Boy Soldier Read Online Free Page A

they delved deeper into the life and history of Fergus Watts, Danny kept reminding himself that this shadowy figure was not just some anonymous stranger, but his own father's father. They were flesh and blood. Family.
    Every new fact was a revelation. Fergus Watts's special skill was explosives. He had a natural flair for languages, particularly Spanish. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the box cover to guide the way.
    The SAS man's skills led him to Colombia and the war against the FARC drugs barons. His ongoing mission had been to lead patrols deep into the rainforest, to seek and destroy drug manufacturing plants. Danny tried to imagine the jungle, the heat, the heroic battles.
    But then hero turned villain. Fergus Watts vanished and soon after it was discovered he'd gone over to FARC, purely for the money.
    'It's true,' said Danny as they scrolled on to another page. 'It's exactly like the guy at my RCB said, he betrayed the Regiment and his country.'
    A long in-depth article from a correspondent in Colombia said that the manufacture and export of cocaine to the USA and Europe was a multi-billion-dollar business, and that in selling his skills and taking the FARC 'blood money', Watts shared the responsibility for the deaths of thousands of young drug users.
    'He's no better than a murderer,' said Danny angrily. 'A mass murderer.'
    The newspaper stories revealed that the traitor had eventually been captured after a gun battle between his small band of FARC guerrillas and Colombian soldiers. Watts had taken a bullet in the thigh during the fighting and was later tried and thrown into a Colombian prison to rot.
    After the trial and jail sentence, the name Fergus Watts disappeared from the newspapers for over four years, but then there was a dramatic return to the headlines:
     
    SAS TRAITOR MASTERMINDS
MASS PRISON BREAKOUT
     
    Since the breakout Watts had never been seen, or heard of, again.
    'He's here,' said Danny. 'He's in England.'
    'You can't know that,' said Elena. 'He might still be in Colombia – he might even be dead.'
    'Yeah? So who was it made the enquiry about me? It had to be him, there's no one else, and I'm gonna find him. I'll phone the SAS to start with and see what they can tell me.'
    'Danny, it's a secret regiment. What you gonna do, ring one-one-eight and ask to be put through?'
    Danny was in no mood to be corrected. 'Yeah, all right,' he snapped, 'it was a stupid idea. So what do I do?'
    Normally, Elena would have snapped back, but she knew Danny was devastated by what he'd learned about his grandfather. 'Try some other army numbers – they must be listed in the phone book. And maybe you should make the calls in the garden. We don't want anyone else knowing about this. I'll see if I can find anything online. But if we do find him, what then? Really?'
    'I'll turn him in,' said Danny, picking up the phone directory.
    'I want him to suffer the way he's made other people suffer.'
     
    The garden at Foxcroft was like the quiet room, hardly ever used. There was nothing wrong with it; it was beautiful, if you liked flowers and plants that trailed in and out of trellises fixed to the high brick wall completely enclosing the garden. But as most of the residents of Foxcroft couldn't tell a rose from a stick of rhubarb, they generally stayed away.
    And that suited Jane Brooker, who tended the garden almost as lovingly as she looked after the kids in her care. The garden was Jane's escape from the stresses and strains of life at Foxcroft. She needed it.
    It was almost like being in the countryside. Only the constant thunder of traffic snaking its way to and from the centre of the city and the jagged broken glass cemented into the coping on top of the crumbling brick wall gave away the fact that the garden was in a busy and sometimes dangerous district.
    Dave the Rave often joked that the broken glass was there to keep the Foxcroft kids in rather than keep unwanted visitors out. But it wasn't