Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

Their end point – the mystery air wreck – lay some thirty kilometres onwards from the Devil’s Falls, in the midst of that lowland jungle.

Jaeger nosed his canoe ahead, his paddle dipping into the waters noiselessly and causing barely a ripple. As a former Royal Marines Commando, he was well at home on the water. He’d led the river leg, helping those behind navigate through the more treacherous shallows. He reflected upon their next move. Decisions now would prove critical.

The journey downriver had been relatively peaceful, at least compared to what had gone before. But he feared that with landfall approaching, this transitory period of stillness was about to come to an end.

He could detect a new threat resonating in the air now: a deep, throaty roar filled his ears, as if a hundred thousand wildebeest were thundering over an African plain in a massive stampede.

He glanced ahead.

On the horizon he could see a tower of rising mist – the spray thrown up by the Rio de los Dios as it cascaded over the edge of the rift, forming one of the world’s tallest and most dramatic waterfalls.

There was no way over the Devil’s Falls – that much had been obvious from studying the aerial photos. The only possible route ahead appeared to be a pathway of sorts leading down the escarpment, but that lay a good day’s march north of here. Jaeger’s plan was to leave the river shortly and to undertake the last stage of the journey – including the steep descent – on foot.

Skirting around the Devil’s Falls would take them a good distance out of their way, but there was no alternative as far as he could determine. He’d studied the terrain from every angle, and the path down the escarpment was the only way to proceed. As to who or what exactly had made that path – it remained a mystery.

It could be wild animals.

It could be Indians.

Or it could be that mystery force that was out there somewhere – armed, hostile and dangerous.

The secondary problem that Jaeger was grappling with was the fact that they’d always envisaged making this final part of the journey as a ten-person team. Now they were reduced to five, and he was unsure what to do with the missing team members’ kit. They’d packed their personal effects into the canoes, but there was no way to carry them onwards from here.

To leave such kit behind would be tantamount to telegraphing their acceptance that the missing team members were dead, but Jaeger couldn’t see any way around it.

He glanced behind him.

His canoe was leading, the others in line astern. There were five vessels in all, each an Advanced Elements convertible kayak – a fifteen-foot semi-foldable inflatable expedition craft. The kayaks had been parachuted in by Kamishi and Krakow, packed in the para-tubes. Each twenty-five-kilo craft folded down to form a cube measuring around two square feet, but opened out into a boat capable of carrying 249 kilos of kit.

Back at the sandbar, they’d unpacked the kayaks, inflated them with stirrup pumps and launched them into the water loaded with gear. Each vessel boasted a triple-skin rip-stop hull, for extreme puncture resistance, built-in aluminium rods for added stability, plus adjustable padded seats, allowing for long-distance paddling without getting chafed raw.

With six inflatable chambers per canoe, plus flotation bags, they were pretty much unsinkable – as they had proven on the few sections of white water that they’d encountered.

Originally, Jaeger’s plan had had five kayaks on the water, each crewed by two of his team. But with their numbers so depleted, the crafts had had the seating reconfigured so that each accommodated just one person. Dale and Kral had seemed the most relieved at not having to undergo a three-day river journey sharing the one cramped canoe.

Jaeger figured the film team’s animosity was all down to one thing. Kral resented Dale’s seniority. Dale was directing the filming, while Kral was only an assistant producer – and there were times when the Slovak’s antipathy flashed through. As for Dale, Kral’s unfortunate habit of sucking his teeth bugged him something rotten.

Jaeger had been on enough such expeditions to know how, in the crucible of the jungle, the best of friends could end up hating each other’s guts. He knew he needed to get the problem sorted, for that kind of friction could endanger the entire expedition.

The rest of the team – Jaeger himself, Alonzo and Kamishi – had bonded pretty well. There was little that made alpha males pull together more than knowing they faced an enemy as unexpected as it was predatory. The three former elite forces soldiers were united in their adversity – it was just the film crew who were bitching behind each other’s backs.

As the arrow-like prow of Jaeger’s craft cleaved a furrow through the Meeting of the Ways – golden-white water on the one side, inky black on the other – he reflected on how he’d been almost happy on the river.

Almost. Of course, the loss of the five team members had cast a dark and continuous shadow over their progress.

But this had been the kind of thing that he had looked forward to back in London – a long paddle down a wild and remote river, in the heart of one of planet earth’s greatest jungles. Here the rivers were corridors of both sunlight and life: wild animals flocked to their banks, and the air thrummed to the beat of a myriad bird wings.

Each kayak had elasticated deck lacing, providing quick access to vital gear. Jaeger had his combat shotgun meshed into that, just a hand’s reach away. If a caiman tried to cause him any trouble, he could draw and fire within seconds if needed. As matters had transpired, most had chosen to keep their distance, for the kayaks were about the biggest thing moving on the river.

At one stage that morning Jaeger had allowed his kayak to drift silently downstream, as he watched a jaguar – a powerful male – stalk his prey. The big cat had padded along the riverside, taking great care not to raise a ripple or to make a sound. He’d got to the point where he was in a caiman’s blind spot, and had swum across to the mudbank upon which the reptile was sunning itself. This was a yacare as opposed to a black caiman, so the smaller of the two species.

The big cat had stalked up the mudbank and pounced. The caiman had sensed danger at the last moment and tried to swing its jaws around to snap. But the cat was far quicker. Legs astride the caiman’s front shoulders, claws sunk deep, he’d gripped the beast’s head in his mouth, sinking his fangs into its brain.

It had been an instant kill, following which the jaguar had dragged the caiman into the water and swum back to shore. Having watched the entire hunt, Jaeger had felt like giving the big cat a round of applause. It was one–nil to the jaguar, and Jaeger for one was happy for it to remain that way.

After his earlier battle with one of the giant reptiles, and his loss of Irina Narov, he had developed a dislike of the caiman that went more than skin deep.

There had been one other joy to travelling by river: Dale and Kral’s kayaks had been positioned at the rear of the flotilla. Jaeger had argued that they were the least experienced canoeists, and so they should be kept the furthest away from any likely trouble. As a bonus, putting them at the rear had kept him well away from Dale’s camera lens.

But oddly, during the last day or so Jaeger had found himself almost missing the on-camera conversations. In a weird way the camera had been someone to talk to; to unburden himself to. Jaeger had never been on an expedition where he’d been so bereft of a soulmate; of company.

Alonzo was fine as a stand-in second-in-command. In fact, he reminded Jaeger of Raff in many ways, and with his massive physique the former SEAL would doubtless prove a superlative warrior. In time Jaeger figured Alonzo could become a good and loyal friend – but he was not his confidante; not yet, anyway.