The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour (best summer reads of all time txt) 📕

the frame. It had stood on the window-ledge for the remaining year of his time with the choir and then while he was at the local school, and when he had drifted, and had still been there on the day he had slipped away, told his lie, gone. There was a plate in the sink, and a knife, and an empty mug.

Fighting, killing, air strikes, the loss of friends who he rated as brothers, wounds and gut rot. And he had come through and a source of strength had been home, the semi-detached home at the end of a cul-de-sac, and his mum living there, still giving him that same strength after his money had been taken – and her photograph – on the border with Libya. Now his faith was shaken and all because his picture was not where he had expected it to be.

He crossed the kitchen. The inner door was closed.

Cammy stood by it. Hesitated . . . Wondered if he should turn on his heel and go. Had been through barbed wire entanglements that were strewn with tin cans and would rattle if moved, and had crossed minefields and had gone on his stomach in darkness and had eased his elbows forward so that he could grope in the sand with his fingers and search for a jumping anti-personnel bastard . . . Needed her blessing: wanted food, wanted money, wanted her love. He pushed the door, slipped through, closed it after him. The hall light bathed him. The landing at the top of the stairs was dark and the door into the living-room was closed. Took the gamble, opened it. Did not know whether he would face black-clad men, cops, and weapon barrels, whether lights would blaze into his face. He eased the door closed and stifled the light he had momentarily admitted.

She was sitting in the wing-back chair. Had been her chair as long as he could remember, and next to the chair was a low chest, as there had always been, and on the chest were the zappers for the TV, and anything she was reading, and where there should have been a picture, framed, showing the choir going towards the cathedral’s side door, robes flowing in a brisk wind and winter sun on their faces and their hair riffling.

He rounded the chair, knelt before it. Reached up, took her head in his hands, was resisted.

He leaned towards her. She twisted her head away. His kiss landed on the side of her head, his lips buried in her hair . . . And he had crossed the world for this moment. He let go of her head.

“I came back. Came back for you.”

A small voice but clear. “You were neither expected nor wanted.”

“I came back out of love for you, to see you.”

“I didn’t ask you to, didn’t need you to.”

“Had to see you.”

She stared straight in front of her and did not look at Cammy. “Then hurry up. They’re waiting for you. They’re outside and watching for you. Your choice was to go. My choice was never to want to see you again.”

Only a few at the Station were not asleep.

The Mess had cleared and the grille had been lowered on the bar and the glasses were in the washer, the machine going through its last rinses. In the canteen, lights were low and the only sound was the hum of a refrigerator where breakfast ingredients waited the arrival of the chefs who would serve up the first meal of the day to the early technical and flying staff.

Pilots and navigators slept, those who drove the big Sentry AEW1 and the Sentinel R1 which carried the high dome on its back, all part of the Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance hub, and their pint-sized army of communications experts who flew with them . . . those not based down in the Mediterranean and doing shifts over Syrian airspace. Also crashed out were the pilots and sensor operators and intelligence people who flew the Reaper drones, though their aircraft were 2,500 miles away, locked up in Turkish hangars. And the teams of maintenance men, and those who fed the raw data of the locations and identities of the remnants of the black flag groups into the systems. The Station was quiet. No night flights were scheduled.

The few who were awake manned a security control area and had responsibility for the protection of the Station, its equipment, planes and drones, and for those assigned to them. They were RAF Regiment and were armed in a way considered appropriate to deal with any potential threat, likely to come from a home-grown jihadi who would be categorised as a “lone wolf” and carrying an improvised explosive in a vest with crude wiring. The Regiment men whiled away a shift with coffee breaks and, on what had become routine timings, went out with their Land Rovers to patrol the perimeters, and might let their dogs have a run and give them a toy to chew on in place of a volunteer’s padded arm as used in training.

The Station covered many acres, and some buildings included were recently erected and considered temporary, or were modern, and some had served a purpose in the last war when the runway had been used by heavy bombers flying night after night over Germany. The men and women of the Regiment, charged with guard duty, were at a normal level of preparedness: they had not received a threat assessment ratcheted up to levels of Amber, and no indication that might have put them up to Red. There was no intelligence that an attack was either “likely” or “imminent”.

The light rain had moved on, and clearer skies were forecast, and a decent temperature was expected . . . Had information been received that an attack – from however an incompetent quarter – was likely that morning, then the Regiment personnel would have been placed on full alert, and the local police would have drafted in every firearm available. The Station would have resembled a well-defended fortress,