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

of smoke rising, no clearance of the cloud when the debris fell back to the ground, no bodies to count – left them taut and frustrated. They had done their debrief and had walked to the Mess and would try to relax and talk about holidays, barmaids in the surrounding villages, vehicle showrooms, and football. Would try to wind down and then would go home. Would all tiptoe into the kids’ bedrooms and see a sleeping child and ease out, then would go down to the kitchen where the wife might be watching a TV show, flicking the pages of a magazine, wrestling with a tax form, and there would be the brief exchange that was possible if the anxiety, the tension, of the day had been successfully degraded in the Mess.

“Hi, love, day go all right?”

“Bit knackered, but good – thanks.”

And “good” meant that they had not done a “splash” on a flat-roofed building and taken down three or four jihadis who intelligence reckoned to be prime targets, and then found it was a place where their version of the Mothers’ Union was chatting. Had not hit a gathering of supposed fighters, and learned – too late – that they had “rifled” a wedding party with a Hellfire. “Good” meant there had been no cluster-fuck moments, and they had not needed to choose which little grey shadow on the ground went quickly to Paradise and which lived until the next day’s Reaper patrol.

Sitting on the lower bunk in their cabin, Baz and Mags had a good view of the quayside.

The last vehicles had gone through the parking lot before driving on board. The sounds of the big doors rising and then clamping tight shut. Men on the quayside dangling huge ropes and then dragging them on board after they had been freed. The shake in the ferry from the surge of the engines. It went out slowly. Baz had the trained eye and Mags had the nose for what was unusual. Neither his eye or her nose had warned them. Baz thought it was all as he had predicted. The camper was a deck below them. Stowed away in the van was the package . . . sure as God spoke if Baz had had to lift it clear he’d have done himself a hernia. A hell of a weight. He knew about the Russian built RPG-7 launcher and about the armour-piercing capabilities of the projectiles that were effective at least up to 400 yards. Not much, but enough. A tidy weapon, he’d have said.

As they had gone on board, him driving and her beside him, and the platform had shaken under them, Baz had said, “You all right for this, last time of asking?”

She had said, “Never better, feeling good.”

He had reflected, “Because, if they nick us with it or, worse, if they get us after it’s been fired and with that payload, we’re for the high jump.”

“We’re doing all right, you old bugger – in fact, doing well.”

Clear water now between them and the quay. She kissed him on the cheek and grinned. It was not a long crossing and they would need to get on with it – as she said, and did, and he assumed that was why she had taken up the offer of a cabin. Used it well, and sweated in the heated cabin and not yet past the harbour groyne, and did not think of consequences. Out into the Channel and a fair swell shaking them – which seemed to add to the experience.

Dominic and Babs had changed places; Babs had stretched out and tilted back her seat so that Jonas’s knees compressed: he made no complaint, nor did the dog.

“Mr Merrick, can I ask you . . .?”

He shut down his phone. He had been living – as far as he could – the last days, hours, of the brotherhood. He believed his assessment had been reinforced. He had been into the loop of the 24/7 intelligence dispersal of facts, conjectures, analyses. Had enjoyed the company of the dog, and when he was home the next day he would tell Vera some of it.

“How near do you think we are?”

“The first eyeballs and footprints? An hour, two at the most.”

“So, why is this area not saturated? Why not a cordon?”

“To do what, Dominic?”

“Box him in, close him down, and . . .”

“Somebody coughs at the wrong moment, Dominic, somebody kicks over a rubbish bin, somebody steps on a piece of dried wood and it snaps, somebody is confronted by a dog as he slips through a back garden and the animal goes berserk; somebody has a radio that comes alive with a prattle of police patois. And what happens? Our target fades into the night and whatever plan has been in place is ditched. I prefer to stay quiet and have the pair of you.”

He stroked the dog’s head. The Norwegian Forest cat might have allowed such familiarity, and might not.

“Understood, but your way, Mr Merrick, you take the full weight of the responsibility. If you cock it up then they, the bosses, will hang you out to dry. They won’t stand by you. Ours wouldn’t. You’re on your own.”

“As I prefer it.”

“The chap you’re hunting, do you hate him?”

“Not really.”

“After what he’s done, where he’s been?”

“I’m not a crusader, Dominic. I’m a lowly functionary. In the benighted period of recent German history I would have been the sort of man who kept the trains running on time, made sure that the ones feeding Treblinka, Sobibor, Stutthof were on schedule and not subservient to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Just do the job and make sure, as best I can, that it all runs smoothly.”

“Not saving society.” The young man’s irony rang through.

“Doing a job, and doing it well, is satisfactory. Doing it poorly is disappointing. But there’s none of this Queen and country stuff. No, like I said, I’m the man who knows the railway timetable and keeps the programme running . . . I also like to watch for crocodiles, if you know