Pickers 3: The Valley Read Online Free PDF Page A

a plan within days, of course. Take Georges here with you and get started. Then you bring the girls over later, and we will eat. You have nephews to meet."
    "Nephews?"
    "Well, of course. I was bound to find some woman crazy enough in the end. Go quickly, take the girls, before this crowd gets out there and starts mobbing them with questions."
     

They called themselves Scouts, and there were six of them in total. A driver and a gunner for each of their vehicles. Their arrival the day before had seemed so impressive, but knowing that was the force in full deployment made it less so.
    The Scouts' vehicles were parked up in front of the semi-circular building that had been a visitors' centre- in the days when people visited the Valley in winter to ski and debauch. It had been storage before Remy left, but Georges and his squad had re-purposed it as their base. The other five Scouts were waiting inside, arrayed around a large relief map of the Valley and the Alps around it.
    "You met yesterday, but we didn't do full introductions. This is Sarah." Georges pointed out the woman who had been his driver, then moved around the table. There were two women and two men. "Lucas, Justine, Amandine and Fabien."
    Fabien was tall, and darker than Veronique or Maxine, he had obviously arrived whilst they were away. The other three were more familiar. Lucas and Justine were brother and sister, twins, who Veronique remembered sharing classes with. Amandine was younger, maybe a year older than Maxine. Her body language suggested she was close, intimate, even, to Lucas. It looked like the team was a family as well.
    Georges continued, "We've been recording everything we've heard about the world beyond our Valley and running the occasional trip out for information. Obviously," he leant against a display case and tried to appear nonchalant as he continued, "you'll have a much more detailed.... Bigger picture. But we have the local details to match up to it."
    There was an uncomfortable quiet for a while, as the Scouts studied the Pickers, and vice versa. Apart from Veronique, who was always fascinated by maps, and couldn't keep herself from drifting over to the grand one on the table to stare at it.
    "So." said Sarah, eventually, "Where is this treasure you are going to take us hunting for?"
    Veronique traced a finger down the miniature Valley, then ran it over one ridge line, Northwest to a ripple of smaller peaks and valleys. Her finger traversed these valleys and went over the hills to the next one along. She found a cluster of tiny grey boxes and tapped it. "Here." she announced.
    Georges paced over to the map. He leant against the table and looked along the valley that Veronique had indicated. "Oh dear." he said after a while. He pointed at a red ball at the open end of the valley, a recent addition to the map. "That is going to be tricky, because this is the base for all of Northern France's Raiders. Right here, blocking our route up the valley to your vault."

* * *
    The information was served up in a thick folder of tiny details. Observations from Pickers, traders and other travellers. None had seen the encampment close to- none who had escaped to pass on the information, anyway- but many had seen the smoke on the horizon, recorded the increased raider activity or worked their way past the debris left behind by it.
    Veronique was flipping through the folder, seeing the pattern as it had been revealed to the Scouts, but secretly hoping to spot a flaw in the logic of their interpretation. Remy stood beside Georges looking down at the red ball with him. "There? You are certain?"
    "Well, not certain." Georges pulled the ball from the map, revealing the hole where it had been pinned in amongst another cluster of little grey boxes. "But it seems the most likely location for them to set up. The town is on a junction of the main road up the valley. There are structures already built for them to take up residence in and, though it's not fortified,