Cover

Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Chris Ryan

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Postscript

Copyright

One Good Turn

Chris Ryan

 

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Also by Chris Ryan

Non-fiction

The One That Got Away

Chris Ryan’s SAS Fitness Book

Chris Ryan’s Ultimate Survival Guide

 

Fiction

Stand By, Stand By

Zero Option

The Kremlin Device

Tenth Man Down

The Hit List

The Watchman

Land of Fire

Greed

The Increment

Blackout

Ultimate Weapon

Strike Back

 

In the Alpha Force Series

Survival

Rat-Catcher

Desert Pursuit

Hostage

Red Centre

Hunted

Black Gold

Blood Money

Fault Line

Untouchable

 

In the Code Red Series

Flash Flood

Wildfire

Outbreak

About the Book

1917, Western Front, Ypres

A soldier wakes up in a damp, dark basement. He can’t get out. He is covered in mud. His skin is badly burned. And he can’t remember anything. But his nightmare doesn’t end there.

He is tried and found guilty of cowardice, impersonating a fellow soldier and theft. He can barely speak, let alone defend himself. As the verdict is passed and he learns that the death sentence awaits him, he remembers two things: that he took something from a dead man in the trenches, and that the name his accusers have been calling him is not his.

With time slipping away, Chris Ransom must try to remember the events that have led him to this moment, so that he can clear his name and save himself.

About the Author

Chris Ryan was born near Newcastle in 1961. He joined the SAS in 1984. During his ten years in the service he took part in many dangerous missions, some of them in secret. He was also Sniper Team Commander of the anti-terrorist team. During the Gulf War, Chris was the only member of an eight-man team to escape from Iraq – three colleagues were killed and four captured. This was the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS and, as a result, Chris was awarded the Military Medal. During his last two years in the service he selected and trained recruits.

Chris wrote about his experiences in the bestseller The One That Got Away which was adapted as a film. He has written many other bestsellers, including Ultimate Weapon and Strike Back. Chris Ryan’s SAS Fitness Book and Chris Ryan’s Ultimate Survival Guide can be bought from bookshops. Chris Ryan also writes the Code Red and Alpha Force books for younger readers.

Chris is currently working as a bodyguard in America.

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Chapter One

THE MAN HURT in his dream and he hurt when he woke.

He was lying on a metal bed frame in a dark cellar. He was cuffed to it by the wrists and ankles. High up towards the ceiling, a cracked airbrick let in a little light so that he could see the bare walls, piles of rotting furniture and a wine rack along the far wall. The floor was puddled with water and the man could hear things running around in it.

Something moved at the bottom of the bed. Before he could react, a weight moved up his leg and onto his chest. He lifted his head and saw a big, greasy rat squatting on him. He bellowed and threw himself from side to side. The rat flopped off onto the wet floor.

He didn’t go to sleep again. His head was splitting. The rats were everywhere and behind their grunting and scratching he could always hear the guns.

Crump. Crump. Crumpcrumpcrumpumpmpmpmpumpcrump. Crump. Crump.

That sound came from the big French guns down the line. You didn’t just hear them. You felt them loosely in the gut.

The war taught you to recognise the different guns.

Eighteen-pound field guns went whizzzzz-BANG, depending on how close they were to the target. Once you heard the whizz, there wasn’t much time till the bang. The German field guns sounded the same.

Mortars, which lobbed bombs high in the air to land on an enemy’s head, made three distinct noises. POUM as the round was launched, EEEEEEE as it flew through the air and CRACK as it landed.

The big shells, the Pissing Jennies or Whistling Percies, screamed, then cracked the heavens open when they burst. They came from the heavy artillery as far as six miles behind the lines. A big gun might fire a sixty-pound shell but they were tiddlers compared to the big howitzers. These massive weapons slid along on special railways and fired 700-pound rounds.

His personal nightmare was the enemy’s M11 mortar – a huge brute that fired an 850-pound shell, practically the weight of a horse. The M11 could blow a hole through four feet of reinforced concrete, or make a crater twenty-five feet deep. When you heard one of those screaming overhead, you knew men were going to die. Because the British Army thought concrete protection was cowardly and, anyway, you couldn’t dig more than eight foot down into the Belgian mud without drowning.

The sound of one shell bursting was bad. Two was enough to bring tears to your eyes. Bombardments could often last for hours – days even – with the shells bursting every few seconds.

It was odd that he knew these things but did not know who he was. It was odd that the bed had no mattress and he was lying on its metal base. And it was odd that he was cuffed at the head and the feet so he could not move. In fact, everything was odd.

He heard a scraping sound and turned his head.

Christ, that hurt. His skin felt as if it had been scoured with sand and then dried until it cracked. His head was splitting. His jaw was loose. His tongue felt rough stumps where teeth should be. The entire length of his back felt raw. And the rawness went all the way down the backs of his legs. A distance away and above him, light flared as the cellar door opened.

A figure appeared, a dark shape against the light, and footsteps sounded on creaky wooden stairs.

‘Mate. Mate,’ he called out hoarsely. ‘What’s going on, mate?’

The voice was cold and cruel. ‘Don’t “mate” me you horrid little man.’ A face loomed over him, twisted with hate. ‘You’re lucky you weren’t shot on the spot.’

The man watched as the figure turned, pulled a bottle of wine from a rack and left. The man on the bed started to cry. That was odd too. He cried himself back to sleep.

He dreamed he was up to his neck in filthy water in a shell hole with sides of slippery clay. He was holding onto what he thought were tree roots, but when he looked again, he saw they were human limbs. The thirst was torturing him, but he couldn’t drink because the water was a stew of rotting flesh and mud. He felt movement near him in the water and a body bumped up against him, swollen by the gas of rot.

He held his breath and sank down. Immediately he was lost in a chaos of twisting guts and grasping hands. They felt round his neck. They felt in his pockets. He tried to kick himself free, but every time his face broke the surface he was dragged down into filth. He opened his mouth to shout but a hand clasped his mouth. Tighter. Tighter. Tighter.

He woke up to find a lantern shining in his face, a hand over his mouth and a rough voice telling him to shut up. The ties were taken off his wrists, and he was made to sit up.

‘What’s going on?’ he whispered. He was so thirsty he could hardly speak.

‘Scrubbing you up, mate.’ An impossibly clean sergeant stood by the bed. Behind was a corporal with his Lee Enfield rifle at the ready.

‘I’m thirsty.’

‘All in good time. Here. Wash your face, then wash your hands,’ the sergeant said.

‘Tell me what’s going on. Please.’

‘You’re a prisoner – that’s what’s going on. Now get a move on.’

A bowl of soap-scummed water was put in his lap but, instead of washing, the man dipped his face into it and drank. It was beautiful – the best thing he had ever drunk in his life. Only then did he splash it on his face. As the water grew steadily more filthy, he felt as if were washing away some of the horror.

‘Now, you’re a pretty boy again, we’ll take you upstairs,’ the sergeant said. ‘My advice is to say as little as possible. It’ll only piss them off.’

But when the man tried to stand he fell over. So he was supported by two privates up the stairs, down a dark corridor and into a long, cold room which was so full of light it hurt him. Through his tears, he saw three men sitting at a table at the end of the room, and felt himself being carried towards it.

‘Why are you holding him up, Sergeant?’ a voice snapped.

‘He’s prone to falling over, sir.’

‘Nonsense. This is a field court martial, not a bloody rest home. He’s a little coward with no spine. Let go of him, and if he falls, stamp on his hand or foot or something until he stands on his own. Christ and all the angels, he stinks! Let’s get this over and done with.’

The sergeant put a chair in front of him. He leaned his weight on the back of it, and stared at the three officers who sat behind the long trestle table straight ahead. From their expressions, they didn’t much like him. The lieutenant on the left had slicked-back fair hair, a thin moustache and looked younger than him, but then you could never tell with officers. The officer in the middle, a major, was balding and red-faced with heavy jowls. The officer on the right, another lieutenant, had a centre parting, a monocle and looked appalled.

The man did not grasp anything that followed. It concerned a man called John Stubbs and he didn’t see why that should bother him.

‘Right,’ the major said. ‘Let’s get this going. Which of you is going to be the prisoner’s friend? Hmm. Lieutenant Burton – I’m appointing you. Has the prisoner had time to prepare his defence?’

Lieutenant Burton, the one with the monocle, said: ‘When was he arrested, Sergeant Major?’

‘Two days ago, sir.’