Spy School Out West

Chapter 21

I've decided to keep going with the mango thing. It's a good strategy for me and I've been thinking about it a lot more than I probably should, and about what qualifies as eating a mango, so "mangoes" is officially a new chapter stat.

Man, I didn't put a single exclamation point. This feels depressing.

--
Ben's POV
--
Paris Catacombs
August 3 (I think? idk timezones are confusing)
0600 hours
--

"I think we're here," Catherine finally said.

We had been walking nonstop for three hours, and most of this time had been spent within four feet of disturbing underground artistic motifs: bones stacked up like timber with gaps interrupted by skulls in random shapes. Balto and I had been keeping a tally, so far we'd seen triangles, hearts, crosses, zigzags... and now a target pattern.

I recognized the pattern from almost a year before, and it still gave me chills. The wall had been repaired to look the exact same, and I suspected the infiltration of the building would be as simple as before. Joshua certainly wouldn't expect us to go through the exact same measures we had last time, so that's exactly what we did.

First, Erica rigged a fiber-optics camera to her phone, then jammed it on the end of a cord. She snaked the cord through a manhole cover and spun it in a circle so we had a worm's-eye view of the pleasant little plaza. The nostalgia was hitting me like a semi.

To add to this, Erica proceeded to cheerfully (or as close to cheerful as Erica got) point out three separate undercover agents to us on her phone's video.

"Number One's selling produce at that stand over there, Number Two's eating at the cafe at that table, and Number Three is the one reading the newspaper with sunglasses on that bench."

"Why would Joshua hire guards if he's not even there yet?" Balto asked. "He's not, right?"

I hadn't thought of that.

"He's probably coming soon, then," Erica guessed, then spooled her camera back up and disconnected it from her phone. "Mom, do you have some nitro? C-4 would work okay too, it just might be a tad noisy."

"Isn't that a bad idea?" Balto asked. "If he's coming soon, and his goons hear it, then he might not come- or he might ambush us."

"How do we know he's not already here?" I added. "Could he already be?"

"His plane took off an hour ago from Los Angeles," Erica replied. "The CIA made visual confirmation. It's going to take him a few more hours at least. And now that you mention it, I have something better." She reached into her utility belt and pulled out a small white block made of paper. There seemed to be something in it.

"What's that?" Balto asked, though I noticed she was sidling away from Erica and across the tunnel.

"Military matches," Erica explained, selecting one. "Ben, can I have your mace?"

I tossed it to her, then asked, "do you not have any?"

"I do, but you never use yours," Erica replied. "Mine's almost empty. Zoe, do you have a certain..."

"Oh, yeah," Zoe replied, reaching into her pocket, then passed her a crinkly cylindrical packet with a colorful pattern. "Do you need Advil too?"

Erica shook her head as she took the packet "Thanks for offering." Balto laughed. "You can make explosives out of those?"

"They make good wicks," Erica explained, unwrapping it while facing the bone wall so I couldn't see what it was.

I leaned closer to Balto. "What did Zoe give her?" I asked quietly.

Balto laughed again. She seemed to find whatever it was - and my obliviousness to it - hilarious. "Girl stuff," she replied. "You don't need to worry about it."

"Of course," I groaned. Mike and Chip wandered over to us.

"You're a girl. Do you know what she's doing with it?" Chip asked Balto. Before she could respond, Mike answered, "that's a really personal question."

"I'm spraying the match with your aerosol mace for flammability, treating the 'girl stuff,' which I can't believe you boys haven't figured out yet, with some chemicals from my utility belt... and lighting the match," Erica replied, startling me. "Cover your ears if you want."

"If I want?" I started to ask, but Erica lit the whatever-it-was with the match. There was a high-pitched screaming noise, and then a low boom. Amazingly, it wasn't nearly as loud as I expected.

"Here's your mace," Erica said once the explosion stopped, tossing it back to me.

"Er, thanks," I stammered as I caught the mace. The hole she'd exploded was about the size of a small window, so I had to duck through it. Watching Chip fit through was somewhat comical; he spent a good thirty seconds trying to fit before giving up and crawling through the hole, red-faced in embarrassment.

We were in a cellar that looked almost the same as it had when we'd first exploded through the wall a year earlier. There were some weapons, but it was mostly snack food in large cardboard boxes that the French disapproved of. Stuff like Twinkies, Devil Dogs, peanut butter, and assorted Doritos. I snatched a bag of chips from their stockpile; I hadn't eaten since the parachute debacle and I was famished.

Catherine led the way upstairs and Cyrus took up the rear in case there was an ambush we hadn't noticed. Balto and I ended up in the middle as the worst fighters.

When we emerged from the cellar, ambush-free, and into the massive living room. Ms. E, the previous evil-mastermind owner of the building, had bought out the whole block and knocked down the walls between them. She'd then installed spiral staircases leading up to the second, third, and possibly fourth floors. The place had been cleaned up and the vases, scrolls, and other ancient artifacts we'd broken had since been replaced.

"Woah!" Balto exclaimed, a little too loudly.

"Shh!" We all shushed her, not wanting to alert the goons outside. 

"Sorry," she said more quietly. "It's just that... is that the Mona Lisa?"

Catherine was an art curator at the British Museum as her MI6 cover. However, she'd still studied Art History at a university, so she was passionate about art and artifacts. "Why, yes," she said, seeming awed. "I forgot to notify my contacts at the Louvre after our last time here. I'll do it this time." I could tell it pained her to see the painting in someone's home, rather than a museum where it belonged, but she was putting the mission first.

She doled out handguns for all of us, then secreted us in, on, and under various cabinets, chairs, and couches. She put me and Zoe next to each other under a plush sofa. I had to lay down, army-crawl style, in order to fit, but Zoe could stay on her hands and knees. I cocked my pistol, ensured it was loaded, and waited.

I really wished that I could have been given dummy bullets. I was a horrible shot, and holding a weapon was probably more dangerous to me than to anyone I was aiming it at. What I was good at was calculating aim. However, calculating aim and aiming the actual gun take completely different skill sets. I was lucky I could even cock the handgun correctly, let alone fire it in a kill shot at an enemy who probably didn't want to be shot in the first place.

We laid there in silence for hours until the door creaked open and Joshua Hallal entered with two of his thugs. I felt a shudder run up my spine.

Catherine looked at all of us from her hiding place at the top of the stairs, and once she had our attention, counted down from three on her fingers. She reached zero and sprang down the steps.

At once, we emerged from our hiding spots. I pressed the barrel of my gun to one thug's head, getting into the spirit of it. Catherine leveled a pistol at Joshua's nose. "Joshua Hallal, you're under arrest."

He grinned menacingly. "Not so fast."

I need to stop with these cliffhangers.

Publishing date: 10|7|24

Total word count: 1,330 

Mangoes: 19|25