Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

He felt a nagging certainty that Ruth and Luke were alive. He had no absolute proof – just the memories awakened by a draught of psychotropic liquid – but still he felt convinced that the clues to their fate lay somewhere on this warplane.

A tap on his shoulder broke his reverie. It was Dale.

The cameraman gave an exhausted smile. ‘Figure you could give me a few words? Kind of summing up what it feels like to be sat here right now, in the cockpit of this aircraft, flying out to show it to the world?’

‘Okay, but let’s keep it short.’

Dale was framing up the shot when Jaeger noticed Narov’s head rise abruptly from the navigator’s desk. The rearmost windows of the swept-back cockpit looked out over the sides of the aircraft, and she was staring out of hers intently.

‘We have company,’ she announced. ‘Three Black Hawk helicopters.’

‘Colonel Evandro’s escort,’ Dale remarked. ‘Got to be.’ He glanced at Jaeger. ‘Just a second. Hold the interview while I grab some shots.’

Dale moved across to that side of the aircraft and began filming. Jaeger followed.

Sure enough, three squat black helicopters were keeping pace with the Airlander, set maybe five hundred feet off the airship’s starboard side. As Jaeger eyed them, something struck him as being amiss. The helos were painted in some kind of a matt-black stealth material, and none of them were showing any markings.

The Brazilian air force did operate Black Hawks. Maybe they did have a fleet of unmarked stealth variants, but this was far from what Jaeger had been expecting. It made sense for Colonel Evandro to have scrambled some fast jets out of Cachimbo – most likely F16s – to see them safely home in a blaze of glory.

Unmarked Black Hawks – in Jaeger’s mind it just didn’t compute.

While the Black Hawk came heavily armed, it was mostly a troop transport, and it wouldn’t have anything like the range to make Cachimbo airbase. The helo’s combat reach was less than 600 kilometres, under half of what was required.

No way did Jaeger believe this was Colonel Evandro’s escort.

He turned to Narov. Their eyes met.

Jaeger shook his head worriedly. This isn’t right .

Narov reciprocated.

He flicked the Thuraya satphone to the ‘on’ position and dialled Raff. Keeping off-comms was an irrelevance now. Either this was a friendly escort, in which case they were safe, or they had been found by that hostile force. Whichever it was, there was little point in trying to remain hidden.

The moment the satphone acquired a signal, Jaeger heard the ringtone, followed by an instant answer. But it wasn’t Raff’s voice that came on the line. Instead he could hear what sounded like incoming radio communications from whoever was commanding the mystery flight of Black Hawks. Raff was using the Thuraya link to relay the message to Jaeger and his team.

‘This is unmarked Black Hawk calling Airlander on open means,’ the voice intoned. ‘Confirm you are receiving me. This is unmarked Black Hawk calling Airlander: acknowledge.’

‘Open means’ referred to the non-encrypted general traffic radio frequency that all aircraft monitored. Oddly, the pilot’s voice sounded as if it had a slightly Eastern European – Russian – timbre, the flat, guttural accent for an instant reminding Jaeger of… Narov’s way of speaking.

Narov was glued to the voice blaring out of the satphone, but just for an second she flicked her eyes up to meet Jaeger’s. And in them he detected a look that he had never once expected to see.

Fear.

Jaeger punched out a quick data-burst message: I am live to your comms.

The moment he’d sent it, he heard the gravelly tones of the big Maori come up on the air. ‘Black Hawk, this is Airlander. Affirmative we hear you.’

‘To whom am I speaking?’ the Black Hawk commander asked.

‘Takavesi Raffara, ops officer, Airlander. To whom am I speaking?’

‘Mr Raffara, I ask the questions. I hold all the cards. Put Mr Jaeger on the air.’

‘Negative. I am the ops officer of this aircraft. All comms go via me.’

‘I repeat, put Mr Jaeger on the air.’

‘Negative. All comms go via me,’ Raff repeated.

Jaeger saw the foremost Black Hawk open fire, using its GAU-19, a fearsome six-barrelled 50-calibre Gatling gun. During the three-second burst, the air beneath the helicopter turned black with spent shell casings. In those three short seconds it had pumped out over a hundred armour-piercing rounds, each the size of a small child’s wrist.

The burst of fire had gone a good three hundred yards to the front of the Airlander’s flight deck, but the message it sent was crystal clear. We have the ability to rip you to shreds one hundred times over.

‘The next burst will be bang into your gondola,’ the Black Hawk commander threatened. ‘Put Jaeger on.’

‘Negative. I do not have Jaeger on board my aircraft.’

Raff was choosing his words very carefully. Technically speaking, it was true: Jaeger was not aboard the Airlander.

‘Listen very carefully, Mr Raffara. My navigator has identified a cleared area of land 150 kilometres due east, at grid 497865. You are to put down on that grid. And make no mistake: when you do so, I will need every member of your team accounted for. Confirm you understand my instructions.’

‘Wait out.’

Jaeger heard the bleep of an incoming message on his satphone: Response?

He punched out a reply: They get us down we’re dead. All of us. Resist.

Raff’s voice came up on the air again. ‘Black Hawk, this is Airlander. Negative. We are proceeding to our destination as planned. We are an international team embarked upon a civilian expedition. Do not – repeat, do not – interfere with this flight.’

‘In that case, take a good look at the open door of our lead aircraft,’ the Black Hawk commander countered. ‘You see that figure in the doorway: it is one of your beloved Indians. And as a bonus, we have some of your team members with us too.’

Jaeger’s mind was racing. The enemy must have overrun one of his ambush parties and captured at least some of them alive. From there it would have been easy enough to load them aboard the helicopter, using the Ju 390’s former resting place as a convenient landing zone.

‘I believe some of you may know this savage,’ the Black Hawk commander sneered. ‘His name means “the big pig”. Highly appropriate. Now, watch him fly.’

Moments later a stick-like figure tumbled out of the lead Black Hawk.

Even from such a distance, Jaeger could tell that it was an Amahuaca warrior, silently screaming as he fell. He was quickly swallowed by the cloud mass, but not before Jaeger figured he’d recognised the collar of short feathers strung around his neck – the gwyrag’waja – each feather signifying an enemy killed in battle.

He felt a blinding blaze of rage sweep over him, as the body of what appeared to be Puruwehua’s brother plummeted out of sight. Gwaihutiga had saved Jaeger’s life on the rope bridge, and now he’d very likely been hurled to his death as a result of Jaeger and his team trying to save their own skins. Jaeger smashed his fist into the wall of the aircraft, his mind a whirl of sickening anger and frustration.

‘I have several more of these savages,’ the Black Hawk commander continued. ‘For every minute you do not agree to alter course and bearing to grid 497865, another will be thrown to his death. Oh, and your expedition team – they will also follow. Do as ordered. Alter course. One minute and counting.’

‘Wait out.’

Again Jaeger’s phone bleeped with a message: Response?