Jaeger held up his hands. ‘Whoa… Where did that come from?’
Narov turned away. ‘It is a long story. I do not know if I am ready. If you are ready… And now—’
Her words were cut short by a fearful cry that rang out over the radio intercom. ‘Arggghhh! Get it off! Get it off!’
Jaeger spun around, only to find that Dale had blundered into a place where the spiders’ webs seemed at their thickest. The cameraman had been so focused on his lens that he’d not kept a proper watch on where he was going. Tough, sticky filaments wrapped around him, as he fought to retain hold of his camera and sweep the suffocating silken threads – and their arachnid hordes – away.
Jaeger dashed to his aid.
He figured there was little chance that even a Phoneutria’s fangs could pierce Dale’s gloves or mask, and presumably the NBC suit was tough enough to resist a bite. But Dale was unlikely to know that, and his terror sounded all too real.
Jaeger used his thick rubber mitts to swipe the writhing mass of spiders aside, punching their squishy, hissing forms into the darkness. With Narov’s help he dragged Dale free, still desperately clutching at his camera. But as they pulled him out of the tangle of webs, Jaeger caught sight of the real cause of Dale’s fear.
Lying in the crushed mass of silken threads was a ghostly skeleton, its fleshless face a rictus of horror, the bones of its body still clad in a half-decayed SS officer’s uniform. As Jaeger stared at the dead man – doubtless one of the Ju 390’s original passengers – he heard a voice over the radio intercom.
‘It wasn’t the bloody spiders that got me!’ Dale gasped. ‘It was being in the clutches of some long-dead Nazi general!’
‘I see him,’ Jaeger confirmed. ‘And you know something? He makes you look almost handsome. Come on – let’s hustle.’
Jaeger was all too aware that they’d been in the suffocating confines of this aircraft for approaching an hour now. It was time to get moving. But as he led Dale and Narov back towards the cockpit, he was struck by a shocking realisation: he’d yet to spare a thought for how this warplane might hold the key to discovering the fate of his wife and child.
Luke and Ruth: their disappearance was tied up inextricably with whatever they had discovered here. The Reichsadler – the stamp of evil – was all over both this warplane and Jaeger’s family’s abduction.
And somehow he had to start searching for the answers.
76
Jaeger stood in the fringes of the jungle speaking to his team – Lewis Alonzo, Hiro Kamishi, Leticia Santos, Joe James, Irina Narov, and Mike Dale – who was still filming – plus Puruwehua, Gwaihutiga and their fellow Indians. He’d removed his gas mask so he could talk, though he was still wearing the rest of the cumbersome NBC suit.
‘Right, you all know the score,’ he announced, his voice thick with tension and exhaustion. ‘We’re about to start the lift. The Airlander crew figure they may need an hour to work the warplane free. That’s the time I’m asking you to buy us. Do all you can to hold off the bad guys, but no heroics. Mission one: let’s all stay alive. And remember – just as soon as we’re gone, break contact and get the hell out of here.’
Jaeger glanced at the giant airship, which seemed to fill the sky above them. The Airlander was an awe-inspiring sight. It hovered less than one hundred feet above the broken bone ends of the dead canopy, like the belly of some huge white whale suspended in the clouds.
It was four times the length of the Ju 390’s fuselage, and ten times its width – the airship’s bulbous hull being filled with some three and a half million cubic feet of helium gas.
It simply dwarfed the warplane that lay beneath it.
The Airlander’s pilot could risk bringing her no lower, for the topmost branches of the dead forest thrust skywards like jagged spear tips. The airship had an intelligent skin that could heal itself if holed, but multiple wounds would cause her real trouble.
Plus, there was that unknown toxin leaking out of the Ju 390, and no one aboard the Airlander fancied getting danger-close to that.
As per Raff’s last data-burst message earlier that morning, there were no drones in the immediate vicinity. Their decoy – the kayak carrying the tracking device and cell phone – seemed to have drawn the surveillance a good distance north of here. It put the Predator out of video range of the Airlander, which in any case was hidden from view by 8,000 feet of cloud cover.
But an electronic intercept of the airship’s radar signature was still possible, as was an infrared trace of her hotspots – not least her four propulsors. All it would take was one such pick-up and the Predator would be on to them. Time was of the essence, more than it had been since the very start of the expedition.
It was the morning of day eleven, and if all went to plan, it was to be their last before arriving back in comparative civilisation. Or at least it was for Jaeger, Narov and Dale. Over the preceding hours, he and his team had been immersed in a race against time, not to mention their unknown enemy.
The previous evening, a lone Amahuaca Indian runner had reached their location with worrying news: the Dark Force was less than eighteen hours away. If they continued marching overnight, they would arrive even sooner. That force consisted of sixty-odd operators, and they were heavily armed.
The Indians shadowing them had tried to frustrate their progress, but blowpipes and arrows had proven no match for machine guns and grenade launchers. The main force of Indians would keep tracking and harassing them, but there was only so much they could do to slow their progress.
Since then, Jaeger and his crew had worked feverishly, during which time several things had become clear. First, whatever toxic cocktail was leaking out of the warplane, it appeared to be some form of irradiated mercury plasma. But it was nothing that Jaeger could identify any more specifically, for it appeared to be a threat unknown to his detection kit.
That kit worked by comparing a detected chemical signature with a known index of agents. Whatever this was, it appeared to be completely off the scale. And that meant that no one could risk going anywhere near without wearing a full set of protective gear.
Second, while the Airlander had been able to lower a pair of lifting harnesses – Jaeger and team getting them slung beneath the points where the Ju 390’s wings met the fuselage – there was no way she could lift the team out of the jungle as well.
The Airlander had the means to winch each person up the two-hundred-odd feet to the airship, but there simply weren’t enough NBC suits – or the time – to enable them to do so. The Indians had sent out a series of runners all through the night. The last had arrived just after first light, with the warning that the enemy force was two hours away, and closing fast.
Jaeger had been forced to accept the inevitable: his team would have to split up. The main body – Alonzo, Kamishi, Santos and Joe James, plus Puruwehua, Gwaihutiga, and half a dozen Amahuaca warriors – would take up blocking positions between the warplane and the bad guys.
Gwaihutiga volunteered to lead the charge. He would depart with most of the Indian warriors, to set up the first ambush. Puruwehua, Alonzo and the rest would form a second blocking group, nearer to the wreck. In that way they hoped to buy those doing the lift-out some much-needed time.
As to Jaeger, Narov and Dale – they were going to ride in the Ju 390, as the Airlander dragged her free from the jungle. Or at least that was the plan.