Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

Jaeger glanced at the jump light.

It began to flash red: get ready .

He glanced ahead, peering over Narov’s shoulder. He felt a few strands of her loose hair whipping into his face, the stark oblong of the ramp silhouetted against the bright, snarling maw of the heavens.

Outside was a whirlwind of pure, raging, blinding light.

He felt the wind tearing at his helmet and trying to rip the goggles from his face. He got his head down and steeled himself to drive forward.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the red light burn green.

The PD stepped back: ‘GO! GO! GO!’

Suddenly Jaeger was thrusting Narov forward, driving her ahead and then diving into thin air. As one they tumbled into the snarling emptiness. But as they left the open ramp, Jaeger felt something catch momentarily, the force of it snagging and then tearing loose, serving to throw them violently off balance.

He knew instantly what had happened: they’d made an unstable exit.

They’d been thrown off-kilter and they were going into a spin.

This had the potential to be really bad.

Jaeger and Narov were sucked through the churning maw of the aircraft’s slipstream, the violent turbulence throwing them over and over faster than ever. Spat out of the aircraft’s wake, they began to plummet towards earth, twisting round and round like some giant crazed spinning top.

Jaeger tried to focus his mind on counting out the seconds before he could risk opening the chute.

‘Three thousand and three, three thousand and four…’

But as the voice counted out the beats inside his head, he realised things were rapidly worsening. Rather than stabilising, the spin just seemed unstoppable. It was the nightmare of the centrifuge all over, only now it was happening at 30,000 feet and for real.

He tried to gauge how fast they were rotating – to see if he could risk pulling the chute. The only way to do so was by counting how rapidly the air around them turned from blue to green to blue to green and back again. Blue meant facing the sky, green meant the jungle.

Blue-green-blue-green-blue-green-bluuue-greeeeeen-blueeeennnnn… Aaarrgggh!

Right now Jaeger was struggling to remain conscious, let alone get a grip on the view.

The jump plan called for them all to link up in the freefall, and to pull their chutes on Jaeger releasing his. That way they’d descend pretty much as one, gliding into the landing zone good and tight. But being in tandem and with the spin catapulting them across the heavens – already they were starting to lose the others.

They plummeted towards earth, spinning faster and faster with the fall. As the air speed increased so did the G-forces, the wind tearing at Jaeger’s head like a raging hurricane. He felt as if he were strapped on to some giant out-of-control superbike, which was powering down a corkscrew-shaped tunnel at pushing four hundred kilometres an hour.

With the wind-chill factor, the temperature had to be minus 100 degrees. And as the spin became ever more violent Jaeger could sense the grey-out creeping into the edges of his frozen eyeballs.

His vision blurred and fuzzed. He felt himself gasping for breath; for oxygen. Burning lungs struggled to drag in enough gas from the bottle. His sensory awareness – the ability to judge where he was, or even who he was – was rapidly slipping away.

Beside him his combat shotgun was slamming about like a baseball bat, the folding butt cracking blows into his helmeted head. It had been fastened tight to his side, but somehow it had been ripped loose in the freefall, and it was making them even more unstable.

Jaeger was on the verge of losing consciousness now.

And he didn’t want to imagine what state Narov was in.

With his pulse juddering inside his skull and his mind reeling from the dizziness and disorientation, Jaeger forced his scrambled mind to focus. He had to stabilise their fall. Narov was relying on him, as was every jumper in the stick.

There was only one way to stop the spin.

Now to do it.

He drew his arms in close to his chest, then flung both them and his legs into a rigid star shape, bracing his back against the unbearable forces that were threatening to tear him limb from limb. Muscles screamed against the pain and the pressure. He let out a piercing cry of agony as he held the pose and tried to anchor the two of them in the razor-thin air.

‘Aaaaaarrggghhhhhh!’

At least no one would ever hear him scream, for they were alone on the very roof of the world up here.

With arms and legs thrust out rigid to make four anchors, his body arched through the hopelessly light atmosphere. The frozen air howled all around him as his limbs locked with the pain. If only he could hold the star shape for long enough to stabilise their crazed corkscrew descent, they might just get through this alive.

Gradually, slowly, agonisingly, Jaeger began to sense the revolutions decreasing.

Finally, he and Narov stopped spinning.

He forced his frazzled mind to concentrate.

He was facing the blinding blue.

Blue meant sky.

He let out a string of curses. Wrong way up .

The two of them were dropping at a murderous speed with their backs to the earth. Every second brought them 300 feet nearer to a pulverising impact, as they plummeted towards the thick jungle. But if Jaeger pulled the chute in their present position, it would open below them. They would fall through it, tearing towards earth like a pair of corpses entombed in a shroud of tangled silk.

They’d smash into the forest at pushing four hundred kilometres an hour.

Dead men.

Or rather one man and one woman, locked in a killer embrace.

Jaeger changed position, forcing his right arm in close to his side. He threw his opposite shoulder over, trying to flip the two of them around. He needed to get them facing green. Urgently.

Green meant earth .

But for some reason all the manoeuvre seemed to achieve was the very worst result of all – the violent twist sending them back into the spin.

For a moment he was on the very brink of panic. His arm reached involuntarily for the release cord of his chute, but he forced himself to stay his hand. He forced himself to remember how they’d tested this repeatedly with a specially made dummy, during trial jumps.

If you opened the chute in the spin, you were asking for trouble. Big time.

The lines would wrap themselves up tight, like a kid spooling up spaghetti on a fork. Not good news.

As the spin intensified, Jaeger knew that the full grey-out was almost upon him. This was meltdown time. It was like the centrifuge on steroids, only at extreme high altitude and with no off button. His vision started to blur and fuzz, his mind drifting further and further away from him. He was on the verge of blacking out.

‘Focus!’ he snarled.

He cursed himself, trying to free his head of the blinding confusion. ‘FOCUS! FO-CUS .’

Every second was precious now. He needed to flick himself back into the star shape, and get Narov to do the same. They’d stand a far better chance of stabilising like that.

There was no way of communicating with her, apart from body language and hand gestures. He was about to grab her arms and signal what he wanted when his frazzled senses realised that she had started struggling violently against him.

Amidst all the blinding confusion, something flashed silver-bright through the clear and glistening air .

A blade.

A commando-style knife.

Thrusting towards him, ready to drive into his chest region.

In an instant Jaeger knew what was happening. It was impossible, but it was for real. Narov was preparing to stab at him with her knife.