Ghost Flight

by Bear Grylls

  ‘Which is the more likely scenario?’ Jaeger prompted.

  Jenkinson eyed the soggy napkin on the shelf. ‘B is about as likely as me ever liking sushi. Option A: well, you’d be surprised how common such skulduggery was. We captured their aircraft; they captured ours. We painted them in enemy colours and sneaked about up to all kinds of dodgy business. They did likewise.’

  Jaeger raised one eyebrow. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. Now, slight change of subject. Got a puzzle for you. A riddle. Figured you probably enjoy a good riddle – but I’d like you to keep this one just between the two of us, okay?’

  ‘Never happier than when I’m trying to solve a good riddle,’ Jenkinson confirmed, a gleam in his eye, ‘and especially one that I have to keep a strict secret.’

  Jaeger lowered his voice. ‘Two old men. Veterans of the Second World War. Served in secret units. All very sneaky-beaky. Each keeps his study decked out wall-to-wall with war memorabilia. There is one exception: each has on his desk an obscure ancient manuscript written entirely in an unintelligible language. Question is, why?’

  ‘You mean, why would they each have one?’ Jenkinson rubbed his beard pensively. ‘There’s no evidence of a wider interest? No reference works? No similar texts? No history of a wider study of the phenomena?’

  ‘Nothing. Just the one book. That’s it. Sat on the desk in each of the old men’s studies.’

  Jenkinson’s eyes twinkled. He was clearly enjoying this. ‘There is something called the book code.’ He pulled out an old envelope from his jacket pocket and began scribbling. ‘The beauty is its absolute pure simplicity; that, and the fact that it’s totally unbreakable – unless, of course, you happen to know which book each person is referring to.’

  He scribbled down an apparently random sequence of numbers: 1.16.47/5.12.53/9.6.16/21.4.76/3.12.9.

  ‘Now, imagine you and one other person each has the same edition of a book. He, or she, sends you those numbers. Starting with the first sequence, 1.16.47, you turn to chapter one, page sixteen, line forty-seven. It starts with an I. Next, chapter five, page twelve, line fifty-three: starts with a D. Chapter nine, page six, line sixteen: starts with an I again. Chapter twenty-one, page four, line seventy-six: O. Chapter three, page twelve, line nine: T. Put it all together and what have you got?’

  Jaeger spelled out the letters. ‘I-D-I-O-T. Idiot.’

  Jenkinson smiled. ‘You said it.’

  Jaeger couldn’t help laughing. ‘Very funny. You’ve just blown your invite to the Amazon.’

  Jenkinson chuckled silently, his shoulders rocking back and forth as he did so. ‘Sorry. It’s just the first word that came into my mind.’

  ‘Watch it. You’re digging yourself a deeper grave.’ Jaeger paused for a second. ‘But let’s say the book’s written in an unknown language and writing system. How does it work then? Surely that would make the code unworkable?’

  ‘Not if you have a usable translation. Without the translation you’d have a five-letter word that was utterly unintelligible. Without the translation, it’d be pure nonsense. But with the translation it adds another layer of encoding, that’s all. Both individuals have to have both books to hand, of course, in order to decode the message. But it’s a stroke of genius, actually.’

  ‘Can such a code be broken?’ Jaeger ventured.

  Jenkinson shook his head. ‘Very difficult. Next to impossible. That’s the beauty of it. You need to know which book the two users are referring to, and in this case have access to the translation too. Makes it almost impossible to crack – that’s unless you capture the two old men and beat and torture it out of them.’

  Jaeger eyed the archivist curiously. ‘That’s a dark mind you have there, Mr Jenkinson. But thanks for the insight. And keep digging for any trace of our mystery flight.’ He scribbled his email and phone details on the bottom of Jenkinson’s envelope. ‘I’d be keen to hear of anything you turn up.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Jenkinson smiled. ‘Glad to see someone’s taking a real interest at last.’

  17

  ‘Two-way mirror,’ Carson announced. ‘We use it for assessing which characters will appeal most to TV audiences. Or at least, that’s the bullshit theory.’

  He and Jaeger were standing in a darkened room, before what appeared to be a long glass wall. On the far side was a group of individuals enjoying a cold lunch buffet, apparently oblivious to the fact that they were being watched. Carson’s patter had changed markedly. He’d slipped back into what he clearly figured was buddy-buddy soldier speak.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the crap I’ve been put through pulling this team together,’ he continued. ‘TV executives – they wanted freaks, glamour and eye candy. Top ratings material, as they call it. I wanted tough ex-military types who’d stand at least a chance of making it through. That little lot,’ he jerked a thumb at the glass, ‘is the bloody result.’

  Jaeger indicated the trays of sandwiches that the expedition team was busy tucking into. ‘So why don’t they get the revolting—’

  ‘The sushi? Perks of being management,’ Carson cut in darkly. ‘We get the obscenely expensive, indigestible food. So, I’ll talk you around the team, and then I suggest you go say a few cute ’n’ cuddly words of introduction.’

  He pointed out a figure through the glass. ‘Big guy. Joe James. New Zealander. Former Kiwi SAS. Lost one too many of his mates along the way; plagued by PTSD, hence the long greasy hair and Osama Bin Laden beard. Looks like a biker crossed with a homeless bum, which the TV execs love, of course. But never judge a book by its cover: he remains a tough and resourceful operator, or so I’m told.

  ‘Two: chiselled black dude. Lewis Alonzo. Former US Navy SEAL. Works as a bodyguard these days, but misses the adrenalin rush of combat. Hence volunteering for the present fun and games. About the most reliable bloke you’ve got. Don’t whatever you do lose him in the Amazon. As the Yank made clear in the meeting, they’re footing the lion’s share of the bill. They need Americans on the team – preferably ones performing some world-beating heroics – to play to a US audience.

  ‘Three: the French broadcaster Canal Plus has stumped up a sizeable chunk of the budget, hence the elegant-looking French bird. Sylvie Clermont. Served with the unfortunately named CRAP – Commandos de Recherche et d’Action en Profondeur. Think SAS minus the Special. She wore Dior all through the trials in the Scottish hills. Looked bloody good in it, too. Probably doesn’t wash much – French birds tend not to – but I figure I could forgive her that . . .’

  Carson laughed at his own joke. He glanced at Jaeger, as if expecting him to share in the humour. He didn’t get even a hint of a smile in return. He shrugged – undeterred; skin as thick as a hippo – and ploughed on.

  ‘Four: Asian-looking guy. Hiro Kamishi – Japanese broadcaster NHK’s choice. Hiro by name, hero by nature. A former captain in the Tokusha Sakusen Gun – the Japanese special forces. Fancies himself as a modern-day samurai; a warrior of the higher path. He’s made a name for himself as a war historian, largely due to Japanese guilt over the Second World War. Personally I don’t know what there is to feel guilty about. We won. They lost. The end.’

  Carson laughed at his own joke again, no longer bothering to seek endorsement from Jaeger. The message was clear: I run the show around here, and I’ll say what I bloody well like and like what I bloody well say.

  ‘Five and six: couple of long-haired dudes barely started shaving – Mike Dale and Stefan Kral. An Aussie and a Slovak. They’re Wild Dog Media’s camera crew, so you don’t need to worry much about them. They’ve worked in remote and conflict-prone areas and should be able to look after themselves. The upside: they’ll be behind the cameras filming the show, so should keep well out of your way. The downside: you’re almost old enough to be their father.’

  Carson guffawed. It was clearly his favourite joke of the show so far.

  ‘Seven. Peter Krakow. Polish–German. ZDF, the German broadcaster’s esteemed choice. Krakow is former GS
G9. What else is there to say? He’s a Kraut. He’s got the character of a woodlouse and the sense of humour of a worm. He’s a dour, down-the-line Teutonic type. If that aircraft is German, you can rely on Krakow to keep reminding you.

  ‘Eight: hot-looking Latino chick. Leticia Santos – foisted on us by the tree-hugger brigade. Brazilian chica now working for FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Amazon Indian agency. She was formerly with the B-SOB – your buddy Colonel Evandro’s Brazilian special forces. She’s got a new mantra now: hug an Amazonian Indian. But she’s the nearest the colonel has to having a man on your mission.

  ‘And finally, number nine – come in, please, your time is up! If only. Yeah, I’m talking about the striking-looking blonde. Smokin’ hot. Irina Narov. Former officer in Russia’s Spetsnaz, now taken up American citizenship and lives in New York. Narov is ice cool. Highly capable. Decidedly easy on the eye. Oh yeah, and never to be found without her knife. Or crossed. Needless to say, the TV execs love her. They figure Narov will blow the ratings through the roof.’

  Carson turned to Jaeger. ‘With your good self – makes a round ten. So, what d’you reckon? The team to die for, eh?’

  Jaeger shrugged. ‘I presume it’s too late to change my mind and pull out?’

  Carson’s smile split his face from ear to ear. ‘Trust me, you’re going to love it. You’re the perfect character to mould them into one cohesive team.’

  Jaeger snorted. ‘There is one thing. I’d like Raff as my 2iC. Safe pair of hands to backstop operations and help me handle that bunch of crazies.’

  Carson shook his head. ‘No can do, I’m afraid. As a soldier’s soldier there’s no one better. But he’s hardly the most erudite of individuals, nor easy on the eye. The TV execs are dead set on the team as assembled. That means you’ve got the delightful Irina Narov – the honorary American – as your right-hand . . . well, woman.’

  ‘It’s a deal-breaker?’

  ‘It is. It’s the blonde bombshell or bust.’

  Jaeger turned back to the two-way mirror, eyeing Irina Narov for a long moment. Oddly, he had the sensation that she knew he was watching – as if she could feel his gaze burning through the glass.

  18

  It was first light.

  Approaching time to fire up the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules and take to the skies. The rest of Jaeger’s team was locked and loaded. Good to go. They were strapped into the aircraft’s fold-down canvas seats, plugged into the on-board oxygen-breathing system, and psyching themselves up for what they knew was coming – the plunge from the roof of the world into the unknown.

  Now was the time when Jaeger took a last few moments for himself, just as the mission – or in this case, the expedition of a lifetime – was about to get airborne.

  They were poised to go wheels-up.

  Green-lit. Green for go.

  No turning back. Committed beyond all reason.

  These were the final minutes before the struggle for survival would become all-consuming. Jaeger headed further down the airstrip, seeking a few seconds’ privacy – no doubt the last he’d get in the days and weeks that lay ahead. He’d done this in the world of the military elite. He did it now, as he steeled himself to lead this expedition deep into the Amazon.

  They were flying out of Brazil’s Cachimbo airport, which lay in the heart of the Serra do Cachimbo – the Smoking Pipe Mountains. Cachimbo was equidistant between Rio de Janeiro on the Atlantic coastline and the far western extremities of the Amazon – making it the midway point in Brazil to their intended destination.

  It was all too easy to forget how massive Brazil was as a country, or how vast was the Amazon basin. Some 2,000 kilometres east of Cachimbo lay Rio de Janeiro; some 2,000 kilometres west lay that mystery warplane, in the furthest reaches of the rainforest. And pretty much everything in between was dense jungle.

  Reserved exclusively for military operations, Cachimbo airport was the perfect launching point for their insertion into that real-life Lost World. As a bonus, Colonel Evandro, the B-SOB commander, had decreed that there would be no filming prior to take-off. He’d argued it was too sensitive, due to all the special missions he ran out of Cachimbo. In truth, he’d done so at Jaeger’s request, for Jaeger was sick to death with having a camera stuck up his nose 24/7.

  The camera crew had been with the expedition team for the best part of two weeks now, filming their every waking moment and desperate to catch the barest hint of any unfolding drama. Jaeger was far from used to the constant in-your-face intrusions.

  To make matters worse, he’d had Irina Narov to deal with – his supposed deputy, and, as he saw it, the chief suspect in Andy Smith’s murder. While the rest of his team had seemed to welcome Jaeger’s presence among them, Narov had done little to hide her hostility.

  The blonde Russian bombshell seemed to resent his presence from the get-go, and her abrasiveness had begun to get on his nerves. It was almost as if she had expected to lead things once Andy Smith had been done away with; as if somehow her ambitions had been thwarted.

  Jaeger’s broken toes and fingers, courtesy of Black Beach Prison, were still paining him. They were strapped tight with bandages, and he reckoned he was fit enough to make it through whatever was coming – as long as he could avoid Narov sticking the knife in when his back was turned. He couldn’t quite fathom her hostility, but he figured in the cauldron of the jungle all would be revealed.

  There had been one other expedition dynamic that hadn’t escaped his notice. From the very start sparks were flying between Leticia Santos, the Brazilian team member, and Irina Narov. Jaeger figured it was a classic case of two beautiful women and an all-too-predictable catfight.

  Yet a part of him couldn’t help but think that although they were jealous of each other, somehow he was the source of their jealousy and the tension.

  He forced the thought from his mind. It had rained during the night and he caught the distinctive smell of a fresh, cool tropical downpour falling upon hot, sun-baked earth. It was unmistakable. It transported him back to his first time in ‘the trees’, as the SAS referred to the jungle.

  Jungle training was a core part of SAS selection – the brutal trial that each soldier was required to pass before making it into the unit. From day one in the trees, Jaeger had realised he had a natural affinity with jungle living. He figured it was the dense undergrowth, the mud and the rain that struck a chord – reminding him of messing about outdoors as a kid with his father. Trying to survive endless days of mud, rain and low, claustrophobic jungle forced a man to improvise, and Jaeger liked to wing it – to be forced to think smart on the move.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the moist, musty, earthy air filling his lungs.

  This was the time he took to tune in to his inner voice, his warrior’s sixth sense.

  He’d always listened to it, ever since those days spent scrambling over the hills around his childhood home in rural Wiltshire, or the weekends camped in the forest, surviving off his wits and the wild.

  Under his father’s guidance he’d learned to catch trout with his bare hands – running his fingers through the gently rippling water, moving them slowly along the fish’s cold, scaly sides, ‘tickling’ it into submission, before whipping it on to the riverbank lightning-fast. He’d learned how to set snares for rabbits and to build a watertight basha – a shelter – out of what you could find in your average British woodland.

  Back then the inner voice had proven itself worthy of his attention, reminding him of the natural order of the wild. And as an elite soldier in later years, that same instinct had served to put steel in his soul. During Officer Week on SAS selection, he’d gone against the plan of every other candidate, to universal ridicule – but the inner voice had felt strong and he’d trusted it. He’d been proven right when he was one of only two officers to pass selection that brutal winter.

  That inner voice had always served to centre him.

  Or at least it had done until now.


  For some strange reason this endeavour had Jaeger seriously spooked, which didn’t make a blind bit of sense. The coming expedition wasn’t some kind of mission deep behind enemy lines, outnumbered and outgunned. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was eating him.

  Most likely it was Andy Smith’s death, and everything that had followed.

  Prior to flying out of the UK, Jaeger had attended Smithy’s funeral, but even as he’d stood alongside Dulce and the children paying his respects, it had felt wrong in his guts. Afterwards, he’d caught a beer with Raff at the wake. It was there that the big Maori had shared with him one crucial detail about the way in which Andy Smith had died.

  There had been no sign of forced entry to his hotel room. As far as the police were concerned, he’d let himself out of his own accord, climbed the hills in a drunken stupor and leapt to his death. But if it wasn’t suicide, then Andy had clearly made no attempt to stop his killers from entering his hotel room.

  That suggested that he knew them.

  It suggested that he knew them and trusted them.

  They’d been staying at the remote Loch Iver Hotel, in the midst of a storm-lashed January. It had been pretty much empty of guests, bar the expedition members – and that in turn suggested that the killer had to be amongst Jaeger’s team.

  In short, he or she was very likely in their midst.

  Jaeger had his suspicions as to who it might be. But he’d kept quiet, largely because he hadn’t wanted to alert any of the team to the fact that he or she might be a suspect. Other than Irina Narov, the only ones he hadn’t warmed to were the cocksure and gobby Mike Dale, plus Stefan Kral – the camera crew – but it made zero sense for them to be Smithy’s murderers.

  With his inherent distrust of all things media, Jaeger had found Dale and Kral to be all mouth and no substance. In return, they’d clearly found him distinctly spiky and uncooperative whenever they’d stuck their camera in his face. Andy Smith would surely have proven more easy-going, malleable film material, so they’d be the last people to want him killed off.