Bear Grylls: Ghost Flight

‘Maybe. Let’s hope so,’ Jaeger conceded. ‘But he wasn’t one of your kids; your star pupil.’

‘Trust me, when Chambara’s gone, every single kid on Bioko will have a far brighter future. Hell, man, that country should be rich. It has oil, gas, minerals – the lot. Sell off Chambara’s yachts, raid his foreign bank accounts – we’ll be making a good start. Now, is there anything else?’

‘Maybe there is one thing…’ Jaeger mused. ‘You know, I was there for three years. That’s a lot of time in a place like Bioko. Long story short, I got digging into the island’s history. Second World War. Towards the end of the war, the British launched a top-secret operation to spy on an enemy vessel. The Duchessa . A cargo ship anchored in Malabo harbour. We went to extraordinary lengths to do so. Question is, why?’

Boerke shrugged. ‘Search me.’

‘Apparently the ship’s captain had filed a manifest with the Bioko port authorities,’ Jaeger continued. ‘It was incomplete; it listed six pages of cargo, but the seventh page was missing. Rumour has it the seventh page is secreted in the Malabo Government House vault. I tried everything I could to get hold of it. When you take the capital, maybe you can grab a copy for me?’

Boerke nodded. ‘No worries. Leave me email and phone details. But I’m curious. What do you think she was carrying? And why the interest?’

‘I got sucked in by all the rumours; kind of grabbed me. Diamonds. Uranium. Gold. That’s what they say. Something that could be mined in Africa; something the Nazis needed desperately to help them win the war.’

‘Most likely uranium,’ Boerke suggested.

‘Maybe.’ Jaeger shrugged. ‘But the seventh page – that would prove it.’

The MV Global Challenger lay at anchor on the Thames, a heavy sky glowering low and sullen above the masthead. The black taxi that had ferried Raff and Jaeger from Heathrow airport pulled up at the kerb, tyres coming to rest in a grey puddle slick with oil.

It struck Jaeger that the taxi fare was enough to furnish an entire Bioko classroom with books. And when Raff didn’t tip the cabbie quite as much as he’d evidently been expecting, he sped off without a word, splashing the puddle over the tops of their shoes.

London in February. Some things never changed.

He’d slept nearly the entirety of the two flights – mainland Equatorial Guinea to Nigeria in a noisy C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft, and then on to London. They’d flown the Lagos to London leg in the absolute lap of luxury, but from experience Jaeger knew that first class came with caveats.

Always.

Someone was footing the bill for those BA flights, and at seven grand a pop it was no small change. When he’d pressed Raff on the subject, the big, easy-going Maori had seemed oddly reticent. Clearly someone wanted Jaeger back in London badly and money was no object, but Raff didn’t want to talk about it.

Jaeger figured he was good with that. He trusted the man absolutely.

By the time they’d hit London, Jaeger was starting to feel the cumulative effects of five weeks’ incarceration in Black Beach Prison, plus the battles and escape that had followed. He made his way up the Global Challenger ’s gangplank, limbs creaking like an old man, just as the heavens opened.

A former Arctic survey ship, the Global Challenger was the headquarters of Enduro Adventures, the business that Jaeger had founded upon leaving the military, along with Raff and one other fellow warrior. That man – Stephen Feaney – was standing at the top of the gangplank, half obscured by the falling rain.

He held out a hand in greeting. ‘Never thought we’d find you. You look like shit. Seems like it was only just in time.’

‘You know how it is.’ Jaeger shrugged. ‘That big Maori bastard – President Chambara was just about to cook and eat him. Someone had to drag him out of there.’

Raff snorted. ‘Like hell!’

There was laughter. The three men shared the briefest of moments as the rain hammered across the open deck.

It was good – sweet – to be back together again.

Soldiering at the elite level always had been a young man’s game. Jaeger, Raff and Feaney had been where few others had been and done things few ever imagined possible. It had been the ultimate adventure, but it had taken its toll.

A few years back, they’d decided to quit while they were still ahead. They’d taken their skills learned at the taxpayer’s expense and used them to set up their own business. Enduro Adventures – motto: ‘Planet Earth is our playground’ – was the result.

Jaeger’s brainchild, Enduro was an outfit dedicated to taking wealthy individuals – businessmen, sportsmen and a sprinkling of celebrities – on some of the world’s most challenging wilderness experiences. Over time, they’d built it into a lucrative concern, attracting big personalities on some of the most incredible adventures planet Earth had to offer.

But then, practically overnight, Jaeger’s life had fallen apart and he’d disappeared off the map. He’d become Enduro Adventure’s invisible man. Feaney had been forced to take over the money-making side of things, and Raff the business end of expeditioning – although it was neither man’s natural milieu.

Jaeger, a captain, was the only former officer among the three of them. Back in the military, he’d commanded D Squadron, a sixty-man SAS unit. He’d worked closely with senior command and could move easily in high-end business circles.

Feaney was older, and he’d come up the hard way through the ranks, ending up serving as Jaeger’s sergeant major. As for Raff, his drinking and fighting had always made promotion something of a challenge, not that the big Maori had ever seemed to mind.

The last three years had proven something of a challenge for Enduro Adventures, left bereft of its figurehead. Jaeger knew that a part of Feaney resented him for his Bioko disappearing act. But had the same horror befallen Feaney, Jaeger figured he’d very likely have struggled too. Time and experience had taught him that every man had his breaking point. When Jaeger’s had been reached, he’d fled to the last place on earth anyone would ever look for him – Bioko.

Feaney led the way inside. The Global Challenger ’s boardroom was a shrine to adventure, the walls plastered with mementoes from far-flung corners of the earth: the flags of half the world’s militaries; badges and berets of elite units few even knew existed; racks of deactivated weaponry, including a gold-plated AK-47 hailing from one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.

But it was also a powerful tribute to the wonders of planet earth: photos of some of the most wild and extreme biomes – bone-dry, wind-blasted desert; ice-blue snow-capped mountains; a charcoal jungle canopy pierced by burning shafts of sunlight – graced the walls, along with scores of photographs of the teams that Enduro Adventures had led into such places.

Feaney rattled the door of the fridge behind the bar. ‘Beer?’

Raff grunted. ‘After Bioko, I could murder the lot.’

Feaney handed him a bottle. ‘Jaeger?’

Jaeger shook his head. ‘No thanks. I was dry on Bioko. Not for the first year. But the two after that. One beer, you’ll be scraping me off the ceiling.’

He grabbed a water, and the three men settled around one of the low tables. They talked for a while, catching up on all that had gone down in each other’s absence, before Jaeger brought the focus back to the heart of the matter – the reason why Raff and Feaney had gone to the ends of the earth to find him, and bring him home.

‘So, this new contract – fill me in. I mean, Raff told me some of it, but you know how the Maori is: he can talk a glass eye to sleep.’