Burning Angels (25 page)

Fire leapt through the chopper now, the hungry flames taking hold. Jaeger needed to move fast, or Konig and Urio would be burned alive. But if he tried to brave those flames unprotected, he’d never make it.

He threw off his pack, reached inside and pulled out a large spray can, with
COLDFIRE
stamped across the matt-black exterior. Turning the nozzle on himself, he sprayed himself from head to toe before dashing for the HIP, can gripped in hand. Coldfire was a miracle agent. He’d seen soldiers spray their hands with it, then play a blowtorch across their bare skin and feel nothing.

Taking a massive gulp of air, he dived through the smoke towards the heart of the flames. Incredibly, he felt no sensation of burning; no heat at all. He lifted the can and let rip, the foam cutting through the toxic vapours and dousing the flames within seconds.

Fighting his way forward into the cockpit, he unbuckled the unconscious form of Konig and hauled him from the HIP. Konig looked as if he’d taken a blow to the head, but otherwise he seemed relatively unharmed. Jaeger was soaked with sweat by now, and choking from the smoke, yet he turned a further time and ripped open the other door to the HIP’s cockpit.

With a final burst of energy, he grabbed the co-pilot and began to drag him towards safety.

50

Jaeger and Narov had been moving at speed for a good three hours now. Sticking to the cover of a wadi – a dry watercourse – they’d managed to overtake the poaching gang, and without any sign that they had been spotted.

They pressed ahead to a thick grove of acacia trees, from which they could get eyes on the poachers as they passed. They needed to assess numbers, weaponry, strengths and weaknesses, in order to determine the best way to hit them.

Back at the helicopter, the poachers had been driven off by the weight of defensive fire, and the injured had been stabilised. They’d called for a medevac chopper, which Katavi Lodge was getting sorted. They planned to lift the baby elephant out at the same time as picking up the wounded.

But Jaeger and Narov had left long before any of that could happen, hard on the trail of the poachers.

From the cover of the acacia grove they watched the gang approach. There were ten gunmen. The RPG operator who’d hit the HIP, plus his loader, would be bringing up the rear, making twelve in all. To Jaeger’s practised eye, they looked tooled up to the nines. Long bandoliers of ammo were hanging off their torsos, and magazines were stuffed into bulging pockets, plus rakes of grenades for the launchers.

Twelve poachers, with a veritable war in a box. It wasn’t the sort of odds he relished.

As they watched the gang pass, they saw the ivory – four massive bloodied tusks – being passed between them. Each man took his turn, staggering along with a tusk slung over his shoulder, before passing it on to another.

Jaeger didn’t doubt the energy expended in doing so. He and Narov had moved light, but still they were drenched in sweat. His thin cotton shirt was glued to his back. They had grabbed some bottled water out of the HIP, but even so they were already running short. And these guys – the poachers – were carrying many times more weight.

Jaeger guessed that each tusk was a good forty kilos, so as heavy as a small adult. He figured they’d be breaking march and setting camp any time soon. They’d have to. Dusk was only a short time away, and they would need to drink, eat and rest.

And that meant the plan forming in his mind might just be doable.

He settled back into the cover of the wadi, signalling Narov to do likewise. ‘Seen enough?’ he whispered.

‘Enough to want to kill them all,’ she hissed.

‘My sentiments exactly. Trouble is, if we take them on in open battle, it’ll be suicide.’

‘Got a better idea?’ she rasped.

‘Maybe.’ Jaeger delved into his backpack and pulled out his compact Thuraya satphone. ‘From what Konig told us, elephant ivory is solid, like a massive tooth. But like all teeth, at the root end there’s a hollow cone: the pulp cavity. And that’s filled with soft tissue, cells and veins.’

‘I’m listening,’ Narov growled. Jaeger could tell she still wanted to go in and hit them right here and now.

‘Sooner or later the gang will have to call a halt. They camp up for the night, and we go in. But we don’t hit them. Not yet.’ He held up the Thuraya. ‘We stuff this deep into the pulp cavity. We get Falkenhagen to track the signal. That leads us to their base. In the meantime, we order up some proper hardware. Then we go in and hit them at a time and place of our choosing.’

‘How do we get close enough?’ Narov demanded. ‘To plant the satphone?’

‘I don’t know. But we do what we do best. We observe; we study. We find a way.’

Narov’s eyes glinted. ‘And what if someone calls the phone?’

‘We set it to vibrate mode. Silent.’

‘And if it vibrates its way loose and falls out?’

Jaeger sighed. ‘Now you’re just being difficult.’

‘Being difficult keeps me alive.’ Narov rummaged in her pack and pulled out a tiny device no bigger than a pound coin. ‘How about this? GPS tracker device. Solar-powered Retrievor. Accurate up to one and a half metres. I figured we might need one to keep tabs on Kammler’s people.’

Jaeger held out a hand for it. Stuffing this deep into the tusk’s pulp cavity was certainly feasible, if only they could get close enough.

Narov held off from passing it over. ‘One condition: I get to place it.’

Jaeger eyed her for a second. She was slight, nimble and smart, that much he knew, and he didn’t doubt that she might move more quietly than he could.

He smiled. ‘Let’s do this.’

They pressed on for another three gruelling hours. Finally the gang called a halt. The giant, blood-red African sun was sinking swiftly towards the horizon. Jaeger and Narov crept closer, belly-crawling along a narrow ravine that ended at a patch of dark and stinking mud, marking the fringes of a waterhole.

The poachers were camped on the far side, which made perfect sense. After the long day’s march, they’d have need of water. The waterhole, though, looked to be a festering mud pit. The heat had dissipated slightly, but it remained stultifying, and every crawling, buzzing, stinging thing seemed to be drawn here. Flies as big as mice, rats as big as cats and vicious stinging mosquitoes – the place was swarming.

But nothing bothered Jaeger as much as the dehydration. They’d drained the last of their water a good hour back, and he had little or no fluid left in his body to sweat out. He could feel the onset of a splitting headache. Even lying utterly still, keeping watch on the poachers, the thirst was unbearable.

They both needed to rehydrate, and soon.

Darkness descended across the landscape. A light wind got up, whipping away the last of the sweat from Jaeger’s skin. He lay in the dirt, still as a rock and staring into the wall of the night, Narov beside him.

Above them a faint shimmer of starlight flickered through the acacia canopy, with just the faintest hint of the moon breaking through. To left and right a firefly skittered in the darkness, its fluorescent blue-green glow floating magically above the water.

The absence of light was to be welcomed. On a mission such as this, the darkness was their greatest friend.

And the more he watched, the more Jaeger realised that the water – repulsive though it might be – offered the ideal route in.

51

Neither Jaeger nor Narov had a clue how deep the water was, but it would take them right into the heart of the enemy’s camp. On the far side of the waterhole, the light of the poachers’ cooking fire gleamed on its stagnant surface.

‘Ready to go to work?’ Jaeger whispered, gently nudging Narov’s boot with his own.

She nodded. ‘Let’s get moving.’

It was gone midnight and the camp had been still for a good three hours. During their time spent observing the place, they’d not seen a single sign of any crocs.

It was time.

Jaeger turned and slid himself in, feeling with his boots for something solid. They came to rest in the thick, gloopy detritus that formed the bottom of the waterhole. He was in up to his waist, but at least the bank shielded him from view.

To either side, unseen, nameless beasts slithered and slopped about. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t the faintest hint of any flow to the water. It was stagnant, fetid and nauseating. It stank of animal faeces, disease and death.

In short, it was perfect – for the poachers would never think to watch for an attack from here.

During his time in the SAS, Jaeger had been taught to embrace what most normal souls feared; to inhabit the night; to welcome darkness. It was the cloak to hide his and his brother warriors’ movements from hostile eyes – just as he hoped it would prove now.

He had been trained to seek out the kind of environments – sun-blasted desert, remote, hostile bush and fetid swamps – that normal human beings tended to shun. No other sane people would be there, which meant that a small group of elite operators could sneak through unnoticed.

No poachers would be joining Jaeger and Narov in this foul and stinking waterhole, which was why – despite the numerous downsides – it was perfect.

Jaeger got himself down on to his knees, his eyes and nose just above the water, his hand gripping his pistol. Like this he could maintain the lowest profile possible, while crawling and shuffling silently ahead. He made sure to keep the P228 out of the water. While most pistols still worked when wet, it was always better to keep them dry – just in case the dirty water fouled up the weapon.

He glanced at Narov. ‘You happy?’

She nodded, her eyes sparkling dangerously in the moonlight.

The tips of the fingers of Jaeger’s left hand gripped the squelchy, gooey mush as his feet shoved him into forward motion. He flailed about amongst a mass of rotting, putrid vegetation, his hand sinking up to the wrist with each thrust.

He prayed there weren’t any snakes in here, then drove the thought from his mind.

He pressed ahead for three minutes, counting each forward thrust by hand and feet, and translating that into a rough estimate of distance travelled. He and Narov were moving blind here, and he needed a sense of where the poachers’ camp lay. When he figured they’d covered about seventy-five yards, he signalled a halt.

He approached the left bank and raised his head, inching it above the cover. He felt Narov tight beside him, her head practically on his shoulder. Together they emerged from the swamp, their hands gripping their pistols. Each covered one half of the terrain before them as they whispered details back and forth, building up a picture of the enemy encampment as rapidly as possible.

‘Campfire,’ Jaeger whispered. ‘Two guys sat beside it. Sentry.’

‘Direction of watch?’

‘South-east. Away from the waterhole.’

‘Lights?’

‘None that I can see.’

‘Weapons?’

‘AKs. Plus I see guys to left and right of the fire, sleeping. I count . . . eight.’

‘That’s ten accounted for. Two unseen.’

Narov swivelled her eyes this way and that, scanning her section of the terrain.

‘I see the tusks. One guy standing sentry over them.’

‘Weapon?’

‘Assault rifle slung across his shoulder.’

‘That leaves one unaccounted for. One missing.’

Both were aware of the passage of time, but it made sense to find that missing poacher. They kept watch for a few minutes longer, but still they couldn’t locate the last man.

‘Any sign of extra security measures? Tripwires? Booby traps? Motion sensors?’

Narov shook her head. ‘Nothing visible. Let’s move ahead thirty. Then we’ll be right beside the tusks.’

Jaeger slid back into the murk and pushed on. As he did so, he could hear the sounds of mystery beasts thrashing about in the thick darkness. His eyes were about level with the water, and he could sense vile movement to all sides. Worst of all, he could feel things slithering their way in.

Beneath his shirt, around his neck – on his inner thighs, even – he could detect the faintly stinging sensation, as a leech inserted its jaws under his skin and began sucking greedily, filling its gut with his blood.

It was sickening; revolting.

But there was nothing he could do about it right now.

For some reason – most likely the electrifying adrenalin buzz he was feeling – Jaeger was also dying for a pee. But he had to fight the urge. The golden rule of crossing such watery terrain was: never take a leak. If you did, you risked opening up your urethra and allowing a swampload of germs, bacteria and parasites to swim up your urine stream.

There was even a tiny
fish
– the candiru, or ‘toothpick fish’ – that liked to insert itself into your tube and extend its spines, so you couldn’t pull it out again. The very thought made Jaeger shudder. No way could he allow himself to take a leak. He’d hold it in until the mission was done.

Finally they stopped and did a second scan of the terrain. To their immediate left the four giant tusks gleamed eerily in the moonlight, maybe thirty yards away. The lone sentry had his back to them, facing out into the bush – where any obvious threat would come from.

Narov held up the tracker device. ‘I’m going in,’ she whispered.

For a moment Jaeger was tempted to argue. But this was not the time. And very possibly she could do this better than him. ‘I’ve got your back. You’re covered.’

Narov paused for an instant, then scooped up a handful of shitty gunk from the bank and smeared it all over her face and hair.

She turned to Jaeger. ‘How do I look?’

‘Ravishing.’

With that she slithered up the bank like a ghostly serpent and was gone.

52

Jaeger counted out the seconds. He figured seven minutes had passed, and still no sign of Narov. He was expecting her to reappear at any moment. He had his eyes glued to the sentries by the fire, but there was no sign yet of any trouble.

Still, the tension was unbearable.

Suddenly he detected a weird, strangled gurgling noise coming from the direction of the ivory pile. Momentarily he swivelled his eyes across to check. The lone watchman had disappeared from view.