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

found wild flowers. There were none. Good if he could have heard small birds making melancholy or chirruping songs, but heard only the soft drone of the engine. Looked up often enough. Once only, saw a light flash in the quiet blue of the sky. Just a leg, nothing more of her, and he did not bother with making a pretence of burying it. His trousers sagged at his knees and he had no paper to clean himself. He hitched his trousers, raised his rifle, pointed the barrel into the skies, let go the entire magazine. Pointless and stupid and all he was capable of. They might see on their screens, wherever they flew the drone from, a lone figure who fired at them and had no relevance. Cammy clenched his fist, shook it at the unseen lens and screamed his promise. They would see him, might chuckle, would not hear him.

His promise, “I will come. I will find you. I will hunt you down. Wherever you are, however safe you think yourselves, I will find you and will come for you . . . That is my promise, believe it.”

Cammy heard the flow of the river. Two years before he had left, a tree trunk had fallen across it and made a dam where a waterfall tumbled. Heard it and knew it. He was stumbling, as he had been at the end of his solitary march, when he had crossed a single strand of wire, in the cover of darkness, and had left Syria, and had started out on the next stage of the journey to fulfil the promise, honour his word. So tired, and his strength leaking.

Past five, and sunrise due in fourteen minutes and the Station came reluctantly to life.

Arc lights coming on. The first vehicles of the day moving into the heavily guarded area of the main gates.

The rush would come soon, and passes would be flashed irritably into the faces of the guards from the Regiment. And off the Station, in scores of homes, alarms would ring out for air crew and ground crew, and the technicians who did the repairs or maintenance and fine-tuned the electronics, and in the bedrooms of those who cleaned the toilets, hoovered the carpets in the Officers’ Mess, those who would soon get the gas burning under the frying pans, would valet the uniforms of senior officers who that day were expecting a Civil Service delegation looking into cost cutting . . . A myriad of alarms, and a cacophony of grumbling as feet slipped out from under duvets.

But, for all the congenital moans – force of habit – there would be relief amongst many that the Station was a place of safety: rather serve here, the chime would have been, where security was pretty much guaranteed than in the arsehole corners of the Middle East . . . And soon the nurseries would be opening for the day’s business, and the museum, and the centre where the spooks ruled in Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance. Just the start of another day in the Station’s life. In some electronic archive, tucked away, out of sight and out of mind, would have been the video record of a drone strike that had been launched from Syrian airspace close to the Jordanian border. Not remarkable and not unremarkable, a minor moment in unmanned aerial vehicle warfare. The recording showed, as the Reaper loitered, scattered debris and body parts and a crater. Showed also a single detached leg that had been tossed to the side of the track – and it had showed a guy in a ditch who had had his pants down, and who seemed to fire an entire magazine into the sky, and who had then clenched a fist and punched at nothing.

“Never in doubt,” Baz chuckled and took a hand off the wheel and squeezed Mags’ knee.

“Piece of cake, big boy,” she answered him.

The ferry port was behind them, and so were the banks of arc lights that highlighted the customs area. They had headed through, had waved at a tired-looking woman in uniform, and he had blown her a kiss which was cheeky and probably sealed her belief that too many old people had too much time on their hands, and should get off their backsides and . . . she had given them in return a flutter of her hand. They had not accelerated, had not shown impatience, but had kept their place in the queue of vehicles as they came out of the ferry area and started on the feeder road to the main route north. Very soon, he would turn off, following her directions, and take the B roads that would keep them clear of tracking and surveillance cameras and recognition systems, and they would round the capital by the west side and then drive cross-country back to the east for the last stages of their journey.

“Gone well.”

“Gone a treat.”

“Can I give you a thought, Mags?”

“Give it me.”

Baz said, “Like it’s certainty, I’ll tell you what’ll happen in the next hour. I’m telling you that we were just lucky – two pigs on a dry day finding some mud to roll in. In an hour, might be an hour and a half but not more, they’ll start getting their act together, and the messages that clogged up overnight will unscramble, and they’ll be looking for our wheels, might even have the phoney plate details. Bet your knickers on it, Mags. That dozy cow who waved us through, she’ll be sitting with her head in her hands, and in front of her on a laptop screen will be the picture of our wheels. And the balloon will be up, except – if our luck holds – they’ll not know where to look . . . The schedule’s good, and . . . You all right, Mags?”

“Just gone a bit serious, but all right.” Her head was down on her chest, lips pursed and a frown on her forehead.

“Tell me.”

“It’s powerful kit in the back there. Do some damage. Hasn’t bothered