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

Cammy did not take the road that led to Sturry. He went through trees and along a track that kids had made over the years. He had been one of them. In those days, nights, he would have needed a torch to guide him, and he’d have been hurrying because he had missed the last bus home and was cold and probably wet.

Now, Cammy was skilled at travelling fast and in darkness. He would have led and the brothers would have followed and they would have crossed the supposed front lines held by the government troops, would have gone in and reached the point behind their bunkers and tent camps where they could create chaos among Syrians or Hezbollah or Iranian paramilitary troops, and then the main force with suiciders would have swarmed towards the enemy’s front. Had been the leader, and not known fear. The worm had turned, the worm was doubt, failure. In the wake of failure he had made promises . . . they would be honoured.

No moon because of the density of the low rain clouds. No light other than that little filtered from the street lamps, edging through the trees to his left.

It was good to have made those promises; it tightened his resolve. Would see his mum, would be welcomed – would be fed, given money. He would slip away in the night, well before dawn . . . be on the first train of the morning. Knew the route he would take . . . Would take the fight to them. It had been his promise.

Saw again his lowest point . . . near to the Egyptian border with Libya. Footsore, tired, hungry. Had crossed Jordanian territory and hitched a ride on a dhow that would take him from Aqaba and into the Sinai sands. Had hidden in a lorry that had traversed the Suez Canal north of Ismailia. Had used Bedouin travellers to guide him over the desert dunes. His goal was Libya and then a Mediterranean crossing and into Europe. Had reached the border, far from the main highway, and had slept in the dirt with a blanket wrapping him, and the promise sustaining him. Had woken with the first light of dawn, a little golden segment of sun rising behind him on a distant horizon, but a strong enough light to throw shadows. Two of those shadows had fallen across his body and he had registered the men and the weapons they aimed at him. Blinking as they looked into the sun were three others, all armed and all wary of him. Could they have known? Would have been smugglers bringing weapons and ammunition and narcotics and spare parts for Mercedes and BMW cars across the border – just a fallen strand of barbed wire – and feeding off refugees. Perhaps they had identified him as a straggler from the war in Syria, perhaps even had a slight respect for him. Could have shot him dead and the sound would have echoed into the distance and gone unnoticed. Perhaps they had not thought him worth the waste of a single bullet. If he died there, or was left maimed – and would be a carcase in a few hours under the force of the sun – he would not fulfil his promise. He had eased his hands away from his body as if that were a satisfactory gesture of surrender. One set of hands, gnarled and roughened and with bitten-down nails, had reached forward and had started to strip away his clothing. The barrels of five Kalashnikovs, weapon of choice, were aimed at him. His body was exposed and they would have seen the mark of the bullet’s entry, crudely healed, and seen also where Ulrike had stitched up the shrapnel wounds – no anaesthetic – cleaned them as best she could. No gratuitous violence shown him, but no charity. They had taken his pistol, and the spare magazines. A travel document and an ID card had been examined, then pocketed; he had bought both for cash, way over the odds, from a trader west of the Canal. A small knife was produced, was handed to the man who searched him, and the blade snaked down against his skin and might have been used to puncture his stomach wall, to disembowel him, but instead had carefully, precisely, been used to cut through the cotton straps of the money belt he wore knotted across his abdomen. All the wealth he possessed was inside the zipped flap. The belt was not examined, was thrown from one to another. It was a small gesture but one that emphasised the depths of his failure. The one who had searched him had taken the hem of Cammy’s blanket and had covered his nakedness. He was not jeered at and was not abused. Nothing said – like it was an everyday transaction, and he was an everyday unfortunate, a loser . . . If he had resisted them, he would not have had the chance to fulfil a promise.

That had been the lowest point. Cammy believed the promise had sustained him.

Brambles and thorny branches caught his clothing, and scratched his face, bruised from the beating with the chair and still bleeding from the cuts. All unimportant because his promise had been given.

That day, Stanislau had carried more than his share.

Was always the way with him. He had the big machine-gun on one shoulder and swathes of ammunition for it, and had the mortar tube and half a dozen bombs.

They had stopped at dusk. Pieter and Cammy had made the camouflaged bivouac and they were sheltered between great rounded stones that had been scattered in some earthquake millennia before, and Ulrike was checking what food they could eat later, how to ration it. Cammy ought to have been ruthless and downsized the kit they took with them. They had talked among themselves about abandoning gear – weapons and ammunition – but always Stanislau had waved dismissively, and muttered though his misshapen mouth that the rest of them were