by Bear Grylls
Jaeger glanced westwards, in the direction of Plague Island, but still he couldn’t make out a thing. His chute was buffeted by a gust of wind, and rain droplets pinged into his exposed skin, each like a tiny sharp blade.
Ominously, all he could see was a cold and impenetrable darkness.
77
As he followed the route that Raff was steering, Jaeger’s mind was full of images of Ruth and Luke. The next few hours would reveal everything. For better or for worse.
The question that had been dogging him for the last three years was about to be answered. Either he was going to pull off the seemingly impossible and rescue Ruth and Luke. Or he would discover the grisly truth – that one or both of them were dead.
And if the latter were the case, he knew to whom he would turn.
Their recent missions, and Narov’s confessions – her dark and traumatic family history; her link to Jaeger’s late grandfather; her autism; their growing attachment – had drawn him perilously close to her .
And if he flew too close to Narov’s sun, Jaeger knew for sure that he would get burnt.
Jaeger and his fellow jumpers were still at altitude, and they were completely untraceable by any known defence system. Radar bounces off solid, angular objects – an aircraft’s metal wings, or a helicopter’s rotor blades – but simply bends around human forms and carries on uninterrupted. They were pretty much silent as they flew, so there was little risk of them being heard. They were dressed all in black, suspended beneath black chutes, and practically invisible from the ground.
They approached a high bank of cloud, which was piling up way out to sea. They’d already flown through one level of wet cloud, but nothing as thick or substantial as this. They had no option but to pass right through.
They slipped into the dense grey fug, the cloud becoming blindingly thick. As he drifted through the opaque mass, Jaeger could feel more and more icy water droplets condensing on his exposed skin and running down his face, forming tiny rivulets. By the time he emerged on the far side, he was freezing cold.
He picked up Raff right away, on a level with him and to his front. But when he turned to search behind, there was no sign of Narov, or any of the others.
Unlike in free-falling, when comms are impossible due to all the buffeting of the slipstream, you can radio each other when drifting under chutes. Jaeger pressed send and spoke into his mouthpiece.
‘Narov – Jaeger. Where are you?’
He repeated the call several times, but still there was no answer. He and Raff had lost the rest of the stick, and by now they were very likely out of radio range.
Raff’s voice came up over the air. ‘Let’s crack on. We’ll hit the IP and reorg on the ground.’ IP meant the impact point – in this case Copacabana Beach.
Raff was right. There was sod all they could do about losing contact with the rest of the stick, and too much radio traffic might lead to detection.
Several minutes later, Jaeger noticed Raff accelerate as he started to spiral vertically downwards, making for the island below and the small strip of beach. He made landfall with an almighty thump.
At a thousand feet, Jaeger hit the metal release levers to free his rucksack. It dropped away until it was suspended some twenty feet below him.
He heard the bulky pack thud into the ground.
He flared his chute, to slow his rate of descent, and seconds later his boots slammed into the stretch of sand, which glowed a surreal blue-white in the moonlight. He ran forward several paces as the expanse of silk drifted down, tangling in a bundle beside the sea.
Immediately he unslung his MP7 from his right shoulder and slotted a bullet into the breech. He was a few dozen yards from Raff, and he was good.
‘Ready,’ he hissed into his radio.
The two of them converged on the muster point. Moments later, Hiro Kamishi appeared out of the night sky and landed nearby.
But there was zero sign of the rest of Jaeger’s team.
78
Hank Kammler ordered a bottle of Le Parvis de la Chapelle, the 1976 vintage. Nothing too flashy, but a quality French red nonetheless. He’d resisted cracking open a bottle of the finest champagne. There was much to celebrate, but he never liked to start the party early.
Just in case.
He powered up his laptop, and as it came to life, he let his eyes wander over the scene below. The waterhole was wonderfully busy. The humped, rounded, oily forms of hippos lazed contentedly in the mud. A herd of graceful roan antelopes – or were they sable? Kammler was never quite certain how to tell the difference – nosed towards the murky water, fearful of crocodiles.
All seemed good in paradise, which buoyed his already ebullient mood. He clicked the laptop’s keys, pulling up the same draft email account that Jaeger had accessed just a few days earlier. Kammler kept a regular watch on it. He could tell which messages Jaeger had looked at, and when.
A frown creased his brow.
The most recent messages dreamed up by himself and Steve Jones had yet to be opened. Kammler clicked on one, savouring the dark intent, yet at the same time unsettled that his nemesis hadn’t yet seen it.
The image opened, showing the distinctive shaven-headed form of Jones crouching behind Jaeger’s wife and son, his massive bare arms around their shoulders, his face beaming an utterly sinister smile.
Words typed themselves below the photo: Hello from an old friend.
A pity, Kammler told himself, that Jaeger hadn’t yet got to enjoy that one. It was a masterstroke. That in turn made him wonder where Jaeger and his crew might be right now.
He checked his watch. He was expecting company. Bang on cue, the hulking form of Steve Jones lowered himself into the seat opposite, largely blocking Kammler’s view.
It was typical of the man. He had the sensitivity – the subtlety – of a dinosaur. Kammler glanced at the wine. He’d asked for only the one glass.
‘Good evening. I presume you’d like a Tusker?’ Tusker was a brand of Kenyan lager popular with tourists and expats alike.
Jones eyes narrowed. ‘Never touch the stuff. It’s African, which means it’s piss-weak. I’ll have a Pilsner.’
Kammler ordered the beer. ‘So, what news?’
Jones poured his beer. ‘Your man – Falk Konig – got to take his medicine. He was a little reluctant, but he wasn’t about to argue.’
‘And? Any progress on this boy?’
‘Apparently a kid did arrive here, around six months back, as a stowaway on a transport aircraft. He came complete with some wild story. Sounds like a heap of bullshit to me.’
Kammler’s eyes – reptilian, cold and predatory – fixed themselves on Jones. ‘It may sound like bullshit to you, but I need to hear it. All of it.’
Jones proceeded to relate a similar story as Konig had told Jaeger and Narov several days back. By the end of it, Kammler knew pretty much everything, including the boy’s name. And of course, he didn’t doubt that the tale was one hundred per cent accurate.
He felt the cold claws of uncertainty – of an impossible eleventh-hour dread – tearing at him. If the same story had made its way to Jaeger’s ears, what had he learned? What had he deduced? And where had that taken him?
Was there anything in the boy’s story that might have revealed Kammler’s wider plan? He didn’t think so. How could it? Already the seven flights had landed at their chosen destinations. Their cargoes had been unloaded, and as far as Kammler knew, the primates were parked in quarantine right now.
And that meant the genie was out of the bottle.
No one was about to put it back in again.
No one could save the world’s population from what, even now, was spreading.
Unseen.
Undetected.
Unsuspected even.
In a few weeks’ time it would start to rear its ugly head. The first symptoms would be flu-like. Hardly alarming. But then would come the first of the bleeding.
Well before that time, the world’s
population would be infected. The virus would have spread to the four corners of the earth, and it would be unstoppable.
And then it hit him.
The realisation was so forceful it made Kammler choke on his wine. His eyes bulged and his pulse spiked as he contemplated the utterly unthinkable. He grabbed a napkin and dabbed at his chin absent-mindedly. It was a long shot. Next to impossible. But nonetheless, there was still just the sliver of a chance.
‘You all right?’ a voice queried. It was Jones. ‘Look like you just seen a ghost.’
Kammler waved the question away. ‘Wait,’ he hissed. ‘I need silence. To think.’
His teeth locked and ground against each other. His mind was a maelstrom of seething thoughts, as he tried to work out how best to combat this new and utterly unforeseen danger.
Finally he turned his gaze on Jones. ‘Forget every order I’ve given you. Instead, concentrate on this one task exclusively. I need you to find that boy. I don’t care what it costs, where you have to go, which of your . . . comrades you may need to recruit – but find him. Find this damn kid and shut him down permanently.’
‘I hear you,’ Jones confirmed. It was a long way from going after Jaeger, but at least it was a manhunt of sorts. Something to get his teeth into.
‘I’ll need something to go on. A starting point. A lead.’
‘All will be provided. These slum dwellers – they use cell phones. Mobiles. Mobile internet. I’ll have the best people we’ve got listen out for him. Search. Hack. Monitor. They’ll find him. And when they do, you will go in and terminate with extreme prejudice. Are we understood?’
Jones flashed a cruel smile. ‘Perfectly.’
‘Right, go make your preparations. You’ll need to travel – most likely to Nairobi. You’ll need help. Find people. Offer them whatever it takes, but get this done.’
Jones departed, his unfinished glass of beer gripped in his hand. Kammler turned to his laptop. His fingers flashed across the keyboard, placing a call via IntelCom. It was routed to a nondescript grey office in a complex of low-lying grey buildings, hidden within a swathe of grey forest in remote rural Virginia, on the eastern coast of the USA.
That office was stuffed full of the world’s most advanced signals intercept and tracking technology. On the wall next to the entryway was a small brass plaque. It read: CIA – Division of Asymmetric Threat Analysis (DATA).
A voice answered. ‘Harry Peterson.’
‘It’s me,’ Kammler announced. ‘I’m sending you a file on one specific individual. Yes, from my vacation in East Africa. You are to use all possible means – internet, email, cell phones, travel bookings, passport details, anything – to find him. Last known location believed to be the Mathare shanty town, in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘This has the absolute highest priority, Peterson. You and your people are to drop everything – absolutely everything – to concentrate on this one tasking. Are we understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Let me know as soon as you learn anything. No matter what time of day or night, contact me immediately.’
‘Understood, sir.’
Kammler killed the call. His pulse rate was starting to return to something like normal. Let’s not overdo this, he told himself. Like any threat, it could be managed. Eliminated.
The future was still one hundred per cent his for the taking.
79
There was a crackle in Jaeger’s earpiece. Message incoming.
‘We lost you in the cloud.’ It was Narov. ‘We’re three, but we took a while to find each other. We put down on the airstrip.’
‘Understood,’ Jaeger responded. ‘Stay out of sight. We’ll move across to your location.’
‘One thing. There’s no one here.’
‘Say again?’
‘The airstrip. It’s utterly deserted.’
‘Okay, lie low. Leave your fireflies on strobe.’
‘Believe me, there’s not a soul here,’ Narov repeated. ‘It’s like the whole place . . . It’s deserted.’
‘We’re on our way.’
Jaeger and Raff prepared to move out, leaving Kamishi to guard the wet decon line.
Jaeger laid out the components for his Plague Island space walk on the sands. The thick, chemically resistant material of the Trellchem suit gleamed sinisterly in the moonlight. Beside it he placed the rubber overboots, plus thick rubber gloves. On a nearby rock he laid his roll of all-important gaffer tape.
He glanced at Raff. ‘Me first.’
Raff stepped around to assist. Jaeger clambered into the suit feet-first. He pulled it up to his armpits, then shrugged it over his arms and shoulders. With Raff’s assistance, he zipped himself inside, then pulled the bulbous hood over so that it encased his head completely.
He gestured at the gaffer tape, then held out his hands. Raff taped the wrists of his suit to the rubber of the gloves, doing the same with the boots around Jaeger’s ankles.
The tape would be their first line of defence.
Jaeger twisted a switch, changing his respirator kit on to active powered-air mode. There was a faint whir as the electric motors began to blow in clean, filtered air, billowing out his suit until the toughened rubber skin went rigid. Already it felt hot, unwieldy and constricting, plus it proved noisy whenever he tried to move.
Kamishi helped Raff suit up, and it wasn’t long before they were ready to step into the jungle.
For a moment Raff hesitated. He glanced at Jaeger from behind his visor. Inside, his face was enclosed within his FM54 mask, as was Jaeger’s. That way, they had a double line of defence.
Jaeger saw Raff’s lips move. The words reverberated in his earpiece, sounding muffled and distant.
‘She’s right. Narov. There’s no one here. I can sense it. This island – it’s deserted.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Jaeger countered. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the throb of the air flow.
‘There’s no one here,’ Raff repeated. ‘When we came in to land, did you see a single light? A glimmer? Movement? Anything?’
‘We still have to clear the place. First the airstrip. Then Kammler’s labs. Every step of the way.’
‘Yeah, I know. But trust me – there’s no one here.’
Jaeger eyed him through the barrier of their visors. ‘If you’re right, what does that signify? What does it mean?’
Raff shook his head. ‘Dunno, but it can’t be good news.’
Jaeger sensed the same, but there was something else eating at his mind – something that made him feel physically sick.
If this island was deserted, where had Kammler taken Ruth and Luke?
They moved out, lumbering towards the dark wall of forest like astronauts, but without the benefit of comparative weightlessness to ease their way. As they stepped awkwardly into the waiting jungle, each had his stubby MP7 sub-machine gun slung across his front.
As soon as they were beneath the canopy, the darkness was upon them. The tree cover cut out all ambient light. Jaeger flicked the switch on the torch attached to his MP7, a beam of illumination piercing the gloom as he swept the way ahead.
Before him was an almost impenetrable wall of brooding vegetation, the jungle thick with creepers, plus giant fan-like palm leaves and vines as thick as a man’s thigh. Thank God they only had a few hundred yards of this to fight their way through to make the airstrip.
Jaeger had taken a few ungainly paces under the dark canopy when he sensed movement above him. A bunched, alien form darted at him from out of the shadowed tree limbs, springing with an impossibly acrobatic and lithe sure-footedness. Jaeger raised his bulky gloved right hand to block the movement, and punched with his left, going for the creature’s throat in a typical Krav Maga thrust.
In hand-to-hand combat you had to hit instantly and hard, landing repeated blows on your adversary’s areas of greatest vulnerability – the foremost of which was the neck. But what
ever this beast might be, it proved too agile; or maybe Jaeger’s movements were just too constricted by the suit. He felt as if he were mired in a thick sludge.
His assailant dodged the first blows, and an instant later he felt something powerful snake its way around his suited neck. Whatever had gripped him began to squeeze.
The strength of the thing – for its size – was unbelievable. Jaeger felt adrenalin surge around his system as his suit puckered and buckled, four powerful limbs closing around his head. He fought with his hands to tear them free, but then – suddenly and shockingly – a face appeared before him, red-eyed, rabid and snarling, and the creature struck with its canines, the long yellow fangs slashing at his visor.
For whatever reason, primates find humans encased in space suits even more terrifying and provocative than they do in the flesh. And as Jaeger had been warned in the Falkenhagen briefings, a primate – even one as small as this – could make for a fearsome adversary.
Doubly so when its brain was fried with a mind-altering viral infection.
Jaeger groped for its eyes, one of the most vulnerable points of the body. His gloved fingers made contact, and he drove his thumbs in, gouging deep – a classic Krav Maga move, and one that didn’t require particular agility or speed.
His fingers slid and slewed on a slick, greasy wetness: he could feel it even through the gloves. The animal was leaking liquid – blood – from its eye sockets.
He forced his thumbs deeper, hooking out one living eyeball. Finally the monkey relented, dropping off him in screaming, agonised rage. It let go last with its tail, the limb that had snaked around Jaeger’s neck in a stranglehold.
It made a desperate leap for cover, wounded and hopelessly sick though it was. Jaeger raised his MP7 and fired: one shot that took it down.
The monkey fell dead on the forest floor.
He bent to inspect it, sweeping his torch beam across its motionless form. Beneath its sparse hair, the primate’s skin was covered in swollen red blotches. And where the bullet had torn apart its torso, Jaeger could see a river of blood pooling.
But this wasn’t anything like normal blood.