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.
It wasn't clear to Ben what had got the old man so agitated, but something had. As the aircraft continued to fly over, his arms started to flail and, taken by surprise by his sudden show of strength, Ben and Annie lost their grip on him. Joseph ran, but not towards the woods. Instead he seemed to be heading towards one of the huts, not far from the road. It seemed older than most, more weathered and stained but still whole.
'Joseph!' Ben screamed, holding his arms over his head as if that would be any protection from the flying chunks of debris. 'Not that way! We have to get to the trees! To the trees, Joseph!'