Ghost Flight

by Bear Grylls

  Jaeger was well acquainted with elite forces camouflage techniques. He’d spent days in hidden jungle observation posts, remaining all but invisible to any passers-by. But it wasn’t simply camouflage that the Indians were employing here; it was something far deeper and more profound. Somehow, they used a force – an intangible energy and skill – to render themselves at one with the jungle.

  At a top-secret SAS training school Jaeger had been briefed by a man who’d spent years living with the world’s most remote tribes. The aim of the session had been to learn how to move and fight as well as the natives in such an environment. But no one among their number had ever kidded himself that he’d truly mastered it.

  The way these tribes were able to use the force – it was incredible. And in spite of their dire predicament, Jaeger was fascinated to observe at close quarters how the Indians operated. They moved silently and without putting a foot wrong, even in the pitch darkness. By contrast, his team were stumbling over roots blindly or blundering into trees.

  Jaeger knew that the best – sometimes the only – chance of escape lay immediately after capture. It was when captives still had the energy and spirit to make a break for it, and captors were least equipped to deal with handling prisoners. The captors were generally soldiers and not guards – and that was a big difference. Yet he had few doubts what would happen if anyone tried to make a run for it now: it would be a matter of moments before they were stuck full of poison darts, or arrows.

  Yet as he walked, Jaeger silently counted out his footfalls. In one hand he held his compass, the faintly luminous dial just visible in the darkness, and in the other he clutched the pebbles.

  It was crucial he kept track of where they were, for in doing so he might just give them all a chance of escape.

  50

  It was around first light when the Indians led Jaeger and his team into their village – not that much of it was visible.

  There was a small clearing, at the very centre of which stood a single building – a large, doughnut-shaped communal-type meeting house. It was roofed over with reed thatch reaching almost to the ground, and a thin coil of grey cooking smoke snaked up from the open centre of the structure.

  The entire building was shielded by trees, making it largely invisible from the air. For a moment Jaeger found himself wondering where the villagers actually lived, before he heard voices calling from above. He glanced up, only to discover the answer. This was a tribe who’d made their homes in the treetops.

  Rectangular hut-like structures were perched sixty feet or more above the ground, shielded by the topmost branches. They were reached by ladders made of vines, and between some of the huts there were rickety-looking aerial walkways.

  Jaeger had heard of tribes living like this. He’d been on an expedition to Papua New Guinea, where the native Korowai people were renowned for living in the treetops. Clearly they weren’t alone in their predilection for a life spent high above the jungle floor.

  The column of marchers came to a halt.

  Everywhere, eyes stared at them.

  The adult males held their ground, but the women seemed desperate to hurry away, youngsters clutched protectively to their chests. Children – dusty, naked; half-curious, half-petrified – peered out from behind trees, eyes wide with wonder and fear.

  An incredibly thin and gnarled old man came wandering over.

  He straightened up and brought his face uncomfortably close to Jaeger’s, staring into his eyes – almost as if he could see right inside his skull. He carried on peering around for several seconds, then broke away laughing. The experience was strangely unsettling; violating almost. Whatever that aged Indian had seen inside his head, it left Jaeger nonplussed and disturbed.

  Warriors crowded in from either side now – heavily armed with spears and blowpipes – until Jaeger and his team were surrounded. A second figure stepped forward – an aged and grizzled village elder. As the old man began to speak, Jaeger sensed that this was a person of some gravitas and standing.

  The old man’s words sounded strange – the language echoing bird and animal cries, with its odd high-pitched chirps, clicks and yelps. To his immediate left stood a younger figure, who was clearly listening to the elder’s words intently. Whatever was going on here, Jaeger had the unsettling impression that he and his team were being subjected to some sort of trial.

  After a good two minutes the chief stopped talking. The younger man at his side turned to Jaeger and his team.

  ‘You are welcome.’ The words were spoken slowly, in broken but perfectly comprehensible English. ‘The chief of our tribe says that if you come in peace – welcome. But if you come in anger, and you wish harm on us or our forest home, you will die.’

  Jaeger did his best to try to recover from the shock. No tribe that had never had contact with the outside world had a young man in its number who could speak such English. Someone had either lied to them, or at the very least they had been badly misinformed.

  ‘Please forgive us if we look surprised,’ Jaeger began, ‘but we were told that your tribe had had no contact with the world outside. Some four days’ walk west of here lies an aircraft, something that we think crashed when the world was at war. It’s very likely seventy years old, maybe more. Our purpose is to find that aircraft, identify it and try to lift it out of here. We have entered your lands solely for this purpose, and we wish to pass entirely in peace.’

  The young man translated, the village chief said a few words in reply, and he translated those back to Jaeger.

  ‘You are the force that fell from the sky?’

  ‘We are,’ Jaeger confirmed.

  ‘You were how many when you fell? And how many were lost along the way?’

  ‘We were ten,’ Jaeger answered. ‘We lost one almost immediately, in the river. Two more were taken that day, two more the following day. We don’t know how they were taken or their fates, but one of your men . . .’ Jaeger’s eyes searched the crowd, coming to rest on the warrior leader, ‘left this.’ He pulled Leticia Santos’s scarf from his pack. ‘Maybe you can tell us more?’

  His question was ignored.

  Words went back and forth between the chief and the young man, and then: ‘You say you come in peace – why then do you carry such weapons as we have seen?’

  ‘Self-defence,’ Jaeger answered. ‘There are dangerous animals in the forest. There appear to be dangerous people too – although we are unsure exactly who they are.’

  The old man’s eyes gleamed. ‘If we offer to show you gold, will you take it?’ he demanded, via the translator. ‘We have little value for such things. We cannot eat gold. But the white man fights to get it.’

  Jaeger knew that he was being tested here. ‘We came for the aircraft. That’s our only mission. Any gold – it should stay right here, in the forest. Otherwise it will only bring you trouble. And that is the last thing we would ever want to do.’

  The old man laughed. ‘Many of our people say this: only when the last tree is cut and the last animal hunted and the last fish caught, only then will the white man finally understand that he cannot eat money.’

  Jaeger remained silent. There was a wisdom in those words with which he couldn’t argue.

  ‘And this aircraft that you seek: if you find it, will it also bring us trouble?’ the old man queried. ‘Like the gold, is it better for it to remain lost in the jungle – the white man failing to reclaim what was originally his?’

  Jaeger shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But I don’t think so. I think if we fail, more will come. What was lost has been found. And in truth, I think we’re the best you’re going to get. We understand the aircraft has poisoned the forest that lies around it. And this,’ Jaeger gestured at the jungle, ‘this is your home. It’s more than your home. It’s your life. Your identity. If we remove that aircraft, we’ll stop the forest from being poisoned.’

  He let the silence hang between them.

  The old man turned and gestured at the communal structure. ‘Y
ou see that smoke is coming from the spirit house. A feast is being prepared. We were preparing it for one of two reasons: either to welcome you as friends, or to say goodbye to an enemy.’ The old man laughed. ‘So, let us celebrate friendship!’

  Jaeger thanked the village chief. A part of him felt driven by a sense of urgency to get on with their mission. But he also knew that amongst such cultures there was a way in which things had to be done, a timing and a rhythm. He would respect that and trust to his destiny. He also knew he had little choice.

  As he fell into step with the chief, his attention was drawn to a group of figures standing to one side. In the midst was the warrior leader he’d first encountered at the riverside. Not everyone seemed happy with the outcome of the chief’s interrogations, it seemed. Jaeger figured that the warrior and his men had been sharpening their spears in preparation for ridding their forest of an enemy.

  Distracted for a brief moment, he failed to spot Dale dragging out his video camera. By the time he’d noticed, Dale had it on his shoulder and had started to film.

  ‘Stop!’ hissed Jaeger. ‘Lose the bloody camera!’

  But it was too late: the damage had been done.

  A shiver of electric tension tore through the gathering as the Indians noticed what was happening. Jaeger saw the chief turn on Dale, his face stony, his eyes wide with fear. He uttered a few strangled words of command, and instantly spears were levelled at the entire team.

  Dale seemed frozen, the camera clamped to his shoulder, all colour drained from his features.

  The chief walked up to him. He reached for the camera. Dale handed it over, his face aghast. The chief turned it the wrong way around, put his eye against the lens and stared inside. For a long moment his gaze roved around the camera’s innards, as if trying to locate what exactly it had stolen from him.

  Finally, he handed it to one of his warriors, then turned back without a word towards the spirit house. The spears were lowered.

  The translator shuddered. ‘Do not ever do that again. To do so – it could undo all the good that you have done.’

  Jaeger fell back a step or two, until he was on Dale’s shoulder. ‘You pull that trick again, I’ll make you boil and eat your own head. Or better still – I’ll let the chief boil and eat it for you.’

  Dale nodded. His pupils were wide with shock and fear. He knew how close they’d come to disaster, and for once the slick-tongued media operator was lost for words.

  Jaeger followed the chief into the smoky interior of the spirit house. It had no walls as such, only posts supporting the roof, but with the thatch reaching almost to the ground, it was shaded and dark inside. It took a moment for Jaeger’s eyes to adjust from the bright light to the gloom of the interior.

  Even before they had done so, a voice rang out, one that sounded impossibly . . . familiar.

  ‘So tell me – you do have my knife?’

  Jaeger felt rooted to the spot. That voice was one he’d told himself he would never hear again; it seemed to be speaking to him from way beyond the grave.

  As his eyesight adjusted, he caught sight of an unmistakable figure seated on the ground. Jaeger’s mind reeled as he tried to figure out how she could have got there, not to mention how she could still be alive.

  That figure was the woman he’d long presumed dead: Irina Narov.

  51

  Narov was seated with two others. One was Leticia Santos, their Brazilian team member, the other the giant figure of Joe James. Jaeger was rendered speechless, and his raw confusion wasn’t lost on the Indian chief. In fact, he could feel the aged tribal leader watching him closely, and studying his every move.

  He approached the three of them. ‘But how . . .’ He glanced from one to another, his face breaking into a slow smile. If anything, Joe James’s Osama Bin Laden beard looked even bushier than ever.

  Jaeger held out a hand. ‘You big Kiwi bastard! Could have done without seeing you again.’

  James ignored the proffered hand, enveloping Jaeger in a crushing bear hug. ‘Dude, one thing you gotta learn: real men hug.’

  Leticia Santos was next, throwing her arms around him in a typical show of unrestrained Latino warmth. ‘So! Like I promised – you do get to meet my Indians!’

  Narov was last.

  She stood before Jaeger, an inch or so shorter than him, her eyes as expressionless as ever, her gaze avoiding his. Jaeger gave her the once-over. Whatever she had suffered since he’d lost her on the river – pain-racked from the Phoneutria bite and curled up on his makeshift raft – she didn’t seem much the worse for wear.

  She held out one hand. ‘Knife.’

  For an instant Jaeger checked that hand. It was her left, and the horrible swelling and bite marks seemed to have almost disappeared.

  He bent slightly so that he could whisper in her ear. ‘I gave it to the chief. Had to. It was the only thing I could do to bargain for our lives.’

  ‘Schwachkopf.’ Was there the barest hint of a smile? ‘You have my knife. You’d better have my knife. Or the chief will be the least of your worries.’

  The chief gestured at Jaeger. ‘You have friends here. Spend time with them. Food and drink will come.’

  ‘Thank you, I’m grateful.’

  The chief nodded at the translator. ‘Puruwehua will stay with you, at least until you feel at home.’

  With that he was gone, wandering off amongst his people.

  Jaeger took a seat with the others. James and Santos were the first to tell their story. They’d set camp in the forest maybe an hour’s walk from the sandbar, on the same day they’d parachuted into the jungle. They’d hung offerings in the trees – a scattering of presents – and waited.

  Sure enough, the Indians had come – but not quite in the way they had hoped. Overnight, both of them had been taken captive and marched to the village, the Indians knowing the forest’s secret pathways and being able to move silent and fast. There they were questioned by the chief along similar lines to Jaeger’s interrogation: whether they came in anger or in peace, and the nature of their mission.

  When they had told the chief all they could, they felt as if they had passed some kind of unwritten test. It was then that the chief had allowed them to be reunited with Irina Narov. He’d kept them apart so as to ensure their stories matched.

  And in Jaeger’s questioning there lay a third layer of scrutiny. The chief had kept his missing team members hidden to check if their stories married up. Clearly he was no pushover.

  In fact he’d played Jaeger – he’d played them all – like an old hand.

  ‘So what about Krakow and Clermont?’ Jaeger asked. He peered around the shadows of the spirit house. ‘They somewhere here too?’

  It was the translator, Puruwehua, who answered. ‘There is much to talk about. But it is best you let the chief tell you about your two missing friends.’

  Jaeger glanced at the others. James, Santos and Narov nodded solemnly. Whatever fate had befallen Krakow and Clermont, he didn’t figure it could be good news.

  ‘And you?’ He eyed Narov. ‘Tell me – how on earth did you make it back from the dead?’

  Narov shrugged. ‘Clearly you underestimated my capacity to survive. Wishful thinking on your part, maybe.’

  Her words stung Jaeger. Maybe she was right. Maybe he could have done more to save her. But as he cast his mind back to his exhaustive efforts, and the subsequent search of that river, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine how.

  It was Puruwehua, the translator, who filled the silence. ‘This one – this ja-gwara – we found her on the river clinging to some bamboo. At first we thought she had drowned; that she was ahegwera – a ghost. But then we saw she had been stung by the kajavuria – the spider that eats people’s souls.

  ‘We know what plant can cure this one,’ he continued. ‘So we nursed her. And we carried her through the jungle to here. There came a moment when we knew she would not die. It was the moment of her ma’e-ma’e – her awakening.’
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  Puruwehua turned his dark eyes on Jaeger. There was something in the translator’s gaze that reminded him of the Indian warrior leader’s look: a watching cat; the flat, blank eyes of the jaguar, scrutinising its prey. In fact there was something in his gaze that reminded Jaeger somehow of . . . of Narov.

  ‘She seems angry at you,’ Puruwehua continued. ‘But we believe she is one of the spirit children. She survived what no one should ever survive. She has a very strong a’aga – spirit.’ He paused. ‘Keep her close. You must cherish this one – this ja-gwara. This jaguar.’

  Jaeger felt a flush of embarrassment. He’d come across this tendency before with remote peoples. With them, most thoughts and experiences were communal. They tended to recognise few boundaries between the personal and the private; between what should be discussed publicly and what it was best to keep one-on-one.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Jaeger remarked quietly. ‘Not that my best seemed good enough . . . But tell me something, Puruwehua, how does an “uncontacted” tribe come to include a young man who speaks English?’

  ‘We are the Amahuaca – the cousins of a neighbouring tribe, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau,’ Puruwehua replied. ‘We and the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau speak the same Tupi-Guarani language. Two decades ago the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau decided to make contact with the outside. Over time, they told us what they had learned. They told us that we live in a country called Brazil. They said we needed to learn the language of the outsiders, for inevitably they would come.

  ‘They told us we would need to learn Portuguese, and also English – one the language of Brazil; the other the language of the world. I am the chief’s youngest son. His eldest – one of our prized warriors – you met on the riverbank. My father believed that my qualities lay in the strength of my head, not of my spear arm. I would be a warrior of the mind.

  ‘With the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, he sent me to be educated,’ Puruwehua rounded off his story. ‘I spent ten years in the outside, learning languages. And then I returned. And now I am my tribe’s window on to the world.’