Jaeger forced his thoughts back to the present: he could feel the Super Puma starting to lose what little altitude it had.
Moments later, it flared out, the rear end dropping into a jungle clearing some ninety yards across, the turbines screaming at fever pitch. The Puma’s loadmaster – the guy who looked after the passengers and cargo – was hanging out of the doorway, checking the rotors weren’t about to slam into one of the massive trees that fringed the clearing.
A sudden jolt signified that the rear wheels had made contact with the hot earth. The loadie spun around and gave a thumbs-up – the universal signal for ‘go, go, go’. Keeping low, Jaeger and Narov leapt off the helo and Raff and Alonzo started hurling packs down to them.
They grabbed the bergens and got down in a crouch, covering Raff and Alonzo with their weapons. The Super Puma was still turning and burning, the downwash of the rotor blades kicking up a storm of choking dust and vegetation. Jaeger flashed a thumbs-up, and seconds later, the chopper had pulled away from the clearing and was gone.
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.