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

it was heaved open. The package, in tightly-wrapped greaseproof paper and with adhesive binding wound around it, was tossed inside, only just caught by Baz. The door was slid shut and the car was gone, and darkness reigned. Baz put the package inside the space and smoothed out the tinfoil and covered it, then heaped in the blankets and closed the bench.

Baz said, “What I’m thinking, old girl, is that we might just deserve a drink.”

Mags said, “A bloody large one if I’m pouring.”

With drink taken, they’d not risk driving, but they had hours to kill before the ferry out of Zeebrugge, and they did not know that camera shutters had hammered through the exchange of the package . . .

The vehicle edged closer. The sound was muffled in the blusters of the wind. The natural light was long gone and Cammy saw the pinprick illumination of side-lights.

The engine noise was harsh, grating. He was reminded of the pick-up trucks that carried him and his brothers around the battlefields of Syria. Might get them to a destination and might not . . . In his hip pocket was the screwdriver that he had taken from the tool bag in the back of the transport he had driven from Bordeaux. His anorak was long enough to cover the handle and the narrow blade. He had not allowed any of the Iranians to see that he had taken it. Nor had he expressed an opinion on the deal they reckoned they had done with their contact . . . If he had argued he would have broken their resolve and he would not have been able to launch with them. He could have argued over the cost and over the weather conditions: he had kept quiet.

The vehicle rattled on the pot-holed track. He assumed these guys, the Chechens – not usually praised for their clemency – would not care how far out into the Channel the craft would manage before it would take water . . . might capsize in the swell, might be intercepted by a French patrol boat and rescued, or might get tossed and turned in the bow wave of a container ship . . . They would not care, would have the money, would charge the same for another craft the next night.

Along with the approach of the vehicle he heard the singing of the wind and the rumble of the breaking waves. Cammy thought it their best chance.

The vehicle’s tyres ground into the loose gravel. He thought the Iranian men, the teacher and the psychologist, now looked to him to take the lead, fearful perhaps of what they had agreed. They would have heard the weather. The women held the children close to their skirts.

He knew the reputation of the Chechens. They were feared, loathed by the Kurds fighting them and by the Syrian troops because of their cruelty to those who were captured. But they also had a reputation of buckling when the fighting was against the Hezbollah militiamen, or the Iranians of the Quds force: were the first to run when the enemy’s air strikes came in, would abandon their position in the line . . . Not for him to tell these good God-fearing people that he had fought against their fellow countrymen. Politics were beyond his remit, and religion. He would define himself by his actions.

The engine was killed. Three men climbed down from the cab of the pick-up. Cammy recognised the tarpaulin-covered shape in the back. He took the psychologist’s elbow. Held it, pushed it back. His other hand impeded the teacher. He set the rules, he was in front. A cigarette was lit which was valuable to Cammy. The lighter flame, cupped for protection, showed him a young man’s face and then moved on to an older man whose cigarette drooped from his lips, and whose untrimmed beard was grey, then on to a third man who would have been barely beyond teenage years. Likely a father and two sons. Cammy stepped forward.

English would be the common language. He was addressed in a guttural and rasping voice.

“And you are the passenger? The one they take with them. You want to go tonight? Tonight or tomorrow night, or next week? You are going with them? Yes?”

He didn’t speak, just nodded, and went closer. He was sure they were sons: one had stubble on his face, designer style, and the other had just fluff. He saw that when they dragged on their cigarettes. The older man’s head was shaved smooth but the boys’ hair whipped in the wind.

“You want to go on the water tonight? You speak for these people? The price is agreed. The price does not change. You know that?”

He did not answer.

“We brought the craft you will use. We go a little of the way, we see you into the deep water . . . If you get far out then you telephone the British authorities and they send a boat for you, they pick you up. The other side is a formality . . . a few weeks in a hostel, then you are free. They rescue you, they are very kind. You want to go tonight?”

Cammy held his silence and gazed into the shadows of the man’s face.

“You have the money – what was agreed – and we give you a good outboard motor, and full tank and spare gas. We do all that.”

There might have been a wintry smile on Cammy’s face. The smile would have been recognised by his brothers, not by those who had known him as a child.

“I want to see the boat.”

“And I want first to see the money I will be paid.”

“The boat, first is the boat.”

It would have been unusual for the Chechen, the father, to concede in a discussion about the terms of a deal. He flicked his fingers behind him and the boys lifted down an outboard engine and then the collapsed shape of a rib. He said that he needed to see it blown up, then needed to see that the engine worked, then they would talk of money. Perhaps he