by Bear Grylls
Pilot will reverse to make a forward run, using hull’s lift to break you free. STAND BY.
Jaeger flicked the satphone off again.
The Airlander’s hull provided almost half of her lift: by reversing and taking a run-up she could double her pulling power.
Jaeger shouted a warning to Narov and Dale to hold on tight for the ride. No sooner had he done so than there was an abrupt change in the direction of the force being exerted on the Ju 390, as the airship accelerated into forward motion at full power.
The cutting edges of the Ju 390’s wings were driven into the dead wood, the sharp nose cone drilling forward. Jaeger and Dale ducked below the flight panel as the cockpit speared its way through a tangled wall of tree limbs bleached white by the tropical sun.
Moments later, the canopy appeared to thin noticeably, light flooding into the cockpit. With a tearing of deafening proportions, the mighty warplane broke free, and was catapulted into thin air. To left and right a cloud of rotten wood and debris tumbled from her wings and upper surfaces, spinning towards the forest below.
With the canopy sudden letting go of her, the warplane swung ponderously forward, sailing past the point where she was directly below the Airlander, then rocked back again until she came to rest suspended right below the airship’s flight deck. No sooner had the oscillation slowed to manageable proportions than the Airlander began to reel her in.
Powerful hydraulic winches lifted her upwards, until she fell under the Airlander’s shadow. Her wings came to rest on the underside of the air cushion landing system – the airship’s hovercraft-like skids. The Ju 390 was now effectively attached to the bottom of the Airlander.
With the warplane locked into position, the Airlander’s pilot set the propulsors to full speed ahead, and swung her around to the correct bearing, starting the long climb to cruise altitude. They were Cachimbo-bound, with barely seven hours’ flight time ahead of them.
Jaeger reached triumphantly for the co-pilot’s seventy-year-old flask, jammed into the side of his seat. He waved it at Dale and Narov. ‘Coffee, anyone?’
Even Narov couldn’t help but crack a smile.
‘Sir, the aircraft just isn’t there,’ the operator known as Grey Wolf Six repeated.
He was speaking into his radio sat at the same remote and nameless jungle airstrip, the rank of helicopters with sagging rotor blades lined up awaiting orders; awaiting a mission.
The operator’s English seemed fluent enough, but it was clearly accented, at times having the harsh, guttural inflexion so typical of an Eastern European.
‘How can it not be there?’ the voice on the other end exploded.
‘Sir, our team is on the grid as given. They are in that patch of dead jungle. They have found the imprints of something heavy. They have found smashed-apart dead wood. Sir, the impression is that the aircraft has been ripped out of the jungle.’
‘Ripped out by what?’ Grey Wolf demanded, incredulously.
‘Sir, we have absolutely no idea.’
‘You have the Predator over that area. You have eyes-on. How could you miss an aircraft the size of a Boeing 727 getting lifted out of the jungle?’
‘Sir, our Predator was on orbit north of there, awaiting a clear visual on the tracking device location. There is cloud cover up to ten thousand feet. There is nothing that can effectively see through that. Whoever has done the lift has done so observing complete communications silence, and under cover of the overcast.’ A pause. ‘I know it sounds incredible, but trust me – the aircraft is gone.’
‘Right, this is what we’re going to do.’ Grey Wolf’s voice was icy calm now. ‘You’ve got a flight of Black Hawks at your disposal. Get them airborne and scour that airspace. You will – repeat will – find that warplane. You will retrieve what needs to be retrieved. And then you will destroy that aircraft. Are we clear?’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘I presume this is Jaeger and his team’s doing?’
‘I can only assume so, sir. We Hellfired their river position, targeting the tracker device and cell phone. But—’
‘It’s Jaeger,’ the voice cut in. ‘It has to be. Terminate them all. No one who is a witness to this gets out alive. You understand? And rig that warplane with so much explosive that not a shred of it will ever be found. I want it gone. For good. Don’t mess up this time, Kamerad. Clean up. Every single person. Kill them all.’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘Right, get your Black Hawks airborne. And one more thing: I myself am flying out to your location. This is too important to leave to . . . amateurs. I’ll take one of the Agency’s jets. I’ll be with you in under five hours.’
The operator known as Grey Wolf Six curled his lip. Amateurs. How he despised his American paymaster. Still, the money was good, as were the chances of wreaking bloody mayhem and murder.
And in the coming hours he, Vladimir Ustanov, would show Grey Wolf just what he and his so-called amateurs were capable of.
79
Jaeger powered down his satphone. The data-burst message he’d just received read: Col. Evandro confirms preparing sanitised LZ. ETA at LZ 1630 Zulu. CE sending air escort to cover remainder of journey.
He checked his watch. It was 0945 Zulu. They had six hours and forty-five minutes’ flight time ahead of them before they put down on whatever part of Cachimbo airport Brazil’s Director of Special Forces had prepared for them. By ‘sanitised’, Evandro meant an area where Jaeger and crew would be free to fully decontaminate themselves, and, in due course, the warplane. He was even sending some kind of an airborne escort to shepherd them in – most likely a pair of fast jets.
It was all working out beautifully.
For the next hour or so they steadily gained altitude, as the Airlander climbed to her 10,000-foot cruise ceiling. The higher they got, the thinner the atmosphere, and the more fuel-efficient the airship became – which was crucial for ensuring she had the range to reach Cachimbo.
Finally, they broke free of the cloud cover, sunlight streaming in through the cockpit windows. It was now that Jaeger could get a proper look at what an awesome spectacle they made – a space-age airship and the sleek Second World War aircraft clamped beneath her, flying as one.
With the rounded shape of the Airlander’s undersurface, the Ju 390’s wingtips stuck out a good fifty feet to either side, tapering off to narrow knife-edge points. Jaeger figured the wings would be producing their own aerodynamic lift as the Airlander pushed ahead at approaching 200 kph, helping the airship to speed them to their destination.
With Narov deep in her documents, and Dale filming for all he was worth, Jaeger found himself with little to do but admire the view. A blanket of fluffy white cloud stretched below them as far as the horizon, the blue heavens opening wide above. For the first time in what felt like an age, he had a moment to reflect on all that had happened, and on what might lie ahead.
Narov and her shock revelations – that she had known and worked with his grandfather; that she’d been treated as family almost – needed some serious investigating. It opened up a whole world of uncertainties. Once they had boots on the ground at Cachimbo – and were truly safe, as she had put it – he needed to have a long chat with Irina Narov. But at 20,000 feet and through radios and respirators was hardly a very private or fitting way to do so.
Jaeger’s priority number one had to be to work out how exactly to deal with the Ju 390 and her cargo. They were riding on a Nazi warplane stuffed full of Hitler’s war secrets, painted in US Air Force markings, discovered within what was arguably Brazilian territory, but could equally be Bolivian or Peruvian, and retrieved by an international expedition team.
The question was – who had the foremost claim upon her?
Jaeger figured the likeliest scenario was that a whole alphabet soup of intelligence agencies would descend upon Cachimbo once the discovery became known to them. Colonel Evandro was a smart operator, and he was sure to have chosen a part of the vast air complex
set well away from watching eyes – the public and the press.
In all likelihood, those intelligence agencies would demand – and get – a media blackout, until they had assessed what version of the story to release to the world’s public. In Jaeger’s experience, that was generally how these things were done.
The American government would want to completely sanitise its role in sponsoring such a flight, as would those of her allies – most notably Great Britain – who doubtless had been party to it.
As Narov had intimated, at least some of the technology held in the Ju 390’s hold was very likely still classified, and it would doubtless need to remain so. It would have to be written out of whatever statement was released to the world’s public.
But Jaeger could well foresee the kind of story that would eventually hit the press.
After seventy years lying forgotten in the Amazon jungle, the markings on the Second World War aircraft were barely legible – but only a few such mighty warplanes ever flew. To those intrepid explorers who discovered her, she was instantly recognisable as a Junkers Ju 390, although few could have imagined what a breathtaking cargo she would contain, or what it might tell us about the final death throes of Hitler’s Nazi regime . . .
Kammler and his cronies would be portrayed as trying to save the best of their technology from the ashes of the Third Reich, acting independently of the Allies. Something like that anyway. As for Wild Dog Media’s TV extravaganza – Dale was filming away like a madman, aware that he had the story of his life.
As a gripping adventure-mystery yarn that would out-box-office Indiana Jones, Jaeger figured this was about as good as it got. He didn’t much fancy playing the Harrison Ford character, but Dale did have a serious quantity of interview material with him in the can.
What had been filmed had been filmed, and Jaeger could see a sanitised version of the TV series – one glossing over at least some of the aircraft’s contents, not to mention those US Air Force markings – going out on the air. Indeed, he figured it would make for gripping viewing.
The one other thing that would doubtless need to be edited out of Dale’s film was the Dark Force that had been hunting them. There had been enough drama with ‘lost tribes’ and the Lost World of the jungle to contend with – both of which were far more palatable to a family TV audience.
Jaeger figured that the Dark Force would have to call off the hunt now – the prize having fallen out of their grasp. But given that they had at least one Predator and a heavily armed ground unit at their disposal, he didn’t doubt that the force was some US-generated black agency, one that had gone rogue.
When you sanctioned that many clandestine agencies, giving them total power and zero accountability, you had to expect ‘blowback’, as they called it in the trade.
At some point, somewhere, you would lose all control, and one of those agencies would step right over the line.
80
Even if the Dark Force commander had called off the hunt, Jaeger could hardly do likewise. His instinct had proven unerringly right: at the end of the expedition trail he figured he’d nailed Andy Smith’s killers. Jaeger felt certain that Smith had been tortured and thrown to his death in an effort to get the Dark Force to that warplane first.
Jaeger had lost two other members of his team – Clermont and Krakow – to that same Dark Force. He had a score to settle – at the very least with whoever had ordered the torture and execution of his best friend, and thereafter two members of his expedition. As he had pledged to Dulce – back in what had once been her and Andy’s Wiltshire family home – he didn’t leave his friends hanging.
But first he had to get the remainder of his team – those led by Lewis Alonzo – safely out of the Serra de los Dios, which meant he had something of a logistical nightmare on his hands. And amongst all of that, he somehow had to find the time to search for the answers he most wanted – needed – those that might lead him to his missing wife and child.
He felt a nagging certainty that Ruth and Luke were alive. He had no absolute proof – just the memories awakened by a draught of psychotropic liquid – but still he felt convinced that the clues to their fate lay somewhere on this warplane.
A tap on his shoulder broke his reverie. It was Dale.
The cameraman gave an exhausted smile. ‘Figure you could give me a few words? Kind of summing up what it feels like to be sat here right now, in the cockpit of this aircraft, flying out to show it to the world?’
‘Okay, but let’s keep it short.’
Dale was framing up the shot when Jaeger noticed Narov’s head rise abruptly from the navigator’s desk. The rearmost windows of the swept-back cockpit looked out over the sides of the aircraft, and she was staring out of hers intently.
‘We have company,’ she announced. ‘Three Black Hawk helicopters.’
‘Colonel Evandro’s escort,’ Dale remarked. ‘Got to be.’ He glanced at Jaeger. ‘Just a second. Hold the interview while I grab some shots.’
Dale moved across to that side of the aircraft and began filming. Jaeger followed.
Sure enough, three squat black helicopters were keeping pace with the Airlander, set maybe five hundred feet off the airship’s starboard side. As Jaeger eyed them, something struck him as being amiss. The helos were painted in some kind of a matt-black stealth material, and none of them were showing any markings.
The Brazilian air force did operate Black Hawks. Maybe they did have a fleet of unmarked stealth variants, but this was far from what Jaeger had been expecting. It made sense for Colonel Evandro to have scrambled some fast jets out of Cachimbo – most likely F16s – to see them safely home in a blaze of glory.
Unmarked Black Hawks – in Jaeger’s mind it just didn’t compute.
While the Black Hawk came heavily armed, it was mostly a troop transport, and it wouldn’t have anything like the range to make Cachimbo airbase. The helo’s combat reach was less than 600 kilometres, under half of what was required.
No way did Jaeger believe this was Colonel Evandro’s escort.
He turned to Narov. Their eyes met.
Jaeger shook his head worriedly. This isn’t right.
Narov reciprocated.
He flicked the Thuraya satphone to the ‘on’ position and dialled Raff. Keeping off-comms was an irrelevance now. Either this was a friendly escort, in which case they were safe, or they had been found by that hostile force. Whichever it was, there was little point in trying to remain hidden.
The moment the satphone acquired a signal, Jaeger heard the ringtone, followed by an instant answer. But it wasn’t Raff’s voice that came on the line. Instead he could hear what sounded like incoming radio communications from whoever was commanding the mystery flight of Black Hawks. Raff was using the Thuraya link to relay the message to Jaeger and his team.
‘This is unmarked Black Hawk calling Airlander on open means,’ the voice intoned. ‘Confirm you are receiving me. This is unmarked Black Hawk calling Airlander: acknowledge.’
‘Open means’ referred to the non-encrypted general traffic radio frequency that all aircraft monitored. Oddly, the pilot’s voice sounded as if it had a slightly Eastern European – Russian – timbre, the flat, guttural accent for an instant reminding Jaeger of . . . Narov’s way of speaking.
Narov was glued to the voice blaring out of the satphone, but just for an second she flicked her eyes up to meet Jaeger’s. And in them he detected a look that he had never once expected to see.
Fear.
81
Jaeger punched out a quick data-burst message: I am live to your comms.
The moment he’d sent it, he heard the gravelly tones of the big Maori come up on the air. ‘Black Hawk, this is Airlander. Affirmative we hear you.’
‘To whom am I speaking?’ the Black Hawk commander asked.
‘Takavesi Raffara, ops officer, Airlander. To whom am I speaking?’
‘Mr Raffara, I ask the questions. I hold all the cards. Put Mr Jaeger on the air.’
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‘Negative. I am the ops officer of this aircraft. All comms go via me.’
‘I repeat, put Mr Jaeger on the air.’
‘Negative. All comms go via me,’ Raff repeated.
Jaeger saw the foremost Black Hawk open fire, using its GAU-19, a fearsome six-barrelled 50-calibre Gatling gun. During the three-second burst, the air beneath the helicopter turned black with spent shell casings. In those three short seconds it had pumped out over a hundred armour-piercing rounds, each the size of a small child’s wrist.
The burst of fire had gone a good three hundred yards to the front of the Airlander’s flight deck, but the message it sent was crystal clear. We have the ability to rip you to shreds one hundred times over.
‘The next burst will be bang into your gondola,’ the Black Hawk commander threatened. ‘Put Jaeger on.’
‘Negative. I do not have Jaeger on board my aircraft.’
Raff was choosing his words very carefully. Technically speaking, it was true: Jaeger was not aboard the Airlander.
‘Listen very carefully, Mr Raffara. My navigator has identified a cleared area of land 150 kilometres due east, at grid 497865. You are to put down on that grid. And make no mistake: when you do so, I will need every member of your team accounted for. Confirm you understand my instructions.’
‘Wait out.’
Jaeger heard the bleep of an incoming message on his satphone: Response?
He punched out a reply: They get us down we’re dead. All of us. Resist.
Raff’s voice came up on the air again. ‘Black Hawk, this is Airlander. Negative. We are proceeding to our destination as planned. We are an international team embarked upon a civilian expedition. Do not – repeat, do not – interfere with this flight.’
‘In that case, take a good look at the open door of our lead aircraft,’ the Black Hawk commander countered. ‘You see that figure in the doorway: it is one of your beloved Indians. And as a bonus, we have some of your team members with us too.’
