The soldier grinned slightly at Lucian's comment, but he kept the rifle trained on Ben and Annie.
Lucian addressed the soldier. 'The exit, now. I'll go up front and you follow behind. There's a truck outside, and we haven't got much time. We need to be at the training ground before sunrise.' He turned back to the two cousins and gave them an unpleasant look. 'Playtime's over, kids,' he told them, before returning his gaze to his associate.
'If they try to run away,' he said, 'shoot them.'
Chapter Seventeen
At the exit, two soldiers stood guard. They took in what was happening in a single glance, and at a nod from Lucian one of them opened the doors. Beyond the doors was an old set of stone steps leading upwards. Ben and Annie followed Lucian up, hotly aware that they still had a gun pointed at them from behind.
Outside it was still dark, and as Lucian had predicted there was a truck waiting. Ben and Annie were hustled into the back seat, while the soldier took the wheel and Lucian sat in the passenger seat, twisting his body round so that he could point the gun at them.
They drove in silence. Ben dug his fingernails nervously into his palms, desperately trying to think of a way out of this, but he couldn't think straight with Lucian pointing a gun straight at him. The truck rumbled and juddered around the edge of a thick forest and so, more as a means of keeping calm than anything else, he concentrated on remembering the route they were taking. If they managed to escape — and it was a very big if — he knew they would have to return to the underground bunker and do something about Vortex.
Vortex. The very thought of it made him shiver. Joseph's description of what it could achieve rang in his head, and every time he closed his eyes he saw the horrifying image of patients lying in hospital beds, weak and wasting away, with anxious doctors by their side unable to do anything to help. He saw aeroplanes falling from the sky and crashing into populated buildings. He saw the fear in people's eyes as they watched bodies burn and die.
Could Joseph be right? Could this weapon be as disastrous as he said?
And then he remembered the look in Lucian's eyes when he boasted about the money he was being paid. Why would anyone give him millions of pounds to develop this weapon if it wasn't going to be horribly effective? Why would it be so top secret?
'It will kill thousands of people, you know,' he heard himself saying quietly.
Lucian didn't reply.
'Their blood will be on your hands. You do realize that, don't you?'
The old man snorted scornfully. 'I'm a lot older than you,' he said. 'I understand things you don't.'
Ben looked at him scornfully. 'I bet there aren't many old men who would think that killing your own brother is a good thing to do.'
'Forgive me,' Lucian replied waspishly, 'but there aren't many old men who have my intellect. And if you think I'm going to let my lunatic brother — or you two, for that matter — get in the way of my creation, I'm afraid you are sadly mistaken.' His eyes flicked briefly out of the window. 'RAF Spadeadam,' he said almost thoughtfully. 'They have a motto. Si vis pacem, para bellum. Normally I don't find that military types have much to say of any interest, but in this instance, I have to make a grudging exception. I take it you do not understand what it means.'
Ben stared flatly at him, unwilling to admit that he was right. But just as the old man started to open his mouth again, Annie spoke.
'If you wish for peace,' she said clearly, 'prepare for war.'
Lucian looked at her in surprise. 'Very good,' he murmured.
'The thing is,' Annie replied with a confidence that surprised Ben, given their situation, 'that you're the one who's got it wrong.
You're the one who doesn't understand it.'
'I hardly think so.'
'Of course you don't. Because you're blinded by your arrogance and your belief in your so-called intelligence.'
'Shut up,' Lucian replied.
'Or what?'
Annie raged. 'You're going to shoot me? I hardly think so, if you're going to all this trouble to cover your tracks. So you might as well listen to me. Preparing for war is one thing; developing weapons that will harm innocent people — even children — is another. And if you reckon that giving Vortex to oppressive regimes is a sure-fire way to stop a nuclear war, then you're even more misguided than I thought. Our armies and our governments do a pretty good job of that without any unasked-for help from you. You think you're cleverer than everyone else, but you're not. You're arrogant and greedy, and even we can see that.'
By the time she had finished her tirade, Annie was almost breathless. Ben studied Lucian's face intently, fearfully looking for signs that his cousin might have pushed him over the edge. But there were none. He remained stony-faced, as if he hadn't even heard her accusations.
'Drive quicker,' he said blandly to the soldier next to him. 'We haven't got much time.'
The vehicle started to speed up, and as it did so, Ben became aware of the sickness of anticipation that was churning in his stomach.
It could have been five minutes later or it could have been an hour — time suddenly seemed to have little meaning — when the truck started to slow down. Ben looked through the window and peered out into the darkness. He thought he could see huts in the distance, much like the ones that had been on the practice range the previous day, but as he squinted his eyes he could see that this was a much larger range. As the truck came to a halt, Lucian told them to get out; Ben and Annie did as they were told, and were instructed to walk across the field in amongst the huts and the rubble. There were other things there too: the blown-out carcasses of old cars, a tank like the one they had seen before. Ben couldn't concentrate on them too much, though — he was too acutely aware of the guns being pointed at them as Lucian and the soldier walked behind.
As they walked, the darkness oozed into the cold grey of dawn, and as if from nowhere Ben became aware of the dawn chorus filling the air with its deafening throng. When he had heard that sound only a couple of days before, it had filled him with excitement and wonder; now, though, it seemed ominous, as though it were foretelling something. Something bad.
Eventually they approached a hut in the middle of the practice range. It looked as though it had been newly built, and was constructed of rough, untreated timber — clearly this was not a structure that anyone expected to be there for a long time. On the door was a heavy metal padlock. 'You have the key?' Lucian asked the soldier.
He didn't reply; he simply stepped up to the hut, laid his rifle against the side and unlocked the padlock. 'Get in,' he growled.
Nervously, Ben and Annie walked through the door. It was dark inside, but by the weak light that spilled in, Ben could see Joseph there. He was sitting in the corner, trembling, his hair dishevelled and his face bruised. He didn't seem to register their arrival. Annie rushed towards him and touched her hand lightly to his beaten face; even then it was as if they weren't there.
Lucian spoke from the doorway. 'You seem to know something about the RAF, my girl,' he commented, 'so perhaps you would like some idea of what is about to happen. In about twenty minutes there will be a flyover by an A Ten Tankbuster aircraft. You've heard of the Tankbuster, I take it?'
'Yeah,' Annie stated. 'I've heard of it.'
'Good. They will be firing depleted uranium shells at around seventy rounds per second. As you probably know, such weapons can be' — he stopped, as though he were choosing his words carefully — 'reasonably destructive.' He looked over at Joseph, narrowing his eyes slightly, and then stepped backwards. 'Lock them in,' he told the soldier.