Vortex

Chapter Nineteen

Flight Lieutenant Johnson stood in a clearing of trees, his eyes narrowed and his palm firmly gripping the holster of his gun. He was sure he hadn't imagined it. Those stones had fallen barely a few metres away from him, and they hadn't just appeared out of nowhere.

As he looked around him, his two colleagues stumbled upon the clearing. 'Anything?' he asked them curtly, though he needn't have. The very fact that corporals Clarkson and Hildred were here empty-handed made it clear that nobody had found what they were looking for.

The two corporals shook their heads. 'Maybe it was a bird, sir. They drop things from the air sometimes.'

Johnson looked up to see the cloud-scudded sky high above the clearing. Birds — it was certainly a possibility. Even more reason for shooting the pesky things when he saw them. Not that he'd have much more opportunity for that. Vortex would be delivered in a matter of hours; Johnson, Lucian, the two corporals and the handful of others who knew about it would have gone AWOL by then, on a flight out of the country, their bank accounts considerably swollen. No, he had shot his last bird in the Spadeadam countryside, of that he was sure.

'All right,' he mumbled. 'Get back to the truck and start moving. I don't want you to be late.' The three of them hurried back through the forest towards the vehicle, which was just as they had left it.

'You know what to do?' Johnson asked the two men. They nodded. 'Get on with it, then,' he told them, before turning on his heel and heading back into the hut, momentarily cursing himself for leaving the access down to the bunker open. Sloppy, he told himself. Still, soon it wouldn't matter.

Corporals Clarkson and Hildred climbed into the cab of the truck. 'He's one Rupert I won't miss when this is over,' Clarkson moaned as Hildred fired up the ignition.

'Is there any that you will?' Hildred observed, and his colleague laughed ruefully.

'Good point,' he said. He dug his hand into a pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a cheap plastic lighter. He lit one, took a deep drag, then placed his cigarettes and the lighter on the dashboard as the cab filled with a choking cloud of smoke.

Their instructions were clear: to take their cargo across country to a warehouse near the port in Newcastle. Once they had handed over the device as arranged, they would dump the truck and immediately take a ferry to Amsterdam, then on to a private airfield where false passports would be waiting for them, along with a plane that would transport them to South Africa. Once they were there, they would be on their own.

But first things first: they needed to get out of Spadeadam without attracting the attention of their idiot RAF colleagues, and onto the open road. They drove in silence, dreaming of the money that was about to come their way, and the things they would do with it.

'What was that?' Clarkson asked suddenly.

'What?'

'Something's banging.'

Hildred listened. 'I can't hear anything,' he said. But even as he spoke there was an unmistakable knocking sound from the back of the truck.

'Hear it?'

'Yeah, I heard it.' He put his foot on the brake and the truck pulled gently to a halt. 'Did you strap the thing in properly?'

'You saw me do it,' Clarkson replied.

'Well, maybe it's come loose. We'd better check.' They left the engine turning over as they jumped down from the cab and walked to the back of the truck.

Clarkson put his hand to the door handle and clicked it open. 'It's probably noth—'

As he spoke, his side of the door sprang open and crunched harshly into his face. He shouted in pain as he put his hands up to his face and felt blood instantly pouring from his nose; he was barely even aware of the other door bursting open and whacking Hildred equally hard. Blinded by the sudden pain, they couldn't see who it was that had suddenly attacked them; but they were certainly aware of the flurry of kicks and punches that landed on their knees and in their stomach, forcing them onto the dirty ground, groaning in agony.

'They're down!' a female voice shouted. 'Get in the front!'

'No!' another voice barked — a male this time, but young. 'Get their guns first.' Another blow in the stomach, and their weapons were forcibly taken from them.

They heard the doors slam shut, and with a shock of realization the implication of what was happening dawned on Clarkson. 'Vortex!' he shouted, pushing himself up to his knees. But his eyes were full of blood and he could barely see, let alone do anything about what was happening. And as he scrabbled around in the dirt, a billow of exhaust fumes blew into his face, causing him to cough and splutter.

'Stop them!' he heard Hildred shouting.

'Stop them!'

But it was too late. The engine of the truck had roared into life, and by the time either of them could see again, it had already driven off, and was speeding into the distance.

Ben was no expert at driving a truck, but after his exploits in the Congo he was good enough. The gears crunched noisily as he shifted them up as quickly as possible and sped away from the two soldiers they had just overcome, completely against the odds. They sped along the road in anxious silence. There was nothing to say — they both knew the stakes. The soldiers whose places they had taken most likely had mobile phones on them; they would already have been in touch with Lucian's people, and the chase would be on. Ben and Annie's hastily cobbled together plan was falling apart at the seams.

The truck hit a bump in the road, shaking them about and causing something to fall off the dashboard.

'What was that?' Ben asked tensely, keeping his eye on the road ahead and not daring to look in the side mirrors to see if anyone was following them.

'Just a packet of cigarettes,' Annie replied. 'And a lighter.'

Ben blinked. A lighter. An idea began to form in his mind. 'Hold on,' he told his cousin, before clenching his jaw and turning the steering wheel into a sharp left turn. The truck left the road and juddered across country a little distance before he slammed down the brakes and brought them to an abrupt stop. The engine shuddered, and then stalled.

'What are we doing?' Annie asked.

'Get out,' Ben told her. 'And bring the lighter.'

They jumped out of the cab and ran round to the back of the truck, which Ben opened. Vortex was still there, safely entombed in its metal flight case and still tied to the truck with ropes.

'We can't open the flight case,' Ben said, thinking out loud. 'We already tried that, and it's useless without the key. It's too heavy for us to carry it anywhere, and they'll already have sent someone after us. We've only got one option, and that's to destroy the thing here and now.'

'How, Ben? It's a metal flight case. You're not going to set fire to it with a plastic lighter.'

Ben shook his head. 'I've got another idea. Here, give me a hand.'

They climbed up into the back of the truck.

'Undo the rope,' he said. 'We need the longest piece we can find.'

Annie looked panicked and confused, but she had no option other than to do what Ben said. The knots that fastened the flight case to the side of the truck were large, thick and difficult to untie; and the fact that they were rushing meant it seemed to take even longer to loosen them. Eventually, however, they did untie them. Unravelling the rope, they managed to unwind a piece that was at least ten metres long. Ben looked at it unenthusiastically. 'It'll have to do,' he murmured to himself.

'What do you mean, it'll have to do?' Annie demanded. 'What's going on, Ben?'

But there was no time to explain. They jumped down, then Ben grabbed the keys that were still in the ignition and unlocked the fuel cap at the back of the truck. 'Give me the rope,' he told Annie.

She handed it to him, and he carefully started to thread it into the fuel tank. 'We need to get it saturated,' he said tensely.

'Ben!' Annie warned. 'Look!'

He glanced in the direction that she was pointing. In the distance were two more trucks coming towards them. It was clear that they were moving very quickly.

Half the rope had been fed into the fuel tank by now, so Ben pulled it out, then started to insert the other end.

'They're getting nearer, Ben! I don't know what you've got planned but it had better work — these people have already tried to kill us once today.'

'Just a few more seconds.' His hands were covered in stinking diesel as he continued to feed in the rope.

'Hurry!'

It was done. The whole rope was saturated. Ben started to pull it out, leaving a little of the diesel-soaked rope hanging inside the fuel tank; the rest of it he laid out on the ground, pulling it in a straight line so that the end was as far away from the truck as possible.

'Give me the lighter, Annie,' he said quietly.

Annie's eyes widened as she realized what he was planning to do. 'It's too dangerous,' she said. 'We're too close.'

'Get away from the truck.'

She stood firm.

'Annie, you heard what Joseph said. If we don't destroy this thing, thousands of people could die. This is a real Code Red situation. Now get away from the truck.'

'No,' she replied.

'Annie, they'll be here in a couple of minutes. Give me the lighter — it's the only chance we've got.'

'No, Ben,' she said. 'Look at your hands — they're covered with fuel. If you spark up that lighter, you might go up in flames yourself.'

'I'm going to have to risk it.'

'No you're not, Ben.' She held out her arms. 'My hands are clean. I can do it.'

'Annie!' he said urgently. 'We haven't got time to argue.'

'Then you'd better do what I say.' She stared defiantly at him — one of those stares that Ben knew he couldn't argue against.

'All right,' he said quietly. 'But I'm staying with you. The moment the flame touches the end of the rope, we run — OK?'

Annie nodded. They could hear the engines of the approaching trucks now; there wasn't a single second to lose. 'Ready?'

'Ready. Good luck, Annie.' He clasped hold of her free hand as she bent down and sparked the cigarette lighter into flame.

'Annie,' Ben said. 'I'm sorry I dragged you into this. I'm sorry I forced you to come into Spadeadam.'

His cousin looked at him. 'Don't be silly, Ben. Do you really think I wanted to be left behind?'

A slow grin spread over Ben's face. 'Not really,' he said.

They both looked back down and held their breath. 'Ready?'

'Ready!'

Annie lit the rope.

'Run!'

Ben shouted. Hand in hand they sprinted as fast as they could away from the truck.

It was a matter of seconds before it exploded. Ben and Annie were thrown to the ground by an intense blast of burning air, and they covered their heads with their arms to shield themselves from the chunks of burning shrapnel that flew all around them. As the explosion subsided, there was a flaming crackle, and Ben turned over onto his back to see the vehicle burning, a thick black stream of smoke rising up into the air.

'We did it!' Annie said breathlessly. 'We destroyed it.'

But Ben didn't answer. Instead he squinted his eyes and looked through the flames into the wavering distance beyond. The vehicles that had been following him were there, and three soldiers had climbed down. They looked at the burning truck with unconcealed horror, and Ben realized that what they saw was not a burning weapon, but the piles of money they were expecting to get paid, all going up in smoke. In an instant they all started shouting at each other.

'That's right,' Ben whispered to himself. 'Keep arguing. Keep arguing, then get back in your trucks and drive away.'

It was a vain hope. From the midst of their increasingly heated discussion, one of the soldiers happened to look past the flames. His eyes widened as he saw Ben and Annie lying there.

'Look!' they heard him shout as he pointed in their direction. His colleagues stopped arguing and glanced over. And then, without hesitation, they sprinted towards them.

Ben and Annie moved as one. They jumped to their feet and started running through the high grass away from the soldiers.

They dared not look back, and they dared not slow down. Only their legs could save them now.