Ghost Flight

by Bear Grylls

  ‘I’m glad you are,’ Jaeger told him. ‘I think maybe today you saved our lives . . .’

  The eating and drinking lasted long into the evening. At intervals, both the men and the women of the tribe danced in the open centre of the spirit house, strings of moon-shaped seeds from a forest fruit – the pequia – worn around upper arms and legs. As they stamped their feet and swung their arms in unison, the seeds clashed together, beating out a rhythm that pulsated through the gathering darkness.

  Jaeger found himself being offered a gourd full of a strange red paste. For a moment he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it. It was Leticia Santos who showed him. The paste was made from the bark of a certain tree, she explained. Smeared on the skin, it acted as a powerful insect repellent.

  Jaeger figured he’d better have some. He allowed Santos to rub the paste on his face and hands, enjoying the flare of discomfort – was it jealousy? – that flashed through Narov’s eyes. A larger bowl was passed around, full of a grey, frothy liquid with a pungent smell. It was masata, Santos explained – an alcoholic drink common amongst native Amazonian tribes. It would be seen as an insult to reject it.

  It was only when Jaeger had taken a good few glugs of the thick, warm, chewy liquid that Santos revealed exactly how it was made. She was speaking Portuguese, which effectively froze out the others from the conversation – Narov included. It left her and Jaeger in a bubble of intimacy, as they laughed in disgust at what he’d just been drinking.

  To make the brew, the women of the tribe took raw manioc – a potato-like starch-rich root – and chewed it up. They spat the resulting gunk into a bowl, added water, and left it to ferment for a few days. The resulting mixture was what Jaeger had just consumed.

  Nice.

  The highlight of the feasting was the roast, the rich smell of which filled the spirit house. Three large monkeys were being turned over a central fire pit, and Jaeger couldn’t help but admit the smell was enticing, even if roast monkey wasn’t high on his fantasy food list. After a week on dry rations, he felt hungry as hell.

  A cry went up from the gathering. Jaeger didn’t have a clue what it meant, but Narov for one seemed to understand.

  She held out a hand to Jaeger. ‘For the third and final time: knife.’

  He threw up his arms in mock surrender, reached into his backpack and retrieved Narov’s Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife. ‘More than my life’s worth to lose this.’

  Narov took it. She unsheathed the blade reverentially, spending a long moment checking it over.

  ‘I lost the other in the Rio de los Dios,’ she remarked quietly. ‘And with it I lost a thousand memories.’ She got to her feet. ‘Thanks for returning it.’ Her eyes were averted from Jaeger’s, but the words sounded genuine. ‘I consider it your first success of this expedition.’

  She turned and moved into the centre of the spirit house, Jaeger kept his eyes on her. She bent over the fire pit, seven-inch blade clasped in hand, and began to cut off hunks of steaming flesh. For whatever reason the Amahuaca were giving this outsider, this woman, this ja-gwara, the right to cut the first of the meat.

  Thick chunks were passed around, and soon Jaeger could feel the hot, greasy juices running down his chin. He lay back, resting on his pack, relishing the feeling of a full belly. But there was something else that he was enjoying here – something far more valuable and replenishing than any meal. It was the knowledge that for once he didn’t have to be alert and watchful; for once he and his team weren’t being menaced by a mystery enemy lurking in the shadows.

  For a brief moment, Will Jaeger could allow himself to relax and feel contented.

  52

  The food and the sense of security must have lulled him to sleep. He awoke to find the fire pit glowing a dull red and the feasting long done. The odd star glinted in the heavens high above, and a warm stillness seemed to have settled over the hut, mixed with an undercurrent of expectancy; of anticipation.

  Jaeger noticed that the same thin and gnarled old man who had stared deep into his eyes was now the centre of attention. He bent over something, busy with his hands. It looked like a shorter, thinner version of one of the Amahuaca’s blowpipes, and Jaeger could see him stuffing something into one end.

  He glanced at Puruwehua enquiringly.

  ‘Our shaman,’ Puruwehua explained. ‘He prepares nyakwana. You would call it I think “snuff”. It is . . . I forget the exact word. It makes you see visions.’

  ‘Hallucinogenic,’ Jaeger volunteered.

  ‘Hallucinogenic,’ Puruwehua confirmed. ‘It is made of the seed of the cebil tree, roasted and ground into a fine powder, and mixed with the dried shells of a giant forest snail. It sends the taker into a trance state, so he can visit the spirit world. When you take it, you can fly as high as the topena – the white hawk that is big enough to steal a chicken from the village. It can take you to far distant places, and maybe even out of this world.

  ‘We sniff maybe half a gram at a time.’ Puruwehua smiled. ‘You – you should try no more than a fraction of that amount.’

  Jaeger started. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, of course. When it reaches here, one of your party will need to accept the pipe. Not to do so – it would undo much of the good achieved tonight.’

  ‘Me and drugs . . .’ Jaeger tried a smile. ‘I’ve got enough on my hands without a monged-out head. I’m good, thanks.’

  ‘You are the leader of your group,’ Puruwehua countered, quietly. ‘You can let another take the honour. But it would be . . . unusual.’

  Jaeger shrugged. ‘I can do unusual. Unusual is okay.’

  He watched the pipe do the rounds of the spirit house. With each stop, a figure placed one end to his nostril, while the shaman blew the snuff deep into his nose. Minutes later, the taker would get to his feet, chanting and dancing, his mind clearly far away in another world.

  ‘Via the nyakwana we commune with our ancestors and our spirits,’ Puruwehua explained. ‘Those anchored in the world of the jungle – the animals, birds, trees, rivers, fish and mountains.’

  He pointed out one of the entranced sniffers. ‘So this man – he relates a spirit story. “Once there was an Amahuaca woman who turned into the moon. She had climbed a tree, but decided to stay in the sky, because her boyfriend had found a rival love, and so became the moon . . .”’

  As Puruwehua talked, the pipe drew ever closer. Jaeger noticed that the chief was keeping a careful eye out for what would happen when it reached him. The shaman stopped. He crouched low, the snuff piled on a length of smooth wood, the long, ornately carved pipe clutched in his hand.

  As the snuff was readied, Jaeger found himself remembering a different pipe, one offered to him long ago and a whole world away. Momentarily he was back in his grandfather’s Wiltshire study, the familiar smell of Latakia oak and pinewood cured tobacco strong in his nostrils.

  If his grandfather had felt able to offer a sixteen-year-old boy that pipe, maybe Jaeger could accept a different type of pipe, prepared by a different set of hands – a different elder – now.

  For a moment he wavered.

  The shaman looked at him enquiringly. Barely had he done so when Joe James practically knocked everyone out of the way in his rush to be first.

  ‘Dude, I thought you’d never ask!’ He sat before the shaman cross-legged, his massive beard reaching to the floor. He grasped the near end of the snuff pipe, placed it in his nose and took the shot. Moments later, the big Kiwi’s mind had clearly gone into warp factor.

  Good on James, Jaeger told himself. Cavalry arrived in the nick of time.

  But the shaman didn’t move. Instead he readied a second pinch of snuff and loaded it into the pipe.

  ‘You are two groups,’ Puruwehua explained. ‘Those who came first – they have already opened their minds to the nyakwana. It is not James’s first time with the pipe. And then – the new arrivals. This second pipe, it is for you.’

  The shaman glanced up.

&nbs
p; His eyes – the same as had peered deep inside Jaeger’s skull – fixed him with a look. A testing one. Jaeger felt himself compelled forward, drawn inexorably towards the proffered pipe. He found himself sitting before the Amahuaca shaman just as James had done before him.

  Again his mind drifted to his grandfather’s study. But he was no longer that sixteen-year-old boy. As his grandfather had been, Jaeger was now a leader, a figurehead – albeit in a very different place and time, but somehow still connected by a common enemy.

  The men and women in his charge needed him to be strong, constant and lucid. Despite the Indians’ customs and their hospitality, Jaeger was here to do a job, and he was determined to stick to it. He held his hands up in front of him, in a gesture signifying stop.

  ‘As I think you know, I have many ghosts,’ he remarked quietly. ‘But right now I also have a mission to lead. So those ghosts have to remain caged, at least until I’ve pulled everyone through the jungle and back to their homes.’ He paused. ‘I can’t take the pipe.’

  Puruwehua translated, and the shaman searched Jaeger’s gaze intently. Then he nodded, briefly, a look of respect flashing through his eyes.

  He lowered the pipe.

  It was some time before Jaeger came back to his senses.

  He was lying against his rucksack, eyes closed. After being forgiven the snuff pipe, he’d clearly fallen asleep – his full belly and the warmth of the spirit house lulling him into a deep rest. His mind remained a complete blank – all except for one mesmerising image that seemed seared across the inside of his eyelids.

  It was a scene he’d clearly dreamed, one no doubt provoked by the close encounter with the shaman. It was one that he’d begun to think was a total impossibility, but right now it seemed so utterly real.

  It was of a beautiful green-eyed woman, a child standing protectively at her side. The woman had been speaking, her voice calling to him from across the missing years. And the child – he’d seemed so much taller. In fact he’d seemed the right height for an eleven-year-old boy.

  And he was even more the spitting image of William Jaeger.

  53

  Jaeger didn’t have long to ponder this extraordinarily haunting dream. By now the snuff pipe had done the full round of the spirit house, and the Amahuaca chief came to join him and his team. He began to talk, Puruwehua translating, and the gravity of what he was saying demanded all their attention.

  ‘Many moons ago – too many for we Amahuaca to remember – the white men first came. Strangers with fearful weapons journeyed into our lands. They captured a party of our warriors and took them to a remote part of the jungle. There they were forced under pain of death to fell the forest, and to drag the trees to one side.’

  At first Jaeger was unsure whether the chief was relating a tribal myth, or the story of his people, or a vision inspired by the nyakwana.

  ‘They were made to clear all vegetation,’ the chief continued, ‘and to beat the ground as flat as if it were a river. All of this went against what we believe. If we do harm to the forest, we do harm to ourselves. We and the land are one: we share the same life force. Many sickened and died, but by then the strip of land had been cleared and the forest with it killed.’

  The chief glanced at the open roof and the starlit sky above. ‘One night there came a giant monster of the heavens. It was a huge eagle of smoke, thunder and darkness. It pounced on that dead stretch of land and made its nest there. From its insides the sky monster disgorged more strangers. Those of our warriors who had survived were made to unload heavy cargoes from the belly of the beast.

  ‘There were metal drums,’ the chief continued, ‘and the air monster started to suck liquid from them, like a huge and hungry mosquito. Once it was done, it clawed into the sky again and was gone. Two more came, each like the last. Each landed in the clearing, sucked up more of the liquid, and took to the air, heading that way,’ the chief indicated due south, ‘into the mountains.’

  He paused. ‘And then a fourth air monster came snarling out of the darkness. But there was not enough blood to satisfy this last hungry mosquito. The drums ran dry. It sat there awaiting more; hoping that more would come. But none did. And the white men aboard that monster – they had misjudged the anger of the forest, and how unforgiving the spirits would be to those who had harmed her.

  ‘Those white men – they floundered in death and ruin. Finally, the last two survivors closed up their metal sky monster, and left carrying what little they could. They too perished in the jungle.

  ‘Over the years the forest reclaimed the clearing, the trees reaching high above the monster until it became forgotten by the outside world. But it never left the memory of the Amahuaca, the story being passed from father to son. And then it brought more darkness. We had thought it was dead; a carcass of a dead thing brought here by the white man. But it – or rather something inside it – still lives; and still it has the capacity to do us harm.’

  As the chief related the story, Jaeger had become aware that one amongst his team was absolutely riveted. She seemed glued to his every word; obsessed; an intensity burning in her eyes. It was the first time that Jaeger had seen Irina Narov looking truly engaged – yet at the same time her look struck him as bordering on a kind of madness.

  ‘The animals were the first to suffer,’ the chief continued. ‘Some had made the shelter of the air beast’s wings their home. Some fell ill and died. Others gave birth to offspring that were horribly deformed. Amahuaca warriors hunting in that area sickened after drinking from the rivers. The very water seemed cursed; poisoned. Then the plants of the forest all around started to die.’

  The chief gestured at his youngest son. ‘I was still young at the time – around Puruwehua’s age. I remember it well. Finally, the trees themselves became the air monster’s victims. All that remained were bare skeletons: dead wood, bleached white as bone in the sun. But still we knew that the story of this beast wasn’t finished.’

  He glanced at Jaeger. ‘We knew that the white men would return. We knew that those who came would seek to drive the curse of the air monster from our lands once and for all. That is why I ordered my men not to attack you, but to bring you here. So I could test you. So I could be sure.

  ‘But sadly, you are not alone. A second force has also trespassed into our lands. They came immediately after you, almost as if they had followed you here. I fear they have come with a far less benign purpose. I fear they have come to breathe new life into the evil the monster carried.’

  Jaeger had a thousand questions burning through his mind, but he sensed that the chief wasn’t yet done.

  ‘I have men shadowing that force,’ the chief continued. ‘We call them the Dark Force, and with good reason. They are slashing a route through the jungle, one pointing direct to the air beast’s lair. Two of my warriors were captured. Their bodies were left strung up in the trees, strange symbols carved into their backs, as a warning.

  ‘It will be difficult to fight them,’ the chief added. ‘There are too many – perhaps as many as ten times your team. They carry many thunder sticks. I fear a massacre of my tribe should this descend into open warfare. In the deep forest perhaps we could be victorious. Perhaps. Even then it is uncertain. But in the open ground of the air monster’s lair – my people would be wiped out.’

  Jaeger tried to say something, but the chief waved him into silence.

  ‘The only guarantee of success lies in reaching that air monster first.’ He threw Jaeger a shrewd glance. ‘There is no way that you can overtake this Dark Force. Not alone. Yet if you accept the help of the Amahuaca, you will make it. We know the forest’s secret ways. We can move fast. Only those with brave hearts should join such an undertaking. The journey will involve making a short cut that only we Amahuaca know of.

  ‘No outsider has ever attempted such a journey,’ the chief continued. ‘To do so, you must head direct to the Devil’s Falls, and from there . . . Well, you must take your life in your hands. But it is the o
nly way to stand a chance of beating the Dark Force to the site of the air beast, and to triumph.

  ‘The forest will guide and guard,’ the chief announced. ‘At dawn, all who are ready will go. Puruwehua will be your guide, and you will have two dozen of my finest warriors. It remains to be seen if you will accept this offer, and who will go from your side.’

  For a moment Jaeger was lost for a reply. It was all moving so fast, and he had a hundred questions clouding his mind. It was Joe James who was the first to respond.

  ‘Give me another hit on your pipe, and I’ll follow you guys anywhere,’ he growled.

  There was laughter, James’s comment grounding everyone in the moment.

  ‘One question,’ Jaeger prompted. ‘What about our missing two? What news of them?’

  The chief shook his head. ‘I am sorry. Your friends were captured by this same Dark Force and beaten to death. We retrieved their bodies and cremated them. In Amahuaca tradition, we mix the ash of the bones of our dead with water and we drink it, so that our loved ones are forever with us. We have kept the remains of your friends, for you to do with them as you will . . . I am sorry, Mr Jaeger.’

  Jaeger stared into the fire. So much loss. More good men and women. Ones under his command. He felt his stomach turn with a raw mix of anger and frustration bordering on despair. He vowed to himself that he’d account for whoever was doing this. He’d find answers and justice. Even if it was justice on his terms.

  The conviction steadied him, readying him for whatever was coming.

  54

  Jaeger glanced at the chief, trouble clouding his eyes. ‘I think we’ll go scatter their ashes among the trees,’ he remarked quietly. He turned to his team. ‘And you know something else – I think I’m better off going on alone, with the chief’s warriors. I can move faster on my own, and I don’t want you guys getting any deeper into this—’