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

Wolfboy had gone west of the Peak District National Park, and had no need to hurry, and his tank had sufficient fuel.

It was a meandering route but each time he looked at his watch, and checked the satnav, he believed he had the schedule set correctly.

He wondered how he would be treated, afterwards, by the people who had recruited him, who knew what part he had played. With respect, he believed. His destination was Grantham, the town in Lincolnshire where a former Prime Minister had been brought up. Out by the crematorium was a car park that had, he was told, minimal camera surveillance.

The vehicle handled reasonably and he had become used to the vagaries imposed by the new weight it carried . . . It would be a fine man he gave the cargo to, a man to be admired.

Cammy came out of the trees beside the stream. He passed the back of a new housing development: a pristine collection of townhouses and apartments, rows of parked cars, and lights above the parking areas. They had been building it when he had gone away. Beyond was the park, and benches down by the stream. So tired. Needed to rest and to wash his face and hands, clean the mud off his clothes . . . Then would walk to the station and buy the ticket with his mother’s money, and would sit or stand on the train, and would be rushed to London . . . Then? It would be good to feel the weight of the launcher in his hands, and all fast and all finished quick. Driving the vehicle through the fence and then the chase, and maybe having to cross the full width of a concrete runway, shouting behind him and occasional shots that would be aimed too high, too low or too wide. They would give him – when he took possession of the weapon and the vehicle – pictures of the buildings that were his target. He would not actually get up to them, certainly not into them, but if he were within 200 yards of them, probably single storey, prefabricated and without windows, he could crouch and aim the launcher, go through the sights and lock on the target and squeeze the trigger and feel the thunder blow and the flash of the flame from its exhaust. Could follow the flight of it, track it until it hit – then load the next, and fire, and load again. Might let go four of them, even five, if the couriers had managed to bring that many bombs for the thing. That, Cammy estimated, was when the first of their bullets might hit him. Not likely, with the first one, to be a killing shot. Many more would follow. Might fire 25 into him, might creep close, and him long gone, and fire shots into his head . . . as it would have been at Flores off the Azores, the Atlantic islands.

A master who taught English at the college had been there. He’d had a fine voice, and had made the poetry alive. A ship in Elizabethan times, Sir Richard Grenville its master, 53 Spanish galleons and the Revenge alone, a day-long savage fight and a final capitulation and the buccaneer carried aboard the enemy flagship, mortally wounded, and them still cautious, fearful of him, even as death came. Remembered the teacher’s ringing voice: Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew, But they sank his body with honour down into the deep. They would stand around him, wary long after life had gone, and there would be a sort of awe, and . . . That was how it would be – and his promise had been given.

He was staggering. The strength bled from his legs.

The wind blustered, and the sun would soon show. Remembered what Stanislau liked to say: I want to snatch the sunset and hold it. Cammy would see a sunrise, not a sunset.

It was Kingsmead Park. His mind on Nunc Dimittis, and challenging were the verses of “The snares of Hell”, and others were starting to compete, and his head rolled and his walk was feeble. Ahead of him he saw a bench.

They had parked. They had their weapons. They stood by the car, Jonas at the front.

Beside the parking area was the gateway to a nursery school, and a well-equipped play area.

The dog strained on the lead, was probably hungry. Well, the dog would have to wait for its breakfast.

The place, Dominic told him, was Kingsmead Park. Babs had it on her phone and said it was considered a precious place by the locals because it had been saved from developers by public clamour.

Jonas said, “Time to get this show on the road.”

They had been in the car park a full five minutes when the lone figure emerged from a track beside the new housing development. Babs had let loose a sharp short whistle between her teeth, but quiet, and done it as a mark of admiration, something like that, and there had been a half-smile on Dominic’s face. The figure had passed beneath a street lamp and had been lit well, and had not hurried. Dominic said that the target man, their Tango, was “knackered”. Babs thought he was “about all in”. Jonas thought appearances, in the grey and difficult light of dawn with the first sunlight not yet falling on the open spaces of the park, could lie.

The dog tugged on the lead. Would have wanted the grass.

Dominic cradled his H&K across his vest. Might have dropped the man at this range and in that light, might not. Across the stream were bungalows with pretty gardens, and trees with a flurry of blossom in their branches, and then a main road, a bus passing along it, the first of the day. Babs was doing a fast check-list of her kit, and they armed their weapons. Jonas supposed that was necessary