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

“He was, in that theatre, a formidable fighter and a very fair tactician.”

“So we are told.”

“Quite a reputation in the combat zones.”

“Which means that the next few hours offer the best chance of taking him down.”

“I am saying, Jonas that I am forced to believe this is the moment to beef up where you are. I’ve gone along with you, your concept, but I am – sorry to say this – puking at the risk involved. ‘Beef up’ means putting in some serious resources, but police resources in the main part. By dawn, I can have a couple of hundred officers there, at least five more gun teams, can close off the whole bloody place. Should he be there. That’s the other side of the coin. Is he actually there, actually coming, actually prepared to risk his neck on a visit to his mother, actually going to present this opportunity to us? It is what I want to do now, Jonas. Saturate the place.”

“Put in the Parachute Regiment, maybe a Commando of Marines, rustle up a company of Gurkhas. Excellent idea, but wait until dawn, otherwise they’ll be blundering around and we’re bound to have some ‘blue on blue’ casualties . . . Yes, saturate the place. First class.”

Why? Why had he praised the idea that was anathema to him? Unmarked vans loaded with H&K armed cops, roadblocks materialising, and all looking for a skilled and practised expert in evasion. Cameron Jilkes, as Jonas believed, had exfiltrated the Syrian battlefield, had worked his way across an Arab land mass, had crossed Europe, had traversed the Channel in an open dinghy, had probably reached the city he had adorned as a chorister, would see his mum and sign off his life. He had a target that he would walk through Hell – had already done so – to reach. Obvious to Jonas that the man would identify the cordon, turn and slip away.

“Pleased to have you on board, Jonas. Hoped you would not challenge it, the concept . . . If he’s there.”

“I think he’ll come. If he does, then his mother will feed him. He will be anxious and exhausted and will crash out. Probably sleep till midday, flop about for a bit, then think of moving on. He will be in a comfort zone – and you will have organised a perimeter, put it in place, but not early.”

“First class. Thank you, Jonas.”

The call ended. He thought the AssDepDG a good man, well stacked with dignity and humility, and right now likely to fill his pants under the weight of the stresses challenging him. If the blood started to flow, if the triage doctors were casting around for guidance on who was worth spending time on and who was already on a death conveyor belt, if the nation was gawping at TV images of stricken buildings, weeping families, then a gale of accusations would buffet the AssDepDG: “. . . You followed the assessments of one Jonas Merrick, a junior member of staff, and with no command experience; followed his advice without any examination . . .” He shivered, pocketed his phone and the dog settled. It would be all over, well before any ring of steel was in place.

“You feeling all right, sir?” Babs asked.

“Never better,” Jonas answered her, grimly.

They’d exchanged glances. It had surprised them that there had been no attempt from the back seat to keep the conversation private – “need to know” – and both would now have accepted that they had grandstand seats, a privileged view, of what might or might not happen. They were, Dominic and Babs, going to be a part of the end-game, simple enough and easy to understand – but scary. She eased out of the car, said something about the need to get in the dark among the bushes.

She had her phone. The H&K bounced on her chest, hurt the flesh under the bullet-stopping vest. Sent a text message. Thought they were entitled to know the rank of this guy in the back of their car, and seemed to have too many answers.

Back in the car, she turned to him and smiled. “You still feeling all right, sir?”

“About the same as the last time you asked me . . . Difficult, isn’t it, the waiting?”

Cammy had reached the cemetery behind his home.

He threaded through the first line of gravestones.

He walked on grass, took care he did not trip on fallen stones or vases or flower holders. As he remembered, it was the older graves that he would find first, those with the higher and more ornamental crosses and angel figures with the drooped heads of the dead. He would have to head for the far side. His shoes were leaden and he would have left a trail of mud from the field. Not that it mattered.

Could have been a century of the dead lying here, and supposedly at peace, at rest, the pain of living taken from them. He knew where he would pause. Although darkness was around him, he seemed to remember where he should be, had recall of the sights and the silences of the cemetery. There were men who kept the place tidy with petrol-powered strimmers and rakes and shears and wheelbarrows: like it mattered, was important, how the dead should be left. Not in Syria . . . not when the corpses were from outside the ranks of his battalion, the foreign fighters, and absolutely not when the bodies had been of their enemy; they were left for the vultures – flying nearly as high as the cursed drone planes – and the wolves and the feral dogs, and even for villagers who would creep out from holes under their buildings and strip anything of value worn on a wrist or around a neck, or secreted in a wallet. Cammy felt the pain of leaving shallow scraped graves for Mikki and for Tomas, and for Dwayne. Each more hurried than the last, and no time for respect or for anything that was sombre