Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

When the moment came for battle, Jaeger figured Puruwehua was one frog that wouldn’t allow himself to be eaten very easily.

A good way behind, the Amahuaca village square was largely silent and deserted now. But a lone figure lingered in the open.

He glanced at the dawn sky, moving a few paces to where there was practically zero tree cover and maximum privacy. He pulled something from his pocket – a Thuraya satphone – placed it on a tree stump and squatted down in the undergrowth to wait.

The phone bleeped once, twice, then three times: it had acquired enough satellites. The figure punched speed-dial, followed by a single digit.

The phone rang twice before a voice answered. ‘Grey Wolf. Speak.’

Kral’s teeth showed a thin smile. ‘This is White Wolf. Seven have left with two dozen Indians, heading due south back towards the falls. From there, they take some route known only to the Indians, west towards the target. I couldn’t speak before now, but I have managed to give them the slip. You can do your worst.’

‘Understood.’

‘I can confirm it is SS Oberst-Gruppenführer Kammler’s warplane. Contents more or less intact. Or as good as can be expected after seventy-odd years.’

‘Understood.’

‘I have the exact coordinates of the warplane.’ A pause. ‘Have you made the third payment?’

‘We have the coordinates already. Our surveillance drone found the plane.’

‘Fine.’ A shadow of irritation flitted across Kral’s features. ‘Those I was given are: 964864.’

‘964864. They match.’

‘And the third payment?’

‘It will be in your Zurich account, as arranged. Spend it quickly, Mr White Wolf. You never know what tomorrow may bring.’

‘ Wir sind die Zukunft ,’ Kral whispered.

‘ Wir sind die Zukunft ,’ the voice confirmed.

Kral killed the call.

The figure on the other end cradled the receiver against his neck, letting it rest there for a long moment.

He glanced at a framed photo on his desk. It showed a middle-aged man in a grey pinstriped suit. The face was hawkish, the nose aquiline, the eyes arrogant yet rakish, speaking of untrammelled power and influence – something that had given him a casual confidence in his own abilities long into old age.

‘At last,’ the seated figure whispered. ‘ Wir sind die Zukunft .’

He placed the receiver back to his ear, and punched ‘0’. ‘Anna? Get me Grey Wolf Six. Yes – right now, please.’

He waited for a beat, before a voice came on the line. ‘Grey Wolf Six.’

‘I have the coordinates,’ he announced. ‘They match. Eliminate them all. There are to be no survivors – White Wolf included.’

‘Sir, understood,’ the voice confirmed.

‘Keep it clean; at a distance. Use the Predator. Keep it deniable . You have the tracking unit. Use it. And trace their comms systems. Find them. Eliminate them all.’

‘Understood. But sir, beneath the canopy, we’ll have problems tracking them from the air.’

‘Then do what you must. Unleash your dogs of war. But they are to get nowhere near that warplane.’

‘Understood, sir.’

The seated figure killed the call. After a moment’s thought, he leaned forward and tapped the keyboard of his laptop, bringing it out of sleep mode. He composed a short email.

Dear Ferdy,

Adlerflug IV

found. Will soon be salvaged/dealt with. Clean-up operation under way. Grandpapa Bormann would have been proud of us.

Wir sind die Zukunft.

HK

He pressed ‘send’, then leaned back in his chair, fingers knitted behind his head. On the wall behind him was a framed picture showing a photo of his younger self, wearing the distinctive uniform of a colonel in the American military.

Under the guidance of the Amahuaca Indians, it took Jaeger and his team less than half the time to retrace their route to the Devil’s Falls. They arrived at the bank of the Rio de los Dios just a kilometre or so downstream from where they had cached their expedition gear.

Puruwehua called a halt beneath the fringes of the forest canopy, where a permanent cloud of spray seemed to fog the air. He pointed into the river mist – a sharp precipice sliced through the rock before them, carved by the rushing waters over countless millennia. He had to shout to make himself heard above the deafening roar, as the Rio de los Dios tumbled nearly a thousand feet to the valley below.

‘That way – there is a bridge to the first island,’ he announced. ‘From there we swing by rope. Two rope swings to two further evi-gwa – land islands – and we reach the far side. There, a rock-cut passage runs down the face of the falls, one carved long ago by our forefathers. One hour – maybe less – we will be at the base of the falls.’

‘From there – how long to the air wreck?’ Jaeger queried.

‘At Amahuaca speed, one day.’ Puruwehua shrugged. ‘At white-man speed, a day and a half, no more.’

Jaeger moved to the lip of the precipice, eyes searching for the first crossing. For a while he failed to find it, so well was the bridge concealed. It took Puruwehua to point it out to him.

‘There.’ His arm stabbed downwards, indicating a tiny, rickety-looking structure. ‘ Pyhama – a vine rope that we use for climbing the trees. But it makes for a fine river bridge also. It is covered over by the leaves of the gwy’va tree, from which we get the wood to make our arrow shafts. Like this, it is almost invisible.’

Jaeger and his team shouldered their packs and followed the Indians as they slithered down the cliff face to the start of the crossing. Before them lay a crazy-looking, precipitous rope bridge spanning the first mighty chasm. On the far side it was attached to a rock island, the first of three perched on the very lip of the falls.

The noise of the waterfall prevented any talk here. Jaeger followed Puruwehua, the first of his team to set foot on the perilous structure. He grabbed the vine-rope handrails on either side, forcing himself to step from woven cross rope to cross rope, which were spaced a man’s stride apart.

For a brief moment he made the mistake of looking down.

Two hundred feet below, the brown and angry waters of the Rio de los Dios thundered past, before churning into a maelstrom of seething white and gushing into the abyss. Jaeger figured it was best to keep eyes front. With his gaze firmly fixed on Puruwehua’s shoulders, he forced his feet to continue shuffling forward.

He was approaching the halfway point on the bridge, with most of his team bunched up behind him, when he sensed it.

With zero warning, an impossibly sleek projectile ripped apart the river mists swirling above them, the howl of its passing clawing into his ears. It tore through the centre of the rope bridge, a millisecond later ploughing into the Rio de los Dios far below and exploding in a massive gout of blasted white water.

Jaeger stared transfixed as the plume of onrushing destruction tore upwards – the noise of its eruption pounding in his ears and echoing back and forth across the chasm.

It was all over in less than a second. The bridge was left swinging violently to and fro, as figures clung to it, eyes wide in terror. Jaeger had called in enough Hellfire missile strikes to recognise the high-pitched, tortured howl of the weapon – yet this was the very first time he had ever been the target of one.

‘HELLFIRE!’ He screamed out a warning. ‘HELLFIRE! Get back! Back to the bank! Get under the trees!’

In the strange but signature way that time seemed to slow down in life-threatening combat, Jaeger felt as if he were living a hundred years for every second. His mind processed a thousand and one thoughts as he shovelled figures ahead of him, getting them to make for the cover of the jungle.