Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

This far into the Brazilian Amazon – they were in the extreme west of the state of Acre, in the department of Assis Brazil, right on the Peruvian border – he figured it could only be one sort of warplane flying above them. It had to be a pilotless drone, for only that would have the range and the loiter time to orbit over the jungle for long enough to have found them.

Jaeger knew how long a Predator – the most common drone used by the world’s more advanced militaries – would take to rearm and reacquire its target. The very act of firing a Hellfire tended to wobble the aircraft, breaking up the video link with the unmanned warplane’s remote operator.

It would take around sixty seconds to stabilise and to re-establish firm video contact.

The next AGM-114 Hellfire – and most Predators carried a maximum of three – would be ready to fire any moment now. Depending on what altitude the Predator was orbiting at – most likely 25,000 feet – the missile might take as long as eighteen seconds to reach earth – which was the maximum time that Jaeger had remaining.

The first Hellfire had failed to detonate when it struck the rope structure, cutting through a strand of the bridge like a knife through butter .

But second time around they mightn’t be so lucky.

The last figure – the chief’s eldest son – came clambering back across, Jaeger shoving him towards the riverbank. He turned himself now, heading for the safety of the jungle, boots scrabbling at the rungs underfoot, the forest coming closer with every footfall.

‘GET INTO THE TREES!’ he screamed. ‘GET UNDER THE TREES!’

The canopy wouldn’t shield them from a Hellfire strike. There was little that could do that. But the Predator would find it next to impossible to see through the carpet of thick vegetation, which would prevent it from acquiring a target.

Jaeger kept running, rung to rung, the last man remaining on the bridge.

Then the second missile struck.

He felt the jolt of its impact an instant before the howl of its descent drilled into his ears – for the missile travelled at Mach 1.3, faster than the speed of sound. It exploded in the very centre of the bridge, the skeletal structure dissolving into a ball of boiling flame, razor-sharp shards of shrapnel ripping through the air all around him.

Moments later, he felt himself falling.

With his last reserves of strength Jaeger spun around, grabbing hold of the handrails, locking his arms around them and bracing for the impact. For a second or so his half of the bridge dropped vertically, before the end still attached to the wall of the chasm pulled up short, dragging what remained in a violent whiplash towards the rock face.

Jaeger tensed his body into a block of steel.

He struck the wall of rock, the crushing blow ripping the skin from his forearms, as his head was catapulted forward by the impact.

His forehead hit with a terrible crack.

A blinding burst of stars rocketed through Jaeger’s brain, and an instant later his world turned dark.

Jaeger came to.

His head was spinning. Bolts of burning pain tore through his temples. His vision swam. He felt like throwing up.

Slowly, he became aware of his surroundings. Above him there stretched a wide umbrella of dark green.

Jungle.

Canopy.

High above.

Like a protective blanket.

Shielding him from the Predator.

‘Turn everything off!’ Jaeger screamed. He fought to raise himself on to one elbow, but hands were trying to restrain him, to hold him down. ‘Get everything the hell off! It’s tracking something! GET EVERYTHING OFF!’

Jaeger’s wild, bloodied eyes flashed around his team, as figures scrambled for pockets and belt pouches.

Jaeger gasped as another stab of agony tore through his head. ‘PREDATOR!’ he cried. ‘Carries three Hellfire! Get everything off! TURN IT THE HELL OFF!’

As he screamed and raved, his eyes came to rest on one individual. Dale was crouched at the very lip of the river gorge, one knee supporting his camera, his eye bent to the viewfinder as he filmed the unfolding drama.

With a Herculean effort, Jaeger broke free from whoever was holding him down. He charged forward, eyes flashing dangerously, his face slick with blood, his visage that of a near-madman.

A yell issued forth from his throat like an animal howl. ‘ TURN IT – THE HELL – OFF! ’

Dale glanced up uncomprehendingly – his entire world had been focused through the camera lens.

The next moment, eighty kilos of William Jaeger slammed into him, the rugby tackle sending both men tumbling into the thick vegetation, the camera spinning off in the opposite direction. It rolled once, and disappeared over the lip into the chasm of the gorge.

The camera came to rest on a thin ledge of rock.

Seconds later, there was a howl like all the gates of hell had opened, and a third missile flashed earthwards. Hellfire number three tore through the mists, ripping into the narrow shelf where Dale’s camera had landed. The detonation burned across the narrow ledge, pulverising what little vegetation there was, but the wall of rock above served to shield Jaeger’s team from the worst of the blast.

The explosion was funnelled upwards, a storm of shrapnel tearing into the open sky, the deafening explosion roaring back and forth across the wide expanse of the Rio de los Dios.

As the echoes died away, a silence of sorts settled over the gorge. The scent of scorched rock and blasted vegetation hung heavy in the air, plus the choking, smoky firework smell of high explosives.

‘Hellfire number three!’ Jaeger cried, from where he and Dale had landed in the undergrowth. ‘Should be all it’s got! But search your gear – ALL OF IT – and get everything turned the hell off!’

Figures ran to it, grabbing Bergens and emptying them of their contents.

Jaeger turned to Dale. ‘Your camera: it records date, time and location, right? It’s got an embedded GPS?’

‘Yeah, but I got Kral to disable it, on both units. No cameraman wants date and time burned across their film.’

Jaeger jerked a thumb towards the ledge where Dale’s camera had breathed its last. ‘Whatever the hell Kral was doing – that one wasn’t disabled. ’

Dale’s eyes swivelled to his backpack. ‘I’ve got a second in there. Back-up.’

‘Then get beneath the canopy and make sure it’s turned off!’

Dale hurried to it.

Jaeger struggled to his feet. He felt like death – his head and forearms throbbing in agony – but he had bigger issues to deal with right now. He had his own pack to search and verify. He stumbled across to it and began turfing out the contents. He was certain everything had been switched off, but one mistake now could easily prove the death of all of them.

Five minutes later, the checking was complete.

No one had had a GPS unit running at the time of the Hellfire strikes, let alone a satphone. They’d been moving fast, following a route and a pace set by the Amahuaca Indians. No one on Jaeger’s team had needed to navigate, plus they’d been under deep canopy, where there was zero satellite signal.

Jaeger gathered his team. ‘Something triggered the Predator,’ he announced, through teeth gritted with pain. ‘We emerged from under the canopy at the edge of the falls, and bleep! A signal popped up on a Predator’s screen. It takes a satphone, GPS or similar to do that: something instantly trackable.’

‘It’s got infrared,’ Alonzo volunteered. ‘Predator. Via IR it’ll see us as heat sources.’

Jaeger shook his head. ‘Not beneath a hundred feet of jungle it won’t. And even if it could penetrate all of that – and trust me, it can’t – what would it see? A bunch of indistinct heat blobs. We could just as easily be a herd of forest pigs as a bunch of humans. No, it was tracking something; something that threw up an instant, traceable signal.’