A couple of minutes later she was back, slipping into the ditch like a bloodied eel. The sentry had bled profusely, that much was clear.
‘We need to go,’ she mouthed.
Jaeger nodded. Time was running out. Plus there was that dead sentry now to factor into the equation. If his body was discovered before Narov and Jaeger made the cover of the jungle, all hell would break loose.
Narov eyed him for an instant, then reached into her backpack. ‘There was this,’ she volunteered, holding up a brown leather-backed ledger. On the front cover was scribbled in Spanish: Registro de Vuelo. It was Los Niños’s flight log.
Jaeger shook his head in amazement. ‘Bloody brilliant. Right, let’s get the hell out of here.’
He turned to go back the way they’d come, lowering his head down to the stinking water and pushing off, Diemaco held at the ready.
Most CTRs went wrong when those executing them rushed the withdrawal.
As he began his slow and steady crawl, Jaeger wondered for an instant if Narov felt anything for the man she’d just killed. There was little sign if she did. It was typicaclass="underline" when she had to kill, she did so seemingly without hesitation or remorse.
Another thought struck him. He’d realised with a shock what all of them had perhaps been missing. The best way to bust Kammler’s network was staring them right in the face, here in Dodge.
In a sense, it had been all along, but it had taken this crawl through this hellish shithole for him to realise it. He’d share his thoughts with Narov and the others, but only once they’d got the hell out of Dodge.
And much as he hated it, they still had a good twenty minutes of crawling ahead of them.
Shit happens, he thought to himself wryly. But he would have his moment.
And this mission – it was only just beginning.
36
The trek out to the LZ had taken considerably less time than the journey in. They’d stopped at one of the first rivers they came across, so that Jaeger and Narov could scrub themselves clean of the blood and the stinking gunk from the ditch. But otherwise they’d moved relatively swiftly. They were carrying lighter loads and they were more attuned to the jungle.
They were also buoyed by the success of the CTR. To have penetrated right into the heart of such an operation and got out again undetected and unscathed – that had taken some skill, and balls.
If Narov’s handiwork with the knife had been discovered, there had been no sign of it while they were exfiltrating from Dodge.
They’d arrived at the clearing with a good sixty minutes to spare before the chopper arrived to pluck them out. They settled in some cover, Narov pulling out the flight log from her pack. She flicked through the pages, stopping here and there at key entries. Much that Jaeger marvelled at her focus after such an exhausting mission, he was impatient to know what Los Niños’s flight log might reveal.
‘So, what’s it tell us?’ he pressed.
Narov glanced up at him. ‘I need to go over it in more detail. But two things jump out. One, the Moldovan flight doesn’t end in Dodge. It’s a refuelling stopover, no more. Where it’s headed after that isn’t entirely clear.’
‘So the hunt for Kammler is far from over.’ It was obvious, but Jaeger felt it needed saying.
‘Exactly,’ Narov confirmed. ‘And second, it looks as if three previous flights have been routed via Dodge, all at the orders of Kammler. If they were loaded with uranium, Kammler is even further ahead of the game than we feared.’
‘Good work, you gettin’ that,’ Alonzo cut in. ‘Game changer. Freakin’ game changer. Worries me shitless, though…’
In truth, the flight log had them all worried. The revelation of those three previous flights lent an added sense of urgency to their mission. It was a ticking time bomb. But it had triggered something else – building on the flash of inspiration Jaeger first had as they’d crawled out of Dodge. He had a growing sense as to how they might use all this against Kammler, to nail him. He set about explaining it to the others.
‘So, it’s a part of SAS folklore. Beirut, 1976. The SAS were on a covert mission. There’s a great book about it I read once. Figured we could use something similar now.’
Narov looked askance at him. ‘You? Read a book?’
‘A book?’ Raff echoed.
‘Yeah, a book,’ Jaeger confirmed. ‘Don’t sound so surprised.’
Raff shook his head in disgust. ‘Bloody Ruperts and their books.’
Alonzo grinned. While he didn’t completely get the British sense of humour, he couldn’t help but find it funny. As long as it wasn’t directed at him.
‘So what did this book say?’ Narov challenged. ‘And what makes it relevant now?’
‘The book’s called Cobra Gold. SAS troop gets sent into Beirut to lift some sensitive documents from a bank vault. Lebanon’s one massive war zone – Beirut’s been shot to shreds. The SAS blow their way into the vault, but along with the documents, they discover a shedload of gold bullion.’
Jaeger could tell he had their attention now. The SAS and an epic bank robbery – what was not to like?
‘They figured they’d nab the gold along with the documents. A bit of freelance larceny. We know that the robbery took place. Fact. It’s recorded in the Guinness Book of Records: British Bank of the Middle East; the world’s biggest ever bullion robbery – some $150 million at today’s value.’
‘So what?’ Raff challenged. ‘Every chancer and their dog has a story about the Regiment and its supposed dark arts. I just wish they were all true.’ He paused. ‘In fact, I wish I’d been in on the act.’
Jaeger laughed. ‘During the exfil, they were forced to cache the gold. It was ten years until they came back to retrieve it. Trouble was, they knew that as soon as they set foot in Lebanon, the bad guys – the terrorists – would be onto them. They realised they needed a decoy. A Trojan horse.’
‘So where did they hide it – the gold?’ Raff queried.
‘Dumped at sea. Not that that’s crucial to the story.’ Jaeger couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice now. ‘Tungsten. You’ve all heard of it, right? One of the heaviest metals known to man. Used for tipping bunker-busting bombs and such like. It also happens to be more or less the same molecular weight as gold.’
Raff kicked the bottom of Jaeger’s boot. ‘Get to it.’
‘They built a decoy. A pile of tungsten machined into bars and plated in gold. It looked like bullion. It weighed practically the same. It even smelled right. They allowed the terrorists to seize the decoy and take it right into the heart of their camp. That golden decoy contained a hidden charge of explosives. When it reached the bad guys’ base, someone pressed a button and… kaboom. The tungsten went up a like a massive nail bomb and flattened everything.’
‘Nice story,’ Narov grated icily. ‘But what’s its relevance now?’
Jaeger eyed her. ‘Highly enriched uranium is the heaviest naturally occurring element. It has a very similar molecular weight to gold. Or tungsten, for that matter… So here’s the plan: we switch cargoes. We swap the uranium for a lookalike tungsten cargo. One with a massive charge set at its centre and primed to blow.’
Narov shook her head despairingly. ‘This is your great idea? This is why you told us this bullshit story? Schwachkopf.’
‘And? What exactly is your problem?’
‘First, how do you switch the cargoes when the uranium is being flown here by the Moldovan mafia in an aircraft operated by Eastern European arms dealers?’