Blondie. The nickname had been inevitable. With his eyebrows and even his eyelashes dyed peroxide blonde, he was amazed how much his appearance had altered. As disguises went, it was surprisingly effective.

  They picked themselves up from the dirt, brushed themselves down and pressed on in silence. Above them, the last ghostly whisperings of the bats died away. The only other noise came from behind now – the steady, ground-shaking beat of a hundred or so elephants pushing ever deeper into the cave.

  To one side of the cavern floor ran a dark, sluggish waterway, which vented out of the cave entrance. They climbed over a series of ledges that took them higher than the water by a good few metres. Finally they crested a rise, and a stunning sight unfolded before them.

  The river widened out into a massive expanse of water, forming a vast lake beneath Burning Angels mountain. Jaeger’s torch beam couldn’t even reach the far shore. But even more fantastical were the intricate forms that lunged out of the water in bizarre, seemingly frozen animation.

  Jaeger stared for several seconds in astonishment, before he realised what exactly it was that they had stumbled upon. It was a petrified jungle – here, the jagged-toothed skeletal forms of giant palm trees thrusting out of the lake at crazed angles; there, a serried rank of hardwood trunks puncturing the water like the pillars of a long-lost Roman temple.

  At some stage this must have been a lush prehistoric forest. A volcanic eruption must have rained down ash upon the greenery, burying it, Over time, the volcano had risen higher and the jungle had turned to stone. It had been transformed into the most incredible minerals: into opal – a beautiful reddish mineral streaked with fluorescent blues and greens; malachite – a gemstone rendered in stunning, swirling coppery greens; plus bolts of smooth, glittering, jet-black chert.

  Jaeger had seen much of the world with the military, visiting some of the most remote terrain the planet had to offer, yet still it had the power to amaze and confound him – although rarely like it did right now. Here, in this place where he had expected to encounter only darkness and evil, they’d stumbled upon mind-blowing beauty and splendour.

  He turned to Narov. ‘Don’t ever let me hear you complain about where I took you for your honeymoon.’

  She couldn’t help but smile.

  The lake had to be a good three hundred yards across – more than three football fields set end to end. As to its length, that was anyone’s guess. A ledge ran around the southern flank, and that was clearly the route they had to take.

  As they set off, a thought struck Jaeger. If somewhere up ahead lay Kammler’s dark secret – his factory of death – there was little sign of it from this side. In fact, there was no sign of any human presence anywhere.

  No boot prints.

  No pathways used by humans.

  Not a hint that any vehicles had ever passed this way.

  But the cave system was clearly massive. There were sure to be other entrances; other water-worn passageways leading to other galleries.

  They pressed on.

  The shelf forced them closer to the cave’s wall. It glittered beguilingly. The rock was pierced with a myriad of frosty quartz crystals that glowed blue-white in the torchlight, their tips as sharp as razor blades. Spiders had strung their webs between them, the entire wall seemingly coated with a thin skein of silk.

  The webs were thick with dead bodies. Fat black moths; giant butterflies of stunning colours; enormous orange-and-yellow-striped African hornets, each the length of your little finger; all enmeshed and mummified in the silk. Everywhere Jaeger looked, he could see spiders feasting upon what they had caught.

  Water meant life, Jaeger reminded himself. The lake would draw beasts of all kinds. Here, the hunters – the spiders – were waiting. And the spider bided its time to trap its prey, as did many other predators.

  As they pushed further into the cave, the thought wasn’t lost on Jaeger.

  37

  Jaeger doubled his guard. He’d not been expecting this amount of wildlife so deep in Burning Angels cave.

  In amongst the glittering crystals and the shimmering webs there was something else too, jutting out of the cave wall at odd angles. It was the petrified bones of whatever animals had inhabited the prehistoric – now fossilised – jungle: giant armoured crocodiles; massive beasts that were the ancient forebears of the elephant; plus the heavyweight age-old ancestor to the hippo.

  The ledge narrowed.

  It forced Jaeger and Narov skin-close to the rock.

  A sharp fissure opened up between the ledge and the wall. Jaeger glanced into it. There was something in there.

  He peered closer. The tangled, tortured mass of yellowish brown resembled the flesh and bones of something that had once been living – the skin mummified to a consistency like leather.

  Jaeger felt a presence at his shoulder. ‘Baby elephant,’ Narov whispered, as she peered into the crevasse. ‘They feel their way in the dark using the tips of their trunks, and they must fall in there by accident.’

  ‘Yeah, but you see those marks.’ Jaeger focused his twin beams on a bone that looked badly gnawed. ‘Something did that. Something big and powerful. Some carnivore.’

  Narov nodded. Somewhere in this cave there were flesh-eaters.

  For an instant, she flashed her light across the lake to their rear. ‘Look,’ she whispered. ‘They come.’

  Jaeger glanced over his shoulder. The column of elephants was surging into the lake. As the water deepened, the smaller amongst them – the adolescents – plunged in over their heads. They lifted their trunks until just the tips were showing, the nostrils on the ends sucking in air greedily, as if through a snorkel.

  Narov turned to check the path that she and Jaeger had taken. Smallish grey forms could be seen hurrying forward. The youngest of the herd: the babies. They were too small to wade across, and so they had to take the long way around, sticking to dry land.

  ‘We need to hurry,’ she whispered, a real edge of urgency to her tone now.

  They set off at a jog.

  They hadn’t gone far when Jaeger heard it.

  A low, ghostly sound broke the silence: it was like a cross between a dog’s growl, a bull’s bellow and a monkey’s whooping cackle.

  It was echoed by an answering cry.

  It sent a tingle up Jaeger’s spine.

  If he hadn’t heard that type of cry before, he’d have been convinced that the cave was inhabited by a demonic horde. As it was, he recognised it for what it was: hyenas.

  Up ahead on the path, there were hyenas – an animal that Jaeger had come to know well.

  Something like a cross between a leopard and a wolf, the largest can weigh more than a fully grown human male. Their jaws are so powerful, they can crush the bones of their prey and eat them. Normally they only take on the weak, the sick and the old. But if cornered, they are as dangerous as a pack of lions.

  Maybe more so.

  Jaeger didn’t doubt there was a pack of hyenas on the path, waiting to ambush the youngest of the herd.

  As if to confirm his fears, from behind them a bull elephant gave an answering challenge to the hyena’s ghastly call, unleashing a screaming trumpet from his massive trunk. It tore through the cave system like a thunderclap, his giant ears flapping and his head swinging towards the direction of the threat.

  The lead bull veered off course, bringing two others with him. As the main body of the herd surged onwards through the lake, th
e three bulls tore through the water towards the rock shelf – the source of the hyena howls.

  Jaeger didn’t underestimate the danger. The elephants were facing down a pack of hyenas, and he and Narov were sandwiched in the middle. Every second was vital. There was no time to search for an alternative route around the hyenas, and no time to waver, much as he might baulk at what they were about to do.

  Jaeger reached behind and whipped out his P228, then glanced at Narov. She already had her weapon in hand.

  ‘Head shots!’ he hissed, as they started to sprint forward. ‘Head shots. A wounded hyena is a killer . . .’

  The light of their head torches bounced and spun as they ran, casting weird, ghostly shadows across the walls. From behind them the bull elephants trumpeted again and surged ever closer.

  Jaeger was the first to catch sight of their adversaries. A massive spotted hyena wheeled towards the sound of their footfalls and the glare of the torches, its eyes glowing evilly. It had the typical squat hindquarters, massive shoulders, short neck and bullet-shaped head, plus the distinctive shaggy mane running down its backbone. The beast’s jaws were open in a snarl, showing off short, thick canines and rows of huge, bone-crushing premolars.

  It was like a wolf on steroids.

  The female of the spotted hyena was larger than the male and she dominated the pack. She swung her head low, and to either side of her Jaeger could see other sets of glowing eyes. He counted seven animals in all, as behind him the enraged bull elephants tore through the last of the lake water.

  Jaeger’s pace didn’t falter. Two-handed, and aiming on the run, he pulled the trigger.

  Pzzzt! Pzzzt! Pzzzt!

  Three 9mm rounds tore into the queen hyena’s skull. She fell hard, her torso slamming into the rock shelf – dead before she even came to rest. Her cohorts snarled and sprang to attack.

  Jaeger sensed Narov on his shoulder, firing as she ran.

  The distance between them and the rabid pack had closed to a matter of yards.

  38

  Even as Jaeger vaulted into the air to avoid the bloodied corpses, his P228 spat rounds.

  His boots slammed down on the far side and he sprinted onwards, as behind him the bull elephants closed in – the water boiling under their massive feet; their eyes blazing, ears flapping, trunks sensing the threat.

  As far as the bulls were concerned, there was blood and death and combat on the path before them, on the very route their little ones needed to take. For elephants, the strongest urge was seemingly to protect their own. The entire one-hundred-strong herd was one big, extended family, and right now the bulls’ offspring were in mortal danger.

  Jaeger could understand the animals’ desperation and rage, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be anywhere around when it was unleashed upon the enemy.

  As he instinctively checked over his shoulder, searching for Narov, he realised with a shock that she wasn’t there any more. He came to a juddering halt. He spun around, spotting her bent over the form of a hyena, trying to drag it off the path.

  ‘GET MOVING!’ Jaeger screamed. ‘MOVE IT! NOW!’

  Narov’s only response was to redouble her efforts with the dead weight of the corpse. Jaeger hesitated for just an instant, and then he was back beside her, hands gripping the animal’s once-powerful shoulders as together they heaved it into the crevasse at the side of the path.

  Barely had they done so when the lead elephant was upon them. Jaeger was hit with a wall of sound that seemed to turn his innards to jelly as the elephant trumpeted its earth-shattering rage. Seconds later, tusks stabbed inwards, trapping the pair of them on the narrowest part of the rock shelf.

  Jaeger dragged Narov back into the crook, where the cave roof met the inner edge of the shelf. Jammed against the thick webs and the needle-sharp crystals, they shaded their torches with their hands, lying motionless in the dirt.

  Any movement would attract the bull elephant’s wrath. But if they stayed still and silent in the darkness, they might just survive the carnage that was being unleashed.

  The massive bull speared the first of the hyenas, lifting it up on its tusks and flinging it bodily into the waters of the lake.

  The power of the animal was simply fearsome.

  One by one the hyena bodies were picked up and hurled into the lake. When the shelf was clear of corpses, the lead elephant seemed to calm a little. Jaeger watched, both fascinated and fearful, as the massive animal used the soft, flat end of its trunk to check what had happened.

  He could see the huge nostrils dilating as they sucked in the scent. Every smell would tell a story. Hyena blood. To the elephant, that was good. But it was also intermingled with a scent that would be alien to the animal: cordite fumes. A smog of smoke from the pistol fire hung thick in the cool air of the cave.

  The elephant appeared perplexed: what smell was this?

  The trunk reached deeper. Jaeger could see its moist pink end groping towards him. That trunk – as thick as a tree, and capable of lifting 250 kilos – could snake around a thigh or torso and rip them out of there in a flash, dashing them to pieces against the rock wall.

  For an instant Jaeger considered going on the offensive. The elephant’s head was no more than ten feet away: an easy shot. He could see its eyes clearly now, the long, fine eyelashes catching in the light thrown off by his torch.

  Weirdly, he felt as if the animal could see right through him, even as its trunk reached out to make first contact with his skin. There was something just so human – so humane – about its gaze.

  Jaeger abandoned all thoughts of opening fire. Even if he could bring himself to do so, which he doubted, he knew a 9mm subsonic round would never pierce a bull elephant’s skull.

  He abandoned himself to the elephant’s caress.

  As the trunk made contact with the skin of his arm, he froze. It was so gentle, it felt as if a faint breeze was rippling his arm hairs. He heard the snuffling as the elephant sucked in his scent.

  What could it smell, Jaeger wondered? He hoped to hell that the elephant dung had done the trick. But was there also an underlying human scent that the animal would still detect? Surely, there had to be?

  Gradually the familiar smell of its own species seemed to calm the big bull. A few more caresses and sniffs, and the trunk moved on. Jaeger was using the bulk of his body to shield Narov, so the elephant was only able to take a few perfunctory sniffs at her.

  Seemingly satisfied, the animal turned to its next task: herding its offspring through the bloodied mess that was all that remained of the hyenas. But before it moved away, Jaeger caught a glimpse in its eyes; those ancient, deep, all-seeing eyes.

  It was as if the elephant knew. He knew what he had encountered here. But he had decided to let them live. Jaeger was convinced of it.

  The elephant moved away to where the young ones were clustered on the rock shelf in fear and uncertainty. It used its trunk to settle and comfort them, before nudging those at the front to get moving again.

  Jaeger and Narov grabbed the chance to clamber to their feet and scuttle onwards, ahead of the baby elephants, and towards safety.

  Or so they thought.

  39

  They ran on, moving at a fast jog along the path.

  The rock shelf broadened out into a flat expanse, where the lake came to a natural end. It was here that the rest of the herd had gathered. From the juddering thud of their tusks as they made gouging contact with the rock walls, this was also clearly the site of their salt mine.

  This was what they had come for.

  Jaeger crouched down in the cover of the cave wall. He needed a moment to catch his breath, and to try to get his pulse under control. He pulled out a water bottle and drank deep.

  He waved it in the direction of the path they’d just taken. ‘What’s with moving the corpse? The hyena? It didn’t matter where it fell – dead’s still dead.’

  ‘Those baby elephants – they would not cross a path blocked by a dead hyena. I was try
ing to clear a way.’

  ‘Yeah, but twenty tons of daddy elephant was incoming to do the job properly.’

  Narov shrugged. ‘I know that now, but . . . The elephant is my favourite animal. I could never leave the young ones trapped.’ She eyed Jaeger. ‘And in any case, daddy elephant did not so much as harm a hair on your head, did he?’

  Jaeger rolled his eyes in exasperation. What was there to say?

  Narov had a magical, almost childlike way with animals. Jaeger had realised as much during their expedition into the Amazon. At times she acted almost as if she had a closer relationship with animals than she did with her fellow humans; as if she understood them far better than her own species.

  It didn’t seem to matter what kind of animals, either. Venomous spiders, spine-crushing snakes, carnivorous fish – sometimes all she seemed to care about were the non-humans on this earth. God’s creatures all of them, great or small. And when she had to kill an animal to protect her fellow operators – as now with the hyenas – she was haunted by regrets.

  Jaeger drained the bottle and thrust it back into his pack. As he tightened the shoulder straps and prepared to move again, the light of his torch caught momentarily on something lying far below them.

  Nature rarely follows straight, angular lines of design or construction, such as humans tend to favour. In nature, they are anathema. It was that – that blocky anomaly; that noticeable, unnatural difference – that had caught Jaeger’s eye.

  A river drained into the lake from deeper inside the cave. Just before the point where it did so, there was a bottleneck. A natural constriction.

  And on the near side of that narrow point stood a building.

  It looked more like a Second World War shelter – like part of the Falkenhagen bunker – than it did a generator housing or a pumping station. But set that close to the water, Jaeger was certain that was what it had to be.

  They crept down to the water’s edge. With his ear pressed close to the concrete, Jaeger could hear a faint, rhythmic whir coming from the interior and knew for certain what lay inside.