Vortex

'But what is Vortex?' Ben asked in frustration.

'I don't know,' Joseph replied quietly. 'But I think we ought to find out, don't you?'

He looked piercingly at Ben, then Annie, then back to Ben again. As he did so, Ben struggled hard to decide what was the right thing to do. This man had just told him he heard voices that didn't exist. Should he believe him? Should he be talked into some fool's errand, to try and outwit these men who, if Joseph was right, were ruthless and dangerous? He stared hard at the old man, trying to find the madness in his eyes that had been so evident when they had been bombarded on the practice range.

Joseph stared back. His eyes seemed bright. Vivid. Determined. But they did not seem mad. Not at that moment, at least.

Ben took a deep breath. 'What are we going to do?' he asked.

A look of relief fell over Joseph's face. 'Thank you, Ben,' he said quietly. Then he turned to Annie. 'Are we all agreed that we need to try and get out of here?'

'Of course,' Annie replied. 'But how?'

Joseph turned back towards the metal plate on the wall. 'Do either of you have a key, or a coin — something to give us a bit of leverage?'

Ben grinned. 'I've got something even better than that,' he said with a certain amount of satisfaction. He reached down into his sock and pulled out his penknife. 'They took everything else, but they didn't take this. The pliers are a bit broken,' he apologized, 'but there's a good blade on it.'

Joseph took the penknife and unfolded the largest blade. He nodded with satisfaction, then turned back to the metal plate and forced the knife into the groove surrounding it. For a minute or two he worked away at the plate, while Ben and Annie stood there, holding their breath and listening to the scraping sound of the knife worrying against the metal echo around the cell. Just as Ben thought that the old man was not going to be successful, he saw him lever the plate away from the wall, to reveal a mass of wires behind.

'I thought so,' he muttered to himself as Ben and Annie drew closer.

'What is it?' Annie whispered.

'The wiring for the electric door,' Joseph stated. He peered at the tangle of colour-coded wires.

'Can you rewire it?' Ben asked tensely.

'Patience, Ben,' Joseph instructed, and continued to examine the wiring.

Ben and Annie waited in silence, a sudden nervousness having descended upon the room.

Finally Joseph spoke. 'I think it should be straightforward to open the doors,' he said confidently.

Ben licked his lips, which had become suddenly dry. 'OK,' he said, feeling as if he was improvising on the spot. 'Will you be able to close them again?'

'Yes,' Joseph replied. 'I think so.'

'Good. There might be a guard out there. He won't be expecting the doors to open, so when they do we'll have the element of surprise. Joseph, you'll be busy with the wiring, so it's going to be up to me and Annie to charge him. We'll need to get him back into the cell and close the doors before he can raise the alarm.'

'We're not going to have much time,' Annie said. 'Remember, these guys are armed.'

'I know,' Ben said solemnly. 'We have to move quickly.' He looked at Annie and Joseph in turn. 'Are you ready?' he asked.

Annie nodded.

'Joseph?'

'Wait,' he said. 'When I close the doors, I'll still be inside here. I'll do my best to jump out in time, but if I don't manage it, you two will have to go it alone.'

A chill crept over Ben's skin. 'If there's a guard outside, you can't risk being stuck in here with him. If nothing else, he'll force you to open the doors again.'

Joseph shook his head. 'He can force me all he likes. If I rip the wiring out, the mechanism will be destroyed anyway. They'll have to yank the doors open from outside to get to us.' He gave a sardonic smile. 'And besides,' he said, 'I'm quite used to being locked up in cells. I'll almost be glad of the company.'

Ben breathed out heavily and shut his eyes. 'All right,' he said finally. 'But try and get out, OK.'

'Of course,' Joseph replied calmly.

'After three, then. One, two, three — go!'

As Ben spoke the word, Joseph pulled out two wires and touched them together. There was a spark at his fingertips, and the metal doors hissed slowly open. As Ben had predicted, they revealed a guard in RAF fatigues. He had clearly had his back to the door, but had reacted to the noise and turned round. Ben registered two things: the surprise on his face, and the fact that this was one of the same soldiers who had picked them up. 'Now!' he shouted to Annie, and the two of them lunged forward, pushing him heavily against the far wall. The soldier grunted as Annie placed a well-aimed blow in his stomach; winded, he bent double and Ben pulled his firearm from the holster by his side. He pressed the barrel of the gun against the soldier's back and pushed him forward. 'Get in the cell,' he instructed.

Still gasping for air, the soldier did as he was told, stumbling heavily through the open doors.

'Sit down in the corner and put your hands on your head,' Ben said, then he watched with satisfaction as the soldier followed his instructions to the letter. He looked over at Joseph. 'OK,' he said. 'Shut the doors.'

Joseph nodded, and as Ben stepped backwards out into the corridor he flicked two more wires together. The doors started to shut. 'Get out, Joseph!' Annie urged as the old man hurled himself towards them. There was an awful grinding as the heavy doors closed against the old man's body, but at the last moment he managed to slip through, Annie pulling at him with all her might. The doors closed firmly shut, leaving the soldier locked up inside.

'Will he be able to open the doors using the wires?' Ben asked tersely.

'Not probable,' he said. 'But just to be sure—' He looked meaningfully at the gun Ben held in his hand, and then at the keypad to the left of the doors. Ben understood what he meant. He flicked the small safety catch on the handgun, then aimed it at the keypad.

Bang!

The keypad exploded as the bullet hit it. The sound of the gun, however, seemed to reverberate along the corridor with a deafening echo. The trio looked at each other nervously. 'We'd better hope nobody heard that,' Annie muttered.

Ben nodded, not wanting to think of what would happen if their captors ran in this direction to find out what had happened. He looked down the corridor to his right. 'I think we came this way,' he said. 'Are we all agreed?'

Joseph and Annie nodded.

'Come on, then,' he instructed and, grasping his gun tightly, Ben led the way.

They walked briskly but quietly, desperately trying to remember the way back to the room in which Lucian had interrogated them. Each time they came to a corner, they flattened themselves against the wall while Ben peered round, gun at the ready, to check it was safe. Now and then, they would pass a door. When that happened, Ben would press his ear against it to see if there was any sound of voices; when he was sure it was silent, he would open the door, gun firmly at the ready, and check out what was inside.

Most of the rooms were empty. Others, however, clearly acted as store cupboards. There were shelves full of electronic equipment that meant nothing to Ben, as well as scientific implements, wires, batteries and even, in one room, boxes of plastic explosive. But there was no sign of any people. After several minutes of searching, it became clear that the dimly lit, maze-like concrete corridors of this underground warren were practically deserted; it also became clear that they were lost.

'How on earth are we supposed to find our way out of here?' Annie burst out suddenly.

Ben turned to see tears in her eyes. He gave Joseph a long look. 'I don't know,' he said quietly. 'I guess we just have to keep trying—'

He cut himself short. From somewhere — he wasn't sure where — he heard the sound of footsteps. The trio threw each other anxious glances, then pressed themselves hard against the wall. The footsteps grew louder, and they seemed to be coming along a corridor that ran at right angles to the one in which they stood. Ben gestured at the other two to run back out of sight, and the three of them scuttled down the corridor as quietly as they could, turning a corner just in time — Ben peered back to see two men continuing on their way. Although he was watching from a distance, he was sure that one of them was Flight Lieutenant Johnson.