Burning Angels

by Bear Grylls

  He had been trained to seek out the kind of environments – sun-blasted desert, remote, hostile bush and fetid swamps – that normal human beings tended to shun. No other sane people would be there, which meant that a small group of elite operators could sneak through unnoticed.

  No poachers would be joining Jaeger and Narov in this foul and stinking waterhole, which was why – despite the numerous downsides – it was perfect.

  Jaeger got himself down on to his knees, his eyes and nose just above the water, his hand gripping his pistol. Like this he could maintain the lowest profile possible, while crawling and shuffling silently ahead. He made sure to keep the P228 out of the water. While most pistols still worked when wet, it was always better to keep them dry – just in case the dirty water fouled up the weapon.

  He glanced at Narov. ‘You happy?’

  She nodded, her eyes sparkling dangerously in the moonlight.

  The tips of the fingers of Jaeger’s left hand gripped the squelchy, gooey mush as his feet shoved him into forward motion. He flailed about amongst a mass of rotting, putrid vegetation, his hand sinking up to the wrist with each thrust.

  He prayed there weren’t any snakes in here, then drove the thought from his mind.

  He pressed ahead for three minutes, counting each forward thrust by hand and feet, and translating that into a rough estimate of distance travelled. He and Narov were moving blind here, and he needed a sense of where the poachers’ camp lay. When he figured they’d covered about seventy-five yards, he signalled a halt.

  He approached the left bank and raised his head, inching it above the cover. He felt Narov tight beside him, her head practically on his shoulder. Together they emerged from the swamp, their hands gripping their pistols. Each covered one half of the terrain before them as they whispered details back and forth, building up a picture of the enemy encampment as rapidly as possible.

  ‘Campfire,’ Jaeger whispered. ‘Two guys sat beside it. Sentry.’

  ‘Direction of watch?’

  ‘South-east. Away from the waterhole.’

  ‘Lights?’

  ‘None that I can see.’

  ‘Weapons?’

  ‘AKs. Plus I see guys to left and right of the fire, sleeping. I count . . . eight.’

  ‘That’s ten accounted for. Two unseen.’

  Narov swivelled her eyes this way and that, scanning her section of the terrain.

  ‘I see the tusks. One guy standing sentry over them.’

  ‘Weapon?’

  ‘Assault rifle slung across his shoulder.’

  ‘That leaves one unaccounted for. One missing.’

  Both were aware of the passage of time, but it made sense to find that missing poacher. They kept watch for a few minutes longer, but still they couldn’t locate the last man.

  ‘Any sign of extra security measures? Tripwires? Booby traps? Motion sensors?’

  Narov shook her head. ‘Nothing visible. Let’s move ahead thirty. Then we’ll be right beside the tusks.’

  Jaeger slid back into the murk and pushed on. As he did so, he could hear the sounds of mystery beasts thrashing about in the thick darkness. His eyes were about level with the water, and he could sense vile movement to all sides. Worst of all, he could feel things slithering their way in.

  Beneath his shirt, around his neck – on his inner thighs, even – he could detect the faintly stinging sensation, as a leech inserted its jaws under his skin and began sucking greedily, filling its gut with his blood.

  It was sickening; revolting.

  But there was nothing he could do about it right now.

  For some reason – most likely the electrifying adrenalin buzz he was feeling – Jaeger was also dying for a pee. But he had to fight the urge. The golden rule of crossing such watery terrain was: never take a leak. If you did, you risked opening up your urethra and allowing a swampload of germs, bacteria and parasites to swim up your urine stream.

  There was even a tiny fish – the candiru, or ‘toothpick fish’ – that liked to insert itself into your tube and extend its spines, so you couldn’t pull it out again. The very thought made Jaeger shudder. No way could he allow himself to take a leak. He’d hold it in until the mission was done.

  Finally they stopped and did a second scan of the terrain. To their immediate left the four giant tusks gleamed eerily in the moonlight, maybe thirty yards away. The lone sentry had his back to them, facing out into the bush – where any obvious threat would come from.

  Narov held up the tracker device. ‘I’m going in,’ she whispered.

  For a moment Jaeger was tempted to argue. But this was not the time. And very possibly she could do this better than him. ‘I’ve got your back. You’re covered.’

  Narov paused for an instant, then scooped up a handful of shitty gunk from the bank and smeared it all over her face and hair.

  She turned to Jaeger. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Ravishing.’

  With that she slithered up the bank like a ghostly serpent and was gone.

  52

  Jaeger counted out the seconds. He figured seven minutes had passed, and still no sign of Narov. He was expecting her to reappear at any moment. He had his eyes glued to the sentries by the fire, but there was no sign yet of any trouble.

  Still, the tension was unbearable.

  Suddenly he detected a weird, strangled gurgling noise coming from the direction of the ivory pile. Momentarily he swivelled his eyes across to check. The lone watchman had disappeared from view.

  He saw the sentries by the fire stiffen. His heart was beating like a machine gun, as he pinned them in the sights of his SIG.

  ‘Hussein?’ one of them cried. ‘Hussein!’

  They’d clearly heard the noise too. There was no answer from the lone sentry, and Jaeger could make a good guess as to why.

  One of the figures at the fireside got to his feet. His words – in Swahili – drifted across to Jaeger. ‘I’ll go take a look. Probably gone for a piss.’ He set off through the bush, moving in the direction of the ivory pile; in the direction of Narov.

  Jaeger was about to raise himself over the lip and dash to her aid, when he spotted something. A figure was belly-crawling through the bush towards him. It was Narov all right, but there was something odd about the way she was moving.

  As she got closer, he realised what it was: she was dragging a tusk behind her. Laden down like that, she was never going to make it. Jaeger broke cover, dashed across in a crouch, grabbed the heavy tusk and staggered back the way he’d come.

  He lowered himself into the water, sliding the tusk in beside him. Narov joined him. He could barely believe they’d not been seen.

  Without a word, the two of them began to move silently away. No words needed to be spoken. Had Narov not accomplished her mission, she’d have told him. But what the hell had she brought one of the tusks for?

  Suddenly, gunshots split the night. PCHTHEW! PCHTHEW! PCHTHEW!

  Jaeger and Narov froze. That was three rounds from an AK, and they’d been fired from the direction of the tusk pile. No doubt Narov’s handiwork had been discovered.

  ‘Warning shots,’ Jaeger mouthed. ‘Sounding the alarm.’

  There was a series of irate yells, as figures woke all across the camp. Jaeger and Narov sank lower into the water, faces pressed tight into the mud. All they could do was keep utterly still and try to work out what was happening by hearing alone.

  Voices cried out and boots pounded across the terrain. Weapons could be heard being made ready. The poachers yelled and screamed confusedly. Jaeger sensed a figure appear on the bank just a few metres away from where they were hiding.

  Momentarily, the gunman’s eyes scanned the water, and Jaeger felt his gaze sweep across them. He braced himself for a cry of alarm; for gunfire; for the bite of bullets slicing into flesh and bone.

  Then a voice – a commanding voice – yelled out: ‘No one’s in that shit pit, you idiot! Get searching – out there!’

 
The figure turned and dashed towards the open bush. Jaeger sensed the focus of the search melting away, as the poachers spread out to comb the surrounding terrain. It was sticking to this fetid, disease-ridden stretch of water that had saved them.

  They moved off at a slow crawl, until finally they reached the point from which they’d started. Having checked that it was clear of poachers, they pulled themselves on to dry land, retrieving their backpacks from where they’d stashed them.

  For a brief moment Narov paused. She pulled out her knife and proceeded to rinse its blade in the water.

  ‘One of them had to die. I took that,’ she gestured at the tusk, ‘as cover. To make it look like theft.’

  Jaeger nodded. ‘Smart thinking.’

  They could hear the odd yell, and an occasional burst of gunfire, echoing out of the darkness. The search seemed to have moved east and south, away from the waterhole. The poachers were clearly spooked, and chasing after ghosts and shadows.

  Jaeger and Narov left the lone tusk hidden in the shallows and set off through the bush. They had a long trek ahead of them, and the dehydration was really starting to bite now. But there was one priority even more pressing than water.

  When he figured they’d gone far enough to be safe from detection, Jaeger called a halt. ‘I need a pee. Plus we should check for leeches.’

  Narov nodded.

  It was not the place to stand on ceremony. Jaeger turned away from her and dropped his trousers. Sure enough, his groin was a dark mass of writhing bodies.

  He had always hated bloody leeches. Literally. Even more than bats, they were his least favourite animal. After a good hour feasting on his blood, each of the fat black bodies was engorged to several times its normal length. He prised them off one by one and flicked them away, each leaving a stream of blood oozing down his leg.

  Groin done, he pulled off his shirt and did a repeat performance with neck and torso. The leeches injected an anticoagulant that kept the blood running for a while: by the time he was done, his body was a bloodied mess.

  Narov turned away from him and dropped her own pants.

  ‘Need a hand?’ Jaeger asked jokingly.

  She snorted. ‘In your dreams. I’m surrounded by leeches, you included.’

  He shrugged. ‘Fine. Bleed away.’

  Once the de-leeching was done, they each took a moment to clean their gun. It was crucial to do so, for mud and moisture would have got into the working parts. Then they set out due east, moving at a fast walk.

  They had no water or food remaining, but there should be plenty in the ruins of the helicopter.

  That was if they ever made it back there.

  53

  Jaeger and Narov passed the hip flask back and forth between them. It had been a bonus finding that amongst the wreckage of the HIP. Though Narov rarely drank, they were both exhausted, and in need of the whisky for the psychological boost.

  They’d made it back by close to midnight, to discover the place utterly deserted. Even the baby elephant was gone, which was good news. At least hopefully they’d saved one animal. They’d emptied the HIP of water, sodas and food, sating both their thirst and their hunger.

  That done, Jaeger had made some calls on his Thuraya. The first was to Katavi, and he had been elated to speak to Konig. The reserve’s chief conservationist was made of strong stuff, that much was clear. He’d regained consciousness and was back on the case.

  Jaeger had explained the basics of what he and Narov were up to. He’d asked for a flight to come in and pick them up, and Konig had promised to be airborne by first light. Jaeger had also warned him to expect a delivery of cargo on the next flight in, and told him not to open the crates when they arrived.

  His second call had been to Raff, at Falkenhagen, giving him a shopping list of hardware and weaponry. Raff had promised to get it shipped out to Katavi within twenty-four hours, courtesy of a British diplomatic bag. Finally Jaeger had briefed Raff on the tracking device that he needed them to keep eyes on. The moment it went static Jaeger and Narov needed to know, for that would mean the poachers had reached home base.

  Calls done, they’d sat back against an acacia tree and broken out the hip flask. For a good hour they’d sat together sharing the drink and making plans. It was well past midnight by the time Jaeger realised the flask was nearly empty.

  He shook it, the last of the whisky sloshing about inside. ‘Last sippers, my Russian comrade? So, what do we talk about now?’

  ‘Why the need to talk? Listen to the bush. It is like a symphony. Plus there is the magic of the sky.’

  She leant back and Jaeger followed suit. The rhythmic preep-preep-preep of the night-time insects beat out a hypnotic rhythm, the stunning expanse of the heavens stretching wide and silken above them.

  ‘Still, it’s a rare opportunity,’ Jaeger ventured. ‘Just the two of us; no one else for miles around.’

  ‘So what do you want to talk about?’ Narov murmured.

  ‘You know what? I think we should talk about you.’ Jaeger had a thousand questions he’d never got to ask of Narov, and now was as good a time as any.

  Narov shrugged. ‘It is not so interesting. What is there to say?’

  ‘You can start by telling me how you knew my grandfather. I mean, if he was like a grandfather to you, what does that make us – some kind of long-lost siblings or something?’

  Narov laughed. ‘Hardly. It is a long story. I will try to keep it short.’ Her face grew serious. ‘In the summer of 1944, Sonia Olschanevsky, a young Russian woman, was taken prisoner in France. She had been fighting with the partisans and serving as their radio link to London.

  ‘The Germans took her to a concentration camp, one that you already know of: Natzweiler. It was the camp for the Nacht und Nebel prisoners – those that Hitler decreed would disappear into the night and the fog. If the Germans had realised that Sonia Olschanevsky was an SOE agent, they would have tortured and executed her, as they did all captured agents. Fortunately, they did not.

  ‘They set her to work at the camp. Slave labour. A senior-ranking SS officer was visiting. Sonia was a beautiful woman. He chose her as his bedfellow.’ Narov paused. ‘Over time, she found a means to escape. She managed to wrestle some wooden slats off a pigpen and built herself an escape ladder.

  ‘Using that ladder, she and two fellow escapees clambered over the electrified wire. Sonia made it to the American lines. There she met a pair of British officers embedded with US forces – fellow SOE agents. She told them about Natzweiler, and when the Allied forces broke through, she led them to the camp.

  ‘Natzweiler was the first concentration camp found by the Allies. No one had ever imagined such horrors could exist. The effect of liberating it was incalculable for those two British officers.’ Narov’s face darkened. ‘But by then Sonia was four months pregnant. She was carrying the child of the SS officer who had raped her.’

  Narov paused, her eyes searching the skies above. ‘Sonia was my grandmother. Your grandfather – Grandpa Ted – was one of those two officers. He was so affected by what he had witnessed, and by Sonia’s fortitude, that he offered to be the godfather to the unborn child. That child was my mother. And that’s how I came to know your grandfather.

  ‘I am the grandchild of Nazi rape,’ Narov announced, quietly. ‘So you will understand why for me this is personal. Your grandfather saw something in me from an early age. He honed me – he shaped me – to take up his mantle.’ She turned to Jaeger. ‘He schooled me to be the foremost operative of the Secret Hunters.’

  They sat in silence for what seemed like an age. Jaeger had so many questions, he didn’t know where to start. How well had she known Grandpa Ted? Had she ever visited him at the Jaeger family home? Had she trained with him? And why had this been kept a secret from the rest of the family, Jaeger included?

  Jaeger had been close to his grandfather. He’d admired him, and he’d been inspired by his example to join the military. He felt hurt, somehow, that he’d never
once breathed the slightest word.

  Eventually the cold got the better of them. Narov moved in closer to Jaeger. ‘Pure survival, that’s all,’ she murmured.

  Jaeger nodded. ‘We’re grown-ups. What’s the worst that can happen?’

  He was drifting off to sleep when he sensed her head drop on to his shoulder, and her arms snake around his torso as she snuggled in tight.

  ‘I’m still cold,’ she murmured sleepily.

  He could smell the whisky on her breath. But he could also smell the warm, sweaty, spicy tang of her body so close to his, and he felt his head spinning.

  ‘It’s Africa. It’s not that cold,’ he muttered, as he slipped an arm around her. ‘Better now?’

  ‘A little.’ Narov held on to him. ‘But remember, I am made of ice.’

  Jaeger suppressed a laugh. It was so tempting just to go with it; to go with the easy, intimate, intoxicating flow.

  A part of him felt tense and jumpy: he had Ruth and Luke to somehow find and rescue. But another part of him – the slightly inebriated part – remembered for a moment what it was like to feel the caress of a woman. And deep within himself he longed to return it.

  After all, this wasn’t just any woman he was holding right now. Narov had a startling beauty. And under the moonlight, she looked utterly arresting.

  ‘You know, Mr Bert Groves, if you play an act for long enough, sometimes you start to believe it’s for real,’ she murmured. ‘Especially when you have spent so long living close to the thing you really want, but you know you cannot have it.’

  ‘We can’t do this,’ Jaeger forced himself to say. ‘Ruth and Luke are out there, somewhere beneath that mountain. They’re alive, of that I’m certain. It can’t be long now.’

  Narov snorted. ‘So, better to die of the cold? Schwachkopf.’

  But despite her signature curse, she didn’t relinquish her grip, and neither did he.

  54