Vortex (10 page)

The three officials nodded. 'They are clear,' they said in unison.

Chapter Eight

As the morning wore on, the mist dispersed. In one way that was good - it meant that it was easier to trail Joseph at a safe distance. But in another way it made things more difficult. As he had done ever since they had seen him, Joseph kept stopping and looking around: each time he did this, they had to stop and take cover behind a tree. But he never saw them, and after a while they found that they could be a little less wary. Joseph didn't seem to know what was going on around him.

After about an hour of following him, they reached the other side of the woods. Joseph stepped out from under the canopy of the trees, his eyes blinking in the sudden bright sunshine. Ben and Annie edged quietly towards the boundary of the trees and, doing their best to remain hidden, peered out. The sky was blue now, with only a few cotton-wool clouds floating high above. But it was not the sky that was grabbing their attention; it was what was on the ground.

In front of them was a road. It was not a new road, and it didn't look as if it had been used for many years. Potholes covered the surface, and the top dressing was loose and gravel-strewn. Beyond the road was a collection of concrete huts. Some of them were crumbling, others weren't; a few looked as if they had been utterly destroyed. But those that were still standing all had marks of discolouration from years of exposure to rain and the elements. These were old huts, and they covered a large area.

And somewhere in the middle of the huts, there was a tank.

Joseph had stopped by the side of the road. He was standing still, just staring at what he had stumbled across. Ben and Annie watched in silence as he stepped forward, tripping slightly on one of the potholes in the road as he crossed but managing to stay upright. As he entered the little commune of huts, he brushed his hand against the concrete, all the while looking around him in a kind of wonder. He was too far away for them to hear, but Ben could see from the movement of his lips when he occasionally turned in their direction that he was still muttering to himself - perhaps a bit more furiously now.

When he came to the tank, he appeared not even to notice it. Instead he leaned against the green metal of the huge armoured vehicle, facing back towards the woods, his eyes darting around as he continued to look at all the concrete huts. Ben hid behind a huge tree trunk and took his binoculars out of his rucksack, then surreptitiously looked through them to watch Joseph. 'He seems a bit calmer now,' he told Annie, observing that the old man seemed to be breathing deeply in a way that suggested he was trying to take control of himself. He put the binoculars down. 'I wonder what that tank's doing there in the middle of nowhere.'

Annie took the binoculars and studied the vehicle. 'Chieftain Mark Ten,' she said. 'Combat weight fifty-five tons, crew four, maximum speed forty-eight kilometres an hour. Armed with a hundred-and-twenty-millimetre tank gun with laser range finder, rate of fire eight rounds per minute. These Chieftains were in use until the early nineties when they were replaced by the Challenger.' She sounded, Ben thought, like a walking encyclopaedia.

'Blimey, Annie,' he said. 'Is there anything about this sort of stuff that you
don't
know?'

Annie gave him a winsome little smile. 'Not really,' she replied, fluttering her eyelashes girlishly at him.

Ben smiled. 'So, this Chieftain Mark ten. What exactly is it doing in the middle of a bunch of falling-down huts?'

'Ah,' Annie said, clearly enjoying showing off her knowledge, 'I thought you might ask that. It's a target, I should think.'

'A target? What do you mean?'

Annie put the binoculars back up to her eyes and looked through them towards Joseph and the tank as she spoke. 'I told you, this place is designed as target practice for aircraft. They take machinery like that Chieftain that's gone out of service, decommission them, strip them down and let people take pot shots at them.'

'Why go to all that trouble?' Ben asked. 'I mean, if it's not a real tank, it might as well be anything, mightn't it?'

Annie lowered the binoculars. 'Not really,' she said. 'I reckon that's a moving target.'

Ben was puzzled. 'I thought you said it was decommissioned.'

'I did. What they do is, they install a guidance mechanism that allows the tank to be moved remotely. Then, when there's a training exercise, they can operate the tank from a point of safety.'

'A remote control tank?'

'Something like that.'

'Cool.' Ben grinned.

Annie rolled her eyes. 'It's a serious--' she started to say.

But she was interrupted.

In the background, seemingly from nowhere, they heard a noise. It was a low drone, quiet at first but rapidly becoming louder. Ben and Annie looked at each other; then they looked at Joseph, all alone by the tank, oblivious to the danger that was fast approaching.

'Is that what I think it is?' Ben asked.

Annie, her face suddenly very serious, nodded.

'We have to get him away from there!' Ben said, louder now to make himself heard over the noise. 'If anyone sees him--'

But before Annie could reply, a fighter jet zoomed overhead. It seemed to be flying incredibly low - not much higher than the trees in which they were hiding - and the roar of the engines was like a thunderclap, resounding through the sky like some booming, airborne drum. It seemed to make the ground shake and sent a shock of sound waves through Ben and Annie, who both instinctively threw their hands over their ears, Annie dropping the binoculars as she did so.

As quickly as the plane had arrived, it was gone; but the noise was still there, the approaching drone that told them there would be more where that had come from.

His hands still over his ears, Ben looked at Joseph. The old man's reaction had been quite different from theirs. He stood defiantly among the huts, shaking his fist up to the sky and shouting something that Ben could not hear because of the approaching noise.

With a sense of sudden panic, Ben remembered the sign they had seen at the boundary fence:
DANGER. LOW-FLYING AIRCRAFT. LIVE AMMUNITION TRAINING. KEEP OUT.
He looked at Annie. 'It's just a fly-over, right? These things aren't going to have any live ammo?' he shouted.

The look Annie returned did not fill him with confidence, but he didn't have time to question her further, because at that moment another plane thundered over. It was slightly higher this time, and further to Ben's right.

Neither of them saw the bomb being dropped - it was too small and too fast for that - but they certainly saw the explosion. One of the concrete huts on the outskirts of the little village exploded noisily into a cloud of dust and debris. Joseph's head turned swiftly to see the devastation, and as though it had injected a sudden clarity into his mind, he started to run in the opposite direction.

He didn't get far, however. A third aircraft sped over to Ben's left, dropping another bomb. This one failed to hit a target, instead blowing a massive crater in the earth, the tremors of which threw the old man heavily to the ground.

'We've got to help him!' Ben shouted, but Annie was already running in Joseph's direction, oblivious to the danger overhead. Ben followed.

And as soon as they were out from under the safety of the trees, the sky seemed to be full of rocketing aircraft, and the air thick with weaponry. Four bombs exploded before Ben and Annie managed to reach Joseph; as each one hit the ground, the earth seemed to shake and it was all they could do to keep their balance. 'Call this a training exercise!' Ben yelled at Annie.

'Don't try and tell me I didn't warn you, Ben,' Annie screamed back. 'These guys don't practise bombing people with basketballs, you know.'

Joseph was still on the ground when they reached him, frozen in wide-eyed terror at the noise and the danger around him.

'Joseph!' Ben shouted. 'We've got to get out of here. Do you understand?'

Joseph stared back at him, not even a shred of recognition in his face.

'Joseph!'
Ben repeated. 'We're in danger! Get to your feet!'

But all the old man could do was stare, ashen-faced and terrified, from Ben to the planes.

Ben turned to Annie. 'Come on,' he instructed. 'We've got to get him to his feet. Help me.'

Annie nodded purposefully, then stepped to one side of the old man and grabbed him under his arm. Ben took the other. Before they could heave him up, however, a nearby hut exploded. They all hit the ground and started choking as they breathed in the sudden cloud of dust that billowed around them. There was a brief moment of respite, of relative quiet, but it was soon replaced by the ominous crescendo of another fighter jet. Ben and Annie knew they couldn't stick around to let their eyes and their lungs clear. They had to get back to the safety of the trees, so they heaved Joseph to his feet and started urging him away. The area was fast resembling a war zone . . .

Ben's ears were numb now from the constant boom of the planes' engines overhead, his throat burning from the dust. There seemed to be no let-up as the target practice continued. The trees were about thirty metres away, on the other side of the dirt track. Stumbling, they edged closer.

Twenty-five metres.

Twenty metres.

Annie started to cough, the dust in her lungs clearly getting to her. She faltered and stumbled.

'We're nearly there!' Ben shouted. 'We can't stop now. One of those bombs could get us at any time.'

Annie's face screwed up into a grimace of pure concentration. She nodded forcefully, then carried on heaving Joseph towards the woods.

They would have made it if he hadn't started to struggle.