The Crocodile Hunter Gerald Seymour (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📖

showed an unnamed beast, no doubt sunning itself at the time the picture was taken, digesting a previous day’s feed, but almost certain in the next few hours to slip back into the dark deep water, and lie sill, patient, beneath the surface. Jonas Merrick never argued his corner, accepted that he could rarely alter decisions taken, would not bicker over it. An alternative strategy was obvious, and he could have recited why it would be rejected. The thought was offered.

“Call in the police? An option, but not one we would like. They crawl over us, Jonas, always anxious to pinch territory, kleptomaniacs for gaining acreage. They bring little to the party beyond heavy boots, rigid rule books. There is faint praise for the Service’s efforts in this bloody war. There are those who would restrict us, emasculate us. Not on my watch. You have a Jo who is drifting back to the UK, intentions unknown. I have a lethal weapon freewheeling across the near continent. And we have a list of potential targets as long as your arm and throw in a leg. We’ll manage, we have to manage. And we’ll have to manage the matter of priorities.”

Again the shrug, which was enough.

The footsteps clicked away. He would speak soon to his probationers, and would speak to that section in the building that dealt with access to police support units. Jonas felt older, tired, was dreaming fleetingly of the joys of driving on a crowded west country route with a caravan bumping and swaying behind him. And waited for a call. Cammy looked a pleasant enough lad – but the photograph was not yesterday’s and Jonas assumed that many men were changed by the experience of war. The light was slipping outside and the river gleamed and rain dribbled on his window. Thought also of the lost launcher and the projectiles that could penetrate a tank’s armour, and what type of man would be skilled in its use. Too much to think of and answers coming that were unwelcome.

Chapter 8

“They punched above their weight – know what I mean?”

Jonas told him to expand.

“They were a small unit. We’d heard of them but didn’t have a contact. Must have been that bad hour, the one before dawn, when we all want to be in bed, and the people that we were training were in their pits, wanting to be anywhere but in that camp. The front line was stable, but the black flag guys had tried to break through, and had failed. Maybe we were complacent, but . . .”

Jonas had a young British officer on the phone. He had taken some tracking, was out on the wastes of Dartmoor, a freshener course in survival with the Marines. Two years before he had been with the Special Boat Service and had been attached to a supposedly “good guys” crowd of anti-régime and anti-jihadi fighters.

“. . . always difficult when complacency settles. The feeling was that they had made their main effort, had not dislodged us, that we had done our job well. Normally if they attacked they would come in yelling and screaming, fire points from every angle and probably a suicide boy, or two of them, to blast a hole. It’s intimidating, but you get notice of them coming. Not this time. Came in the small hours, and there were very few of them. They were quiet, and they took us by surprise. Hit very hard, gave us heavy stick. There were four of us in the training team, in our command building, but one of our sergeants had gone out for a piss, and . . .”

Jonas thought he knew the part of the moor where the officer spoke from. Vera had said that it was not necessary always to have a sea view, and that a break in the shelter of one of the tors – Dartmoor or Bodmin – would be pleasant. He thought he could hear the rattle of rain falling on canvas roofing, not that Vera would have minded rain if she were snug in her caravan. His mind could wander but not his concentration, and most of the time his eyes were on the face on the wall beside the crocodile.

“. . . caught short at an inconvenient time, as we later reminded him. Odd thing was that we were able to remind him. We had bulbs slung from cables, linking the command post to the mess hall and to the latrine pits. Shots were fired. My sergeant was still zipping his flies and groping for his weapon when he’s confronted by this guy. Black kit, black mask, black-painted assault rifle. English voice. The barrel is pointed at my sergeant – we’re talking half a dozen paces, point-blank range, where your granny couldn’t miss. South of England accent. He was dead, effectively, my sergeant. Nowhere to go, illuminated, a weapon on him. This guy says, no lie, just says, ‘Get the fuck out of the way, and stay there, out of the way.’ He does. Each pace he takes to the command bunker he’s expecting to be shot in the back. Funny old world. They don’t hit the bunker, but they create five shades of shit amongst the people we’re supposed to be indoctrinating into close quarters warfare. They’re chucking grenades around, and incendiaries. Blitzing the camp. We’re trying to put down suppressive fire but we don’t have targets, and I don’t have enough assets to leave the protection of that building. They stay clear of us, like we’re not important. There was a method to it.”

He thought of the comfortable life he and Vera led, and their dreams of short holiday breaks. Thought of the nightmare of being in the darkness of a Syrian night, mortars and grenades exploding, and the jagged lines of red-tipped tracer fire. The shrieks of pain, and the terrifying extent of the chaos. He stared at the photograph of the man with the smear around his mouth.

“We heard other voices in the few minutes it lasted. All in English