The noise of the waterfall prevented any talk here. Jaeger followed Puruwehua, the first of his team to set foot on the perilous structure. He grabbed the vine-rope handrails on either side, forcing himself to step from woven cross rope to cross rope, which were spaced a man’s stride apart.
For a brief moment he made the mistake of looking down.
Two hundred feet below, the brown and angry waters of the Rio de los Dios thundered past, before churning into a maelstrom of seething white and gushing into the abyss. Jaeger figured it was best to keep eyes front. With his gaze firmly fixed on Puruwehua’s shoulders, he forced his feet to continue shuffling forward.
He was approaching the halfway point on the bridge, with most of his team bunched up behind him, when he sensed it.
With zero warning, an impossibly sleek projectile ripped apart the river mists swirling above them, the howl of its passing clawing into his ears. It tore through the centre of the rope bridge, a millisecond later ploughing into the Rio de los Dios far below and exploding in a massive gout of blasted white water.
Jaeger stared transfixed as the plume of onrushing destruction tore upwards – the noise of its eruption pounding in his ears and echoing back and forth across the chasm.
It was all over in less than a second. The bridge was left swinging violently to and fro, as figures clung to it, eyes wide in terror. Jaeger had called in enough Hellfire missile strikes to recognise the high-pitched, tortured howl of the weapon – yet this was the very first time he had ever been the target of one.
‘HELLFIRE!’ He screamed out a warning. ‘HELLFIRE! Get back! Back to the bank! Get under the trees!’
In the strange but signature way that time seemed to slow down in life-threatening combat, Jaeger felt as if he were living a hundred years for every second. His mind processed a thousand and one thoughts as he shovelled figures ahead of him, getting them to make for the cover of the jungle.
This far into the Brazilian Amazon – they were in the extreme west of the state of Acre, in the department of Assis Brazil, right on the Peruvian border – he figured it could only be one sort of warplane flying above them. It had to be a pilotless drone, for only that would have the range and the loiter time to orbit over the jungle for long enough to have found them.
Jaeger knew how long a Predator – the most common drone used by the world’s more advanced militaries – would take to rearm and reacquire its target. The very act of firing a Hellfire tended to wobble the aircraft, breaking up the video link with the unmanned warplane’s remote operator.
It would take around sixty seconds to stabilise and to re-establish firm video contact.
The next AGM-114 Hellfire – and most Predators carried a maximum of three – would be ready to fire any moment now. Depending on what altitude the Predator was orbiting at – most likely 25,000 feet – the missile might take as long as eighteen seconds to reach earth – which was the maximum time that Jaeger had remaining.
The first Hellfire had failed to detonate when it struck the rope structure, cutting through a strand of the bridge like a knife through butter.
But second time around they mightn’t be so lucky.
The last figure – the chief’s eldest son – came clambering back across, Jaeger shoving him towards the riverbank. He turned himself now, heading for the safety of the jungle, boots scrabbling at the rungs underfoot, the forest coming closer with every footfall.
‘GET INTO THE TREES!’ he screamed. ‘GET UNDER THE TREES!’
The canopy wouldn’t shield them from a Hellfire strike. There was little that could do that. But the Predator would find it next to impossible to see through the carpet of thick vegetation, which would prevent it from acquiring a target.
Jaeger kept running, rung to rung, the last man remaining on the bridge.
Then the second missile struck.
He felt the jolt of its impact an instant before the howl of its descent drilled into his ears – for the missile travelled at Mach 1.3, faster than the speed of sound. It exploded in the very centre of the bridge, the skeletal structure dissolving into a ball of boiling flame, razor-sharp shards of shrapnel ripping through the air all around him.
Moments later, he felt himself falling.
With his last reserves of strength Jaeger spun around, grabbing hold of the handrails, locking his arms around them and bracing for the impact. For a second or so his half of the bridge dropped vertically, before the end still attached to the wall of the chasm pulled up short, dragging what remained in a violent whiplash towards the rock face.
Jaeger tensed his body into a block of steel.
He struck the wall of rock, the crushing blow ripping the skin from his forearms, as his head was catapulted forward by the impact.
His forehead hit with a terrible crack.
A blinding burst of stars rocketed through Jaeger’s brain, and an instant later his world turned dark.
57
Jaeger came to.
His head was spinning. Bolts of burning pain tore through his temples. His vision swam. He felt like throwing up.
Slowly, he became aware of his surroundings. Above him there stretched a wide umbrella of dark green.
Jungle.
Canopy.
High above.
Like a protective blanket.
Shielding him from the Predator.
‘Turn everything off!’ Jaeger screamed. He fought to raise himself on to one elbow, but hands were trying to restrain him, to hold him down. ‘Get everything the hell off! It’s tracking something! GET EVERYTHING OFF!’
Jaeger’s wild, bloodied eyes flashed around his team, as figures scrambled for pockets and belt pouches.
Jaeger gasped as another stab of agony tore through his head. ‘PREDATOR!’ he cried. ‘Carries three Hellfire! Get everything off! TURN IT THE HELL OFF!’
As he screamed and raved, his eyes came to rest on one individual. Dale was crouched at the very lip of the river gorge, one knee supporting his camera, his eye bent to the viewfinder as he filmed the unfolding drama.
With a Herculean effort, Jaeger broke free from whoever was holding him down. He charged forward, eyes flashing dangerously, his face slick with blood, his visage that of a near-madman.
A yell issued forth from his throat like an animal howl. ‘TURN IT – THE HELL – OFF!’
Dale glanced up uncomprehendingly – his entire world had been focused through the camera lens.
The next moment, eighty kilos of William Jaeger slammed into him, the rugby tackle sending both men tumbling into the thick vegetation, the camera spinning off in the opposite direction. It rolled once, and disappeared over the lip into the chasm of the gorge.
The camera came to rest on a thin ledge of rock.
Seconds later, there was a howl like all the gates of hell had opened, and a third missile flashed earthwards. Hellfire number three tore through the mists, ripping into the narrow shelf where Dale’s camera had landed. The detonation burned across the narrow ledge, pulverising what little vegetation there was, but the wall of rock above served to shield Jaeger’s team from the worst of the blast.
The explosion was funnelled upwards, a storm of shrapnel tearing into the open sky, the deafening explosion roaring back and forth across the wide expanse of the Rio de los Dios.
As the echoes died away, a silence of sorts settled over the gorge. The scent of scorched rock and blasted vegetation hung heavy in the air, plus the choking, smoky firework smell of high explosives.
‘Hellfire number three!’ Jaeger cried, from where he and Dale had landed in the undergrowth. ‘Should be all it’s got! But search your gear – ALL OF IT – and get everything turned the hell off!’