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

he’d want. His name is Cameron Jilkes and his home is at the bottom of the cul-de-sac that is second on the right of the road we’re in. That’s where his mother lives. My assumption is, he’ll visit tonight, then move on. I’ve an idea where he’s headed but not certainty. Put mildly, I’d be disappointed if you shot him.”

“Best place for him, from what you say.”

“Out of harm’s way.”

Jonas said, “What he’d want. The glory moment and the wipe-out of pain and angst. Not suitable for him. A cage is right for him . . . We might not get much sleep later on so another doze would be welcome.”

Babs said, “Earlier you told us that you’d like us to find you something, but didn’t say what it was that you wanted.”

“Well remembered. Thank you. Yes . . . Please go to the nearest house and ask if they can lend you a dog lead. Or the next house, or the one after. Of course, you’ll promise to bring it back. Yes, I’d like a dog lead.”

Might have stood there half an hour on the opposite side of the road, but Cammy now moved to the pavement in front of the house. Heard nothing saw nothing and the baby was quiet.

Not in years had he known himself so hesitant.

A cat came to see him. A decent looking beast, with long hair plastered down by the rain. Took a liking to Cammy and rubbed against his ankle. It was a madness that intoxicated him. But he did not take the step forward . . .

Remembered when he had not hesitated, not stopped to consider. Their little unit of foreign fighters had been pushed in to plug a gap in the line, and a main force of Syrians was probing for weakness and had brought up three tanks – mean bastards, Russian built T-72s, each with a combat weight of 40 tonnes. They were like the guys out of a comic book, Cammy and Mikki and Pieter, just had one RPG-7 with them, and grenades, and a single sniper rifle. They had done a weaving run forward, having broken clear of their brothers, and then had put themselves into a warren of damaged buildings and all the time had heard the growing clanking thunder of the tanks’ tracks. No hesitation. The tanks were in file. They had been level with them, would have had enemy infantry within a handful of yards, and Cammy had called the plan. Took as big a risk as at any time he was in Syria and fighting. An RPG round into the tracks, side-on shot and breaking them apart and halting it, and Pieter’s sniper shot taking down the commander in the second one as he stood and gazed out of the turret, and Mikki going like a mad kid in an adventure playground and swarming up the side of the third one and crouching a moment to prise a grenade into the hatch window used by the forward observation guy. Had moved fast. More explosions behind them but the armour was stalled. The line had held . . . If any of them had hesitated it would not have happened.

He stood in front of the door and the rain fell on him and the cat now gave him best friend status. Still could not take the next step forward.

No tanks here, no line to be held and no white heat from fire, and no brothers with him . . . Stood in a residential street and shivered. Easy when there had been tanks and brothers and a front line. Wanted her, and had not wanted her at this same pitch, at any time that she had been available, easy. The cat gave up on him. He was alone.

The wild flowers grew to the height of Dwayne’s knees.

He loved flowers, would always wander away from the group when he saw them growing but would never pick them, not even to make a posy for Ulrike. The flowers that seemed to grow well on river banks entranced him. There were red petals and yellows and blues, and it must have been that week when a mass of them came into bloom at the same time.

They heard the aircraft.

The rest of them had gone to a small sand spit where the stream bent sharply and had stripped and all of them were naked except for their privates and there was a pool where they had knelt and scrubbed themselves and had washed their clothing. The stream at that point was little more than 100 yards from the track they had driven down. The vehicle was a luxury. A military type of jeep, with spare filled fuel tanks and small arms weapons, and had been abandoned. The likely scenario was that government troops had dumped it, and probably their uniforms too, and had then hightailed across country and had a dream of getting back to their villages. The jeep was on the track and Dwayne was close to it, his head down as he moved in a state of bliss through the flowers.

At a distance, a strike aircraft, coming low on an attack run was always near impossible to hear as it approached, coming at perhaps 500 klicks.

He came from a ribbon development on the outskirts of the big park of Algonquin, north of Toronto. He’d told them often enough about where he had been raised. To the rest of them the stories of Dwayne’s life had seemed almost idyllic and many times they puzzled why anyone should want to walk away from his family and his home and exchange them for fighting in Syria and Iraq, now from running in Syria and Iraq. His father was a retired corporate accountant, and his mother soldiered on as a school teacher: conventional and God-fearing but unhappy to debate politics or morals with their only child; argument upset them. They had a Labrador dog and a Maine Coon cat and the porch from spring to autumn was full of rods and tackle; a couple