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

There was a location, east London, in Epping Forest, where there had once been a prisoner of war camp; it had become a police firearms training base, and had also had facilities for Fivers to learn particular skills. They had both been through it, not together but in successive induction courses, had been taken through sessions on self-defence, and the point had been laboured that it was not always possible for the backup to be close. Might be, as near as made no difference, on their own. Facing what, on their own? Facing a guy – maybe – pumped up from years of getting the shit bombed out of him in far away Syria, survived – just about – the slaughter inflicted on a defeated rabble, now in a foul mood. Coming where? Here on the say-so of Jonas Merrick, guru of the hour in Thames House. They were at the end of a cul-de-sac, peering its length and looking into the shadows and hearing the patter of rain off leaky gutters. And backup? The cavalry were somewhere behind them, but not identified. The training course in the Forest had given them the basics of self-defence. Hairy big bastards, tattooed arms, moustaches, bald heads, piercing and sneering eyes. Had done simulated attacks on guys and girls in the surveillance teams who were on their own, then had shown out. Just pretend attacks, but both Tristram and Izzy could remember them. They had come with such suddenness, from nowhere, supposed to be warned but still not expected, that Tristram – the first time – had broken wind, gasped, shrieked, then gone down in an armlock, too petrified to fight back. Izzy – not proud of it, bloody embarrassing – had wet herself, had been incapacitated, too shocked to make a response.

A recruit on Tristram’s course had queried the action of the instructor: she had asked whether the “ferocity” of the play-acted attack breached Health and Safety regulations. Was there a statute laying down acceptable levels for the effects of the shock inflicted? The rest of them, so Tristram said, had all muttered about “snowflakes”, and anyway that girl had failed to make it through . . . And all of them had said later that “There but for God’s grace go I, go each last fucking one of us”. But, of course, it never would happen, would it? They were all graduates, all chosen by rigorous selection, all had good brains and above-average awareness and their job would be to analyse, to predict, to turn out the plods to do the heavy lifting . . . Would not be alone, the two of them, in a darkened cul-de-sac where some crazy embittered idiot would be coming – according to the Eternal Flame – to visit his mum. No backup. No weapon.

They reached the end of the road and stopped.

Could not have said, either of them, who made the move. Hands close, then touching, then fingers entwined. Not affection but a mutual need for safety. Other than the rain and the TVs and one bloody owl that kept shrieking, they heard nothing. They were under a tree which took some of the rain and there was an evergreen shrub that took some more of it, and a pigeon exploded out of it and broke the quiet. It thrashed in the branches as if in panic flight and she squeaked and he gasped, and they held each other tightly.

She did not let go of his hand, had no weapon to hold instead, said, “Well, come on. Let’s get this fucking business moving.”

Doing what they did best, getting all the pieces in place.

She did the check-in, and Baz was parked up in the line for vehicles waiting to collect tickets. Not gone for long, not more than five minutes. He watched her walking towards the camper. A lesser woman than his Mags would have waved the tickets at him so that he would see the moment of success, or would have done a high-five for him. Too clever, his Mags. That would have been the behaviour of kids, not of professionals.

He guessed there would be layers of bureaucracy to get through. The German tail would have first done their own search, been unwilling to cry “Failure” too quickly. Then they would have called in their local control. The local people, either in a command car or taking over a police station office in Cologne or Aachen or where-fucking-ever, would then have had to go up to a national level. From national level there would then be a fast sub-committee meeting, when they could get enough people together who were not stuck in traffic, already on their way home, and then a decision would need to be made. Face lost, bucket-sized. Having to explain at an international level that a surveillance team had fouled up – and a British target, and Brits in this day and age were the least favourite chums to have on board. So, reluctantly the bad news would be spread. Given to the Dutch and to the Belgians first because they were on the obvious route the camper would be taking . . . then the French. That would have been a hard pill to get down the gullet. As he had often enough said to Mags, “I may be a complete arsehole but I’m not a complete fool”. He reckoned he understood the way the systems worked.

At the French end it would reach – might not have done so yet – an office in Paris. A junior would have fielded it, and he or she would pass the parcel up the ladder and try to contact a relevant duty officer, and that’s how it worked . . . Likely as not be a call back to the unhappy Huns asking for more details, and then the British might get a query and it would end up in a labyrinth where pride and national prestige played their