Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

But, for now at least, the windshield had held.

Jaeger’s head was filled with a tidal wave of sound. Heavy, wind-blasted debris rained down on the Ju 390’s metal skin. He felt as if he were strapped inside a giant steel drum.

A long humming vibration rippled through the fuselage, as the turbulence from the propulsors set up some kind of resonance with the thick lifting straps wrapped around the plane. Jaeger could sense that every fibre of the airship was straining to make the lift, and that the aircraft herself was somehow fighting to be free.

Suddenly there was a violent lurch as the cockpit seemed to plunge towards the ground and the Ju 390’s tail wheel flipped up and broke free. The rear of the fuselage rose, throwing off whatever fallen debris and tree limbs still lay across her.

Four double wheels – eight colossal tyres – held the warplane to the ground now. The massive aircraft seemed to twist and shake, as if she were a monstrous bird trying to drag her claws free of a cloying swamp and take to the skies.

Moments later, there was a sound like a giant Velcro strip being ripped apart, and the Ju 390 lurched into the air.

The force of her breaking free thrust Jaeger downwards into his seat, and threw him forward against the restraining straps. For several seconds the giant warplane rose into the air as if the force of gravity had suddenly been suspended, moving steadily closer to the jagged crown of the skeletal canopy.

With the dead wood casting a cobweb of shadows across the cockpit, the warplane’s upper fuselage ploughed into the lowest branches. There was a tearing crash, the sudden impact throwing Jaeger off his seat, the straps of his harness ripping into his shoulders.

All around him, bony tree limbs clutched at the cockpit, as if a giant hand was trying to break its way in and pluck Jaeger, Dale and Narov out and hurl them to the ground. As the warplane tore a path upwards, an extra thick finger of wood punched through the Perspex side window, half knocking Dale’s camera from his grasp and spearing towards Jaeger on the far side.

He ducked, the jagged branch jabbing into his seat where his head had been moments earlier. The impact snapped it in two, leaving the broken limb hanging out of the warplane’s window.

Jaeger sensed the upward momentum of the aircraft slowing. He chanced a momentary glance to his left. He could see the giant propellers on the Ju 390’s port wing – each twice the height of a fully grown man – ensnared in the branches. Moments later, the grasp of the skeleton canopy tightened around the aircraft and she came to a juddering halt.

They were suspended ninety feet above the ground, and stuck fast.

For several seconds the Ju 390 seemed to hang there in her nest of wooden bones.

From above, Jaeger heard the howl of the propulsors changing pitch, the downdraught dropping off to a faint breeze. For an instant he feared the pilot was giving up; that he’d been forced to admit that the dead wood had defeated him – in which case Jaeger, Narov and Dale would be facing a sixty-strong enemy force pretty damn quickly.

He risked flicking on his Thuraya, and instantly there was a data-burst message from Raff.

Pilot will reverse to make a forward run, using hull’s lift to break you free. STAND BY.

Jaeger flicked the satphone off again.

The Airlander’s hull provided almost half of her lift: by reversing and taking a run-up she could double her pulling power.

Jaeger shouted a warning to Narov and Dale to hold on tight for the ride. No sooner had he done so than there was an abrupt change in the direction of the force being exerted on the Ju 390, as the airship accelerated into forward motion at full power.

The cutting edges of the Ju 390’s wings were driven into the dead wood, the sharp nose cone drilling forward. Jaeger and Dale ducked below the flight panel as the cockpit speared its way through a tangled wall of tree limbs bleached white by the tropical sun.

Moments later, the canopy appeared to thin noticeably, light flooding into the cockpit. With a tearing of deafening proportions, the mighty warplane broke free, and was catapulted into thin air. To left and right a cloud of rotten wood and debris tumbled from her wings and upper surfaces, spinning towards the forest below.

With the canopy sudden letting go of her, the warplane swung ponderously forward, sailing past the point where she was directly below the Airlander, then rocked back again until she came to rest suspended right below the airship’s flight deck. No sooner had the oscillation slowed to manageable proportions than the Airlander began to reel her in.

Powerful hydraulic winches lifted her upwards, until she fell under the Airlander’s shadow. Her wings came to rest on the underside of the air cushion landing system – the airship’s hovercraft-like skids. The Ju 390 was now effectively attached to the bottom of the Airlander.

With the warplane locked into position, the Airlander’s pilot set the propulsors to full speed ahead, and swung her around to the correct bearing, starting the long climb to cruise altitude. They were Cachimbo-bound, with barely seven hours’ flight time ahead of them.

Jaeger reached triumphantly for the co-pilot’s seventy-year-old flask, jammed into the side of his seat. He waved it at Dale and Narov. ‘Coffee, anyone?’

Even Narov couldn’t help but crack a smile.

‘Sir, the aircraft just isn’t there,’ the operator known as Grey Wolf Six repeated.

He was speaking into his radio sat at the same remote and nameless jungle airstrip, the rank of helicopters with sagging rotor blades lined up awaiting orders; awaiting a mission.

The operator’s English seemed fluent enough, but it was clearly accented, at times having the harsh, guttural inflexion so typical of an Eastern European.

‘How can it not be there?’ the voice on the other end exploded.

‘Sir, our team is on the grid as given. They are in that patch of dead jungle. They have found the imprints of something heavy. They have found smashed-apart dead wood. Sir, the impression is that the aircraft has been ripped out of the jungle.’

‘Ripped out by what?’ Grey Wolf demanded, incredulously.

‘Sir, we have absolutely no idea.’

‘You have the Predator over that area. You have eyes-on. How could you miss an aircraft the size of a Boeing 727 getting lifted out of the jungle?’

‘Sir, our Predator was on orbit north of there, awaiting a clear visual on the tracking device location. There is cloud cover up to ten thousand feet. There is nothing that can effectively see through that. Whoever has done the lift has done so observing complete communications silence, and under cover of the overcast.’ A pause. ‘I know it sounds incredible, but trust me – the aircraft is gone.’

‘Right, this is what we’re going to do.’ Grey Wolf’s voice was icy calm now. ‘You’ve got a flight of Black Hawks at your disposal. Get them airborne and scour that airspace. You will – repeat will – find that warplane. You will retrieve what needs to be retrieved. And then you will destroy that aircraft. Are we clear?’

‘Understood, sir.’

‘I presume this is Jaeger and his team’s doing?’

‘I can only assume so, sir. We Hellfired their river position, targeting the tracker device and cell phone. But—’

‘It’s Jaeger,’ the voice cut in. ‘It has to be . Terminate them all. No one who is a witness to this gets out alive. You understand? And rig that warplane with so much explosive that not a shred of it will ever be found. I want it gone. For good. Don’t mess up this time, Kamerad . Clean up. Every single person. Kill them all.’