Bear Grylls: The Hunt (Will Jaeger Book 3) Page 12

  The key priority now was to get off the LZ, in case any of the narcos were around. But first, Jaeger needed to check they’d been dropped in the right location. He pulled out his map, compass and GPS. Having used these to verify their grid, he took a compass bearing pretty much due west, checked the map for any obvious features, and signalled the off.

  Heaving his massive pack onto his shoulders, he led the way silently towards the ragged fringe of trees, pushing beneath the canopy, where all was shade and shadow. A hundred yards in, he halted, signalling the others to do likewise. Here they’d execute a listening watch, crouching in silence, using eyes and ears to scrutinise their surroundings.

  If anyone had got wise to their arrival, now was the time they were likely to put in an appearance. Silent and watchful, Jaeger and his team would be ready to mount an ambush, as opposed to blundering into one.

  As he crouched there, letting the sounds, sights and smells of the jungle seep into him, Jaeger felt his mind wander. Losing Ruth again, and in such shocking circumstances, had hit him hard. He’d been totally blindsided. And it hurt. Really hurt.

  He’d barely slept this past week. He had dark bags beneath his eyes. He hoped that the present mission, and the sheer physical exertion, would help drive the worry from his mind.

  Deep in his heart he still loved her. She was the mother of his son, and the woman he had fallen for all those years ago, with those magical green eyes flecked with gold. She could light up a room with her laughter and her razor-sharp sense of humour. But that had been Ruth Jaeger prior to Kammler getting his hands on her.

  If she had been kidnapped, the present mission was the best way – perhaps the only way – of finding her.

  28

  Jaeger made some final adjustments to the straps on his pack and hefted it onto his shoulders.

  He was using his trusted seventy-five-litre ALICE pack, a US military-style bergen designed specifically for jungle work. It came with a strong metal frame, which held the pack a good inch or more off the back and shoulders, allowing air to circulate and helping to prevent prickly heat and skin rubbing raw.

  Most large backpacks were wider than a man’s shoulders, with all sorts of pouches sticking out the sides. As a result, they tended to snag on vegetation. The ALICE pack was no broader than Jaeger’s torso, and all the pouches were slung on the rear. He knew that if his body could squeeze through a gap, his pack would too. Lined with a tough rubberised canoe bag, which made it waterproof, it could also double as a buoyancy aid.

  All four of them were armed with Colt Diemacos, the assault rifle of choice for special forces operators, and BSOB’s standard weapon.

  Recently the Colombian government had made great strides in tackling the narco gangs, but not in this remote area. Here, where the borders of Colombia, Peru and Brazil converged, was a vast lawless region. A swathe of jungle the size of France, it was home to drugs smugglers, people traffickers and illegal mining and logging camps.

  Few here respected frontiers very much.

  For Jaeger and his team it was all about stealth, secrecy and surprise now; about remaining unseen and undetected until the moment they blew their demolitions charges. The plastic explosives, detonators and related kit were an extra burden weighing on their shoulders.

  Jaeger picked out a distinctive tree some fifty yards ahead – his first point to aim for – and set forth. He’d taped a tiny plastic counter to his Diemaco, of the kind an air hostess would use when counting passengers onto a plane. Covered in green gaffer tape – DIY camouflage – it had a push button and a tiny mechanical wheel, presently set to 000.

  After counting ten left footfalls – Jaeger was left-handed, and favoured his left side – he pressed the button, the numbers flicking around to 001. From long experience he knew that ten left footfalls under such a heavy pack amounted to 8.3 metres of terrain covered. When the counter clicked around to 012, he’d know he’d covered the first hundred metres of terrain. At 120 he’d have completed his first kilometre, and so on and so forth. A simple navigational system called ‘pacing and bearing’, this was the bread-and-butter of SAS operations in the jungle. Amidst such dense vegetation, and with the sky obscured by a thick canopy, it was a vital tool in their navigational arsenal.

  Normally Jaeger tended to use a more old-school system: he’d pass a small pebble from one pocket to another, each pass recording paces covered. But right now he needed a system that took less focus, meaning he could concentrate on what lay ahead.

  He was acutely aware of how distracted he was at the moment; how difficult he was finding this. Part of his mind was on Luke and Simon back at home, another part on Ruth, wherever she might be. That left little room for the mission, and he had to get a grip. Right now, Raff, Narov and Alonzo were as reliant upon him as he was on them. He had to shake himself out of it and focus.

  He eyed the vegetation. It was what was termed ‘dirty jungle’ – dense and suffocating. From floor to canopy was a mass of musty, dank, decaying leaf matter, interspersed with half-rotten branches and slabs of fallen bark. Underfoot, a thick layer of mouldy detritus cushioned each footfall, and everywhere thick clouds of bugs misted the hot, moisture-laden air.

  They say you either love the jungle or hate it. Generally, Jaeger was of the former disposition: he thrilled to its raw primeval otherness, the sense of a land lost in time; the sense of entering an environment unchanged by human hand for millennia. But this jungle would test even him.

  There was no slashing through this with a machete. That would leave a trail like a motorway for any bad guys to follow. Instead, he had to wriggle and thread his way through. At each step detritus rained upon him and began to work its way down his back.

  After each hundred paces, Jaeger grabbed his compass where it was slung around his neck and took a new bearing – due west towards another distinctive feature: a vine twisting around a tree trunk, or a broken branch suspended halfway to the forest floor.

  Operating like this meant he didn’t have to keep checking the compass. Instead, he kept eyes on the feature up ahead as he moved. ‘Move like a panther, not a Panzer,’ he’d been told on SAS selection. Stealthy, not tank-like. He’d always remembered.

  He kept both hands on his weapon in the ‘patrol alert’ position – slung low across the body, ready to unleash controlled bursts of fire. Here, being fast on the draw was key to survival.

  In the jungle you were taught to open fire from the hip, putting a burst of rounds into the enemy’s position, forcing them to go to ground. Then you’d take two steps left or right, so when the enemy looked to nail you, you were no longer visible. It was then that you’d bring your weapon into the shoulder to unleash aimed shots, good marksmanship and weapons drills being key.

  After years of practice, this had become instinctive. Second nature. Something that Jaeger didn’t need to consciously think about. Which was fortunate, because right now he was struggling with some particularly nasty undergrowth, plus a mind plagued by dark worries about his loved ones.

  When his counter reached 240, Jaeger called a halt. The others drew in close, down on one knee and heads practically touching. Jaeger pulled out a map as they averaged out the distance they had covered. They were some two kilometres in, with four to go before they reached the ridge overlooking Dodge City, their intended destination.

  Jaeger gulped some water. He felt a dark foreboding about the jungle here, a palpable sense of unwelcome.

  His nerves were on edge; his eyes seeing enemies in every patch of shadow.

  29

  ‘We hit the LZ at 0800,’ Jaeger whispered. ‘We’re three hours in, averaging seven hundred metres per hour. Last light’s at – what – 1900 hours?’

  ‘Under this depth of canopy, 1800, at a push,’ Raff volunteered.

  Jaeger had learnt to trust Raff on most things when it came to the jungle. He scrutinised the map for any signs of serious obstacles, such as ravines or rivers.

  ‘We should make the ridge before dark, but only if we keep up the pace. All good?’

  Three sets of eyes stared back at him, white in the darkness, faces streaked with dirt and grime and rotting leaf matter. None of them were wearing camouflage cream. Years of experience had proved it to be more of a liability than a blessing on a mission such as this.

  Over days spent on covert ops in the jungle, no washing was possible. Camo cream would dry thick and stiff on face and neck. It became unbearably itchy, and it was movement – always – which drew an aggressor’s eye. Raff had long ago taught Jaeger that nature was the best camouflage: ‘Go dirty early.’

  Jaeger stood, his sodden combat fatigues clinging to his skin. They were all dressed the same, in the unmarked jungle uniforms provided by Colonel Evandro. Jaeger’s shirt and trousers were dark with sweat.

  ‘Keep drinking. Keep rehydrating,’ he whispered. ‘The humidity’s off the scale.’

  He pulled out a compact Katadyn filter from his bergen. He dropped the end of the intake tube into a patch of stagnant-looking water and began to pump, refilling each of their water bottles. The Katadyn employed a series of ceramic filters impregnated with silver to remove dirt, bacteria and protozoa – the kind of nasty single-celled parasites that abounded in the Amazon. Unless the water source was contaminated with man-made chemicals – which was highly unlikely here – it could render just about anything drinkable.

  Water bottles replenished, they pushed onwards, Raff now taking point, a sense of urgency driving them.

  By the time they reached the base of the ridge, Narov was leading. Jaeger joined her as she studied the slope that reared before them. He eyed her for a second. She seemed to be in bad shape, even considering what they’d just been through. She was limping, and Jaeger figured she’d yet to fully recover from her Dubai injuries. Typically, she’d said not a word, despite carrying the same load as the others.

  The heat and humidity had been building through the day, and now they faced a stiff climb with little light remaining. In truth, Jaeger felt like death himself. He was light-headed, soaked to the skin with sweat, and had a pounding headache. First signs of a lack of fluids. Exhaustion and a rapid deterioration in his mental capacity would quickly follow if he let the dehydration really set in.

  They’d done their best to keep the fluids going down, replenishing their bottles every two hours, then filter, drink, repeat. But even so, Jaeger had just sweated the liquid out again. It was the same for all of them, sweat running off like water in a shower.

  He glanced to the west, where beams of sunlight were filtering low through the canopy. Last light was maybe forty minutes off, and with sundown it would grow dark as the grave. Only ten per cent of the light filtered through the jungle canopy, so even with a full moon and stars, visibility would be zero.

  Every second was precious now.

  Jaeger glanced at Raff. ‘You good for the recce ascent?’

  Raff nodded. Without a word, they dropped their packs. Jaeger turned to Narov and Alonzo. ‘Keep drinking, and get some food down you too.’

  Narov glanced at Alonzo. ‘Typical Jaeger,’ she grated. ‘Treats us like children.’

  Jaeger grimaced. Typical Irina Narov, more like.

  He and Raff started the climb with only the bare necessities – weapons, compass, plus a couple of water bottles – to hand. They fought their way upwards, mouthing silent curses as rotten vegetation and dirt gave way underfoot. The temptation was always to use your assault rifle as some kind of walking stick, which would free up one hand to grab at branches.

  But tradecraft forbade it. You needed your weapon always at the ready, and free from dirt and vegetation.

  Digging in with his tough Salewa boots, and clambering over the last of the fallen tree trunks, Jaeger approached the high point. They needed to move with extreme caution. Here the vegetation thinned and it was rocky underfoot. Sunlight broke through, bathing the terrain in fine evening light. The last thing they needed was to be silhouetted on the skyline.

  Jaeger dropped to his hands and knees, Raff doing likewise. They crawled ahead, waiting for the terrain to fall away on the far side. There should be nothing between them and the narco base but half a kilometre of open air. They found an opening in the low tree cover and inched forward, lifting their heads slowly.

  Before them, the ridge plunged away. Smack-bang ahead lay a clearing hacked out of the thick jungle – the base of Los Niños. Two things struck Jaeger: one, it was simply massive; and two, there was a well-used dirt airstrip that ran along the southern edge of the clearing.

  Burnt stumps marked where the forest had been stripped away, the underlying soil laid bare to form the landing strip, like an angry red scar. To the north lay the base, resembling some kind of a frontier town – all galvanised-iron roofs and rough dirt streets. Two of the buildings were huge, as though a pair of giant warehouses had been parachuted into the jungle.

  Those, Jaeger figured, were the drugs processing and storage facilities, where the raw coca paste was refined into pure cocaine. From there it would be loaded aboard aircraft and flown north at low level en route to the USA.

  Some would doubtless be routed east, on an island-hopping journey across the Atlantic, bound for some of the less law-abiding states in Africa. There, the narcos had set up transit points for shipping the deadly white powder north into Europe.

  Everyone at all levels was paid off, and no one tended to ask too many questions. Those who did invariably ended up dead.

  As Jaeger gazed down upon Dodge, he just hoped their fate wouldn’t be the same.

  30

  Several roads bisected Dodge, each a rust-red highway that terminated in a dark wall of trees. At the far end of one lay a rectangular expanse of flat ground, with a sagging set of football posts at either end. Like kids anywhere, El Padre’s child soldiers needed to boot a ball around after a hard day’s graft.

  Jaeger could see 4x4s buzzing along the dirt roads. Stick-like figures were crammed into the vehicles. He didn’t doubt that most of them were armed. All in all, he reckoned the base was a good kilometre square. This was a serious operation; they had to be running industrial-scale quantities out of here.

  But Hank Kammler here, in such a remote and lawless outpost? Or Ruth? To Jaeger that just didn’t add up. Plus what reason would El Padre possibly have for dabbling in uranium trafficking? That was a whole different level of bad than narcotics.

  Smuggling cocaine was one thing. Smuggling the raw material for a nuclear weapon – that was inviting a world of unwanted attention and trouble. If El Padre was messing with highly enriched uranium, the powers-that-be would have every excuse to flatten this place.

  With the amount of cash that was obviously being spun out of the drugs trade, why would anyone take the risk? It was tantamount to suicide. Any way Jaeger looked at it, it didn’t make sense.

  They inched backwards into the tree cover.

  ‘Well, the nav’s been spot-on,’ Raff rumbled, ‘but buggered if the place isn’t massive.’

  ‘Yeah. A major facility, with several hundred men needed to run and guard it.’

  ‘Plus the wife and kids.’

  Raff was right: Jaeger hadn’t missed the smaller figures dashing about the dirt streets. Many of the narco workers had brought their families. And as both men were well aware, that complicated matters: neither of them was keen to get into a fight that risked women and children getting caught in the crossfire.

  Jaeger glanced around at their ridgetop location. ‘Positions? Defences?’

  ‘Keep two on permanent watch, looking west with eyes on. And the others in the rear, resting. The ridge’s northern wall falls away almost vertical, so no one’s about to take us from there. East is the slope we just climbed: no one’s coming up that without us knowing it. South the ridge rolls on for a good few kilometres. That’s the main threat.’

  Jaeger nodded. ‘Agreed. Let’s go.’

  As silently and swiftly as they could, they dropped down. The last of the light was fading to deep shadow by the time they reached the foot of the descent. Jaeger gave a quick heads-up before they all heaved up their bergens and began the climb.

  It soon became clear that Narov was having real problems. She was moving slowly, and twice she took a fall, once collapsing against a tree and the next time plunging face forward, awkwardly catching her side on a rock.

  Finally, wordlessly, Jaeger managed to prise away her assault rifle and pass it to Alonzo, whilst he and Raff each took one of her arms and more or less propelled her up the steep slope.

  Narov hated accepting the help and didn’t offer the slightest word of thanks, despite the fact that it was almost dark by the time they reached the top. Another few minutes on the slope and she would have been trapped there in pitch darkness.

  They crawled across to the point that Jaeger and Raff had selected as their base of operations – their observation post, or OP. Jaeger gave Narov and Alonzo a quick brief about their position, plus the orientation of the narco gang’s base.

  ‘I’m setting an ERV seven hundred metres due east, so at the base of the slope we just climbed,’ he explained. ‘If we’re hit, or split up, that’s where we regroup.’ ERV stood for emergency rendezvous point, which pretty much did what it said on the tin.

  That decided, Jaeger went about making contact with their Falkenhagen headquarters. He pulled out a compact military-spec Thuraya satphone and punched in a short message: In position. Grid 183746. Nothing further. Out.

  Using an inbuilt cipher programme, he encoded the message, sending it in data burst, which basically meant it was compressed to a tiny fraction of its size, taking barely a split second to bounce to the satellite orbiting high overhead, and from there to where Peter Miles would be listening.