Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

The call went through to a building stuffed full of the world’s most advanced signals intercept and tracking systems. Next to the entryway to that building was a small brass plaque. It read: CIA – Division of Asymmetric Threat Analysis (DATA).

A figure dressed in smart–casual civilian clothes answered. ‘DATA. Harry Peterson.’

‘It’s me,’ Grey Wolf announced. ‘I’m inbound on the Learjet and I need you to find that individual I sent you the file on. Jaeger. William Jaeger. Use all possible means: internet, email, mobile phones, flight bookings, passport details – anything . Last known location, western Brazil, near the Bolivia–Peru border.’

‘Understood, sir.’

Grey Wolf killed the call.

He settled back into his seat. Things certainly hadn’t gone so well in the Amazon, but this was just a skirmish, he told himself. One of many such battles fought in a far longer war; a war that he and his forefathers had been fighting since the spring of 1945.

A setback, certainly, but a manageable one, and nothing compared to some they had suffered in the past.

He reached for a sleek-looking tablet computer lying on the table before him. He powered it up and opened a file, revealing a list of names in alphabetical order. He ran the cursor down the list and typed a few words beside one of them: Missing in action. If alive, terminate. PRIORITY.

That done, he picked up an attaché case lying beside him, laid it on the table and slipped the tablet inside. He closed the lid with a resounding click, flicking the combination lock so it was securely fastened.

On the lid of the attaché case in small gold lettering were the words: Hank Kammler, Deputy Director, CIA.

Hank Kammler – AKA Grey Wolf – ran his fingertips gently, reverentially, over the embossing. At the end of the war his father had been forced to change his name. SS Oberst-Gruppenführer Hans Kammler had become Horace Kramer – the better to ease his recruitment into the Office for Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. As he’d worked his way up through the CIA into its highest ranks, Horace Kramer had never lost sight of his true mission: to hide in plain sight, to regroup and to rebuild the Reich.

By the time his father’s life was cut prematurely short, Hank Kammler had decided to take up the mantle and follow him into the CIA. Kammler smiled to himself thinly, an edge of mockery creeping into his eyes. As if he would ever have been content quietly serving as a CIA man, forgetting the glory of his Nazi forefathers.

Recently, he’d opted to recover what was rightfully his. Born Hank Kramer, he’d changed his surname formally to Kammler – thus reclaiming the legacy of his father, and what he saw as his birthright.

And as far as he was concerned, that reclamation was only just beginning.

Jaeger settled into his seat for the short connecting flight to Bioko airport.

The flight from London to Nigeria had been all that he’d expected – fast, direct and comfortable, although this time his budget hadn’t quite stretched to first class. At Lagos he’d boarded some clapped-out regional airliner for the short jump across the Gulf of Guinea to the island capital of Equatorial Guinea.

The contact that he’d had from Pieter Boerke had been as unexpected as it had been intriguing. Some two weeks after bailing out of that doomed warplane as it plunged towards the jungle, Jaeger had made it out to a place of relative safety – Cachimbo airbase. And it was at Cachimbo that Boerke had managed to get a call through to him.

‘I have your papers,’ the South African had announced. ‘The seventh page of the manifest, just like you asked for.’

Jaeger hadn’t had the heart to tell Boerke that the last thing on his mind right then was an obscure Second World War cargo ship that had docked in Bioko’s harbour towards the end of the war. He’d asked the coup leader to scan the papers and email them over. He hadn’t quite got the answer he’d been expecting.

‘No, man; no can do,’ Boerke had told him. ‘You have to come see, in person. Because, my friend, this isn’t just papers. There’s something physical. Something I can’t email or post. Trust me, man – you have to come see.’

‘You got a hint?’ Jaeger had asked. ‘It’s a long way to fly. Plus, after the last few weeks—’

‘Put it this way,’ Boerke had cut in. ‘I am not a Nazi. In fact, I hate bloody Nazis. I am not the grandson of one, either. But if I were, I’d go a very long way – in fact I’d go to the ends of the earth, and maybe even have a lot of people killed – to make sure this never saw the light of day. That’s all I am willing to say. Trust me, Jaeger, you need to be here.’

Jaeger had considered his options. He was working on the assumption that Alonzo, Kamishi and Joe James were still alive, and being guided by the surviving Indians to a place where they could rejoin the outside world. He felt pretty certain that Gwaihutiga was dead, thrown from the Black Hawk along with Stefan Kral, their seemingly traitorous cameraman.

As for Leticia Santos, she was still missing, fate unknown. Colonel Evandro had promised to do all he could to find her, and Jaeger reckoned he and his B-SOB teams would leave no stone unturned.

Jaeger’s ruse with getting the Airlander to jettison the Ju 390 had doubtless saved the lives of the airship’s crew, Raff included. The Black Hawk had been forced to chase after the warplane as it had accelerated into its gliding dive, leaving the Airlander to limp in to Cachimbo.

Dale had managed to injure himself when his parachute had ploughed into the jungle canopy, and Narov had taken a shrapnel wound to the arm as the Dark Force had blasted their way into the Ju 390 cockpit. But Jaeger had managed to link up with them both on the ground and help get them moving – although it had been touch and go whether they would make it out of there.

Typically, both Dale and Narov had claimed that they’d suffered only flesh wounds and were quite capable of surviving the onward journey. Jaeger had worried that in the hot and humid jungle, and with little chance of rest, proper nutrition or medical treatment, their injuries were at risk of turning septic.

Still, he’d realised there was little chance of either Narov or Dale listening to his concerns – and in any case, there was precious little he could do to help right now. Either they made it out of the jungle under their own steam, or they would die.

Jaeger had located a small stream, and they’d followed that for two days, moving only as fast as their condition allowed. Eventually the stream had led to a tributary, leading in turn to a larger river, one that turned out to be navigable. As luck would have it, Jaeger had managed to flag down a passing timber barge – one used to shunt tree trunks downriver towards the sawmills.

A three-day river trip had followed, during which the greatest danger seemed to be Narov falling out with the drunken Brazilian captain. But only for so long.

Once Narov and Dale were aboard ship, the infections that Jaeger had feared might take hold did, and with a vengeance. By the time their journey was over – Jaeger delivering them to Cachimbo airbase and its state-of-the-art high-security hospital via a local taxi cab – they both had raging fevers.

They were diagnosed with septicaemia: their wounds had become infected and turned the entire circulatory system septic. In Dale’s case at least, the situation was exacerbated by acute exhaustion. They’d been rushed into intensive care, and were now getting treatment under Colonel Evandro’s careful watch and guard.

Having got those he could out of the worst of the danger – and with little else he could do to help Leticia Santos – Jaeger had figured he could risk booking himself a flight from Brazil to Bioko. He’d made sure the colonel kept him briefed every step of the way.