Free Vortex by Chris Ryan Page B

about jeopardizing our plans, I want him arrested. He can do his work just as easily from a prison cell as a laboratory. Are my instructions clear?'
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