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

He bit at his lip, scratched the palms of his hands with his nails. He walked towards the nave.

They were moving professionally, not in a cluster but strung out, Mikki somewhere in the middle. There was a moon which gave them enough light. Mikki was from Ukraine.

They walked towards a wilderness. The aim was to get clear of the fighting zone beside the Euphrates river, and to keep away from roads and vehicle tracks, to lie up in daylight in abandoned buildings. They would light no fires, would stay hidden, then, when the light fell, they would move on and use instinct, or a compass, to get them into remote territory where only nomads lived, or others with black flags folded and hidden in rucksacks. Cammy had not told them, nor had there been a discussion amongst them, where they were headed, which frontier they might cross, which conflict they might enter, not yet determined. Stanislau led.

Dwayne was back-marker. Sometimes on the march Cammy would murmur the words and anthem notes of a hymn. That night he was quiet. Ulrike was immediately ahead of him, then Mikki. Pieter was behind Mikki . . . Pieter’s chest was bad and he had a hacking cough that he tried, with no great success, to stifle. That evening, Cammy had spoken to them all before they had started out, and had caught Mikki’s eye as he finished, and had been rewarded with the usual heavy grin, and the mock melancholy.

On the west side of Kiev were the tower block apartments built in the communist era, where Mikki started life. He had military experience, had been in the army and had done front line tours of fighting with the separatists in the east. Hated Russians, had tried to kill them, had tried harder to avoid them killing him, loathed them. The chance had come to fight Russians again and he had joined the black flags. Knew little of Islam, cared for it less, but had an opportunity to do them damage. He was an ordnance expert, did clever booby traps and could get on a workbench and manufacture the improvised bombs for the roadside. Never spoke of parents, had not been married, didn’t claim to have fathered any kids, would deny he had ever loved before joining the brothers. “The Boss” was what he called Cammy. “The Madonna” was his name for Ulrike. Probably, among them, he had found his only worthwhile home.

They had left the deserted building as soon as darkness came, had not felt happy there, none of them, and Tomas was mightily missed though not talked of. They were heading north and veering a little east. They had no night-sight gear and Stanislau as front-marker had noted a vehicle parked up and abandoned on the reverse slope of an incline. If anything confused them, needed checking for explosives, then Mikki was called up. They were pressing on and needed ground covered . . . Mikki had an accented growl and his big phrase, often repeated, was Life is short. Live it. He liked to talk about a “bender”, a few days of excess alcohol in a five-star place, Muscat or Kuwait, but better if it were Beirut, room service and booze, had that dream for “one day”. Mikki was disciplined most times, was safe hands, and all of them trusted him, and his stories of fighting Russians were sexed with diabolical killings and the awesome fate of their wounded and his eyes would be bright in the telling.

He told his Boss he would look at it. His Madonna, whom he adored; stopped, unhooked her rucksack. Stanislau crouched at the front, and Dwayne at the back faced away and peered out into the darkness. Cammy was checking a bootlace. None of them would actually see it, know what Mikki had done that detonated it. Might have been a trip-wire, might have been a pressure plate. The flash and the blast of scalding air, then the thunder roll, the scouring dirt and grit and the singing of the shrapnel, then the scream.

Mikki lost both legs. Taken clean off immediately below his knees. He had not even reached the vehicle, a desert warhorse, a Toyota pick-up. Mikki screamed into the night and none of them, at first, dared move. Then Ulrike did: she had the limited medical know-how none of the rest of them had learned. She called it . . . two legs gone, blood pumping, and the bitter observation that there would be no Chinook coming in for a “casevac”. Pieter yelled at her that she should not go closer for fear of a cluster of the fucking things. Dwayne cocked his rifle. They’d look to Cammy to give them authority. He nodded and Dwayne would have seen the movement of his head.

Good luck to Mikki, and a kindness done him. One shot, one bullet to crack open his forehead and to strangle the screams.

They agreed that to bury him would require a heavy pickaxe to break up parched ground, and there were no stones to make a cairn, and the chance of a few rocks – what they could forage, holding off rats or wild dogs – was minimal. Pieter had gone to him and hooked out his wallet. Empty – no address to which a “sympathy note” could be sent if ever they reached a place where there was paper, an envelope, stamps and a postbox.

Paused, held their silence, allowed their thoughts to run free. No tears but a promise given. Cammy allowed a couple of minutes that followed the crack of the single shot, then said what was needed. Life is short. Live it. They were on the move.

The line closed up. They had no gap, no sign of a place where a tooth had just been extracted. Another brother gone.

Washing up dirty plates, used coffee mugs, glasses from which juice had been drunk, Farouk reflected that the schedule was now far advanced.

He stood, suds and warm water dripping from his hands, at the hub of