Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

In spite of the water he’d drunk, Jaeger was still feeling like death, and he was in no mood for bullshit. ‘Great TV? You still think this is about making great TV? Dale, there’s something you need to grasp: this is about trying to stay alive now. Survival. Yours as much as anyone’s. This is not a story any more. You’re living it .’

‘But if I can’t film, there’s no TV series,’ Dale objected. ‘And the people funding all of this – the TV execs – they’re throwing good money after bad.’

‘The TV execs aren’t here,’ Jaeger growled. ‘We are.’ A beat. ‘You shoot one more frame on that thing without my say-so, your film is history. And so, my friend, are you.’

‘So tell me – what the hell happened here?’ Jaeger prompted.

He was sitting in the makeshift camp that Alonzo and the rest had hacked out of the jungle, where the thick vegetation met the open sweep of the sandbar. Shaded by some overhanging trees, it was about as comfortable as you could get in such terrain.

He’d managed a quick wash in the river, which snaked past as sluggish and brooding as ever. He’d pulled a daysack out of one of the para-tubes, and grabbed the bare essentials to help him recover from his epic trans-jungle journey: food rations, bottled water, rehydration salts, plus some insect repellent. As a result, he was starting to feel vaguely human again.

The expedition team – or rather, those that remained – were gathered for a communal heads-up. But there was a weird, wired tension to the air, a sense that hostile forces were prowling the fringes of the camp and lurking just out of sight. Jaeger had retrieved a back-up combat shotgun from one of the para-tubes, and he wasn’t alone in keeping one eye on the jungle and one hand on his weapon.

‘Best I start at the beginning – when we lost you guys in the freefall.’ Alonzo’s reply was delivered in the deep, rumbling tones so typical of the big Afro-American.

As Jaeger had begun to realise, Alonzo was the kind of guy who tended to wear his heart very much on his sleeve. As he continued speaking, his words became thick with regret at what had happened.

‘We lost you guys pretty quickly after the jump, so I led the stick in. We made it down good. All here, no injuries, firm and clear underfoot. We set camp, sorted our gear, agreed a sentry roster, and figured no big deal: we’d wait for you and Narov to come to us, this being the first RV.

‘It was then we kind of broke into two camps,’ Alonzo continued. ‘There was my lot – let’s say the Warrior Brigade – who wanted to send out probing patrols in the direction we figured you guys must’ve put down. See if we could help bring you in – that was if you were still alive… And then there was the Tree-hugger Brigade…

‘So the Hugger Brigade – led by James and Santos – they wanted to go that way.’ Alonzo jerked a thumb westwards. ‘They figured they’d found a riverside path made by the Indians. Well, we all knew the tribe was out there somewhere. We could feel eyes in the jungle. The Hugger Brigade – they wanted to reach out and make peaceful contact.

‘Peaceful contact!’ Alonzo glanced at Jaeger. ‘You know, I just spent a year doing peacekeeping ops in Sudan; the Nuba mountains. About as remote as you can get. Some of those Nuba tribes, they still wander around pretty much butt-naked. But you know something – man, I grew to love those people. And one lesson I learned from the get-go: they wanted peaceful contact, they’d let you know about it.’

Alonzo shrugged. ‘Long story short, James and Santos set out around lunchtime on day one. Santos argued she knew what she was doing; she was Brazilian, and she’d spent years working with Amazonian tribes.’ He shook his head. ‘James: man, he’s stir-crazy; a total loon. He’d scrawled some note to the Indians; scribbled some pictures.’ He glanced at Dale. ‘You got the footage?’

Dale grabbed his camera, flipped open the side screen and scrolled through the digital files stored on the camera’s memory card. He pressed ‘play’. An image appeared on the screen – a close-up of a scribbled note. The thick, Kiwi-accented voice of Joe James could be heard reading out the words in the background.

‘Yo! Amazon dwellers! You like peace, we like peace. Let’s make peace!’ The shot panned out to reveal James’s massive Bin Laden beard and his craggy biker features. ‘We’re coming into your domain to say hello and to make peaceful contact.’

Dale shook his head in disbelief. ‘Can you believe this guy? “Yo! Amazon dwellers!” I mean – like the Indians read English! A genuine wacko – spent too long in his cabin in the woods. Perfect for the camera. Not perfect for the mission!’

Jaeger signalled that he’d seen enough. ‘He is a little unusual. But who isn’t? Anyone who’s a hundred per cent sane wouldn’t be here. A little crazy is okay.’

Alonzo scratched his stubble. ‘Yeah, but man, that one – James – he’s kinda off the scale. Anyhow, he and Santos set out. Twenty-four hours later there was no sign of them, but we’d had no sign of trouble either. So the second tier of the Hugger Brigade – the Frenchie, Clermont, and bizarrely, the German, Krakow; you’d never have him down as a natural-born hugger – they set out to link up with James and Santos.

‘I shouldn’t have let ’em go,’ Alonzo growled. ‘I had this bad feeling. But hell, with you and Narov gone, we had no expedition leader and no deputy. Around midday – an hour after Clermont and Krakow had left – we heard yelling and gunfire. Sounded like a two-way range; like an ambush, with return fire.’

Alonzo glanced at Jaeger. ‘That was it: hugging declared over. We set out as a hunter force, tracking Clermont and Krakow’s trail to a point maybe a half-mile out. There, we hit major disturbance of the undergrowth. Fresh blood. Plus there were several of these.’

He pulled something out of his pack and handed it to Jaeger. ‘Careful. Figure that’s some kind of poison.’

Jaeger studied what he’d been given. It was a thin piece of wood around six inches long. It was finely carved and sharpened at one end, the point being smeared in some kind of dark and viscous fluid.

‘We pushed on,’ Alonzo continued, ‘and we picked up James and Santos’s trail. We found their camp, but no sign of them. No sign of any struggle, either. No sign of a fight. No blood. No darts. Nothing. It was like they’d been teleported out of there by aliens.’

Alonzo paused. ‘And then there was this.’ He pulled a spent bullet casing from his pocket. ‘Found it on the way back. Kind of stumbled across it.’ He handed Jaeger the casing. ‘It’s a 7.62 mm. More than likely GPMG or AK-47. It ain’t one of ours, that’s for sure.’

Jaeger rolled the casing around in his hand for a couple of seconds.

Until a few decades back, 7.62 mm had been the calibre of round used by NATO forces. In the Vietnam War, the Americans had experimented with a smaller calibre: 5.56 mm. With lighter bullets a foot soldier could carry more rounds of ammo, which meant more sustained firepower – crucial when undertaking long missions on foot in the jungle. Since then, 5.56 mm had become a common NATO calibre, and none of those gathered on the sandbar were using a 7.62 mm weapon.

Jaeger eyed Alonzo. ‘There’s been no further sign of the four of them?’

Alonzo shook his head. ‘None.’

‘So what d’you make of it?’ he prompted.

Alonzo’s face darkened. ‘Man, I dunno… There’s a hostile force out there, that’s for sure, but right now that force remains a mystery. If it is the Indians, how come we’ve got a 7.62 mm weapon in the mix? Since when does a lost tribe pack a punch like that?’