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

waiting. They had tried to make it plain enough, clear to a simpleton, that they were about to run a show and the passenger would do as he was bloody told. He had not yet answered, stared back at them and his mind seemed to be far away. They might have wondered whether a single word they had said, coming at him with their argument and pincer movement logic, had been taken in. Might not have heard a word, might not have listened to anything they’d said. He had a small bag by his feet, and had started to rummage in it. They waited. One certainty, the sergeant back in Dover, at the station on Ladywell, would get a heavy-grade bollocking for letting them loose on this cretin, and both would batter him with their problems. A file was taken out. The guy, Mr Merrick – and they had both been scrupulously polite while their voices dripped sarcasm – extracted a picture, an individual’s head and shoulders, what would have been a passport snap blown up. He used a pencil-thin torch to illuminate the picture and Babs saw that the name of a south Devon caravan site was on its side. The beam was shone on the picture. A decent enough looking lad, nice enough hair, no tattoos on his neck, what seemed like a genuine and understated smile – not cocky and not supercilious – but the smile was still hard to gauge because of the smear ringing the mouth.

“Is that him?”

“Is that the target?”

“What’s around his mouth?”

They were answered, quietly, and both had to strain to hear. “That’s ice-cream. We went out and bought some ice-cream for the kids who came ashore this morning, the Iranians. The adults didn’t want to make an identification, but he’d saved one of the kids from drowning during the crossing, brave of him, and that kid did the business for us, kissed it and his mouth was full of ice-cream and a chocolate stick. Always go for the weakest link, the way to break a chain. Know what I mean?”

The voice had a chill to it, like there was no emotion. They looked at the picture until he switched off the torch, and replaced it in the file.

He said where they should go.

A car was already parked there.

They swore. Jonas, to himself, chuckled.

The car would have been left by Tristram and Izzy, Babs expertly manoeuvred their car into the remaining space. More grumbling from the front and he saw no benefit in disabusing them. No need to explain to them who else was on the plot and what their requirement was.

Jonas looked at his watch. “I think we are a little early. Should have picked up a flask, shouldn’t I? Just one thing I’d like you to find me, and . . .”

“All in due course, if you don’t mind, Mr Merrick. We still have loose threads,” Babs said.

“I think we spelled it out pretty clearly, Mr Merrick, but didn’t get an answer.”

“The guarantee, sir, and our primacy – and, full respect, you are elderly and may be confronting a motivated and dangerous individual and we’d not want you blundering into our line of sight.”

“Into our line of fire.”

Jonas said, “No risk of that. I think I understand what you want and I’m sure we’ll get along rather well.”

“So, that’s done and dusted.”

“Not a problem,” Jonas said.

“Would you mind stepping out, Mr Merrick.”

He did. He stood under the tree and let the rain fall, felt comfortable and at ease. Babs unfastened one of the boxes and Dominic started rummaging on its far side and then heaved out two vests. Jonas had never worn one. The surveillance people in 3/S/12 liked to show them off when they were on an arrest operation, and they’d come back into the building and come up the stairs for their debrief, still wearing them, then would dump them on the floor: he’d always thought it was similar to a peacock displaying, letting the corridor know they’d been at the sharp end. He was told they did not have one for him. He answered that it was unlikely he would need such equipment and that he had no intention of going anywhere close to where he might require one. They were satisfied.

Jonas could have trampled all over them, might have suggested that they had never, not ever, confronted a living terrorist who was armed and who represented a straightforward and unarguable risk to life: thought for a short moment of Winston Gunn and the quiver in the boy’s lower lip and the shake in his hands, and thought of the wires and the detonators and the sticks of commercial explosive – could have rubbished them and spoken of a private investiture and a gong now safe in his wife’s knicker drawer. Would not have dreamed of telling them of that faraway and irrelevant event. Nor would he have considered it fair comment to remark on the probably indisputable fact that neither had ever gone with their main armament, to the stage where they eased off the Safety and were ready to fire . . . Would never have fired, would never have known – whatever their training – how they would be if “Christ, it’s actually happening” . . . as a bodyguard had shouted when the President, “Rawhide”, was shot on a Washington DC pavement. Would have been churlish because they might do the business and might freeze – did not know. Vera had once tried to ask him what had been in his mind when he had started yanking clear the wires of the bomb young Gunn had been wearing, and he’d had no decent answer. They had the guns out and locked in the magazines, and armed the weapons, then did the same with the Glock pistols carried in holsters looped to their thighs. They made a harsh noise doing it, but the TVs indoors continued to play and the rain to fall and they attracted no attention.

Jonas watched, then said, “It’s what