The Hunters

by Chris Kuzneski

  Similarly, back in the engine compartment, Cobb let the Black Robes from the command center nearly make it to the door of the engine before bringing them down with one or two shots from the silenced Uzi. Its coughs were completely swallowed by Ludmilla’s moans as her wheels spun for traction on the cold rails.

  The first Black Robe who tried to come into the engine compartment went down. The one behind him nearly tripped over the body before joining his comrade, a nine-millimeter round cracking open his skull like a hammered coconut.

  Cobb heard the scrambling of a third man heading for the opposite side of the command center car, then the thud of his body hitting the flatbed floor as McNutt took him down.

  The entire train jerked convulsively as Ludmilla began to move. Cobb was in motion. It was time to sweep the train for loose ends. For that, McNutt would make his way across the roof to the end of the sleeper car. Cobb would move through the command car and flatbed, and they would meet in the freight car.

  Cobb moved low and fast, checking both sides of the command center entrance. The lights were still on, as were Garcia’s video screens. That meant that back in the village Garcia could see what the train’s security cams picked up. That was good. It was always nice to have fresh eyes.

  ‘Chief,’ McNutt whispered in his earpiece.

  Cobb’s heart raced slightly. It might as well have been the voice of doom. They both knew that talking before a mission was complete meant only one thing: complications.

  ‘Go,’ he said softly, remaining slightly hunched in the middle of the command center.

  ‘The sleeping car,’ McNutt reported. ‘It’s uncoupled.’

  Cobb looked questioningly at the video screens to his left. One screen showed the sleeping compartment car at the end of the train sitting on the track as Ludmilla slowly pulled away from it. Cobb was dumbfounded.

  ‘Did you do it?’ he asked. He had to ask. McNutt had disobeyed a direct order less than a day before, and Cobb couldn’t afford to assume he wouldn’t warp his orders again.

  ‘Of course not,’ McNutt snapped with irritation in his whisper.

  ‘Finish the sweep,’ Cobb said tightly, his brain whirling. He moved quickly, but not recklessly, forward. He checked the flatbed, picking his way through and around the bodies McNutt had dropped there.

  The bodies were not the problem. The two AK-47s and three nine-millimeter Russian Gyurza automatics lying beside them were.

  The enemy had emerged from the armory car carrying the same weapons they had used earlier - low-end firearms. Now that Cobb thought of it, the Black Robe bodies in the command center car had been equipped the same way. Why weren’t they using the better guns that his team had brought? Cobb didn’t have to look in the armory to know the truth, but he did anyway. He stepped in from the north door as McNutt entered the south - as the sleeping compartment car got smaller and smaller on the track behind him.

  The lights in the armory car refracted the silver ceiling, steel-gray walls, and deep blue gun racks. Except for a few heavy containers littering the floor, the place had been picked clean. And it certainly wasn’t by anyone left on the train.

  If Cobb were the kind of man whose face fell, heart skipped, or stomach dropped, they would be doing all three. But somehow he kept his composure.

  ‘Team,’ he announced, his mind racing, ‘we’ve been had.’

  * * *

  Alexandru Decebal pulled back the reins of his horse so he could look back at the village nestled in the woods like fallen leaves. Decebal looked for a lingering moment, then he turned his horse away. He rode further southwest, sadness stabbing him. He was unsure if he would ever return.

  The village had been here all his life; it seemed to him, from the stories told and the events that had transpired, as if it had been here forever. The truth was, before the coming of the prince there had been no real village - just another section of mountain railway with a few structures to house transient loggers and the people who serviced the rails. Water-bearers for the engine. Mechanics for simple repairs. Then there was the blasting of the tunnel through a relatively small hill. Some of the workers who had made the tunnel elected to remain here rather than return to the larger cities. Even before 1917, the first tremors of war were being felt in the economy: in the scarcity of food, in refugees coming and going, and in stealing to survive.

  The creation of that tunnel was easy, compared with the danger and death experienced by the engineers and the workers who constructed the rest of that obscure section of rail. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the tsar’s desire for a variety of emergency escape routes, the rail lines would never have come this far into the wilderness of a bordering nation. When it was completed, other emergencies had taken precedence, so this portion of track was all but forgotten. No one remembered it, except for Dimitry Borovsky, who had brought Prince Felix here and introduced him to his most trusted friend in Romania: Marku Decebal, Alexandru’s great-grandfather.

  Marku was named appropriately. It means ‘one who defends’. And in collaboration with Dimitry, that’s exactly what they had done. Taking his wife and child, they had moved to the bluff top and started their honor guard work - each man inviting his most loyal friends and trusted associates to join them, many being unaware of the treasure just outside their camp.

  Soon they had taken wives and raised families. Funded by the prince, their work became more about protecting their way of life than safeguarding the train. For Alexandru, born into it years later, this was not just a village. It was a living memorial - to people and to their future. He had buried his wife there. His children had remained here, eschewing the fortune and mysteries of distant lands to hold onto the old ways, the best ways.

  And now Viktor Borovsky had told him it was over.

  The strangers had come and the secret was out. Borovsky said that their work here was through. Romanovs would not return to claim the treasure. The old Russia was dead. The Romanians who had collected the treasure were gone. It was time to do what they had always said they would do if this day came: bury the gold and jewels, the art and gems.

  Seal it in its tomb for all time.

  But Borovsky was an old man now. Not as physically old as Decebal, yet Alexandru could see how tired he was - how the weight of Moscow had worn him down. He was so rarely here. For him, it was easy to give up the dream.

  Not so for Decebal. The wilderness had always been home, and the wilderness was more than just one bluff with an aging train. It was an idea. He would start a new life elsewhere for himself, for the villagers, rather than stay here in a village that no longer had a purpose. And to do that required more money than the prince had left for them, funds stored in accounts that had been eaten away by a century.

  Decebal quietly led his horse away, down into the grove in the shadow of the bluff. As soon as he entered the grove, he knew something was wrong. Before he even saw them, he knew that invaders were here.

  His horse shied, then stilled beneath his powerful thighs. Decebal looked ahead and he saw them. Dark shapes stretched in a line all the way across the grove and into the valley beyond. He saw at least ten long, low shapes, with taller shapes moving amongst them. And amongst those taller shapes were even taller spikes with rounded ends.

  His horse snorted and reared, whinnying. The taller shapes all seemed to snap around toward him. He saw slashes of moonlight reflected off lenses, scopes, and eyes.

  ‘Kill him!’ he heard a voice hiss in Russian.

  Decebal was already galloping back the way he had come, as fast as his horse could take him. Behind him, it sounded like dragons. He hazarded a glance and saw several of the low, monstrous beasts clawing the earth at the lip of the grove.

  As always, Decebal looked ahead, peering through the darkness. He could see the first suggestion of light outlining the horizon. He could see steam rising from the southwest. It had to be the explorers’ train, retracing the prince’s path. He could also see the sparks of the nocturnal village fires ahea
d and considerably above him.

  Too far, he thought. He would have a better chance of reaching the train on the sloping ground than trying to climb up the vertical bluff back to the village. On the far side, where the train tracks were hidden, the ascent was a long, steady curve. On this side, it was a treacherous incline where he and his horse would soon be overtaken.

  Decebal charged southeast to meet the rising sun, and the train, before it was too late. Behind him the growls got louder.

  If anyone on the bluff had been looking down, they might have seen the galloping horse and its rider racing diagonally across the grassland. Puffs of dawn-lit dirt rose from the horse’s hooves as two dark objects, as long as they were wide, seemed to sizzle across the field after him. From the grove, it was impossible to see they were gaining on the rider.

  Grigori Sidorov stepped out from the waiting line of IMZ-Ural sidecar motorcycles, which were made by the military for the most extreme and hostile off-road conditions. The leader of the Black Robes held the Accuracy International AX338 long-range sniper’s rifle - the one McNutt had used to kill his hired help - like a royal scepter.

  ‘Idiots,’ he muttered. ‘They can’t even kill an old man on an old horse.’

  Sidorov waved for one of his men to join him. The man was part of his inner circle, not one of those newer, incompetent recruits he had left on the train, the men who joined for the sin but not for the labor. The man arrived quickly and stood in front of Sidorov. He was shorter than the leader by more than a head: the perfect size for his new assignment.

  Sidorov set the barrel of the rifle on the man’s shoulder and placed his eye behind the sniper’s night vision scope. The Romanian rider appeared in the circle like a bobbing puppet on a string. Sidorov smiled, settled, waited just a moment, and pulled the trigger.

  The twenty-millimeter-long, nine-millimeter-wide, copper-colored .338 Lapua Magnum spear entered Decebal’s body traveling nine hundred and three meters per second. It was designed to penetrate five layers of military-grade body armor at a thousand yards, so going through the old man’s torso, as hearty and healthy as it was, posed no problem.

  It entered between his shoulder blades and, because of his galloping posture, exited through his sternum’s manubrium, ravaging portions of both his heart and lungs while ripping muscle and shattering bone.

  The projectile continued forward. Had the horse’s head been on the upswing of the gallop, it would have killed the animal, too. As it was, the bullet only cut some hairs off the very top of the horse’s mane before it buried itself in the turf ahead.

  Sidorov’s smile widened as he watched Decebal’s body jerk, sag, then begin to topple.

  ‘Kneel,’ he ordered the man in front of him.

  The Black Robe instantly knelt, allowing Sidorov to watch his victim fall.

  Decebal landed heavily on his back. He bounced once, then slid, and finally settled. His eyes were blinking as he realized that, of all the responsibilities he had been given, or given himself, it was only this last one that he had failed. It was with some bitterness that he accepted it was also the most important responsibility.

  But you did all right, he told himself as thoughts swirled in his head. It has been an honorable life. A loving life. All in all, a very good one.

  He smiled his gap-toothed smile one last time - seeing his friends, his family, and his life all at once - then died under the stars he had loved so much.

  61

  McNutt saw a frightened Lipizzaner in the distance. The speckled stallion bolted along the tree line before it disappeared from view. ‘That’s Decebal’s horse!’

  Because of Ludmilla’s monstrous roar, he had to shout even though he was right beside Cobb in the engine cab. Dobrev pushed her as fast as she could go without hurling them off the old, partially recessed rails. The train had taken an agonizing left at the tree line and swept up the slope on the far side, clawing toward a ragged swath of land between their position and the village. Using a map, Cobb had already showed Dobrev where the berm was that they’d have to plow through. The engineer had grunted, accepting the inevitability of the attempt, if not necessarily the success. Both men knew they had to hit it fast if they were going to get through nearly a century of compacted growth and debris.

  Using hand gestures and the map, Cobb had made it clear to Dobrev that they had to get to the village as fast as possible. Although the treasure was being taken care of, they had to protect the villagers from the impending raid. Despite the urgency of the mission, they could only go so fast up the incline. Both men, by their intensity and silence, were clearly hoping they would be able to gain sufficient speed.

  Cobb addressed the entire team through his earpiece. ‘Everybody: if you haven’t already, get your tactical vests and helmets on,’ he instructed them. ‘The Black Robes that we killed on the train were sacrifices. The rest of them are waiting in the darkness.’

  ‘Where in the darkness?’ Sarah hissed in his ear, as she hung onto a small ridge at the very top of the cave, her toes wedged in two rock fissures.

  ‘Somewhere between us and you,’ Cobb surmised. ‘They’re stalking the train. That was their plan all along.’

  ‘Then why attack us here?’ Garcia demanded. Back in the village, he was desperately trying to keep his eyes on all the train’s security camera images - all crammed onto one laptop screen.

  ‘To cover their flank or to take hostages,’ Cobb said. ‘They know the cave’s around here somewhere.’

  ‘God … damn … it!’ Sarah cursed, realizing she was a sitting - make that hanging - target. McNutt had explained exactly what had to be done, but he had made things seem a lot simpler than she was finding them. Still, it was easier for her to learn how to set a charge than it would have been for her to teach him how to climb a cave. ‘How much time do we have?’

  ‘Not much,’ Cobb stated. ‘Jasmine, what’s happening in the village?’

  ‘Decebal left orders to organize then went to scout ahead,’ she said. ‘They’re doing the best they can.’ The young woman was ducked behind one of the iron cauldrons, watching as villagers were running all around her, some carrying rifles, others in a panic. ‘Viktor and Anna are trying to organize them, but until they get orders from Decebal …’

  ‘Decebal is dead,’ Cobb guessed, the image of the galloping horse still fresh in his mind.

  ‘That gunfire we just heard?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cobb said. ‘The Black Robes killed him.’ He refrained from adding ‘probably with one of our own guns’.

  McNutt, however, did not hold back. ‘They stripped the armory of our weapons before leaving the train as a diversion.’

  ‘Not now, McNutt,’ Cobb said. ‘Jasmine, tell Borovsky and Anna we’re coming to get them and the villagers. We should get in okay because the Black Robes don’t know there’s track out there. But I have a feeling we’re going to have to fight our way out.’

  ‘Got it,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘What’s with uncoupling the sleeper car?’ Garcia asked.

  ‘The Black Robes uncoupled it. They knew if we moved the train, it would stay as a roadblock,’ McNutt explained.

  ‘The armory was stripped? How stripped?’ Sarah demanded.

  Cobb and McNutt exchanged worried glances.

  ‘Very stripped,’ McNutt admitted. ‘They got every gun we didn’t take with us, including a Russian RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade launcher.’

  Cobb looked disbelievingly at McNutt.

  ‘You said prepare for anything,’ the gunman complained. ‘I didn’t bring it before we got here, but when Papi said I could have whatever I wanted …’

  ‘Sarah, be ready to blow open that tunnel,’ Cobb said. ‘When you do, run for it.’

  ‘She’s going alone?’ Garcia asked incredulously.

  ‘For the moment,’ Cobb said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘The track that goes to the village doesn’t end in the village,’ Cobb said.

/>   ‘How do you know that?’ Garcia asked. ‘There’s no—’

  ‘The village was a load-on terminal for timber,’ Cobb explained. ‘Which means the flatbeds would have to be pulled even with the stacks. Otherwise, you’d have to move the wood down the rail, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.’

  ‘The track is a circle!’ Jasmine said. ‘Of course!’

  ‘Exactly,’ Cobb said. ‘The trains would loop through to load up the timber, then head back down the line. They never reversed. Too inefficient.’

  Jasmine nodded in understanding. ‘The prince tore it up on one end, but the treasure train still could have come out and joined the main trunk through the village. That is, if you could find a way past the blockade.’

  ‘And,’ Cobb added, ‘if everything goes well, that’s how we’re going to do this.’

  ‘Dobrev must have known that or at least guessed it,’ Jasmine said. ‘He kept talking about how Ludmilla could go both ways.’

  ‘Wow,’ McNutt said. ‘Normally that statement would turn me on.’

  Garcia ignored him. ‘But what about the cave? And all of that stuff clinging to the prince’s train cars? And any debris that falls on the tracks?’

  ‘He says Ludmilla will take care of that,’ Jasmine reported.

  McNutt saw the engineer mutter something encouraging to his cab and pat its wall. ‘He can promise whatever he wants. First we have to get through the molehill these people built.’

  ‘Get ready,’ Cobb told them all. ‘This promises to be interesting. Oh, and pass the word not to shoot us.’

  ‘Why would they?’ Sarah asked.

  Cobb replied, ‘We’re dressed as Black Robes.’