“What about a taniwha?” Taine said quietly. “Would that be a cryptid, too?”
Jules eyes widened. She clamped her mouth shut.
Taine looked at Alcouffe. “So, why us? You have the body, and the boy’s testimony – why not call in your military?”
The lieutenant adjusted the cuff of his uniform. “I would like nothing better than to see a couple of Leclerc tanks roll in, a compagnie of soldiers, a batterie—”
“You haven’t called it in, have you?” Taine interrupted. “Because you know they won’t believe you. A dragon who preys on women and children? You’d be a laughing stock. It’s a fairy tale.”
Alcouffe ignored him. “Until we know more about the creature, we feel it’s imperative this be kept quiet.”
“The villagers already know,” Taine said. “Today, at the café, they wouldn’t help.”
“Legends and hearsay,” Alcouffe replied, stepping to the window. “There have been stories. But add a dead woman, and a lame boy, and people will want to know if there’s any truth to those stories. We’ll be overrun by tourists and sight-seers looking for fame and getting into danger.”
Taine nodded.
“How did you keep people out last time?” Jules asked.
“The last time was five hundred years ago, Mademoiselle Asher,” Godefroi said. “There was no Internet in the middle ages. No mass media. We posted people at the outskirts of the village and had them tell visitors we had the plague. It was close enough to the truth. Nobody came.”
Taine’s mind raced. Armies dealt in hard intelligence. Facts. The French army would fling any report about a dragon back in Alcouffe’s face. The lieutenant had no choice but to protect his community with the resources he had available. It was a choice soldiers knew well enough. But as far as Alcouffe was concerned, Taine was expendable. Deniable. Taine knew Alcouffe could pull it off, too. It would be simple enough for Alcouffe to suggest Taine had taken it upon himself – to avenge the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior for example. A foreign national, a soldier and suspected terrorist, if Taine died – if anyone in the operation died – he was the perfect scapegoat.
Taine’s grip tightened on the armrest. The safest option would be for him to sit quietly in custody for four days. Wait it out. Taine almost smiled. He couldn’t do it. Already, he was chaffing to do something. Sit on his arse in a French jail while someone else did the dirty work? Yeah, right. Defending lives was what soldiers did, what he did.
Still, Jules didn’t deserve to be dragged into this…
He turned to her.
“I’ll be careful, if you will,” she said.
Taine smiled. He should have known.
Stepping away from the window, Alcouffe clapped his hands together. “Excellent!”
But Taine wasn’t done with him. Getting to his feet, he stepped forward until his face was almost touching the lieutenant’s. “Yes, we’ll help, but I want your assurance that, whatever happens to me, when this is over, Dr Asher is allowed to go home.”
Alcouffe’s gaze slid to the window.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, yes,” Godefroi said quickly. “Les assurances. You have them. Tell him, Alan.”
Alcouffe turned back, his eyes narrow. “I give you my word.”
Pushing to her feet, Jules smoothed the fabric of her shorts then took the meat dish from Lompech. “Right, if you boys are done proving who has the most testosterone, I’m going to need a lab.”
Godefroi led her to the door. “My nièce is the chemistry teacher at the Lycée Robert Garnier,” he said. “She will show you.”
Taine slung the rifle over his shoulder. Fixing the radio earpiece into place, he looked around the room. Dressed in full riot gear, men were stuffing electrolyte drinks and cereal bars into their pockets. Taine did the same, also adding a bush knife to his equipment. Two M67 fragmentation grenades remained on the table.
“You are familiar with them?” Alcouffe asked.
Taine picked one up, testing its weight in his hand. “The New Zealand Defence Force uses them, yes.”
“Then they are for you. My men are not trained to use them.”
Taine clipped the grenades to his belt. “When do the rest of your team turn up?”
“This is all of us,” Alcouffe replied.
“Five men to slay a dragon? No wonder you wanted my help.”
The Frenchman glared. “Right now, three of my men are following the crab creatures through the pipes and waterways under the town. They volunteered for this task even though they risk being stung by barbs and eaten alive. They have no idea where the crabs will lead them, and no idea what they will find.” He took a step forward, until Taine could feel the man’s breath on his face. “They are some of the bravest men I know.”
Adjusting the strap on his shoulder, Taine nodded. “Better one brave man than fifty cowards.”
Alcouffe stepped back, studying him. After a moment, he gestured to one of the gendarmes. “This is Guy. He speaks English.”
Guy stuck out a hand to shake Taine’s. “Guy Lompech, Sergeant McKenna. Enchanté.”
Broad for a man in his twenties, something about the soldier struck Taine as familiar.
Taine raised an eyebrow. “Lompech?”
“Yes, yes, he’s the butcher’s son,” Alcouffe interrupted. “We don’t have time for aperitifs and chatting. This is Bruno, over there that’s Thierry, and the short one is Pascal Le Cannu.”
Carrying a grenade launcher, Le Cannu acknowledged Taine with a handshake. “My tailor is rich,” he said, grinning.
“I’m sorry?”
“My tailor is rich. Le Cannu is learning English,” Lompech explained.
“Oh, right.” Taine smiled at Le Cannu. “That’s great.”
“Please, how do you call this?” Le Cannu said, patting the weapon at his hip.
“A grenade launcher?”
“Grenade launcher, yes. I have the grenade launcher,” the gendarme said in halting English, the word grenade more like gargling than speech.
Taine gave him the thumbs up. “Very good.”
It was: a grenade launcher was what was needed for killing a dragon, although how useful it would be in a tight space was debatable. But there were no others available, so Taine would have to make do with the hand grenades. About the same firepower, less to carry.
Alcouffe went on. “Only Lompech speaks English. The rest, no. Or only a few words. You’ll have to use hand signals.” The lieutenant broke into French. Taine heard his name, and the words soldat néo zélandais…
“Are you familiar with le clarion, Sergeant?” the butcher’s son asked. Taine’s confusion must have shown because Lompech tilted his head towards the rifle. “Le clarion, the bugle. It is what we call the FAMAS.”
Taine checked the gun over. Safety, single fire, automatic, and a tiny trigger guard which meant gloves were out of the question. New Zealand’s Steyrs had a larger guard, but maybe its penetration was superior to the Steyr. Taine hoped so; seeing as they were off on a dragon hunt. He pointed to the trigger. “Squeeze this here?”
Lompech chuckled. “That is all you need to know.”
One hand on his earpiece, Alcouffe help up a hand for silence. “It’s Tatou. They have found something.”
Twelve minutes later, the soldiers had gathered on the outskirts of town, nine of them now, including Tatou, Rossi and Laloup. They were standing knee-deep in the canal at the entrance to a tunnel disappearing into the wall. Blackened and slick with slime, the opening was gated with a solid iron grating, now hanging on an angle, the lock broken off.