Ghost Flight

by Bear Grylls

  ‘Boring, stupid . . . and half crazy.’ Narov had come to, and she’d been watching him test his raft. She gestured to it weakly. ‘No way do you get me on that. It is time to accept the inevitable and go on alone.’

  Jaeger ignored the remark. He placed the weapons to either side of the craft, facing forwards, then returned to Narov, squatting down before her.

  ‘Captain Narov, your carriage awaits.’ He gestured at the makeshift raft. He could feel his guts twisting with the thought of what lay ahead, but he did his best to suppress it. ‘I’m going to carry you down and place you aboard. It’s reasonably stable, but try not to thrash about. And don’t knock the weapons overboard.’

  He smiled at her encouragingly, but she could barely respond.

  ‘Correction,’ she whispered. ‘Not half crazy: clinically insane. But as you see, I am in no fit state to argue.’

  Jaeger lifted her up. ‘That’s my girl.’

  Narov scowled. She was clearly too finished to think of a suitable retort.

  Jaeger laid her gently across the raft, warning her to keep her long legs well tucked in. She curled up into a foetal position, the craft sinking a good six inches under her weight, but still most of it remained above the surface.

  They were good to go.

  Jaeger waded into deeper water, pushing the raft ahead of him, thick mud squelching underfoot. The water felt lukewarm and oily with sediment. Every now and then his boot encountered a lump of rotting vegetation – most likely a tree branch – embedded in the heavy silt. As he clambered over them, they threw up long lines of bubbles – gases from their decay rushing to the surface.

  When the water was up to chest height, Jaeger kicked off. The current was stronger than he’d expected, and he didn’t doubt that they’d be carried fast downstream. But it was what lurked in the water that made him so keen to get the river crossing over with.

  34

  Jaeger kicked across the first open stretch of water, keeping both hands on the raft. Narov lay before him, curled into a ball, unmoving. It was crucial that he kept going straight and steady. If the raft were spun violently or became unbalanced, she would tumble off, and would be as good as dead in the water.

  She was too far gone to fend for herself, or even to swim for it.

  Jaeger’s eyes scanned the river to either side. He was almost level with the surface, giving him a weird, otherworldly perspective. He figured this was what it must be like to be one of the Rio de los Dios caimans, cruising the waters mostly submerged and hunting for their prey.

  He searched to left and right, checking for any that might be heading their way.

  He was twenty yards from the mudbank ahead when he sighted the first. It was the movement that drew his eye. He watched as it slithered into the river a good hundred yards or so upstream. Ungainly on land, the massive creature moved with a deadly grace and speed as it entered the water, and Jaeger felt every muscle tensing for the fight.

  But instead of heading downstream, towards them, the caiman turned its snout northwards, nosing its way upriver for a good fifty yards or more. Then it climbed out on to a mudbank and went back to what it had been doing earlier – sunbathing.

  Jaeger heaved a sigh of relief. That was one caiman that clearly wasn’t feeling hungry.

  A few moments later he felt his boots touch the bottom. Wading now, he pushed the raft up on to the first patch of land – a stretch of boggy sediment a dozen feet across. He moved to the front of the craft, and began to haul it onwards, his limbs burning with the effort. With each step his legs sank up to the knees in the black, clinging mud.

  Twice he lost his grip completely, falling on to his hands and knees and getting splattered all over in stinking filth. For a moment he was reminded of the swamp that he and Raff had hidden in on Bioko island. Difference was, there had been no giant caimans to contend with there.

  By the time he reached the edge of the deeper water again, he was covered from head to toe in putrid black gunk and rotting matter, and his pulse was thumping like a machine gun with the exertion.

  He figured there were two more shallow mudbanks that he couldn’t navigate his way around; that he’d be forced to cross. No doubt about it, he was going to be utterly finished by the time they reached the far side.

  If they reached the far side.

  He waded in again, pulling the raft after him, then resumed the prone position behind it. As he kicked out and propelled the craft towards the centre of the river, the current tugged at it more powerfully. Jaeger was forced to struggle with all his might to keep it balanced, his legs pumping to make any headway.

  Downstream the water was shallower, but faster moving near the bank. Jaeger could see the river getting turbulent as it coursed over rocks that created a stretch of white water. He needed to get across before they were swept into those rapids.

  The raft neared the second of the mudbanks. As it did so, Jaeger felt an unexpected touch. Something had brushed against his right arm. He glanced up, only to find that it was Narov’s hand. Her fingers reached out, curled around his, and she gave a faint squeeze.

  He didn’t know quite what she was trying to tell him; reading this woman was nigh-on impossible. But maybe, just maybe, the ice queen was starting to melt a little.

  ‘I know what you are thinking.’ Her voice barely reached him, reduced to a half-whisper as it was by all the toxins burning through her system. ‘But I am not being intimate. I am trying to alert you. The first caiman – it is coming.’

  Using his wrists to keep hold of the raft, Jaeger grabbed both weapons. He held them by their pistol grips, index fingers curled around the triggers, barrels menacing the water to left and right, his eyes scanning the surface.

  ‘Where?’ he hissed. ‘Which side?’

  ‘Eleven o’clock,’ Narov whispered. ‘More or less dead ahead. Forty feet. Closing fast.’

  It was coming at them in his blind spot.

  ‘Hold tight,’ Jaeger yelled.

  He released his grip on the weapon on his left, slipped free the knot that held the combat shotgun, grabbed it and dropped off the raft, diving beneath it, kicking hard with both legs. As he came up on the far side, he caught sight of a massive black snout knifing through the water towards him, a ribbed, scaly, armoured body snaking out behind it a good five metres or more.

  It was a black caiman all right, and a real monster.

  Jaeger levelled the weapon just as the caiman’s jaws yawned wide before him. He was staring down its very throat. There was no time to aim. He pulled the trigger at close to point-blank range, his left hand jerking the pump action backwards and ratcheting in another round, and another.

  The impact of the repeated shots blew the reptile’s giant head clean out of the water, but it wasn’t enough to halt its forward progress. It might have been killed instantly, a blasted funnel of lead shot tearing into its brain, but still its bloodied corpse slammed into Jaeger with all the force of a 400-kilogram beast.

  Jaeger felt the air being crushed out of his lungs as he was driven deep down under the raft, the dark and turbid waters closing all around him.

  Above, the bloodied mass of the caiman’s front end came to rest with a sickening crunch, its dead eyes staring hungrily, its lacerated jaw slamming down into the forward arm of the raft.

  The lightweight craft lurched alarmingly, the impact half breaking it in two. Moments later, the limp, lifeless weight of the caiman’s corpse began to slip below the surface of the river.

  The stricken craft keeled over still further, the muddy water beginning to lap around Narov’s head and shoulders as it cannoned off rocks and was swept into the first of the rapids.

  She sensed that it was going down. For a moment her muscles tensed as she tried to hold on.

  But the effort was too much for her.

  Finally Jaeger forced his way back to the surface, lungs choking out the fetid water of the Rio de los Dios. He’d been down deep and long fighting for his life and he felt half d
rowned. For a long moment he struggled for breath, his body screaming out for oxygen and desperate to drag the life-giving air into his system.

  To either side of him were more caimans, closing in on the corpse of the monster he had just killed. They were drawn by the smell of blood. As Jaeger had been driven down towards the riverbed he’d lost his combat shotgun, and he was pretty much defenceless now, but the caimans weren’t paying much attention to him.

  Instead, they had one of their own to feast upon, and the taste of the blood thick in the water was driving them wild.

  For a long moment Jaeger tried to orientate himself, and then he too was dragged into the rapids. He tried to protect his torso as he was swept against the rocks, keeping his feet downstream to push off any obstacles and his arms out to the sides to steady himself.

  He pulled himself into the slower current at the edge of the white water and did a 360-degree sweep, scanning for the raft. But as he eyed the river all around him, he couldn’t seem to locate it in any direction. The lightweight craft had completely disappeared, and its loss made his blood run cold.

  He kept searching, growing ever more frantic, but still there was no sight of the makeshift craft.

  And as for Irina Narov – there wasn’t the slightest sign of her anywhere.

  35

  Jaeger hauled himself on to the riverbank.

  He sank to his knees in a sodden, exhausted heap, his limbs burning, his lungs gasping for breath. To any watching eyes he would appear more like a mud-encrusted, semi-drowned rat than a human being – not that he expected many to be watching.

  For hours on end he’d quartered the Rio de los Dios searching for Irina Narov. He’d scanned the river from bank to bank, searching everywhere and yelling out her name. But he’d been unable to find the slightest sign of her, or the raft. And then he’d discovered what he’d most feared to find: his pack and the canoe flotation bag, still lashed together, but torn and shredded by caiman tooth and claw marks.

  The battered remains of the makeshift raft had drifted into the shallows a good distance downstream. On an adjacent mudbank Jaeger had discovered one unnerving sign of the woman he’d tried so desperately to safeguard: her sky-blue headband, now sodden and torn and stained with mud.

  Still he’d continued to search the riverbanks as far as he could go, but even as he’d done so, he’d feared his efforts were futile. He figured Narov must have been thrown from the raft, even as the caiman’s dead body had thrust him deep into the river’s inky depths. The rapids and the caimans would have done the rest.

  He’d fought for the best part of a minute to regain the surface, but it was still enough time for the raft to have been swept completely out of his sight. Had it still been intact and afloat, he’d have been able to see the makeshift craft. He’d have been able to catch it and draw it into land.

  And had Irina Narov still been with it, he might have been able to save her.

  As it was . . . Well, he didn’t like to contemplate Narov’s exact fate, yet he didn’t doubt for one moment that she was gone. Narov was dead – either drowned in the Rio de los Dios, or torn apart by ravening black caimans; and most likely a mixture of the two.

  And he, Will Jaeger, had been unable to do anything to save her.

  He struggled to his feet and stumbled further up the muddy riverbank. In the dark shock of the moment, his training began to kick in. He slipped into full-on survival mode; it was all he knew how to do. He’d lost Narov, but the rest of the expedition was still out there somewhere in the jungle. There were eight people presumably waiting at that distant sandbar; reliant upon him.

  Right now they had no coordinates to make for; no way to head towards the air wreck. And without a way forward, there was no easy way out of this savage Lost World; no exit strategy. To withdraw from a place as remote and as seemingly damned as the Cordillera de los Dios took a great deal of planning and preparation, as Jaeger well knew.

  If Narov’s loss were to mean anything, he had to get himself reunited with his team and get them on the move. He had to lead them to the site of that wreck, and to do that he had to get himself to the sandbar – although the odds of him doing so were rapidly turning against him.

  He proceeded to empty out the contents of his pockets, plus those of his belt pouches. After the chaos of the river crossing, he had no idea what if any of his kit remained. The rucksack had been rendered useless – shredded by the caimans and voided of its contents – but as he scanned his meagre possessions, Jaeger began to count his blessings.

  His single most vital piece of kit – his compass, stuffed deep in a trouser pocket and zipped tight – was still there. With that one piece of equipment alone he stood a chance of making it through to the distant sandbar. He dragged out the map from his trouser side pocket. It was sodden and battered, but just about usable.

  He had both map and compass; it was a start.

  He checked his chest-mounted knife. It was still there, clipped firmly into its sheath; the knife Raff had given him; the one he’d put to such good use during the epic fight on Fernao beach – the fight in which Little Mo had been killed.

  So much death; and now one more to contend with.

  36

  What Jaeger wouldn’t have given to have Raff alongside him now. Had the big Maori been here, Narov might have lived. There were no guarantees, of course, but Raff would have helped him fight off the killer caiman, and one or other of them would have likely escaped unscathed from that first attack, and so been able to safeguard the raft and its precious cargo.

  But Jaeger was alone, Irina Narov was gone, and he had to steel himself to the hard facts. He had no choice. He had to go on.

  He continued with his kit check. He had two full bottles of water slung in his belt rig – although the Katadyn filter was gone. He had a little emergency food, the roll of paracord that he’d used to lower Narov and himself from the canopy, plus two dozen rounds for the shotgun.

  He dumped the shotgun shells. They were a useless deadweight without the weapon.

  Amongst the few other bits and pieces that the kit check revealed, his gaze came to rest upon the shiny form of the C-130 pilot’s coin. The Night Stalkers’ motto glistened in the sunlight: Death Waits in the Dark. No doubt about it – death red in tooth and claw had lurked in the dark waters of the Rio de los Dios.

  And it had found them; or at least, it had found Narov.

  But that wasn’t in any way the pilot’s fault, of course.

  The pilot of that C-130 had got them out of his aircraft at exactly the right release point. That was no mean feat. The disaster that had followed – it was none of his doing. The coin went with the rest of Jaeger’s meagre possessions – deep into his pocket. Hope was what kept people alive, he reminded himself.

  The last piece of equipment that he contemplated was also the most difficult: it was Irina Narov’s knife.

  After he’d used it to cut them free from the abseil line, Jaeger had slung it on his own belt. Amidst all the chaos, and with Narov so incapacitated from the spider bite, it had seemed like the right thing to do. Now it was all he had that linked him to her.

  He held it in his hands for a long moment. His eyes traced the knife’s name, stamped into the steel hilt. He knew all about the history of the blade, for he’d researched his grandfather’s.

  In the months following Hitler’s spring 1940 blitzkrieg – his lightning war that had driven the Allied troops out of France – Winston Churchill had ordered the creation of a special force, to launch butcher-and-bolt terror raids against the enemy. Those special volunteers were taught to wage war in what was then a very un-British way – fast and dirty, with no holds barred.

  At a top-secret school for mayhem and murder, they’d been shown how to hurt, maul, injure and kill with ease. Their instructors had been the legendary William Fairbairn and Eric ‘Bill’ Sykes, who over the years had perfected the means to terminate silently, at close quarters.

  From Wilkinson Sword, Syke
s and Fairbairn had commissioned a combat knife to be used by Churchill’s special volunteers. It had a seven-inch blade, a heavy handle to give firm grip in the wet, plus razor edges and a sharp stabbing profile.

  The knives had rolled off Wilkinson Sword’s London production line. Etched on the square head of each were the words: ‘The Fairbairn–Sykes Fighting Knife’. Fairbairn and Sykes had taught the special volunteers that there was no more deadly weapon at close quarters, and most importantly, ‘It never runs out of ammunition.’

  Jaeger had never got to see Narov use her blade in anger. But the fact that she’d chosen to carry such a knife – the same as his grandfather had used – had somehow drawn him to her, though he’d never got the chance to ask her where she had got it, or what exactly it might mean to her.

  He wondered how she’d come by it: a Russian; a veteran of the Spetsnaz, with a British commando knife. And why that comment she’d made – good for killing Germans? During the war, every British commando and SAS soldier had been issued with one of those knives; doubtless the iconic blade had accounted for more than its fair share of the Nazi enemy.

  But that was many decades and a whole world ago.

  Jaeger replaced the knife on his belt.

  For a brief moment he wondered if he’d been wrong; wrong to insist that Narov come with him. If he’d done as she’d asked and left her, she more than likely would still be alive. But it was in his DNA never to leave a man behind – or woman, for that matter – and anyway, how long would she have lasted?

  No. The more he thought about it, the more he knew that he had done the right thing. The only thing. She’d have perished either way. If he’d left her, she’d just have died a longer, lingering death, and she’d have died alone.

  Jaeger forced all thoughts of Narov to the back of his mind.

  He took stock. A daunting journey lay ahead: twenty-plus kilometres through thick jungle with only two litres of clean water to sustain him. A human could survive without food for many days; not so water. He’d have to ration himself strictly: a gulp every hour; nine gulps per bottle; eighteen hours walking, max.