Boy Soldier Read Online Free

overalls. 'He's got a point there, Terry, a very good point. He stinks of fry-ups, we stink of top coat.'
    He turned to page three and studied the photograph for a few moments. 'No, I could handle the smell, no problem. What would get me would be being stuck in this little van for hour after hour. Be like being in a prison cell.'
    The eggs were almost cooked and Frankie turned away to spread butter on the baps. This, a prison cell? They had no idea. A prison cell was a dark, window-less concrete cube, three paces long by five wide and crammed with twelve other prisoners. The burger bar was heaven compared to all that. You could open the door and step outside. You could look out and see the road and the grass verge and the houses in the distance. You could listen to the radio. And you could talk to people.
    Frankie had acquired his new identity three years earlier, soon after he'd finally made it back to England. It had taken a long time to get back, a full nine months after he'd led the breakout from the Colombian prison.
    First he had to cross the two hundred and fifty miles of jungle to the Colombian border with Panama. It took three months and he used all his skills to evade capture, living off what he could trap or pick.
    In Panama he stowed away on a Japanese cargo ship as it went through the canal towards the Atlantic Ocean. He hid amongst three thousand new cars, ate only food waiting to be thrown overboard and jumped ship when the vessel docked in Turkey six weeks later. Then he hitchhiked or hid in trucks until he reached France. He finally entered England along with seven illegal immigrants hiding under the cross-Channel train.
    Essex seemed as good a place as any to settle. It was teeming with people too busy with their own lives to worry about one more ordinary, anonymous-looking bloke with a limp.
    He did odd jobs to begin with, casual work for cash, no questions asked. He kept every penny he earned, but when he did start to spend, he spent wisely. A new National Insurance number bought in a pub cost him just fifty quid. That was when he became Frank Wilson. Changing his name and living as another person was something he was used to from his years on covert operations in the Regiment. The rule was: always have a first name starting with the same letter as your real name. It helped you remember.
    Frankie always dealt in cash; there was no bank account or credit cards to help trace him. He'd started in a bedsit, but since buying the second-hand burger bar his finances had quickly improved. Now he rented an old cottage, pretty dilapidated but very private. And that was all he wanted. Privacy. To be left alone.
    Frankie placed the two full breakfast baps on the counter. 'There we are, gentlemen. Help yourself to sauce. And enjoy.'

4
    The website straplines spewed out the story in graphic and horrifying detail:
    SAS HERO TURNS TRAITOR . . . Fergus Watts, the former SAS hero . . .
    WHAT MAKES A HERO TURN TRAITOR? . . .
    Highly decorated SAS man, Fergus Watts . . .
    And it got even worse:
    BRITS WHO BETRAYED THEIR COUNTRY . . .
    Philby, Blunt, . . . Watts . . .
    There were more. Many more.
    Danny and Elena were online in the quiet room, using Elena's precious laptop. 'If what your granddad did is so terrible, we're bound to find something about it on the Internet,' she'd said to Danny. She simply typed 'Fergus Watts SAS' into Google and the details began to emerge.
    They scrolled through the websites and got most of the information through old newspaper stories going back eight years. And they didn't make good reading, even though the Fergus Watts story started so well.
    He'd been an excellent soldier and was eventually 'badged' into the SAS. He did tours of Northern Ireland at the height of the conflict, and in the first Gulf War was decorated for his work behind enemy lines. He rose to the rank of Warrant Officer and could have got out at the age of forty, but the Regiment was his life and he chose to stay on.
    As