Finding North (33 page)

“
We did,” Joseph said.
“Jesse wanted to see if he could find one of his beloved churches.
Something about Joseph of Arimathea, not Jesus’s father, and
. . . I don’t know what else. Churches.”

Joseph shook his head and
shrugged.

“
But it was Farooq?” Alex
asked.

“
It was,” Joseph
nodded.

“
Thank you,” Alex
said.

“
Sure.” Joseph pointed
back into the alcove, and she nodded.

“
Huh,” Jesse said. “It was
Farooq.”

“
Weird, huh?” Alex nodded.
“And that map? The one we’re looking for? It’s a map of Ultima
Thule. We found all three on the same day. We couldn’t afford the
map.”

“
The map’s got to be
here,” Jesse said.

“
That map has to be here,”
Alex said. “We have the books . . .”

“
How did these books get
here?” Raz asked. “No one has had access to your books. No one.
What the hell is this place?”

Alex looked at Raz. He
looked furious, which meant that he was afraid for her.

“
We need to leave,” Raz
said. “Now.”

“
We have a map of Ultima
Thule over here,” Colin said.

Alex moved toward Colin’s
voice.

“
I don’t like this,” Raz
said. “Not one bit. It feels like a set-up.”

“
A set-up?” Alex
asked.

“
We conveniently find
everything we could possibly hope to find,” Raz said. “We find a
connection to bees, a connection to Nazo’s valley, the
cartographer’s tool set . . .”

“
The bookstore assistant
has disappeared,” Joseph said.

“
French Intelligence is
nowhere to be found,” Matthew said.

“
That can only
mean . . .” Raz said.

“
They’re coming for us,”
Alex said in a low voice.

“
I agree with Rasmussen,”
Trece said. “We’re sitting ducks here. They can get us when we
leave. They can get us inside this fucking store. We can’t get to
our vehicles without exposing ourselves.”

“
We’ve been set up,” Raz
said.

Joseph looked up at Trece
and then glanced at Alex. She caught his eyes, and
nodded.

“
Lock and load, ladies,”
White Boy yelled from the back door. “We’ve got
company.”

“
Who came up with the
plan?” Alex asked.

“
Sir,” Vince said. “Leena
and I have developed a strategic defense plan
which . . .”

“
Sir?” Margaret asked in
an uncharacteristically loud voice.

Vince turned to look at
her. Margaret’s entire face was red with a flush.

“
That thing I found,”
Margaret said. She held up what looked a two-inch-by-four-inch
piece of golden-colored metal. “That Eloise Le Grande said to hold
onto it — that we might need it.”

“
You,” Alex pointed to
Vince and Leena. “You have command. Set up. Rasmussen and I will
follow this lead. Colin, bring me the map.”

“
You heard the Fey,”
Joseph said.

“
Let’s do this thing,”
Matthew said.

A laser beam appeared in a
gloomy corner of the store.

“
GET DOWN!” Alex
yelled.

The team dropped onto
their bellies only a second before bullets shattered the glass
windows and tore through the door and walls. Alex and Raz dropped
down next to Margaret and MJ. Shots followed any movement in the
room.

“
These are pros!” Matthew
yelled.

“
Looks like French
military,” Trece said.

“
Stay down,” Joseph
said.

“
They’re firing in a
military pattern,” Trece said regarding the shooters’ tendency to
fire two rounds in quick succession.

“
Sir!” Margaret
yelled.

Alex looked at Margaret.
There was a loud crash as White Boy pushed a bookshelf over to hold
the door closed.

“
She spoke to me in
Navajo,” Margaret said. “Good, clear Navajo, like my grandmother’s
Navajo.”

“
Do you have the object?”
Alex asked.

Margaret held out a
pointed piece of gold-colored metal. The pointed end seemed to be
an exact match to the point of the compass rose in the floor. There
was a round hole near one end of the metal. There were two small
holes about a quarter of an inch from the non-pointed end. There
was an inch-by-half-inch piece of the same metal attached to the
non-point end of the metal. Alex reached into her pocket, and her
head rose off the ground. Raz’s hand pushed her back down. Two
rounds nipped the edge of her jacket as they flew over
her.

“
Stay down,” Vince said.
“We haven’t set the perimeter yet.”

Alex looked toward his
voice. He, Leena, Royce, and Trece were working moving furniture
and bookshelves to secure the building. Colin was moving from team
member to team member to make sure everyone was all right. White
Boy was building a defensive station out of books. Colin yelped,
and Alex looked in his direction. His right arm had been grazed by
a bullet.

“
Shit, shit, shit, shit,
shit,” Colin yelled.

MJ belly-crawled over to
Colin’s location to wrap his arm. Alex tapped Raz, and he looked at
her.

“
What is it?” Margaret
asked.

“
It’s a key of some kind,”
Alex said. “Do you mind if I hold on to this?”

Margaret shook her head.
Alex tucked the metal object into her pocket.

“
Move!” Trece
said.

Alex, Margaret, and Raz
belly-crawled away from the wall. From where they were, she saw
that Vince, Leena, White Boy, and Trece had built defensible
positions in the open bookstore. White Boy belly-crawled over to
them. Pressing himself against the bookshelf, he knocked the books
off the shelf at the end of the alcove under which MJ had found the
maps. Trece belly-crawled to him and joined him in knocking the
books off. Together, they moved the shelf away from the wall,
exposing the small cinder block room with no windows where MJ had
found the maps.

“
Sir,” Vince pointed to
the room.

“
I’ll stay
to . . .” Alex started.

“
Rasmussen,” Vince said.
“Get the Fey into the room.”

“
Cover me!” Raz
said.

“
You heard the man!” Vince
said. “Troy — over here.”

He pointed to a position
behind a bookcase near the back door. Troy scrambled to the door.
He set up his MK 12 Mod 0 sniper-enhanced machine gun. Troy looked
through the scope to see who was out back.

“
Jakker, keep him loaded,”
Vince said.

“
Done,” Zack belly-crawled
to where Troy had set up.

“
I
see . . . at least thirteen combatants,” Troy said.
“You want me to take them.”

“
Not yet,” Vince said.
“Leena, take the front.”

Currently their
second-best sharpshooter, Leena belly-crawled to the station near
the front door. She took out her Mark 12 Mod 0 sniper-enhanced
machine gun.

“
Cliff!” Vince
said.

“
On it, sir,” Cliff moved
to help keep Leena’s weapon loaded.

“
Rasmussen, why haven’t
you . . .” Vince started.

“
You need my guns,” Alex
yelled.

“
Sir, we have another
fifteen combatants on this end,” Leena said. “And sir, they arrived
in what look like French military vehicles.”

“
No,” Vince yelled. “I
need you to get ahold of French Intelligence. I need Rasmussen to
negotiate a truce, and I need Sergeant Dusty to call in help. Now
get into the safe room.”

“
Olivas, Carmichael,”
Vince said. “Engage. Return fire. Non-lethal only. If this is
French military, we don’t want to start an international incident.
You copy?”

“
Return non-lethal fire
only,” Troy said at the same time Leena said, “Return non-lethal
fire, sir.”

Troy and Leena began
firing their rifles.

Hunched over, Raz grabbed
Alex’s right arm, and Sergeant Dusty grabbed her left. They dragged
her into the room.

“
Trece — with Carmichael,”
Vince said. “White Boy — with Olivas.”

Trece set down the
sixteen-pound M249 SAW he’d been carrying next to Leena and began
firing. White Boy set up station next to Troy.

Alex moved to get
up.

“
I’m a Green Beret, God
damn it!” Alex yelled at Raz.

“
So am I, sir,” Sergeant
Dusty said. “But command asked us to connect to the
authorities.”

Alex scowled at Sergeant
Dusty, and he gave her one of his “You’re acting crazy” smiles. She
shook her head.

“
They have to believe that
someone will lead when they can’t,” Raz said. “They need you in
here.”

Alex looked out. Vince had
assigned the rest of the team to positions around the shop. They
were taking non-lethal fire and returning the same. Glass, metal,
and cinder flew through the air along with bullets.

“
Something is not right
here,” Alex said. “I’m calling Dom.”

“
Incoming!” Trece
yelled.

Three flash-bang canisters
flew into the shop. The team had just enough time to look away
before they went off. Their eyes were protected from the flash by
their sunglasses, but their ears took a beating. The canisters
began to smoke.

“
Dom!” Alex yelled into
her cell phone.

“
Where the fuck are you?”
Dom asked in an explosion of angry Parisian French. “My men have
been looking for you all over the city! You were supposed
to . . .”

“
Pick up our vehicles and
meet you at the store,” Alex yelled. “That’s the message you left
on my cell phone this morning at zero-three hundred
hours.”

“
What?” Dom
asked.

“
We met your men and the
shop assistant at the store,” Alex said. “Your assistant was
here.”

“
No, you did not, because
the fucking shop assistant is fucking sitting right next to me,”
Dom said. “My fucking assistant is out right now looking for you.
Where are you?”

“
We’re at the store!” Alex
yelled.

“
God damn it,” Dom
said.

The phone went silent. A
few seconds later, the chaos in the store ended.

“
They’ve stopped firing!”
Matthew yelled.

“
Hold!” Vince
yelled.

The only sound in the
store was the hiss of gas from the flash-bomb grenades.

“
Dom?” Alex asked into her
cell phone.

Raz looked over at her. He
was on his cell phone to the Paris police. She glanced at Sergeant
Dusty who was on the phone to US European Command. She
shrugged.

“
Alex?” Troy asked. “Your
uncle is walking across the back parking lot. Would you like me to
shoot him?”

“
Wing him a little,” Trece
said. “Fucker.”

Alex got up from the floor
of the little room and walked into the store. All of the windows
were gone. Glass and brick fragments littered the wood floor. She
stepped over the grenades and walked to what had been the back
door.

“
Oncle Dominic,”
Alex yelled to Dom from the door. She held her
arms open wide as if he were coming to visit her at her summer
cottage.
“Comment allez-vous?”

He scowled at her but kept
walking in her direction.

“
We got word that a combat
military team had taken over the store,” Dom said. “After the arson
attempts, French command assumed, I
assumed . . .”

“
Bonjour Oncle
Dominic!”
Alex said and attempted to hug
him.

Shaking his head, Dom
scowled at her.

“
They looked in at you,”
Dom said. “You could have indicated who you were,
and . . .”

“
You didn’t honestly
expect that, upon seeing laser targeting from military weapons, a
combat-ready military team would pass out flowers and sing songs,
did you?” Alex asked.

Dom scowled at
her.

“
You
told
us to come dressed like this,”
Alex said. “’Come armed to the teeth,’ you said. ‘Look like
American thugs,’ you said.”

Dom’s scowl
darkened.

“‘
Shake something loose,’
you said,” Alex said.

“
Yes, but I never said to
meet us at the store,” Dom said. “That message is not from
me.”

“
Then why was your
assistant here?” Alex asked.

“
Since you killed the last
one, I’m not sure which assistant you mean,” Dom said.

Stunned by his cruelty,
Alex’s mouth dropped open. She shook her head at him.

“
Fuck you,” Alex said.
“Fey Team, clear out. Let’s leave the French to their own
problems.”

“
Your vehicles have been
disabled,” Dom said.