Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

His son’s best friend at school, a boy called Daniel, had exhibited some of Narov’s characteristics: his speech had been oddly matter-of-fact and direct, sometimes seemingly bordering on the rude. He’d often failed to pick up on the social cues that came naturally to most kids. And he’d found it painfully difficult making and holding eye contact – not until he really knew and trusted someone.

It had taken Daniel a good while to learn to trust Luke, but once he’d done so, he’d proved the most loyal and constant of friends. They’d competed over everything: rugby, air hockey, even at the local paintball facility. But it had only ever been the healthy competition between best friends, and they’d stuck up for each other against all outsiders.

When Luke had disappeared, Daniel had been devastated. He’d lost his one true companion – his battle buddy. Just as Jaeger had.

Over time, Jaeger and Ruth had become friendly with Daniel’s parents. They’d confided in them that Daniel had been diagnosed with Asperger’s, or high-functioning autism – the experts didn’t appear sure which exactly. As with many such kids, Daniel proved to be obsessed by and brilliant at one thing: mathematics. That, plus he had a magical way with animals.

Jaeger cast his mind back to the close encounter they’d had with the Phoneutria . Something had struck him then, although he hadn’t quite realised what it was. Narov had acted almost as if she had a relationship with the venomous spiders – like she understood them. She’d been reluctant to kill even one of them, not until there was no other option.

And if there was one thing that Narov would obsess over and excel at, Jaeger had a good idea what it might be: the hunt and the kill.

‘How far?’ she demanded, her voice cutting through his thoughts.

‘How far to what?’

‘The air wreck. What else is there?’

Jaeger pointed ahead. ‘Around eight hundred metres. You see where the light breaks through the canopy – that’s where the forest starts to die.’

‘So close,’ she whispered.

‘ Wir sind die Zukunft .’ Jaeger repeated the line that he’d heard in the closing stages of his nyakwana- induced vision. ‘You speak German. Wir sind die Zukunft . What does it mean?’

Narov stopped dead. She stared at him for a long second, her eyes frozen. ‘Where did you hear that?’

‘An echo from my past.’ Why did this woman always have to answer a question with a question? ‘So, what does it mean?’

‘ Wir sind die Zukunft ,’ Narov repeated, slowly and very deliberately. ‘We are the future. It was the rallying cry of the Herrenrasse – the Nazi master race. Whenever Hitler tired of Denn heute gehort uns Deutschland, und morgen die ganze Welt , he’d try a bit of Wir sind die Zukunft . The people lapped it up.’

‘How come you know so much about it?’ Jaeger demanded.

‘Know your enemy,’ Narov replied cryptically. ‘I make it my business to know.’ She threw Jaeger a look that struck him as being almost accusatory. ‘The question is – how do you know so little?’ She paused. ‘So little about your own past.’

Before Jaeger could answer, there was a terrified scream from behind. He turned to see a blaze of fear flash across Leticia Santos’s features as she was dragged beneath the water. She broke the surface, arms flailing desperately, her face a mask of terror, before she was ripped under once more.

Jaeger had caught the briefest glimpse of what had hold of her. It was one of the massive waterborne snakes that Puruwehua had warned him about: a constrictor. He charged through the shallows, diving for the deadly serpent and grappling with its tail as he frantically tried to wrest the coils free from her body.

He couldn’t use his shotgun. If he opened fire he’d blast Santos at the same time as hitting the snake. The water thrashed and boiled, Santos and the serpent entwined in a blur of snakeskin and limbs as she fought a battle that she could never win alone. The more that Jaeger fought it, the more the monster constrictor seemed to tighten its murderous grip around her.

Then from behind him Jaeger heard a sudden crack. It was the distinctive sound of a sniper rifle. At the same moment, somewhere in amongst the blur of snake and human, something erupted in a burst of blood and pulverised flesh as a high-velocity round hit home.

A second or so later the struggle was over, the snake’s head hanging limp and lifeless. Jaeger could see where most of its skull had been blown away, the high-velocity sniper round leaving a telltale exit wound. One by one Jaeger started to unwind the dead coils, and along with Alonzo and Kamishi he hauled Santos free.

As the three of them tried to pump the water out of her lungs, Jaeger glanced at Narov. She was standing in the swamp, the Dragunov still at her shoulder in case she needed to take a second shot.

Santos spluttered back into life, coughing frantically, her chest heaving up and down. Jaeger made sure they’d got her stabilised, but she was badly traumatised, and still shaking with terror at the attack. Alonzo and Kamishi agreed to carry her the final stretch to the warplane, leaving Jaeger free to rejoin Narov at the head of the party.

‘Nice shooting,’ he remarked icily, once they were on the move again. ‘But how could you be sure you were going to blow the snake’s head off, and not Leticia’s?’

Narov eyed him coldly. ‘If someone hadn’t taken the shot she would now be dead. Even with your help it was a losing battle. With this,’ she patted the Dragunov, ‘at least I stood chance. A fifty-fifty chance, but still better than none. Sometimes a bullet saves a life. They are not always fired to take one.’

‘So you flipped the coin and pulled the trigger…’ Jaeger lapsed into silence.

It didn’t escape him that Narov’s bullet could just as easily have hit him as Santos, yet she had barely hesitated before taking such a shot – such a gamble. He didn’t know if that made her the ultimate professional or a psychopath.

Narov looked over her shoulder towards where the snake had been killed. ‘It is a pity about the constrictor. It was only doing what comes naturally to it – trying to get a meal. The mbojuhua. Boa constrictor imperator. It is a CITES Appendix II listed species, which means it is in high danger of extinction.’

Jaeger glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She seemed more concerned for the dead snake than she was for Leticia Santos. He figured if she was an assassin it made it far easier if all she really cared about was animals.

The ground rose as they neared the dead zone.

Ahead, Jaeger could see where the vegetation fell away on all sides. It was replaced by ranks of bare tree trunks bleached white in the sun, like endless rows of gravestones. Above lay a skeletal latticework of dead wood – what remained of the once verdant canopy – and above that again, a bank of low grey cloud.

They gathered on the brink of the zone wherein all life had died.

From ahead of him, Jaeger could hear the rain drumming deafeningly, instead of dripping from the leaf cover high above. It sounded unnatural somehow, the area of the dead zone seeming horribly empty and exposed.

He sensed Puruwehua shiver. ‘The forest – it should never die,’ the Indian remarked simply. ‘When the forest dies, we Amahuaca die with it.’

‘Don’t go dying on us now, Puruwehua,’ Jaeger muttered. ‘You’re our koty’ar, remember? We need you.’

They stared into the dead zone. Far ahead, Jaeger could just make out something dark and massive, half obscured among the bony fingers reaching towards the clouds. His pulse quickened. It was the barely discernible silhouette of a warplane. In spite of the previous night’s vision – or maybe because of it – he longed to get inside it and uncover its secrets.