Free Ghost Flight by Bear Grylls

grabbed it and flicked his eyes over the story, relishing the news along with the excellent breakfast.
    Pieter Boerke had been bang on: his Gotcha coup had delivered all that he had promised. Boerke had somehow managed to ferry his men across the Gulf of Guinea during the height of a tropical storm. He’d chosen to do so deliberately, for local intelligence – most likely Major Mojo’s – had suggested that Chambara’s forces would be stood down due to the appalling weather.
    Boerke’s men had struck from out of a howling, rain-lashed devil of a night. Chambara’s guards had been taken by utter surprise, their resistance fast crumbling. The President had been caught as he tried to flee the country in his private jet, at Bioko airport.
    Jaeger smiled. Maybe he would be getting the seventh page of the Duchessa ’s manifest, after all – not that it particularly seemed to matter now.
    Fifteen minutes later, he pressed a finger on to a doorbell. He’d left the Triumph in the village and walked up the hill, having first phoned through a warning to Dulce that he was coming.
    Dulce. Sweet. Smith’s wife had certainly proven true to her name.
    Smith had met her in Brazil, during their second training mission, Dulce being a distant cousin of Colonel Evandro. Marriage had followed a whirlwind romance, and Jaeger couldn’t say that he blamed Smithy for grabbing his girl.
    Five foot nine; dark, smouldering eyes and burnished skin – Dulce was smoking hot. She was also the perfect marriage material, as Jaeger had made clear in his best man’s speech, while at the same time gently reminding Dulce of Smithy’s bad habits but enduring loyalty.
    The door to the Millside opened. Dulce stood there, striking as ever, a brave smile on her shadowed features. But there was no hiding the grief that lay raw and fresh just below the surface. Jaeger handed her the hamper that he’d purchased from the delicatessen, plus a hastily scribbled card.
    She made coffee, while Jaeger filled her in on the short version of his three missing years. He’d maintained contact with her husband, of course, but it had been mostly one-way – Smithy reporting by email that nothing had been heard of Jaeger’s missing wife and child.
    The deal Jaeger had cut with his closest friend was that his whereabouts would remain a closely guarded secret until he chose otherwise. There had been one caveat: if Smithy died or was otherwise incapacitated, his lawyer would release details of Jaeger’s whereabouts.
    Jaeger figured that was how Raff and Feaney had found him, but he hadn’t troubled to ask. With Smithy dead, it was all pretty much an irrelevance now.
    ‘Was there anything?’ Jaeger asked, as the two of them shared some of Dulce’s pasteis de nata , a Brazilian delicacy, across the kitchen table. ‘Anything that might have suggested he was unhappy? That he’d take his own life?’
    ‘But of course not!’ Dulce’s eyes flashed with a spark of Latino anger. She always had had a fiery side. ‘How can you ask? We were happy. He was so happy. No. Andy would never have done what they say he did. It is just not possible.’
    ‘No money worries?’ Jaeger probed. ‘No grief with the kids at school? Help me here. I’m floundering around trying to find something.’
    She shrugged. ‘There is nothing.’
    ‘He wasn’t drinking? He’d not hit the bottle?’
    ‘Jaeger, he’s gone. And no, amigo , he wasn’t drinking.’
    Her eyes met his. Pained. Smoky. Storm-laden.
    ‘He had a mark,’ Jaeger ventured. ‘Kind of like a tattoo. On his left shoulder?’
    ‘What mark?’ Dulce looked blank. ‘He had nothing. I would know.’
    Jaeger realised then that the police hadn’t shown her the photo of the dark eagle carved into her husband’s shoulder. He didn’t exactly blame them. It was already traumatic enough for her; she didn’t need to be confronted with the full gory details.
    He moved swiftly on. ‘This expedition into the Amazon, how was he