Vortex (23 page)

Ben didn't need telling. He slammed his foot on the throttle and yanked the right-hand steering lever. The tank almost seemed to skid as it pulled round in a tight turning circle and sped away from the devastation of the training site. Bombs fell left and right. Left and right. The trio remained silent, praying that none of the planes overhead scored a direct hit, holding their breath, every moment fully expecting to be battered to bits.

Eventually, though, Ben became aware that the noise of the training exercise was behind them, but he didn't slow down. Not yet.

Only when they were well clear did he dare to take his foot off the throttle. The Chieftain ground quickly to a halt, and for a moment they all sat there, listening to the churning sound of the engine turning over, their faces white and their body trembling.

Even above the rumble of the engines, Ben could hear the others' breathing. Heavy. Laboured. But relieved.

'I think we're safe,' Annie gasped.

Ben nodded. 'For now,' he panted. He turned to look at his cousin, and she smiled at him, a bead of sweat trickling down her dirty face.

'Nice driving,' she said.

Chapter Eighteen

How long they sat there, trying to regain their breath and their composure, Ben couldn't have said. It was just a relief to be safe.

Joseph was the first to speak. 'We can't stay here,' he said. 'They will come for us soon. And besides, I need to do something about Vortex.'

Ben turned to look at the old man. The cut and bruises on his face were sore, and there were dark bags under his wild green eyes. He looked to be in a worse state than he had when they first found him, and that was saying something.

'I don't know,' Ben replied nervously. 'Why don't we just try and find someone in charge. Alert them to what's going on.'

Joseph smiled. 'And you think they'll believe you? I've been trying to tell people about strange things happening at Spadeadam for years. Trust me, it's not what they want to hear.'

'Yeah, but
I'm
not--' Ben cut himself short.

'Not mad?' Joseph asked delicately. 'No, I would have to agree with that. But listen to me: Lucian will be scared that other people know of his device. Believe me, Vortex will be leaving that bunker any time now, if it hasn't done already. And if you want to hand yourself over to the RAF, that's up to you. Just make sure you don't accidentally give yourself up to one of Lucian's stooges. It's difficult to tell the difference between friends and enemies in this place, I've noticed.'

'He's right, Ben,' Annie said. 'We can't risk it. And if we're the only people who know about Vortex, we're the ones who have to stop it.'

Ben closed his eyes briefly. His body ached from being thrown around the uncomfortable chassis of the tank; there were already blisters forming on his hands from where he had been tightly gripping the steering handles. But then he looked at Joseph. The old man was a state, his body beaten and bruised. He had taken more punishment than anyone should have been expected to take, let alone a man of his age. Yet Ben knew from a single glance that Joseph would not be deterred from returning to the bunker and doing whatever was necessary to stop his brother. He also knew that he was in no state to make it there on foot.

'We need to follow the edge of the forest,' he said quietly. 'That was the way we came.'

'Listen to me, you two,' Joseph said. 'You've done enough to help me already. I'm an old man. I can take risks that you two can't. You don't have to help me do this. If you leave now, maybe you can get out of Spadeadam without anyone being the wiser.'

The offer was clearly sincerely meant, but Ben shook his head. 'If Vortex is as bad as you say it is, it's everyone's responsibility.' He looked at Annie. 'Agreed?'

'Agreed.'

'Good. We'll take the tank as far as we can, then continue on foot. Hold tight, everyone.' He pushed his foot down on the throttle, and the tank lurched into movement.

There may have been no planes overhead, but there was a new urgency now - the need to get to the bunker before anything could happen to Vortex. And so Ben sped, full throttle, around the edge of the forest, peering through the viewing hole into the early morning light and hoping that they were heading in the right direction. The other two sat quietly, tensely. None of them knew what was waiting ahead, and a sense of danger seemed to hang in the air around them.

They had been driving for several minutes. Ben's face was creased into an expression of concentration as he did his best to keep to the rough track that skirted round the edge of the forest, when he heard another sound above the growl of the tank's engine. 'What's that?' he asked tersely.

'I'll check,' Annie replied. She held firmly onto the back of Ben's seat, pushed open the circular entrance hatch at the top of the tank, then peered outside.

She ducked back into the relative safety of the tank almost immediately.

'We're being followed!' she yelled. 'Choppers. Two of them. They're overhead!'

'What do we do?' Ben shouted back.

'We have to keep going. They could be regular RAF, but they could be Lucian's men. We can't be sure.'

Suddenly there was an ear-splitting noise, and Ben saw the ground ahead of him explode in a shower of dirt.

'What was that?' he screamed.

'Gunships!' Annie replied. 'It has to be Lucian's people up there! And they're firing at us! We have to get out of the way!' As she spoke, there was another burst of fire from above. 'Get off the track, Ben. Into the woods. They'll hit us any minute, and that's the only place they can't follow.'

Without even thinking, Ben took a deep breath and pulled sharply on the left-hand steering lever. The tank veered towards the forest; as it did so, there was a deafening crackle as bullets ripped into the back of the tank. Ben tried to press harder on the throttle, but it was already fully open: the tank was going as fast as he could make it, and they just had to hope they got under cover in time.

Suddenly all he could see through the viewing window was a massive thicket of trees approaching them. The rat-a-tat of gunship fire outside came in increasingly frenzied bursts.

Crash!
The tank trampled over several young saplings on the edge of the forest, crunching them to the ground as easily as skittles being knocked over by a bowling ball. Sweat dripping down his face, Ben saw a thick tree trunk approaching fast out of the gloom. He turned sharply to avoid it and continued several metres across the clearing, before having to yank the vehicle in a different direction.

The trunk that they finally hit seemed to come from nowhere - one moment the way ahead looked clear, the next they were thrown around inside the tank with a sickening thump that seemed to penetrate to the core of their bodies. The engine of the tank started to emit a high-pitched scream as it thrust itself against the tree, an unstoppable force against an immovable object, the tracks around the wheels spinning in the dirt. Ben pulled his foot off the throttle, and the screaming instantly subsided.

'Get out!' he shouted. 'We can't carry on in the tank - the forest is too thick.'

Immediately, Annie raised her bruised body and pushed the hatch open, before pulling herself up onto the top of the tank. 'Give me your hand, Joseph!' she shouted. She grabbed hold of the old man's bony hand, and Ben helped push him up through the hatch, before pulling himself up onto the top of the metal beast. He glanced towards the front of the machine: the tank gun had been crushed up against the trunk of the massive tree he had hit, which was itself leaning down at an angle from the force of the collision. He jumped down onto the forest floor, then helped Joseph as he painfully dismounted from the tank, followed by Annie - still lithe despite her sore body.

Above them, they could still hear the roar of the helicopter gunships circling overhead. 'We need to get away,' Annie shouted. 'They could land at any minute, then this part of the forest is going to be swarming with them looking for us.'

Ben nodded, then glanced nervously at Joseph. He was in a terrible state, those parts of his face that weren't bruised a deathly white, his breathing laboured. 'Joseph,' he said clearly, 'we need to move quickly. Are you up to it?'

The old man nodded with determination; Ben wasn't convinced.

'We should still follow the edge of the forest,' he announced. 'My bet is that the guys in the choppers are regular RAF called in to deal with someone trying to steal their tank. They'll expect us to hide deeper in the forest, so it could work to our advantage.'

Annie nodded, and the three of them retraced their steps through the trail of devastation left by the tank, turning away just before they hit the edge of the forest and following the edge of the trees. The buzzing of the choppers - like the sound of enormous wasps out to sting them - grew more distant as they stumbled hurriedly through the trees, occasionally tripping on tree roots, but doing their best to keep going. They couldn't move as fast as they would have liked, however: Joseph was slowing them down. His heavy breathing became more and more laboured, and it wasn't long before his running had become little more than a hurried, limping walk. Finally he misplaced his footing and fell headlong onto the ground.

'Joseph!' Annie cried, but Ben was already there, kneeling down and pulling the old man up.

'Leave me,' he croaked. 'I'm holding you up.'

Ben shook his head. 'No way, Joseph. We've got this far, and we're not giving up now.' He looked over at Annie. 'Help me,' he instructed.

Instinctively she seemed to know what to do. Each of them wrapped one of Joseph's arms around their necks and they helped him move forward, half supporting him, half dragging him through the trees.

It took a good half-hour of struggling in this way before they saw the ominous sight of the hut above the bunker appear through the trees, which were particularly dense here. They stopped, catching their breath and squinting their eyes to see what was going on. There was movement of some kind, but their view was too obscured to see what it was, so they crept as silently as they could to the very edge of the trees, crouching down behind a low bush as they staked the place out.

There were three people there, each of them armed, and a truck with its rear doors flung wide open. Two of them loaded a heavy-looking flight case into the back of the van, while the third stood watch. Even from this distance, Ben could tell it was Flight Lieutenant Johnson. Once the object was loaded into the van, the two soldiers stood in front of Johnson, listening patiently as though receiving instructions of some kind.

'Is that what I think it is?' Annie breathed.

Ben nodded. 'Vortex,' he said. 'It has to be. We can't let that truck leave - at least, we can't let it leave without us on it. If we do, it's over.'

'We need to distract them,' Annie said.

'And quickly,' whispered Joseph. 'Look, they're shutting the doors.'

Ben did it almost without thinking. They needed to get the three soldiers into the forest - that way they could sneak into the back of the truck without anyone noticing. It was a long shot, but they didn't have the time to think up anything more sophisticated. Ben scrabbled around on the ground and found a couple of good-sized rocks; he threw them out of the forest, making sure that they landed near the soldiers.