‘You’re on the wrong strip, comrade. I’m expecting a shipment of coca paste from Ecuador. End of.’
The pilot’s mouth hung open. Speechless.
Gonzalez shrugged. ‘Listen, we don’t mess with El Padre. No one does. Not if they want to live. So best you turn this crate around and get airborne again. Pronto.’
The pilot seemed frozen, his face drained of all colour.
‘Comrade, you’re free to go. But I gotta tell you something. You’re not just at the wrong strip; you’re in the wrong goddam country. This is Brazil. You want the other side of the border. Colombia.’
‘So who are…’ the pilot stuttered. ‘Who are you guys?’
Gonzalez shook his head. ‘Not your need-to-know.’ There was a steeliness to his gaze now. ‘Like I said, we’re done. Adios. You need to spin this crate around and get airborne.’
The pilot turned and barked a few orders in Russian at his co-pilot and navigator, then reached for his instrument panel. The colour was starting to return to his features. Maybe he was going to get away with this. Maybe he wasn’t about to die.
Gonzales yelled for his boys to load up the cargo once more. In the hangar, the dummy shipment was manhandled into the pickup, driven up the ramp of the AN-12 and deposited in the aircraft’s hold. With barely a second glance, the loadmaster got it strapped down and headed for the cockpit.
Gonzales’s men exited the aircraft, switch done.
‘Word of advice, Igor,’ Gonzales volunteered to the pilot. ‘You get to El Padre’s place, you may want to keep quiet about your little fuck-up. He doesn’t take kindly to… fuck-ups.’ A beat. ‘Good luck, comrade. Safe flying to wherever it is you’re headed. This side of the border, we’re the only guys in town.’
The pilot cracked a smile. He reached behind him and pulled out a bottle. ‘You like vodka? Khortytsa vodka. The best. All the way from Ukraine.’
Captain Gonzales shook his head. ‘I’m a tequila kind of guy. Maybe you’ll need that where you’re heading. If El Padre finds out what really happened here tonight…’ He let the words tail off menacingly. ‘Adios, comrade, and say hello to Moldova for me, or wherever the hell it is you come from.’
The pilot punched a button and there was the distinctive whine of the starter motors firing up the first of the aircraft’s engines. ‘Ukraine. I come from Ukraine. Oleksandr Savchenko, Ukraine’s finest pilot. But right now, we have cargo to deliver all the way to fucking China. If you ever come to Ukraine, please, you…’ The last of his words were drowned out by the howling of the engines.
‘Sure, I’ll look you up.’ Gonzales slapped the fuselage theatrically. ‘Safe trip! And next time, get a better navigator, Comrade Savchenko!’
He stepped away from the aircraft, his part of the mission complete: so far, so good.
43
Jaeger and his team were gathered around Colonel Evandro’s computer, the military-encrypted internet link providing a secure video feed to their distant Falkenhagen headquarters. Peter Miles was speaking, and they were glued to his every word.
‘We agree with your analysis, plus all intelligence from our end suggests that the plane isn’t terminating at that jungle strip. It’s a stopover. Refuelling. Time for the crew to grab some shut-eye. But mostly it’s a ruse. A cut-off. A decoy destination.’
The switch had gone like clockwork. The AN-12 had flown on to Los Niños’s base with its Trojan horse tungsten-bomb cargo, apparently with no further dramas. Which must have been as much of a relief to Oleksandr Savchenko, Ukraine’s finest pilot, as it was to Jaeger and his team.
Right now, the tracking device revealed that the crate was sitting on that aircraft in Dodge, beaming out its signal as regular as clockwork.
‘So what d’you reckon to the China connection?’ Jaeger queried. ‘What the pilot mentioned. Is it credible?’
‘Yes, as it happens.’ Miles replied. ‘We figure they’ve flown to Colombia as a blind. It’s not unusual with these criminal-narco-mafioso networks. Colombia’s where the trail goes cold. Or at least it’s supposed to. Meanwhile, the HEU gets spirited to the other side of the world.’
Miles searched out Narov. ‘Plus, there’s been an unexpected development… Irina, I have something of a personal question for you. You and Falk Konig – Kammler’s son – you made something of a special connection on your last mission, I understand?’
‘You can say that again,’ Jaeger cut in. ‘Became intimately acquainted. Sparks flew.’
Raff practically choked on his coffee. Alonzo tried to kill an almighty great snigger. Narov gave the daggers. If looks could kill, Jaeger was dead and buried.
‘Falk and I shared a mutual interest, yes,’ she replied tightly. ‘For wildlife. For animals. So yes, by the time we left, I viewed him as a… close friend. That was all. Nothing more.’ She glared at Jaeger. ‘Nothing like what that Schwachkopf is implying.’
With that, she stalked out the room.
Her sudden departure was met with an uncomfortable silence. It was Raff who broke it. He eyed Jaeger despairingly. ‘That went well. Always had the touch. And still got it, by the looks of things.’
Jaeger winced. ‘Well, it’s true. They were like a couple of lovebirds.’
During their previous mission, Kammler’s son, Falk, had played a somewhat ambivalent role. While Narov had believed he was on the side of the angels, Jaeger hadn’t been convinced.
Falk had changed his surname from Kammler to Konig, apparently in an effort to distance himself from the family’s Nazi legacy. But after Jaeger and his team had nailed Kammler’s dark plot to bring back the Reich, Falk had dropped off the radar. Completely.
Jaeger’s last communication with him had been a text message, in which Falk had tried to exonerate himself: My father has taken refuge in his lair… I am innocent. He is a madman.
After that, silence.
In Jaeger’s book, that was suspicious. You didn’t do a disappearing act like that unless you had reason. Why run unless you were guilty?
‘Falk’s been calling Irina,’ Miles announced. ‘Repeatedly, over an eight-hour period. He’s been using a Chinese-made ETACTO TLX, a kind of poor man’s satphone. It’s got great connectivity over China and comes equipped with two SIM slots. He chose to use his regular SIM card, in spite of the fact that it’s at the top of our global watch list. Seems he set his phone to automatic call repeat. Of course, he got no answer, Irina being in the Brazilian jungle.’
‘So Falk’s surfaced. Where is he?’ Jaeger queried.
‘Well, there’s the thing. He’s in China. A remote border region in the depths of the Himalayas.’ Miles eyed Jaeger for a long moment. ‘Go fetch Irina. Say sorry, and get her back in here. You all need to hear this.’
Jaeger headed outside. Finding Narov alone, he didn’t know quite what to say. He figured he’d keep it simple.
‘Look, I’m sorry. I was just messing with you. It didn’t mean anything.’
Narov turned on him. ‘You know something? I’m sick of you and I am sick of your blind stupidity.’ A beat, fraught with emotion. Jaeger knew exactly what she was driving at: the bond – the electrifying attraction – between the two of them.
He knew in his heart that he’d fallen for her. It was the love that wouldn’t speak its name. Guilt over Ruth made him try to bury it; deny it.
‘You want to know the truth?’ Narov continued. ‘You want to know why I went off hunting Kammler solo? Because I no longer trusted you. I needed to hide it from you, Kahuhara’ga.’
Kahuhara’ga. The Hunter. Months back, Jaeger had been given that name by a tribe of isolated Amazonian Indians who had sacrificed themselves in order to aid his mission. Narov had started using the name teasingly. Yet now she seemed to have lost all faith in him.