Burning Angels (44 page)
Authors: Bear Grylls
‘And Luke? Did he sleep better last night?’
‘Well, the son is rather like the father, I suspect. A born survivor.’ Hanedi ruffled Simon Bello’s hair. ‘So, little chap, are you ready to say hello to another of the thousands that you have saved?’
The kid blushed. He’d found the media attention hard to deal with, to put it mildly. It all felt so over the top. All he’d done was donate a few drops of blood.
‘Sure, but Jaeger did the hard bit. I didn’t do shit.’ Simon glanced at Jaeger a little sheepishly. Jaeger had been trying to get him to curtail the language, not always successfully.
They all laughed. ‘Call it teamwork,’ Hanedi suggested modestly.
They pushed through double doors. A figure was propped up on pillows. A mass of thick dark hair; fine, almost elfin features; plus those huge sea-green eyes, flecked with specks of gold. Were they more green than blue, or more blue than green? Jaeger never had been quite able to decide; they seemed to constantly change, both with the light and with her moods.
He was struck again by just how extraordinarily arresting his wife’s appearance was. He’d spent every hour possible with her and Luke, just staring at them or holding their hands. Each time, he’d been hit by the same thought:
where the heck does love like this come from? It’s the only thing that totally breaks me.
Ruth smiled at him weakly. This was her first conscious moment since the virus had truly taken her, sucking her down into its dark and whirling vortex; since Jaeger had seen her thrust into that portable patient isolation unit aboard the Airlander.
He smiled. ‘Welcome back. How’re you feeling?’
‘How long have I been . . . fighting it?’ she replied, a little confusedly. ‘It feels like a lifetime.’
‘Weeks. But you’re back now.’ Jaeger glanced at the kid. ‘And this is how. This is Simon Chucks Bello. I thought – we thought – you’d like to meet him.’
She turned her gaze on the boy. Her eyes smiled, and when they did, the world smiled with them. She’d always had this miraculous ability to light up an entire room with her laughter; her magic. It was what had first drawn Jaeger to her.
She held out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Simon Chucks Bello. I understand that without you, none of us would still be . . . breathing. You’re one hell of a kid.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. But I didn’t exactly do much. Just got stuck by a needle.’
Ruth shook her head in amusement. ‘That’s not what I heard. I heard you got chased by the bad guys, jumped into a boat to escape, survived the sea ride from hell, not to mention an epic rescue by airship. Welcome to life with my husband – the very lovely but equally dangerous Will Jaeger.’
They laughed. That was Ruth for you, Jaeger thought. Always calm, always kind and always bloody right.
He pointed at the door leading into an adjacent room. ‘Go check on Luke. Go beat him at chess. You know you want to.’
Simon Bello patted the rucksack he had slung over his shoulder. ‘In here. Plus I brought him some snacks. We’re good to go.’
He disappeared through the door. Luke had been conscious for a good week now, and he and Simon had developed a certain repartee.
There wasn’t much in terms of electronic entertainment in the slums. Few were the households with computers or even TVs, and there was even less for orphans. Accordingly, they played a lot of board games, thought most were home-made – cobbled together from bits of cardboard and other trash.
Simon Chucks Bello was a demon at chess. Luke was using all his insider theories and trying various fancy sequences, but still Simon could defeat him within fifteen moves. It drove Luke crazy. He had inherited his father’s competitive spirit. He came from a long line of bad losers.
Ruth patted the bed. Jaeger sat beside her, and they hugged as if neither ever wanted to let the other go. Jaeger could barely believe that she was back. There had been so many moments over the past few weeks when he had feared they were losing her.
‘So, he’s quite the kid,’ Ruth murmured. She eyed Jaeger. ‘And you know something – you’re quite the dad.’
He held her gaze. ‘What are you thinking?’
She smiled. ‘Well, he did save the world. And us. And Luke has always wanted a brother . . .’
A while later Jaeger and Simon left the hospital. Once they were outside Jaeger switched on his mobile. There was the ping of an incoming message. He clicked on it.
My father took refuge in his lair beneath the mountain. Burning Angels Peak . . . I am innocent. He is a madman.
It needed no sign-off.
Finally, Falk Konig had surfaced.
It gave Jaeger just the kind of lead that he’d been looking for.
Within a matter of days of being plucked from the sea, Simon Chucks Bello had been rushed to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, Georgia.
The source of his immunity was isolated from his blood. It was in turn synthesised into an inoculation that could be mass-produced, so that those not infected by the virus could be rendered immune.
A cure took longer to develop, but it was still ready in time to save most of those infected with the
Gottvirus.
The final death toll from the pandemic was less than thirteen hundred souls – still a huge tragedy, but nothing compared to what Hank Kammler had been intending.
At the height of the epidemic, the world had been on the verge of global meltdown. That number of people couldn’t die without there being panic on the streets. But the worst of the trouble and chaos had been averted. For once world governments had been open about what exactly the virus was and where it had come from. It had taken such honesty to re-establish confidence amongst the world’s peoples.
Even so, it was several months before the United Nation’s World Health Organisation was able to declare the pandemic over. By then, Simon Chucks Bello had been granted British citizenship and was a part of the Jaeger family.
He’d also been given the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour for those who have made an
exceptional contribution to the security of the United States and to world peace.
However, US President Joseph Byrne did not get to present him with the medal: amidst something of an intelligence-driven scandal, he had been voted out of power. Thankfully.
Jaeger’s team at Amani Beach – Raff, Alonzo, Kamishi and James – had taken a few injuries under intense fire, but they had escaped via the cover provided by the Taranis. All had survived. They still called Jaeger a glory boy and refused to let him forget leaving them to fight it out on that beach.
Irina Narov had made a full recovery – from both the virus and her injuries. But of course she blamed Jaeger for losing her precious commando dagger in the struggle with Jones.
At the time of writing, Hank Kammler – the former deputy director of the CIA – was still at large, location unknown. Unsurprisingly, he was now the world’s most wanted man.
And in the meantime, Jaeger, Ruth, Luke and ‘Bellows’, as he’d been nicknamed, were a family again. And Jaeger had commissioned a new dagger for Narov.
He’d made a special request that the blade be razor sharp.
Novels
Ghost Flight
Non-Fiction
Facing Up
Facing the Frozen Ocean
Born Survivor
Great Outdoor Adventures
Living Wild
To My Sons
Mud, Sweat and Tears
A Survival Guide for Life
True Grit
Your Life – Train For It
Extreme Food
Fuel for Life
Mission Survival
Gold of the Gods
Way of the Wolf
Sands of the Scorpion
Tracks of the Tiger
Claws of the Crocodile
Rage of the Rhino
Strike of the Shark
Lair of the Leopard
Special thanks to the following: literary agents at PFD Caroline Michel, Annabel Merullo and Laura Williams, for their hard work and effort to support the publication of this book; Jon Wood and Jemima Forrester, and all at Orion – Malcolm Edwards, Mark Rusher and Leanne Oliver – who make up ‘Team Grylls’. Thanks also to all at BGV, for making the movie side of the Will Jaeger thriller series such an exciting reality.
Thanks also to the following: Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, Ollie Morton and Iain Thompson of Avon Protection, for their invaluable insight, advice and expertise on all things CBRN, and their input into the chemical, biological and nuclear aspects of this book, including the defence and protection measures. Chris Daniels and all at Hybrid Air Vehicles, for their unique insight and expertise on all things Airlander, and for pushing the envelope in terms of what is possible with such an airship; to Paul and Anne Sherratt, for such potent insight into Cold War relations immediately following World War Two; to Bob Lowndes, of Autism Wessex, for advice on all things autism and regarding those on the spectrum; to Peter Message, for a youthful critique of the early stages of the manuscript for this book; and to Ash Alexander-Cooper OBE for your technical military advice.
And a final special thank you to Damien Lewis, for helping to build upon what we discovered together in my grandfather’s war chest marked ‘Top Secret’. Bringing those World War Two documents, memorabilia and artefacts to life, in such a modern context, is pure brilliance.
This book is inspired by the true life exploits of my grandfather, Brigadier William Edward Harvey Grylls, OBE, 15/19th King’s Royal Hussars and Commanding Officer of Target Force, the covert unit established at Winston Churchill’s behest at the end of World War Two. The unit was one of the most clandestine bands of operators ever assembled by the War Office, and its mission was to track down and protect secret technologies, weaponry, scientists and high-ranking Nazi officials to serve the West’s cause against the world’s new superpower, the Soviet Union.
No one in our family had any idea of his covert role as Commanding Officer T Force – ‘T’ standing for ‘Target’ – until many years after his death and the release of information under the Official Secrets Act seventy-year rule – a process of discovery that inspired the writing of this book.
My grandfather was a man of few words, but I remember him so fondly from when I was a child growing up. Pipe-smoking, enigmatic, dry-humoured and loved by those he led.
To me, though, he was always just Grandpa Ted.
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in 2016 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Bear Grylls Ventures 2016
The right of Bear Grylls to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 5688 8
Orion Books
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
Table of Contents
