Ghost Flight

by Bear Grylls

  ‘Focus!’ he snarled.

  He cursed himself, trying to free his head of the blinding confusion. ‘FOCUS! FO-CUS.’

  Every second was precious now. He needed to flick himself back into the star shape, and get Narov to do the same. They’d stand a far better chance of stabilising like that.

  There was no way of communicating with her, apart from body language and hand gestures. He was about to grab her arms and signal what he wanted when his frazzled senses realised that she had started struggling violently against him.

  Amidst all the blinding confusion, something flashed silver-bright through the clear and glistening air.

  A blade.

  A commando-style knife.

  Thrusting towards him, ready to drive into his chest region.

  In an instant Jaeger knew what was happening. It was impossible, but it was for real. Narov was preparing to stab at him with her knife.

  Carson’s warning flashed through his mind: Never to be found without her knife. Or crossed.

  The blade drove at him in a savage thrust.

  Jaeger managed to block it with a parry of his right arm, using the tough altimeter that he had strapped to his wrist to take the impact. The blade glanced off the thick glass, nicking into his Gore-Tex sleeve as it did so.

  He felt a jabbing stab of pain in his right forearm.

  She’d cut him with the first blow.

  For a few desperate moments he continued to block and parry, as Narov slashed wildly with the blade, again and again and again.

  She swung once more, stabbing much lower this time and clearly going for his guts. Jaeger’s arm – frozen like a block of ice – was a split second too slow.

  He failed to parry the thrust.

  He tensed for the punching agony of a blade slicing deep into his abdomen. It didn’t much matter where she stabbed him.

  If she opened him up here, plummeting to earth at a thousand feet or more every three seconds, he was a dead man.

  26

  The knife came at him in a swift, driving thrust.

  But oddly, as it disappeared from view around the base of his stomach, Jaeger felt no pain. No pain at all. Instead he felt the first of the straps that held Narov to him break open, as the blade sliced through it.

  Her arm reached forward, drove backwards, and again the razor-sharp knife struck home, sawing apart the tough canvas and nylon.

  Once she was done slicing through the right-hand straps, Narov swapped sides. She jabbed backwards with the blade several further times, cutting away frenziedly at the left-hand ones.

  A few final jabs and she was done.

  With that, Irina Narov, the wild card on Jaeger’s team, spun away from him.

  The moment she tore herself free, Jaeger saw her snap her arms and legs out into a star shape. As her limbs slowed her fall and she began to stabilise, Jaeger whirled past. Moments later there was a crack from above like the sails of a ship catching the wind, and a parachute flared in the sky.

  Irina Narov had pulled her emergency chute.

  Released of the dead weight of a second body, Jaeger’s odds of survival were suddenly far better than the near-zero they’d been five seconds ago. For a few long moments he struggled desperately to bring his own spin under control, fighting to stop the wild corkscrewing and to stabilise himself.

  He was pushing two minutes into the freefall when he finally risked jerking the release cord – sending 360 square feet of the finest silk billowing out behind him.

  An instant later he felt as if a giant hand was reaching over and yanking him violently upwards by the shoulders. Decelerating from a monster freefall like this was akin to driving a car into a brick wall at colossal speed and all the airbags going off at once.

  Jaeger had gone from facing an imminent, onrushing, life-ending impact with the jungle to knowing that his parachute had saved him. Or rather, that Irina Narov’s slick handiwork with her knife had pretty much rescued the both of them. He glanced upwards, to check that his canopy was good. He reached with his hands, grabbed the steering toggles and gave them a series of sharp pumps, releasing the half-brakes and allowing the chute to fully fly.

  Thank God it felt okay.

  From the swirling, sickening maelstrom and earsplitting wind noise of the freefall, Jaeger’s world had transformed itself into one of pure calm stillness. Just the occasional flap of wind ruffled the slider panel above him. For a moment he concentrated on bringing his heartbeat under control, and on properly clearing his head, so he could relax into the glide.

  He risked a glance at his altimeter. He was at 1,800 feet. He’d just completed a 28,000-foot death ride towards earth. It had taken six seconds for his chute to open fully. He’d deployed it less than ten seconds away from ploughing into the earth at pushing 200 kph.

  It had been that close.

  At that speed there wouldn’t have been a great deal left of him to scrape up from amongst the ferns and the rotting wood, so that his mates could bury his remains.

  Jaeger stole a brief moment to scan the sky.

  Apart from Narov, there wasn’t another jumper to be seen.

  He flicked his aching, bloodshot eyes downwards, searching the velvety green canopy below. It was drifting up to meet him and not a clearing was there anywhere to be seen.

  He figured he and Narov had to be thirty-plus kilometres away from their intended landing zone. The plan had been to open their chutes at 28,000 feet, and glide the forty-odd kilometres into that sandbar. But with their unstable exit and the murderous spin that had followed, all of that was now defunct.

  Apart from the unarguably spirited and tough Narov, Jaeger had lost every other member of his team.

  They were two lone parachutists drifting through the hot, steamy air, with nowhere to put down.

  It didn’t get a lot worse.

  For a moment Jaeger wondered if it had been his weapon that had snagged on the ramp of the Hercules, sending them into that near-fatal spin. But how could the PDs have missed it? It was their job to ensure that every jumper was free of obstructions; that nothing was hanging loose that might snag. And beyond that, he knew he’d properly tightened his shotgun prior to making the jump.

  Jaeger had worked with countless PD crews over the years. Invariably, they were the ultimate professionals. They knew they held the jumpers’ lives in their hands, and that one tiny mistake could prove fatal. It was only by sheer luck – and, he had to admit it, Narov’s quick thinking – that both of them were still alive.

  It didn’t make any sense for the PDs to have let his weapon flap loose on exit. It just didn’t compute. In fact, there was one hell of a lot that didn’t add up thus far. First Smithy had died – or rather, been murdered. Then they’d had that unidentified aircraft on their tail. And now this.

  Had one of the PDs deliberately tried to sabotage their jump? Jaeger just didn’t know, but he was starting to wonder what else could possibly go wrong.

  As it happened, a great deal – for right now he had the mother of all problems to deal with.

  After chute-opening, touchdown was the next most dangerous moment – always – and especially when you had absolutely nowhere clear on which to put down. A parachute jump instructor had once warned Jaeger that it wasn’t the freefall that killed people – it was the ground that did.

  Jaeger had gained a few hundred feet on Narov, once she’d cut away from him in the spin. They were reduced to a team of two now. The key priority was to keep together for the touchdown, and whatever might come thereafter. Jaeger focused on trying to slow himself, so she could catch him.

  Above him, Narov executed a series of sharp left turns, as she corkscrewed downwards under her chute, rapidly losing height with each rotation. Jaeger kept trimming his own parachute, feathering his brake lines to slow his wind speed and fall.

  After a few seconds he sensed a faint ruffling in the air beside him, and there was Narov. Their eyes met across the space between them. In spite of their epic mid-air
‘knife fight’, she seemed as cool as a cucumber. It was as if nothing untoward had happened.

  Jaeger tried a thumbs-up.

  Narov reciprocated.

  He signalled that he’d lead her in to make the landing. She gave a curt nod. She dropped behind him and took up a position a few dozen metres above. They had just a few hundred feet to go now.

  Fortunately, Jaeger had trained for what was coming – impact into a jungle canopy. It was far from easy to get it right. Only the most experienced jumpers could manage it. But from the trick that Narov had pulled when she’d cut free during the spin, Jaeger figured she’d stand as good a chance as any.

  He searched the terrain below for a patch of canopy that seemed thinner than the rest; somewhere they could maybe break through. Most parachutists who dropped into dense jungle hadn’t intended to be there at all; they were airmen bailing out of an aircraft that had either been shot down, or had suffered some kind of mechanical problem – maybe run out of fuel.

  They’d hit the canopy with no idea how to approach it, nor any training on how to survive. They’d normally suffer injuries in the impact – broken arms or legs. But worse would follow. Whilst the jumper might break through, the parachute rarely if ever did. It would snag on the topmost branches, leaving the parachutist suspended in mid-air, hanging just below the treetops.

  And that very often proved the death of them.

  A jumper so trapped had three options. Remain suspended in his chute, and hope for some kind of rescue. Cut himself free, with a sixty- to eighty-foot drop to the forest floor below. Try to reach a branch, if one was near enough, and climb to the ground.

  More often than not, jumpers chose to remain hanging in their chutes, for the other options were approaching suicidal. Injured, disorientated, suffering from shock and dehydration, and plagued by ravenous insects, they’d stay there waiting to be rescued.

  Most took a long few days to die.

  Jaeger didn’t fancy that for himself, or for Irina Narov, either.

  27

  Through the swirling mist he caught sight of a patch of lighter yellowish-green amidst the dark carpet of old growth that stretched to the distant horizon. Fresh vegetation. That new growth should be more leafy, springy and yielding; less likely to break and snap into jagged branch ends, like spear tips.

  Or so Jaeger hoped.

  He glanced at his altimeter – the one with which he’d fended off what he’d feared were knife thrusts intended to disembowel him.

  Five hundred feet to go.

  He reached forward and pushed down the two metal levers on his rucksack’s attachment. He felt the heavy pack drop away as the rope let it fall ten metres below him.

  The last thing he did as the forest canopy raced up towards him was to punch a button on his wrist-mounted GPS – his global positioning system. Before the forest claimed them, he got it to waypoint – to mark – their exact position, for he figured they’d not be getting another chance to do so any time soon.

  In the final few seconds prior to impact he concentrated on trimming the chute with the left and right toggles, so as to get himself down over that lighter patch of green.

  He saw the mass of the canopy rushing up to meet him. He pulled back hard on both toggles, flaring and slowing his chute. If he could just hold it back from the stall, this was the way to burn off the speed and to ease his way through.

  A moment later he heard the cracking thump as the thirty-five-kilo rucksack piled into the topmost branches, smashing them apart and disappearing from view.

  Jaeger lifted his legs, bent his knees, and clenched his arms protectively over his chest and face. An instant later he felt his boots and knees penetrate the vegetation as he followed the rucksack through. Sharp branches ripped at his butt and then his shoulders before he shot past into the open darkness below.

  He cannoned off some thicker branches, gasping with pain from the impact, and plummeted for several feet, before his chute ploughed into the canopy above, bringing him up short. He felt winded by the sudden deceleration. A swirling fog of leaves, broken twigs and plant matter whirled around him as he fought for breath. But as he swung backwards and forward like a pendulum, Jaeger counted his blessings a thousand times over.

  He was uninjured, and he was still very much alive.

  There was a second crash from above, and moments later Narov appeared beside him, likewise swinging wildly to and fro.

  Slowly the atmosphere around them cleared.

  Shafts of blinding sunlight streamed in through the holes they’d punched in the canopy, sunbeams dancing in the air.

  In the ringing silence it was as if every living being in the jungle was holding its breath, as if shocked that two such alien creatures could have dropped in on their world.

  The swaying of the chutes slowed.

  ‘You okay?’ Jaeger called across at Narov.

  After all they’d been through, it sounded like the understatement of the century.

  Narov shrugged. ‘I am alive. You are evidently alive. It could be worse.’

  Like how exactly? Jaeger felt like asking. But he held his counsel. While Narov’s English was fluent enough, her Russian accent remained strong, her way of speaking oddly flat and unemotional.

  He jerked his head upwards, in the direction of the freefall. He tried a winning smile. ‘For a moment there I thought you were trying to kill me. With the knife.’

  She stared at him. ‘If I had wanted to kill you, I would have killed you.’

  Jaeger chose to ignore the taunt. ‘I was trying to stabilise the two of us. Something snagged us at the exit, tearing my weapon loose. I almost had it sorted when you cut yourself free. Talk about a lack of faith.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Narov eyed him for a brief second, her face a blank mask. ‘But you failed.’ She glanced away from him. ‘Had I not cut free, we would both now be dead.’

  There wasn’t a lot Jaeger could say to that. He wriggled about in his harness, trying to get a good look at the terrain beneath them.

  ‘Anyway, why would I want to kill you?’ Narov continued. ‘Mr Jaeger, you need to learn to trust your team.’ She eyed the jungle canopy. ‘So, the question now is – how do we get down from here? We didn’t exactly train for this in the Spetsnaz.’

  ‘Not like you train for cutting away from your tandem in the spin?’ Jaeger queried. ‘That knifework – that was pretty slick.’

  ‘I have never trained for doing that. But there was nothing else; no other option.’ Narov paused. ‘“Any mission, any time, any place: whatever it takes.” The motto of the Spetsnaz.’

  Before Jaeger could think of a suitable reply, there was a tearing crack from above, like an explosion. A heavy branch crashed downwards, tumbling to the forest floor below. An instant later Narov lurched a good few feet lower, as one of the panels of her damaged chute tore apart, giving way under the pressure.

  She glanced up at Jaeger. ‘So, do you have any idea as to how we get down? Other than falling? Or do I have to get us out of this one too?’

  Jaeger shook his head in frustration. God, but this woman was trying. Yet after her mid-air performance with the knife, he was beginning to doubt whether she was Smithy’s murderer after all. It had been the perfect opportunity for her to slip her blade into Jaeger and kill him, and yet she hadn’t.

  No harm in testing her further, though, Jaeger reflected. ‘There is maybe a way to get us out of this.’ He gestured at the tangled mess of their parachutes in the canopy. ‘But first I’m gonna need that knife of yours.’

  He had his own blade strapped to his person. It was the Gerber knife that Raff had given him in Bioko. It had a special meaning for him now, for it was the blade with which he’d saved his good friend’s life. He wore it in a sheath slung diagonally across his chest. But he wanted to see if Narov would willingly hand over the weapon that had so nearly sliced his guts out.

  She didn’t so much as hesitate. ‘My knife? But don’t drop it. It’s an old friend.’ She r
eached for the long blade, unclipped it, took the point in her hand and launched it across the short distance between them.

  ‘Catch,’ she called, as it flashed through the sunlight and the shadows.

  The knife that Jaeger caught looked strangely familiar. For a moment he turned it over in his hands, the slender seven-inch tapered stiletto blade glinting in the sunlight. There was no doubt about it: it was similar to the one lying in Grandpa Ted’s trunk, back in Jaeger’s Wardour Castle apartment.

  When Jaeger had turned sixteen, his grandfather had allowed him to unsheathe that knife, while the two of them puffed away contentedly on his pipe. The smoky, aromatic scent came back to Jaeger now, as did the name of the knife: it was stamped on the dagger’s hilt.

  He checked Narov’s blade, then glanced up at her appraisingly. ‘Nice. A Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife. Second World War vintage, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘It is.’ Narov shrugged. ‘As you SAS proved back then, very good for killing Germans.’

  Jaeger eyed her for a long moment. ‘You think we’ll be killing Germans? On this expedition?’

  Narov’s answer – thrown back at him defiantly – echoed Great Uncle Joe’s dark words, and it was uttered in what sounded like fluent German: ‘Denn heute gehort uns Deutschland, und morgen die ganze Welt.’ Today Germany belongs to us: tomorrow, the entire world.

  ‘You know, it’s unlikely there are going to be any left alive on that aircraft.’ A hint of sarcasm had crept into Jaeger’s tone. ‘After seventy-odd years in the depths of the Amazon – I’d say next to impossible.’

  ‘Schwachkopf!’ – idiot! Narov glared at him. ‘You think I don’t know that? Why not do something useful, Mr Expedition Leader, and get us out of this mess you got us into?’

  28