Bear Grylls - Burning Angels

In a matter of minutes, five IR fireflies appeared in the night sky above him: the stick was complete. He let Raff overtake, taking up pole position once more, and they drifted onwards, six figures alone on the dark roof of the world.

When Jaeger had studied the Airlander’s surveillance photos, there had seemed to be only one viable landing zone – the island’s dirt airstrip. It was likely to be heavily guarded, but it was the one significant patch of terrain devoid of any tree cover.

He hadn’t liked it. None of them had. Landing there would be like flying down the very throats of the enemy. But it had seemed like it was the airstrip or bust.

Then Kamishi had outlined their actions-on, which were vital upon landing. And it wasn’t pretty.

They would need to find a location where they could change from one set of survival kit – HAPLSS high-altitude jump gear – to another, their Bio Level 4 space suits. And all while potentially having dropped right into the hornets’ nest.

The thick HAPLSS suits provided life-saving warmth and oxygen, but they would offer little protection in a Level 4 hot zone. The team needed a safe environment in which to don their air-purifying respirators and space suits.

The kit included FM54 masks – the same as they’d worn when rescuing Leticia Santos – linked by a crushproof S-profile hose to a series of battery-operated filters, making up a space-age-looking pack on the operator’s back. That filter unit would pump clean air into their bulky space suits – olive-green Trellchem EVO 1Bs, made of a Nomex fabric with a chemically resistant Viton rubber topcoat, providing one hundred per cent protection.

Whilst transforming themselves from high-altitude parachutists to Hot Zone 4 operators, the team would be highly vulnerable, which ruled out the airstrip as a landing point. That had left only one other possibility: a narrow stretch of pristine white sand that lay to the western side of the island.

From the surveillance photos, ‘Copacabana Beach’, as they’d dubbed it appeared just about doable. At low tide there was maybe fifty feet of sand between where the jungle ended and the sea began. All being well, they would switch gear there, then move into the jungle and hit Kammler’s facility, striking with total surprise from out of the dark and empty night.

That, at least, was the plan.

But one person would have to remain at the beach. Their role was to establish a ‘wet decon line’ – consisting of a makeshift decontamination tent complete with scrub-down kits. Once the team re-emerged from the jungle, mission complete, they would need to douse their suits in buckets of seawater laced with EnviroChem – a potent chemical that killed viruses.

With the suits sanitised, they’d change out of them and scrub down a second time, this time decontaminating their bare skin. They’d then step over the clean/dirty line into the non-contaminated universe, leaving their CBRN kit behind.

On one side of that line would lie a Level 4 Hot Zone.

The other side – the open, wave-washed beach – would hopefully be safe and contamination-free. At least that was the theory. And Kamishi – their CBRN specialist – was the obvious candidate to oversee the wet decon line.

Jaeger glanced westwards, in the direction of Plague Island, but still he couldn’t make out a thing. His chute was buffeted by a gust of wind, and rain droplets pinged into his exposed skin, each like a tiny sharp blade.

Ominously, all he could see was a cold and impenetrable darkness.

As he followed the route that Raff was steering, Jaeger’s mind was full of images of Ruth and Luke. The next few hours would reveal everything. For better or for worse.

The question that had been dogging him for the last three years was about to be answered. Either he was going to pull off the seemingly impossible and rescue Ruth and Luke. Or he would discover the grisly truth – that one or both of them were dead.

And if the latter were the case, he knew to whom he would turn.

Their recent missions, and Narov’s confessions – her dark and traumatic family history; her link to Jaeger’s late grandfather; her autism; their growing attachment – had drawn him perilously close to her .

And if he flew too close to Narov’s sun, Jaeger knew for sure that he would get burnt.

Jaeger and his fellow jumpers were still at altitude, and they were completely untraceable by any known defence system. Radar bounces off solid, angular objects – an aircraft’s metal wings, or a helicopter’s rotor blades – but simply bends around human forms and carries on uninterrupted. They were pretty much silent as they flew, so there was little risk of them being heard. They were dressed all in black, suspended beneath black chutes, and practically invisible from the ground.

They approached a high bank of cloud, which was piling up way out to sea. They’d already flown through one level of wet cloud, but nothing as thick or substantial as this. They had no option but to pass right through.

They slipped into the dense grey fug, the cloud becoming blindingly thick. As he drifted through the opaque mass, Jaeger could feel more and more icy water droplets condensing on his exposed skin and running down his face, forming tiny rivulets. By the time he emerged on the far side, he was freezing cold.

He picked up Raff right away, on a level with him and to his front. But when he turned to search behind, there was no sign of Narov, or any of the others.

Unlike in free-falling, when comms are impossible due to all the buffeting of the slipstream, you can radio each other when drifting under chutes. Jaeger pressed send and spoke into his mouthpiece.

‘Narov – Jaeger. Where are you?’

He repeated the call several times, but still there was no answer. He and Raff had lost the rest of the stick, and by now they were very likely out of radio range.

Raff’s voice came up over the air. ‘Let’s crack on. We’ll hit the IP and reorg on the ground.’ IP meant the impact point – in this case Copacabana Beach.

Raff was right. There was sod all they could do about losing contact with the rest of the stick, and too much radio traffic might lead to detection.

Several minutes later, Jaeger noticed Raff accelerate as he started to spiral vertically downwards, making for the island below and the small strip of beach. He made landfall with an almighty thump.

At a thousand feet, Jaeger hit the metal release levers to free his rucksack. It dropped away until it was suspended some twenty feet below him.

He heard the bulky pack thud into the ground.

He flared his chute, to slow his rate of descent, and seconds later his boots slammed into the stretch of sand, which glowed a surreal blue-white in the moonlight. He ran forward several paces as the expanse of silk drifted down, tangling in a bundle beside the sea.

Immediately he unslung his MP7 from his right shoulder and slotted a bullet into the breech. He was a few dozen yards from Raff, and he was good.

‘Ready,’ he hissed into his radio.

The two of them converged on the muster point. Moments later, Hiro Kamishi appeared out of the night sky and landed nearby.

But there was zero sign of the rest of Jaeger’s team.

Hank Kammler ordered a bottle of Le Parvis de la Chapelle, the 1976 vintage. Nothing too flashy, but a quality French red nonetheless. He’d resisted cracking open a bottle of the finest champagne. There was much to celebrate, but he never liked to start the party early.

Just in case.

He powered up his laptop, and as it came to life, he let his eyes wander over the scene below. The waterhole was wonderfully busy. The humped, rounded, oily forms of hippos lazed contentedly in the mud. A herd of graceful roan antelopes – or were they sable? Kammler was never quite certain how to tell the difference – nosed towards the murky water, fearful of crocodiles.