Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

‘Smithy fell to his death?’ Jaeger demanded, incredulous. ‘Impossible. The man was bloody indestructible. He was a master on the hills.’

The room fell silent. Feaney stared at his beer bottle, trouble clouding his eyes. ‘The cops say his blood alcohol level was way off the scale. They say he drank a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, went up on the hills and stumbled to his death in the darkness.’

Jaeger’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘Bullshit. Smithy drank even less than I do.’

‘Mate, that’s exactly what we told them. The police. But they’re sticking to their story: death by misadventure, with more than a hint of suicide.’

‘Suicide?’ Jaeger exploded. ‘What in God’s name would Smithy have need to kill himself for? Wife and kids like that? Dream mission like this to lead? Come on: suicide . Get real. Smithy had everything to live for.’

‘You’d best tell him, Feaney.’ It was Raff, and his voice was tight with barely suppressed anger. ‘ Everything .’

Feaney visibly braced himself for what was coming. ‘When Smithy was found, his lungs were half full of water. Cops claim he’d lain all night in the lashing rain and breathed it in. They also claim that the fall killed him pretty much instantly. Clean broke his neck. Well, you can’t breathe in water when you’re dead. The water had to have got in there whilst he was still alive.’

‘So what’re you saying?’ Jaeger glanced from Feaney to Raff and back again. ‘You saying he was waterboarded ?’

Raff curled his fingers around his beer bottle, knuckles white. ‘Lungs half full of water. Dead men don’t breathe. Go figure. Plus, there’s more.’ He glanced at Feaney, the bottle twisting under his tightening grip.

Feaney reached below the table and pulled out a plastic folder. He removed a photo, sliding it across to Jaeger.

‘Police gave it to us. We went to the morgue anyway, to double-check. That mark; that symbol – it was carved into Andy’s left shoulder.’

Jaeger stared at the image, an icy chill running up his spine. Cut deep into his former second-in-command’s skin was a crudely stylised eagle. It was standing on its tail, cruelly hooked beak thrown to its right and wings stretched wide, talons grasping a bizarre circular form.

Feaney reached forward, stabbing a finger at the photo. ‘We can’t place it. The eagle symbol. Doesn’t seem to mean much of anything to anyone. And trust me, we’ve asked.’ He glanced at Jaeger. ‘Police argue it’s just some arbitrary pseudo-military image. That Smithy did it to himself. Self-harm. Part of the case they’re building for suicide.’

Jaeger couldn’t speak. He’d barely registered Feaney’s words. He was unable to tear his eyes away from that image. Somehow the sight of it eclipsed even the horrors he’d suffered in Black Beach Prison.

The longer he stared at that dark eagle symbol, the more he felt it burn into his brain. It summoned terrible memories hidden deep within him.

It was so alien yet so familiar somehow, and it threatened to drag those long-buried memories back to the surface, kicking and screaming.

Jaeger grabbed the heavy bolt-croppers and clambered over the fence. Luckily, the security at east London’s Springfield Marina never had been too hot. He’d left Bioko with the clothes he stood up in. He’d certainly had zero time to grab his keys – including those that opened the gates leading into the marina.

Still, it was his boat and he saw no reason why he shouldn’t break into his own home.

He’d brought the bolt-croppers at a local store. Before leaving Raff and Feaney he’d asked them – plus Carson, Wild Dog Media’s MD – for forty-eight hours. Two days in which to decide if he was up for taking over from where Smithy had left off – leading this seemingly ill-fated expedition into the Amazon.

But despite the time he’d asked for, Jaeger knew he really wasn’t kidding anyone. Already, they had him: for so many reasons, he just couldn’t refuse.

First off, he owed Raff. The big Maori had saved his life. Unless Pieter Boerke’s mercenary forces had liberated Bioko in record time, Jaeger would have perished in Black Beach Prison – his passing unnoticed by a world from which he had so utterly withdrawn.

Second, he owed Andy Smith. And Jaeger didn’t leave his friends hanging. Not ever. There was no way Smithy had taken his own life. He intended to triple-check, of course. Just to be absolutely certain. But he sensed that his friend’s death had to be linked to that mystery air wreck lying deep in the Amazon. What other reason – what other motive – was there?

Jaeger had an instinctive feeling that Smithy’s killer was amongst the expedition team. The way to find them had to be to join their number and flush them out from the inside.

Thirdly, there was the aircraft itself. From the little that Adam Carson had been able to tell him over the phone, it had sounded intriguing. Irresistible. Like the Winston Churchill quote Feaney had attempted – it absolutely was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Jaeger found the draw of it utterly compelling.

No. He was already decided: he was going.

He’d asked for the forty-eight hours for entirely different reasons. There were three visits he intended to make; three investigations to undertake – and he would be doing so without breathing a word to anyone. Maybe the last few years had left him deeply distrustful. Unable to put his faith in anyone any more.

Maybe the three years in Bioko had rendered him something of a loner; too at home with his own company.

But maybe it was also better – safer – that way. It was how he would survive.

Jaeger took the path that skirted around the marina, his boots crunching through the slick, rain-soaked gravel. It was late afternoon by now, dusk settling over the marina, cooking smells drifting across the still winter water.

The scene – the brightly painted boats, smoke curling lazily from funnels – was all so out of kilter with the leafless, washed-out February greys of the canal basin. Three long years. Jaeger felt as if he’d been away a lifetime.

He came to a halt at the mooring two before his own. The lights were on in Annie’s barge, the old wood-burning stove puffing and smoking wheezily. He climbed aboard, poking his head unannounced through the open hatchway that led into the galley.

‘Hi, Annie. It’s me. You got my spare keys?’

A face looked up at him, eyes staring fearfully wide. ‘ Will ? My God… But where on earth… We all thought… I mean, we were worried that you’d…’

‘Died?’ Jaeger flashed a smile. ‘I’m no ghost, Annie. I’ve been away. Teaching. In Africa. I’m back.’

Annie shook her head, confused. ‘My God… We knew you were a still-waters-run-deep type. But three years in Africa… I mean, one day you were here. The next gone, without a word to anyone.’

There was more than a little injury in Annie’s tone, not to mention resentment.

With his grey-blue eyes and dark hair worn longish, Jaeger was handsome in a chiselled, slightly gaunt and wolfish way. There was barely the faintest streak of silver to his head of hair, and he looked younger than his years.

He’d never shared many personal details with the others on the marina – Annie included – but he’d proven to be a reliable and loyal neighbour, not to mention one who was always on the lookout for his fellow boaties. The community prided itself on being close. That was part of what had drawn Jaeger to it; that, plus the promise of having a home base with one foot in the heart of London, the other in the wide-open countryside.

The marina lay on the River Lee, in the Lee Valley which formed a ribbon of green that stretched north into open meadows and rolling hills. Jaeger would return here after a day’s work on the Global Challenger and pound the riverside paths, running the tension out of his system and some much-needed fitness back in.