Bear Grylls - Ghost Flight

As he tried to shift his weight to his front foot, Jaeger realised how stiff his legs still were. He lost his balance, and an instant later he wiped out. The big wave swallowed him, sucking him under and thrashing him around and around within its roaring, throaty depths.

He felt the raw power of the ocean take hold of him and surrendered himself to it. It was the only way to survive such a massive wipeout. As Jaeger had told his son when he’d first taken him surfing: ‘Take your time. Imagine you have ten seconds to save the world; always spend five of them having milk and cookies.’ It was his way of teaching Luke to stay calm in the storm.

When the wave was done with him, Jaeger knew it would spit him out the far side.

Sure enough, several seconds later he surfaced.

He took a massive gulp of air and felt around for the leash of his board. He found it, pulled the board towards him, climbed on and paddled towards land. Narov was waiting on the sands, victory blazing in her eyes.

It was a week since the epic code-breaking session on Jaeger’s barge, and the Operation Werewolf discovery. The idea of the Bermuda visit had been his. The intention: to spend a few days recharging batteries and making plans, courtesy of Jaeger’s parents.

A rest before the coming fight.

Being a tiny British overseas territory set smack bang in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean, Bermuda was about as far away from any prying eyes as it was possible to get. Jaeger’s parents didn’t even live in the largest settlement, Main Island. They’d made their home in Horseshoe Bay, on the breathtaking territory of Morgan’s Point.

Perfectly isolated. Perfectly beautiful.

And a long way from the hell of the Serra de los Dios…

Oddly enough for one so driven by the mission – by the hunt – Narov had seemed to jump at the chance of paying a visit to this tiny island paradise. Jaeger figured that once they were away from it all, she would be willing to talk at last about her hidden past, and not least her connection to his grandfather.

He’d tried to broach the subject a couple of times in London – but even there Narov had appeared to be stalked by demons.

The Bermuda trip also offered Jaeger the chance to talk to his parents about how Grandpa Ted had died, something that was long overdue. Sure enough, foul play had been suspected, though Jaeger had been too young to pick up on it at the time.

As the police had failed to uncover any evidence, the family had been forced to accept the suicide verdict pretty much at face value. But their suspicions had endured.

Predictably enough, his mother and father had interpreted Jaeger’s arrival with Narov as being something other than what it was. His father had even gone as far as taking Jaeger into his study for a private chat.

He’d remarked upon how Narov – though at times somewhat odd in her mannerisms – was quite beautiful, and how refreshing it was to see Jaeger taking up with a… lady friend once more. Jaeger had pointed out that his father was ignoring one seminal fact – he and Narov were sleeping in separate rooms.

His father had made it clear that he didn’t believe a bit of it. As far as he was concerned, the separate bedrooms act was just that – an act. It was all for show. And with Jaeger’s wife and child absent pushing four years now, his father had made it clear that he and his mother believed it was time.

Time for Jaeger to move on.

Jaeger loved his parents to death. His father in particular had bequeathed to him his joy of all things wild – the sea, mountains, forests. Jaeger hadn’t quite managed to tell him that he’d never felt more convinced that Ruth and Luke were alive. Most probably he’d held off doing so to save his parents any more uncertainty and anguish.

He didn’t really know how to explain his new-found conviction. How could he tell his father that a psychotropic cocktail administered by an Amazon Indian – a brother warrior – had given him back his memories, and with them, his hope?

Surfing done for the morning, he and Narov wandered back towards the house. His parents were out, and Narov went to take a shower, to wash the salt off her skin and hair. Jaeger headed for his bedroom and grabbed his iPad. He needed to check for news of the rest of his team.

Until they were all safely out of the Amazon, he felt uneasy planning the next steps. Of course, simply uncovering the master plan for the return of the Reich – a global Nazi power-grab – didn’t necessarily mean that plan was actually being put into action. But the evidence was all too compelling, and Jaeger feared the worst.

First Andy Smith had been killed, and then Jaeger and his team had been hunted across the Amazon. The Dark Force had done its damnedest to finish them and bury for ever the secrets of the Ju 390 ghost flight. They clearly had a global reach, and some serious technological and military prowess at their disposal. Plus, an official British government file had been snuffed out of existence, disappearing from the archives.

Any which way Jaeger looked at it, the sons of the Reich did indeed appear to be rising. And no one seemed to be aware of it or doing anything much to stop it – apart from him and his small, war-weary team.

When Jenkinson had cracked the Operation Werewolf papers, Jaeger had been tempted to reveal the presence in his grandfather’s war chest of a document with the same title. But something instinctive had held him back. That was a card he’d keep close to his chest until the time was right to play it.

With Colonel Evandro’s help, he had managed to set up a system of secure encrypted email, so that all the surviving team members could communicate in some degree of safety. Or rather, all bar Leticia Santos. Colonel Evandro had his best men, supported by his kidnap, ransom and extortion specialists, out scouring the country, searching for her whereabouts, but so far all leads had come to naught.

Jaeger fired up the iPad and logged on to ProtonMail – the end-to-end email encryption system they were now using. He had one message waiting, from Raff, with good news. In the last twenty-four hours, Lewis Alonzo, Hiro Kamishi and Joe James had surfaced. They had made it out of the Serra de los Dios under the guidance of Puruwehua and some of the neighbouring tribe, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau.

All three were as well as could be expected, and Raff was now working with Colonel Evandro to ensure they were brought home as quickly and safely as possible. Jaeger emailed him back, asking for an update on the search for Leticia Santos.

While he knew there was little he could do to help, a part of him wanted to return to Brazil forthwith to support Colonel Evandro in the hunt. Once he was done in Bermuda, that was what he intended to do, as long as Santos hadn’t been rescued in the interim. He’d vowed to himself that she would be found and brought home safely.

There was a second message waiting in his inbox, this one from Pieter Boerke. He was about to click on it when there was a knock at his door.

It was Narov. ‘I am going out for a run.’

‘Okay,’ Jaeger replied, keeping his eyes on the screen. ‘And when you’re back, maybe we can have that long-overdue chat about how you knew my grandfather. And why you resent me so much.’

Narov paused. ‘Resent you? Maybe not so much now. But yes, in this place, maybe we can talk.’

The door closed and Jaeger opened the message.

First off, download the attached photograph. It’s one I missed in the vaults. Once you’ve got it, dial me on my Skype link. It’ll go through to my cell phone even if I’m out on the move, so you’ll always get me. Do it immediately. Don’t speak to anyone else.

Jaeger did as instructed. The photo was a grainy black-and-white image taken with a long lens. Once again, it was clearly of the Duchessa , and it showed a group of senior Nazi commanders clustered along the ship’s rail. Nothing leaped out at him, so with the image on screen, he pulled up his Skype link and dialled Boerke.