Authors: Bear Grylls
The SOAR coin felt cold, thick and heavy in his hand. It had the unit’s badge displayed across one face, with their motto on the other:
Death Waits in the Dark
. It was a tradition in the American military to give your unit coin to a fellow warrior, one for which the British military sadly didn’t have an equivalent.
Jaeger felt honoured to have that coin, and he was determined to carry it through the coming expedition.
‘So, I did a three-sixty-degree scan,’ the pilot continued. ‘Sure enough, some kind of small civilian aircraft had powered over the horizon and was keeping track with us. The longer it stayed there, hanging in my blind spot, the more certain I was we had a tail. It’s still there, keeping maybe a good four miles back, and we’re an hour-twenty into the flight.
‘Figure from its radar signature it’s somethin’ like a Learjet 85,’ the pilot continued. ‘Small, fast, ultra-slick private passenger jet. You want me to dial them up and ask them what the hell they’re doing sticking their nose up our ass?’
Jaeger thought about it for a second. Typically, an aircraft behaving like this one would be on a surveillance mission – trying to discover what the guys in front might be up to. Many a war had been won or lost on the strength of who had the best intelligence, and Jaeger for one never liked to be spied on.
‘Any chance it’s a coincidence? Maybe a commercial flight that happened to be on the same vector and cruise speed as us?’
The pilot shook his head. ‘Not a hope. Learjet 85 cruises at up to forty-nine thousand feet. We’re at thirty thousand – jump height. Pilots always fly at different altitudes, to de-conflict the airspace. And a Learjet cruises a good hundred knots faster than a Herc.’
‘Any way they can cause us trouble?’ Jaeger queried. ‘With the jump?’
‘Learjet versus a Super Hercules.’ The pilot guffawed. ‘I’d like to see ’em try.’ He eyed Jaeger. ‘But he’s hanging back and sticking in our blind spot. Make no mistake – we got us a tail.’
‘Let’s just leave them thinking we don’t know they’re there. Gives us more options that way.’
The pilot nodded. ‘Guess so. Keep ’em guessing.’
‘Maybe it’s a friendly agency?’ Jaeger suggested. ‘Keen to see what we’re up to here?’
The pilot shrugged. ‘Could be. But you know what they say: presumption is the mother of all screw-ups.’
Jaeger smiled. That had been one of their favourite sayings in the SAS. ‘Let’s assume whoever’s tailing us isn’t Santa Claus with a sleighload of presents. Keep a close eye. Let me know if anything changes.’
‘Got it,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘Meantime, we’ll keep it straight and steady, so you can grab some more zees.’
Jaeger leaned back and tried to sleep, but he felt strangely restless. Any which way he looked at it, he didn’t have a clue what to make of that unidentified plane. He stuffed the pilot’s Night Stalkers coin deep into his pocket, his hand brushing against a folded piece of paper. He’d almost forgotten it was there.
Shortly before leaving Rio de Janeiro, he had received an unexpected email. It was from Simon Jenkinson, the archivist. With Jaeger taking neither laptop nor smartphone on the coming expedition – they’d have zero chance of electricity or a mobile signal where they were heading – he’d printed out a copy.
He ran his eye over the message again now.
You asked me to keep you posted if I turned up anything interesting. Kew Archives just opened a new file under the 70-year rule: AVIA 54/1403A. When I saw it I couldn’t believe it. Mind-blowing. Scary, almost. Strikes me as being something the authorities would never have allowed released if censors were doing their job properly.
I’ve asked for a copy of the entire file, but it usually takes an age. I will email over full documents once I have them. I managed to sneak a few photos via iPhone of the highlights. One is attached. Key name is Hans Kammler, or SS Oberst-Gruppenführer Hans Kammler as he was during the war. Make no mistake, Kammler is the key.
The National Archives, based in Kew, west London, contained vaults of documents from the workings of the British government reaching back over many centuries. You were free to go and view them in person, but you had to order copies of any you wished to take away and study further. It was strictly forbidden to copy them yourself.
The fact that Jenkinson had sneaked photos via his iPhone impressed Jaeger greatly.
Clearly the archivist had hidden reserves of steel.
Or maybe the documents had just seemed so extraordinary – so ‘mind-blowing’, as Jenkinson had put it – that he hadn’t been able to resist breaking a few rules.
Jaeger had downloaded Jenkinson’s attached photo. It had shown a blurry image of an intelligence briefing from Britain’s wartime Air Ministry. Across the top was stamped in red:
MOST SECRET – ULTRA:
To be kept under lock and key and never to be removed from this office
.
It read:
Signal intercept, 3rd February 1945. Translates as follows:
From the Führer to Special Plenipotentiary of the Führer, Hans Kammler, SS Oberst-Gruppenführer and General of the Waffen SS.
Subject: Führer’s Special Task – reference
Aktion Adlerflug
(Operation Eagle’s Flight).
Status:
Kriegsentscheidend
(beyond top secret).
Action: Kammler, as Führer’s plenipotentiary, is to take command of all German Air Ministry departments, personnel, both flying and non-flying, allotment and development of aircraft, and all other supply matters including fuel and ground organisation, including airfields. Kammler’s Reichssportfeld HQ to be headquarters for all allocation of equipment and supplies.
Kammler to be put in charge of programme to move vital armament industries beyond enemy reach. Kammler to form relocation commando reporting centres, equipped with Squadron 200 (LKW Junkers) tasked with removal of armaments systems, evacuation and transport, with a view to appropriate redistribution to pre-identified safe havens.
Jenkinson had added an explanatory note to the effect that the LKW Junkers was an alternative Nazi designation for the Ju 390.
Jaeger had googled the word ‘plenipotentiary’. As far as he could discern, it meant a special emissary granted extraordinary powers. In other words, Kammler had been Hitler’s right-hand man and go-getter, empowered to do whatever was necessary.
Jenkinson’s email was tantalising. It seemed to suggest that Hans Kammler had been tasked to remove the Nazis’ key weaponry at the end of the war, putting it out of reach of the Allies. And if Jenkinson was right, the means to do so may well have been a squadron of giant Ju 390 warplanes.
Jaeger had emailed Jenkinson asking for a sense of what the entire Kammler file might signify. But he’d received no reply, or at least not before he’d boarded the flight into the heart of the Amazon. He had had to reconcile himself to getting no further clarification – or at least not until the expedition was complete.
‘P-Hour minus twenty.’ The pilot’s announcement broke Jaeger’s reverie. ‘Weather reports good and clear; approach course unchanged.’
There was a bitterly cold draught blowing through the aircraft’s hold. Jaeger bashed his frozen hands together to try to work some life into them. He’d kill for a steaming cup of coffee right now.
The Super Hercules was some 200 kilometres east of their release point. Via a bunch of mind-boggling calculations – taking into account the wind speed and direction at 30,000 feet and all altitudes in between – they’d calculated the exact point in the sky from which they needed to jump.
From there, it would be a forty-kilometre glide into the sandbar.
‘P minus ten,’ the pilot intoned.
Jaeger got to his feet.
To his right he saw a line of figures likewise levering themselves off their seats, stamping stiff legs to drive out the cold. He bent and clipped his heavy rucksack on to the front of his parachute harness, using a series of thick steel clips – carabiners – to do so. When he jumped, the pack would be left hanging from his chest, suspended on a pulley system.
‘P minus eight,’ the pilot announced.
Jaeger’s pack weighed in at thirty-five kilograms. He had a similar weight of parachute gear strapped to his back. Plus he was carrying fifteen kilos of weaponry and ammo, and the oxygen-breathing system.
Approaching ninety kilos in all.
More than his own bodyweight.
Jaeger was five foot nine and lithe with it, every inch honed and toned muscle. People tended to think of elite forces types as being monsters, true man mountains. Sure, there were some – like Raff – who were simply massive, but a greater proportion were like Jaeger: leopard-slim, fast and deadly.
The lead PD stepped back so they could all see him. He flashed up five fingers:
P minus five
. Jaeger couldn’t hear the pilot any more; he’d unplugged from the intercom system. From now on the jump would all be done via hand signals.
The PD held up his right fist and blew into it. His fingers opened as he did so, like a spreading flower. He held up five fingers, flashing them twice. It was the signal for wind speed at ground level: ten knots. Jaeger breathed a sigh of relief. Ten knots was doable for making the landing.
He busied himself tightening straps one last time and double-checking his gear. The PD flashed three fingers in front of his goggled face: three minutes to the jump. It was time to link up with Irina Narov for the tandem.
Jaeger turned to face the rear of the Hercules. He shuffled ahead, lifting his heavy rucksack with one hand and using the other to hold himself steady against the aircraft’s side. He needed to get as near to the ramp as possible before his fellow jumper was strapped on.
From up ahead he heard a dull and hollow thunk. It was followed by a mechanical whine and an icy inrush of air. The ramp had cracked open and begun to lower, and with each foot a howling gale blew ever more powerfully into the hold.
As he moved closer to the churning slipstream, Jaeger half expected to hear the first notes of Wagner blasting out of the aircraft’s speakers. It was around now that the pilot would normally start the music.
Instead he caught a burst of wild and savage guitar riffs, followed an instant later by the thumping percussion of drums. Then the high-pitched manic voice of the lead singer of an iconic heavy rock band cut in . . .
It was
AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’
.
The pilot was a Night Stalker all right: he’d clearly decided they were going to do this his way.
The maniacal chorus struck up just as the lead PD manhandled a figure towards Jaeger: Irina Narov – ready for the strap-on.
Highway to hell . . .
The pilot – plus the song’s very title – seemed to be suggesting that Jaeger and his team were on a one-way trip to damnation.
Were they? Jaeger wondered. Were they heading into hell?
Was that where this mission was taking them?
He hoped and prayed that a far better fate awaited them in the jungle.
Yet a part of him feared they were jumping into the worst kind of torment amongst the Mountains of the Gods.
24
Jaeger did his best to blank the crazed, frenzied singing from his head. For a moment he locked eyes with the tall, finely muscled Russian woman standing before him. She looked to be in perfect shape: there didn’t appear to be an ounce of excess weight anywhere on her sparse frame.
Jaeger didn’t know exactly what he expected to read in her gaze.
Apprehension? Fear?
Or maybe something approaching panic?
Narov was ex-Spetsnaz, about the nearest the Russians had to the SAS. By rights, as a former Spetsnaz officer she should be shit hot. But Jaeger had known many a top soldier crap out when on the brink of diving off the ramp into the freezing, screaming blue.
At this kind of height the curvature of the earth would be clearly visible, stretching away to the pencil-slim horizon. Jumping off a C-130’s ramp was daunting enough at the best of times. When doing so from the very outer reaches of earth’s atmosphere it was a total leap of faith, and it could be terrifying as hell.
But as he looked into Narov’s ice-blue eyes, all Jaeger could detect was an unreadable, inscrutable calm. A surprising emptiness filled them; a resolute stillness – almost as if nothing, not even a 30,000-foot dive into the churning void, could reach her.
She flicked her gaze away from his, turned her back on him and adopted the position.
They shuffled closer.
On a tandem, you jumped both facing the same direction. Jaeger’s parachute should be enough to stem their combined fall, giving them an expanse of shared silk to glide under all the way to the touchdown. The PDs standing to either side proceeded to strap the two of them together, vice-tight.
Jaeger had tandemed up scores of times before. He knew he shouldn’t be feeling as he was – awkward and uncomfortable at having another human being in such close proximity to his person.
Before now he’d always tandemed with a fellow elite operator; a brother warrior. Someone he knew well and would gladly fight back-to-back with, if ever the shit went down. He felt far from comfortable getting strapped skin-tight to a total stranger, and a woman.
Narov was also the person in his team that he least trusted right now: his chief suspect for Andy Smith’s murder. Yet he couldn’t deny it – her striking good looks were getting under his skin. However much he might try to zone out such thoughts and tune into the jump, it just wasn’t happening.
It wasn’t helped by the music – AC/DC’s wild lyrics pounding into his skull.
Jaeger glanced behind him. It was all happening fast now.
He could see the PDs rolling the two para-tubes forward on the rails that ran the length of the hold. Kamishi and Krakow shuffled ahead, and bent as if in prayer over the bulky containers. The PDs proceeded to strap the para-tubes to their chest harnesses. The two jumpers would roll the tubes ahead and leap out with them, just seconds after Jaeger and Narov were gone.