The pulk was man-portable: you loaded it up, strapped yourself into the harness and hauled it across the snow. Once they were on the ground, the team would unload the para-tubes, load up the sled and be on their way. Their packs were stripped down to survival gear only, so they could exit the aircraft with the lightest possible loads.
All the heavy kit was packed in the para-tubes.
During the flight, Jaeger had been too wired to sleep. The groaning of the metal fuselage and the deafening howl of the Ivchenko engines made talk all but impossible. The AN-32 had been designed in the mid seventies, and Jaeger didn’t doubt that this one was several decades old. At every twist and turn he felt as if it was about to shake itself to pieces.
But he knew the reputation of the aircraft. Like most Russian airframes, it was ruggedly built and engineered to last. He didn’t doubt it would get them to their target, Chinese vigilance permitting.
He’d plugged himself into the aircraft’s intercom, so he could listen in on the chat from the cockpit. Mostly it had been navigational, as the pilot, co-pilot and navigator talked each other through what they could see of the terrain below, to keep a check on their route. They were heading across the easternmost extent of the Himalayas, circumventing the massive 7,500-metre peak of Kula Kangri, which straddled the border with China.
Jaeger glanced out the nearest of the AN-32’s portholes. He could see jagged-edged snowfields rearing up to their right like the white fangs of some impossible sky god, the heights washed in a silvery-blue moonlight. Kula Kangri had long been disputed by both Bhutan and China. So remote was this region that neither country had been able to substantiate its territorial claim.
‘Border crossing in five,’ the pilot calmly announced.
This was it: no turning back now.
50
Jaeger had had just a brief introduction to the Antonov’s aircrew, and that had been first names only. The pilot, Bill, was very clearly American. He spoke with a tough East Coast – New Jersey – accent. Jaeger didn’t doubt that he was ex-military. Dressed in the smart, iron-creased blacks, whites and reds of an ICRC pilot’s uniform, he sure looked the part.
‘Border crossing in five,’ he repeated. ‘Prepare for things to get a little interesting back there. We’ll be going in lower than a snake’s belly.’
Jaeger flashed a finger-down at Narov, Raff and Alonzo: universal symbol for prepare to lose altitude.
The Antonov’s intercom was one-way only. Any comms with the cockpit had to go via the loadie, Pete, another American. He was perched on one of the fold-down canvas seats where the bulkhead separated cockpit from cargo hold.
The Antonov began to plummet towards the moon-washed snowfields. Jaeger felt his stomach contents lurch into his throat, and fought back the gag reflex as the pilot kept losing altitude.
When it seemed as if they were about to plough into the snow and rock at some 300-plus kilometres an hour, he heard the twin turboprops emit a piercing howl. The pilot piled on the thrust, and the AN-32 pulled up, blasting the tops of the highest drifts, then sped onwards, thundering into the night.
They were down so low that the aircraft’s moon shadow was almost indistinguishable from her fuselage. As he craned his neck to get a view out the rear, Jaeger spotted thick flurries of snow kicked up by the Antonov’s four-bladed propellers, swirling madly in the slipstream.
Deep gullies opened up ahead, and the pilot slipped the Antonov into their icy embrace, throwing it from side to side to edge past dome-like outcrops blasted bare by the freezing wind. At the approach of a vast series of ridges, which rose like a snow-blasted giant’s staircase, Jaeger felt the aircraft going into a series of switchbacks, as if they were riding some runaway escalator.
Whoever the pilot was, and whichever unit he’d trained with, Jaeger figured it was time to settle back and enjoy the ride.
‘Crossing border,’ the pilot’s voice confirmed. ‘Going dark.’
Before now, theirs had been a non-covert flight, and they’d been flying through non-hostile airspace. Accordingly, the Antonov had been showing the normal lights that civilian aircraft used. Now, all had been extinguished, including any internal lighting.
Jaeger glanced around the hold. It was washed in a faint ghostly glow: moonlight reflected back from the snow rushing past just a few dozen feet below.
‘Hook-shaped frozen lake at ten o’clock,’ the co-pilot announced.
‘Check,’ the navigator confirmed. Jaeger could just imagine the guy crouched over his charts. ‘That’s Lake Le-Wen-Pu. You follow its course and it leads into the Le-Wen-Pu valley. The valley extends twenty kilometres north, with a gentle curve east.’
‘Roger,’ the pilot confirmed.
‘Oh yeah, and watch out for yaks, yurts and prayer flags tugging at the undercarriage,’ the navigator added.
Jaeger allowed himself a smile. He risked a peek out of the Antonov’s window. The navigator was right.
Any lower, and they’d be kissing the snowfields.
51
Jaeger braced himself at the Antonov’s open ramp.
Normally when preparing to jump from such an aircraft, you had the reassuring form of a bulky parachute strapped to your shoulders as the slipstream tore at your clothing and howled around your ears.
Not tonight.
All Jaeger had strapped to his back was his light-order bergen: even their weapons were packed into the para-tubes. The Antonov’s airspeed was incredibly slow – seventy knots, Jaeger figured – so it felt little worse than driving down a motorway with the window down.
He reckoned the snowfield flashing past below was no more than forty feet away.
It felt close enough almost to touch.
The Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains were so remote that there was no official agreement as to how far the range extended. But what the maps could agree on was the highest peak – Mount Nyenchen Tanglha itself, at 7,162 metres. Plus there were some 7,080 glaciers, covering 10,700 square kilometres of terrain.
In short, a lot of snow and ice.
Snow and ice: there was a big difference between the two as far as this insertion was concerned. Tonight they needed to seek out just the right kind of snow.
Jaeger had picked the spot off a satellite photo, with the help of some of Brooks’s finest meteorological experts. As he crouched at the open ramp, waiting for the loadie to give them the go-go-go, he prayed that he’d got it right.
The risks in what they were about to attempt were legion. Only Raff and Jaeger had ever made such a drop before, and then only during a series of highly experimental SAS arctic warfare exercises.
The loadie flicked two fingers in front of each of their faces. Two minutes to go. He was fastened to the Antonov’s side with a thick canvas strap, just in case anyone lost it at the last moment and tried to drag him with them.
‘One minute!’ he yelled.
Jaeger bunched closer to the pulk and the steel drop containers, which were perched on the open ramp. He shook out the tension in his arms and shoulders, stamped his feet and beat his hands together. He needed maximum flexibility in his limbs for what was coming.
‘Thirty seconds!’ yelled the loadie.
Jaeger’s eyes were glued to the jump light, which was set to one side of the ramp. Moments later it changed from red to green. This was it: show time.
He dropped his shoulder and drove the pulk off the end of the ramp and into the open void, as to either side of him Alonzo and Raff shoved out the steel containers.
For the briefest of instants he was aware of the objects silhouetted against the gleam of the snow, and then he followed in their wake, leaping off the ramp. As he tumbled into thin air, a part of his brain was yelling at him to pull his chute, even though he knew he didn’t have one.