Bear Grylls: The Hunt (Will Jaeger Book 3) Page 16

  Kammler walked on, making for his quarters. There he would have the benefit of an altogether different kind of companion from Steve Jones. One who was intellectual. Educated. Cultured. As convinced as he was that the world could only be saved if the vast majority of humankind were to be exterminated.

  He strode into his study. ‘My dear, I have good and bad news. Which would you prefer first?’

  ‘The bad,’ a female voice answered from an adjoining room.

  ‘The power-station busters – they need to be forty-kilo devices to achieve our goal.’

  ‘And the good?’

  ‘I think we have enough raw material. In fact, I’m sure we do.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’

  ‘In a nutshell, in pretty good shape. We’ll need a little luck on our side, but when did good fortune ever desert the faithful, the constant, the brave?’

  ‘So we cull the human population to something a little more sustainable?’

  ‘We do. We remove a plague from the earth. And not a moment too soon in my book.’

  ‘And my family? Or at least those I still care for. What about them?’

  ‘You’ll have plenty of warning, as will we all. We’ll get our loved ones – the chosen – to safety.’

  ‘I have your word on that?’

  ‘You have my word.’ Kammler paused. ‘Now, Falkenhagen. Tell me again what you learnt about its defences.’

  40

  Colonel Evandro had been inundated with volunteers. Few had wanted to miss out on the sting. Unsurprisingly, as far as Jaeger was concerned, the colonel had been its single greatest advocate, once Jaeger had shared the proposition with him.

  Station 15 had taken a little disguising. They’d run down the Brazilian flag and sloshed some paint over the few obvious military insignia, shoving the Super Pumas into a distant hangar. The colonel had also set up extra floodlights to illuminate the incoming aircraft when it taxied to a standstill on the runway. That way the pilot would be partially blinded, and less likely to notice any anomalies.

  Not that Colonel Evandro figured there were any.

  He’d even gone as far as getting his BSOB engineers to weld together some crude iron baskets on stakes, which had been planted along either side of the dirt strip. They were burning fiercely now: DIY landing lights – an added touch of authenticity.

  Peter Miles had taken a little more persuading, but once he’d checked into the history – the Lebanon sting by the team of former SAS – he’d seemed happy. A few calls to Daniel Brooks, and some due diligence on the science and technology, and Miles had really started to come onside.

  Apparently Narov was right. Refined tungsten ingots and highly enriched uranium appeared almost exactly the same: an insanely heavy silver-grey metal. It would take a metallurgist with some fancy equipment to tell the two apart, and then only once he’d dismantled the lead sarcophagus making up the radiation shield.

  And no way was all that going to happen in Dodge.

  But the clincher had been getting hold of the DEA’s files on Operation Angeldust. Angeldust was a little more complicated and technically accomplished than Jaeger had remembered it, but the basics were just as he’d described them. After reading the file, Miles had come fully on board.

  Brooks had taken charge of building the fake shipment that Colonel Evandro’s men would switch with the incoming cargo of uranium. In the depths of some woodland in a small, unmarked hangar in rural Virginia – one of the CIA’s many black facilities – a specialist team had been ordered to drop everything else and concentrate on the task.

  Brooks’s demolitions expert, Theo Wallis – something of a magician with anything that could be made to go bang – realised from the get-go that the device would have to be a trade-off between maximum destructive power and the amount of space the explosive charge would need.

  His greatest challenge was the incredibly small volume that the tungsten ingots would occupy. His chosen explosive, RDX, had a density of 1.8 grams per cubic centimetre, as opposed to tungsten’s 19.25 grams. Volume for volume, it weighed less than a tenth of the tungsten ingots within which he would need to conceal the charge.

  RDX was actually a World War II-era explosive, but it remained one of the most powerful available. It had had an interesting history. The story went that in the process of developing the explosive, Britain’s Research Department 11 blew itself to smithereens – hence the name RDX, short for ‘Research Department X’.

  X – as, in the past. Dead and gone. An irony that Jaeger found amusing.

  Wallis needed to cover six faces of the block of RDX with metal ingots, being careful that none of the explosive was visible, for then even a cursory inspection might give the game away. Plus he needed to insert the tiny Retrievor tracking device somewhere it wouldn’t be discovered.

  The great upside of combining RDX with tungsten was the sheer destructive power that resulted. Tungsten was the material of choice for bunker-busting bombs, forming the tip of any such projectile. Its enormous weight and density, coupled with its stupendously high melting point, made it ideal for slicing through steel, concrete, earth or brickwork.

  Its capacity for causing lethal harm was practically unlimited, especially when hurled at its target with the explosive velocity of RDX – some 8,750 metres per second. The biggest downside was what a surprisingly small block the right amount of tungsten made – not a great deal larger than your average computer printer.

  Wallis figured he could afford to build the block of explosives-cum-tungsten somewhat larger than the equivalent weight of uranium ingots, for the simple reason that he could compensate in the thickness of the lead shield. Because his tungsten bomb wasn’t radioactive, he could thin the lead to allow for a larger charge of RDX.

  That was the answer.

  With the team working around the clock, the dummy-shipment-cum-bomb had been sealed in its lead sarcophagus, packed into a wooden crate and flown to the nearest military airbase, where Brooks had had it loaded aboard a non-stop flight to Brazil. Jetted direct into Cachimbo airport, it had been ferried out to Station 15 and hidden in the hangar where – all being well – the switch would occur.

  Tonight was show time.

  Jaeger, Narov, Raff and Alonzo had joined Colonel Evandro in a makeshift operations room, set a good way back from the airstrip.

  The man chosen to front up the ruse was a Captain Ernesto Gonzales, a short, stocky, dark-skinned guy in his early thirties, who had the demeanour of a farmer rather than a special forces warrior. Indeed, that was exactly the kind of background he hailed from before being recruited into BSOB.

  His face was scarred and pockmarked, his hair longish and greasy, and he looked as if he’d had a hard life, which in truth he had. Dressed as he now was, in scuffed cowboy boots and a mixed bag of ragged unmarked combats, topped off by a wide-brimmed Stetson, he looked every inch a narco.

  As a bonus, he spoke decent English, which was the lingua franca of global smuggling operations. Equally as important, he had one of those classic poker-faced demeanours, his features rarely giving anything away. He was a consummate bluffer – which was why the colonel had used him for various undercover ops in the past.

  In short, Gonzales was the obvious choice for tonight’s dark and dangerous charade.

  41

  The inbound aircraft was an Antonov AN-12. Fitted with extra internal fuel tanks, it had a range of over 6,000 kilometres and an unrivalled STOL – short take-off and landing – capability. It could put down on a dirt strip 600 metres in length, and on an airbase at several thousand metres of altitude.

  In short, it was perfect for flying into rugged, mountainous territory, and landing on a runway hacked out of the jungle. It was also highly manoeuvrable and well capable of low-level flying, so keeping below any radar.

  With four powerful turboprop engines and a massive cargo-carrying capacity, the AN-12 was overkill for such a small load, but it was one of the few aircraft capable of executing such a challenging transcontinental delivery.

  For the past forty minutes, the pilot had been guided by a VOR/DME system – a VHF omnidirectional range, combined with a distance measuring equipment device. In layman’s terms, a homing beacon. All airports had them. In fact, the AN-12 had been using three VOR/DMEs – those stationed at the nearest commercial airports to Dodge – and triangulating its position from their signals.

  The self-appointed air traffic controller at Dodge had been talking the pilot in by radio, using vectors from those VOR/DMEs to cross-reference distance and position. While it sounded complicated, it was pretty much the standard operating procedure for bringing in a ghost flight packed full of illegal cargo to an uncharted bush airstrip.

  Normally the narco boss wouldn’t provide the end location to the pilot, for that risked the DEA getting wise to their base. Hence the need to use VOR/DME triangulation to keep nudging the aircraft in. Hence why El Padre’s air traffic control guy kept talking to the AN-12’s pilot via their prearranged frequency, guiding him ever closer.

  Normally, the procedure was pretty much foolproof. Normally.

  Tonight was a little different. Tonight, things had got a little complicated.

  First, the signal emanating from Dodge had got scrambled. El Padre’s radio operator had lost contact with the incoming aircraft. No matter what he tried, the AN-12 was unreachable: in the place of the Russian pilot’s voice, there was a weird, echoing, hollow, howling scream.

  Electrical storm, it sounded like. But the operator was well aware that thunderstorms didn’t affect VHF radio signals. Not normally. Hence his discomfort and confusion at having lost contact with the incoming aircraft.

  ‘Try another frequency,’ barked a stout, barrel-chested figure at his side.

  It was unusual – very – to have El Padre himself standing by for such a delivery. The radio operator blanched and began punching buttons, scrolling through the digital frequencies, but he didn’t hold out any great hopes.

  In the AN-12’s cockpit, the pilot was having little better luck. He could see the three VOR/DMEs transmitting their bearings, but without any guidance from the ground, he was screwed. He too began to prod at his radio. Maybe the narcos had drifted across to a different frequency without telling him. Sure enough, as he scanned the airwaves, a voice came up asking him to check in.

  ‘Bear 12, come in. Bear 12, come in. We lost your signal. Repeat, we lost your signal. Come in, Bear 12, come in.’

  The pilot grabbed his radio handset. ‘This is Bear 12. Where the hell have you been?’ he growled. ‘I lost you for fifteen minutes. Why you change frequency?’

  Colonel Evandro’s radio operator smiled. ‘You want me to guide you in, or you want to bitch?’

  ‘I want you to guide.’

  ‘Okay, this is your landing bearing and vectors.’ The radio operator passed the pilot a series of bearings from the VOR/DME stations that would bring him directly into Station 15. ‘You’re twenty minutes out.’

  ‘Twenty,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘Make sure you have runway lights on. Is a big jungle down there.’

  ‘Affirm. Out.’

  The radio operator flashed Colonel Evandro a smile. They’d just taken control of the inbound aircraft. They knew its call sign – Bear 12 – because they’d been tracking the aircraft’s radio communications as it approached Brazilian airspace. All seemed to be going perfectly, but twenty minutes was a long time in show business. Any number of things could still go wrong.

  The jam on Dodge’s radio signal might collapse, enabling the narcos to alert the pilot. If his navigator was any good, he might realise they were being lured down to a strip the wrong side of the border. Or Captain Gonzales might screw it up on the ground.

  Jaeger felt horribly restless. He checked his watch, stepped outside and gazed into the heavens. Fifteen minutes to go, and not a sign of any aircraft. Not a glimmer of moonlight on metal. Not the faintest rumble of engines.

  So much was hanging on this moment. The hunt for Kammler. The means to derail whatever he was up to. Jaeger’s search for his traumatised and now missing wife. Plus the sting had been his idea in the first place.

  It couldn’t just fall apart now.

  He felt others join him. Narov. Alonzo. Raff. All craning their necks skywards. He flicked his wrist, checking his watch for the umpteenth time. Ten minutes. Surely they should be able to see and hear something?

  Silence. The thumping of his pulse in his temples. Jaeger could sense the tension, taut on the still air. He shivered as though someone had walked over his grave. The aircraft wasn’t coming, he knew it.

  They’d been rumbled.

  42

  ‘Eight minutes,’ someone said.

  Silence; all eyes scanning the darkened heavens.

  Jaeger shook his head darkly. ‘They’re not coming.’

  ‘Shut up.’ It was Colonel Evandro. It was unlike him to be so brusque. ‘I hear something.’

  Jaeger strained his ears. Sure enough, a faint, barely audible rumble reverberated over the treetops. An aircraft was coming in low and unseen from the west, the noise masked by the dense vegetation.

  Moments later, the eerie form of the AN-12 lumbered out of the blackness, flying at a little above its 70-knot stall speed. It was showing no lights across its 125-foot wingspan, so it appeared like some kind of giant ghost plane. It did one pass low over the airbase before executing a smart turn and touching down smoothly on the dirt strip.

  Unbelievable, Jaeger told himself, his adrenalin pumping. This guy sure knows how to fly.

  For several seconds the 100-foot-long aircraft slowed on the runway, as if coming to a standstill. Yet when it was maybe a third of the way in, its four Ivchenko turboprop engines began to pour thick black smoke as they went to maximum power. The Antonov gained speed rapidly, and in a thunderous roar it clawed its way back into the darkness.

  Jaeger sprinted for the radio room. The pilot must have noticed something was amiss. But what? What had they overlooked when preparing the airstrip for the sting? He burst inside to find Colonel Evandro’s radio operator firmly on the case.

  ‘Bear 12, you’ve aborted the landing. Why the abort?’

  Silence. A long beat of echoing static in which the Antonov’s pilot didn’t respond. Jaeger feared they’d spooked him. Or maybe Los Niños’s radio operator had managed to make contact, alerting him to what was going on.

  ‘Bear 12, Bear 12, why the abort?’ the radio operator repeated.

  A moment of silence, followed by a throaty chuckle. ‘No abort. Old Soviet trick. Testing if your strip is good. I touch wheels, see if strip holds up. Don’t worry. Is good. Bear 12 now making final approach.’

  By the time Jaeger had got his pulse back to something like normal, the AN-12 had touched down and was coming to a halt on the dirt runway.

  All eyes switched to Captain Ernesto Gonzales’s point of view now, as it was transmitted to a laptop set on the desk before them. Jaeger felt his heart race as he eyed the screen. It had made sense to rig the BSOB captain with a tiny surveillance device so they could monitor the sting as it went down.

  A figure stepped into view dressed in grubby overalls. Using two fluorescent panels, he guided the aircraft towards the target hangar; the hangar that concealed the decoy cargo.

  The AN-12 taxied to a standstill. Captain Gonzales strolled over, using one hand to anchor his Stetson against the aircraft’s powerful backwash.

  The pilot powered down his engines. Once the deafening racket had died away, he slid open the cockpit’s side window. His face appeared: mid fifties, jowly; former Soviet military if the greying crew cut was anything to go by.

  ‘You’re late,’ Gonzales shouted up at him.

  The pilot peered down. ‘You change frequency. Why the change?’

  Gonzales’s face remained impassive. ‘You never heard of electrical storms? We get a lot of ’em around here.’

  ‘Thunderstorm not affect VHF.’

  ‘Well something did.’ A beat of silence. ‘You wanna bitch about it, or you wanna unload?’

  The Russian shrugged. ‘We are here. We get unloading, comrade.’

  ‘You are. Let’s get started.’

  There was an audible clunk from somewhere, and the AN-12’s rear ramp whined down. Captain Gonzales yelled out some orders and a bunch of narco lookalikes roared over in a pickup truck fitted with a hydraulic tailgate.

  Moments later it had backed up to the AN-12’s ramp and disappeared inside. A minute ticked by. Gonzales wandered around to the AN-12’s rear and started yelling orders, gesticulating wildly, just to lend an added sense of chaos to the scene. The colonel had made the perfect choice – Gonzales was a natural.

  The pickup drove down the ramp with a wooden crate the size of a small fridge-freezer strapped to its rear. As it headed across to the nearby hangar, Captain Gonzales moved back to the cockpit.

  ‘You wait there while we inspect the cargo,’ he told the pilot.

  The pilot shrugged. ‘Cargo is good. No need to inspect.’

  Gonzales moved his hand more firmly onto the AK-47 slung across his shoulder. ‘You wait while we check. Comrade.’

  The pilot didn’t respond. He clearly wasn’t going anywhere until this narco gunman was satisfied.

  There was a yell from the direction of the hangar. In Portuguese. ‘El Commandante! You need to see this!’

  Gonzales eyed the pilot. ‘Something I need to check. You wait here.’ He strolled across to the hangar.

  ‘It’s a heap of bloody metal in a crate,’ one of his men complained, gesturing at the cargo. ‘What do we want with a heap of useless freakin’ metal? Take a look for yourself,’ he announced, feigning anger.

  Gonzales and his men were keeping it one hundred per cent real, just in case any of the Russian crew spoke Portuguese and overheard. Gonzales made a show of peering into the crate. He frowned. ‘What the fuck? What is this shit?’