The Hunters

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘Maybe that’ll make them hesitate as well,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Cobb said.

  The train was running hot and hard. In the glare of the single headlight, Dobrev could see a log fence where the track supposedly ended. He throttled up and tore through the barricade, then hit the end of the two-foot-high berm. Sparks spit from the wheels and lit the ground that was still dark beneath the dawning sky. The metal shrieked and the three occupants were jerked forward as the train slowed - but it did not stop. Like a snowplow it pushed through the sunbaked soil, which blew apart in clods. They heard the dirt crunch under the wheels, saw it fly like thousands of gnats in both directions. The screeching was terrible. Cobb hoped that the Black Robes were close enough to be deafened and pelted by BB-fast grains of dirt. It might not penetrate those robes, but it sure as hell would slow them down.

  ‘Don’t derail, don’t derail, don’t derail,’ was McNutt’s mantra for the seeming eternity it took to cover what was, in fact, less than a half-mile. The longer they moved, the leveler the ground and the easier it was to push through the mound.

  And then the village came into view.

  62

  Garcia saw the Black Robes before anyone else did.

  The attack started as distant black dots on a postage-stamp-sized section of his crowded computer screen. They emerged from the grove line bathed in the dull red, orange, and yellow glow of coming sunrise. The tech looked above his computer to the lip of the bluff itself.

  ‘They’re coming from the grove, three o’clock east!’ Garcia yelled, pointing.

  Cobb ran through the engine to the command center and found the screen showing the northeast view. It was getting lighter outside every minute, and the train was picking up speed.

  ‘They either want to follow us or escort us in,’ Cobb decided. ‘Either way—’

  ‘They ain’t,’ McNutt seethed, charging past him toward the freight car.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Cobb demanded.

  ‘Welcome them with open arms, and I do mean arms!’ McNutt shouted back without pausing, shaking the Val assault rifle in the air.

  Cobb ran back to the cab. He and Dobrev exchanged intent glances, then both watched as the village came closer through a line of trees - one that would just allow the train to squeeze through. They also saw the honor guard horsemen waiting with their rifles.

  ‘Other side!’ Cobb yelled at Jasmine. ‘Have them ride along the far side. Let the train take the brunt of the attack!’

  ‘Viktor is way ahead of you,’ he heard Jasmine say in his ear.

  Cobb smiled grimly, gripped Dobrev’s shoulder reassuringly, then ran to the gap between the engine and the command center. He balanced there, staring carefully off to the east. He saw the Black Robes coming around the sloping bend in the distance.

  They were on IMZ-Ural ‘Cossack’ motorcycles, each with a sidecar. They were made in Russia, based on the superior BMW sidecar cycles of World War II. They were designed to battle storm troopers and Panzer tanks in the brutal terrain and climate of the Eastern Front. They could easily take this landscape and this ancient train.

  Cobb recognized some of the weapons in the riders’ hands: machine guns, fifteen-round automatics, even the shotgun he had declined all those hours ago. He looked at the Uzi, essentially ineffective at this range.

  The horsemen who were unlucky enough to be within range fell under a peppering of fire.

  As Cobb watched, McNutt shot the motorcycle driver closest to the back of the train. The man’s head erupted like a popcorn kernel and the cycle veered off, the sidecar passenger shrieking.

  The shooting had the proper effect. Now that they knew they were in range of McNutt’s weapons, the cyclists slowed down and fell back.

  Cobb raced back to the cab. Through the windshield he could see the village up ahead as if it were a diorama model. He could actually pick out Jasmine and Garcia at the front of a long line of rifle-toting villagers. He saw Borovsky astride a horse, pointing and barking out orders to the riders. He saw all the people start to surge forward as the train entered the trees.

  He motioned for Dobrev to slow to allow people to get onboard. The Russian understood. They would be safer hunkered in the command center or armory than they would anywhere else. Those who could grabbed the train and climbed on. Those who couldn’t tried to keep up for protection. The rest sought cover wherever they could find it. It had been explained to them that the train would be coming back this way shortly.

  At least they hoped.

  Cobb knew where everybody was except for one person.

  ‘Sarah!’ he shouted. ‘What’s your status?’

  There was no answer. Cobb stared slack-jawed at the cave entrance just a few hundred yards away.

  ‘Jasmine, Garcia, where’s Sarah?’

  ‘We don’t know!’ they yelled back.

  Cobb felt a familiar, unpleasant burning in his gut.

  Meanwhile, some younger, stronger villagers had hopped onto the slowing train to help their elders aboard. They started filling the command center, the freight car, and the flatbed as McNutt kept up a steady stream of defensive fire behind them. More men joined him with their old carbines.

  Cobb ignored it all. He just stared straight ahead as they passed through the village. There was enough light now for him to make out the geography ahead. He saw, about a mile in the distance, the back end of the tunnel. He grabbed the binoculars and looked ahead, focused. The wall was still intact. If Sarah had fallen, or if the unstable explosive had knocked her out or even killed her, this was going to be a very short trip.

  Borovsky rode alongside, his head bobbing in the cab’s east window.

  ‘Go back!’ Cobb shouted, pointing hard. ‘Protect the rear of the train!’ The colonel nodded and set off to do just that. Now, Cobb knew, if the train crashed, at least they would be in a better position to mount a last stand.

  Cobb felt a hand on his arm. He turned to see what Dobrev wanted. Cobb saw something he wasn’t expecting: the engineer staring straight ahead in amazement. Cobb followed his gaze and saw her.

  Sarah was fifty yards away, running from the stone wall, wearing only the long-sleeved T-shirt and matching leggings. Having removed her shoes for the climb, her feet were bare and her toes were bleeding. Her face was smeared with dirt. Her blond hair was wet with sweat, hanging down in ringlets around her burning eyes.

  ‘I couldn’t blow it from the inside!’ she panted through his earpiece. ‘That much dynamite … my ears …’

  ‘Right, of course,’ Cobb grinned. ‘So how …?’

  ‘The rocks were loose on top,’ she said. ‘I pushed one out and climbed down. Sorry I didn’t answer.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘So how about—’

  ‘Blowing this sucker?’ she said. ‘I’d rather not get buried. Give me another few seconds.’

  Cobb motioned for Dobrev to slow the train. He did a quick calculation and took Ludmilla to half-speed, about thirty-five miles an hour - still fast enough to keep cutting through the dirt embankment. It was falling apart easily now that the terrain was level.

  Sarah was still running. Her right hand was up, the red button on the end of a detonator stick just beneath her raised thumb. The expression on her face was one of exhausted madness.

  Her lips moved as she ran.

  ‘Sure hope this works, Jack,’ Cobb heard in his ear. ‘In three … two … one …’

  And then her thumb went down.

  Twenty yards away, Sarah disappeared in a billowing cloud of white as the hill behind her exploded up and outward, as if it had been shot from the center of the earth.

  63

  Cobb recklessly stuck his head out and stared up, as a wave of dirt and rock swung overhead on either side of the train. Those BB-shots of dirt that he’d wished on the Black Robes hit his own scalp and exposed neck as he turned to watch the mass of debris crest over the flatbed and come crashing down between the tracks and the on
coming Black Robes.

  The motorcycles veered off, swerving to avoid being buried, swept, or knocked away. Cobb was sorry there hadn’t been time to warn his own people. The horsemen reined their horses hard and scattered in all directions, and the villagers fell wherever they were.

  When Cobb ducked back in, Dobrev had not budged nor had the train deviated. It continued to groan slowly toward the billowing dust cloud where Sarah had once stood.

  ‘Sarah? You copy?’ Cobb asked.

  There was only silence.

  ‘Look!‘ Dobrev said in Russian.

  Cobb knew exactly what he meant. Incredibly, where once there was a cave, there was now an open gap through the hillside - with only powdered residue of the wall coating the tracks.

  Jasmine arrived in the engine. Her face was covered with dust.

  ‘You were watching too?’ Cobb said.

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for anything,’ she replied.

  ‘How many villagers we got on the ground?’

  ‘About twenty,’ she said.

  ‘Garcia?’

  ‘Yo!’

  ‘Get them into the freight car. The armored walls will protect them better than the other cars. McNutt?’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s gettin’ near them,’ he promised as the crack-crack-crack of the Val rang out.

  The train slowed just outside the mouth of the tunnel. As it did, Dobrev turned and shouted something to Jasmine, who quickly relayed the information to Cobb.

  ‘We have to stop,’ she reported as Dobrev grabbed a heavy iron mallet from the locker.

  ‘Why? What’s he doing?’ Cobb demanded.

  ‘He said the cowcatcher has to come off now,’ she told him.

  ‘Crap. I’m going with him,’ Cobb said as Dobrev hopped from the cab.

  Cobb told McNutt what he was doing. He told him to concentrate on not letting anyone get to the front. And most importantly, he told him to keep an eye out for Sarah.

  There was a crack and a whirring skid of tires. ‘Copy that,’ McNutt said as a Black Robe went tumbling through the dirt.

  Dobrev began swinging in hard, strong arcs at the old bolts that held the iron cowcatcher to the front of Ludmilla while Cobb drew his handgun and protected the train. Not a single Black Robe made it past the combination wall-of-gunfire and sniper-shots McNutt was unleashing. It seemed to Cobb like the man had at least three hands. Occasionally, as he paced the rocky terrain, Cobb looked around to see if he could spot Sarah.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ Dobrev groaned, in Russian.

  Cobb didn’t need a translator. He knew what that meant. As Dobrev handed the mallet back to Jasmine in the cabin, Cobb put his shoulder to the side of the heavy iron grate. Dobrev joined him, and together they pushed it toward the side of the tracks that sloped outward. It tumbled over with a dull clank, then skidded to a rest in a gully.

  The men boarded quickly, and Cobb turned back to the other pressing matter.

  ‘Sarah,’ he called urgently. ‘Where are you? I do not have a visual!’

  Jasmine looked at Cobb with concern, but all thought of Sarah left her when she glanced back at Dobrev.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered.

  Cobb followed her glance. Dobrev looked ashen - his facial muscles tight, his forehead showing a telltale sheen of cold sweat.

  Jasmine touched his cheek. He shrugged her off.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Only I can do this. I must do this.’

  ‘No, tell me how—’

  ‘Nyet!‘ he barked, and that was that.

  Jasmine choked up as she and Cobb looked through the windshield.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ Cobb told her. ‘Let him be.’

  ‘But he’s … he needs to rest.’

  ‘You make him stop now, that will kill him,’ Cobb said.

  Dobrev was talking. ‘This is the most important moment,’ he said as if the words had to be forced out between his teeth. ‘To couple the trains, I must push with the exact amount of pressure or the wheels will leave the rails …’

  The engine covered the distance between the tunnel mouth and the prince’s train in seconds. They were about thirty feet inside. Then the grated nose of the 2TE116 pressed against the coupling joint of the treasure train’s engine. Everyone on board was jolted, but it was not enough to throw off McNutt’s aim. He shot another Black Robe, who had been struggling to pull his motorcycle out of a mound of debris that the train had thrown to one side. Before the sidecar man could get to the Browning automatic rifle that he had stolen from the armory, a horseman planted a Nagant rifle round in his chest.

  ‘Come on, Ludmilla,’ Dobrev gasped. ‘You can do it, girl …’ He put the big train into reverse.

  Cobb steadied himself as the clawing fingers of the tunnel began to crack and shatter from around the royal roofs and side walls. With a pop that sounded like a massive water balloon, the eight blue and gold cars jerked forward, pulled by Ludmilla. The stubborn, clinging walls of the tunnel began to break and pebbles of granite were raining down around them.

  Cobb hazarded a look back out the window as he heard other cycles racing toward the entrance to the tunnel. But every time one tried to reach the forward cars, either McNutt, a Russian police officer, or a horseman would gun them down.

  ‘McNutt,’ he said, pulling his head in, ‘status?’

  ‘Holding them off,’ McNutt grunted. ‘But not for long. I’m running out of ammo and the horsemen’s weapons take too long between shots.’ The Nagant’s bolt needed to be pulled back and shoved forward for each round. The guns the Black Robes had taken from their armory did not. ‘And I’m worried about that grenade launcher.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Cobb suggested. ‘They want this train. They won’t risk blowing it up.’

  As they spoke, the train reversed out of the tunnel.

  ‘Sarah,’ Cobb said. ‘Elvis is leaving the building. Care to join us?’

  Still no answer.

  ‘Damn it,’ Cobb spat.

  Suddenly light flooded into the cab as they emerged from the tunnel. Cobb could see Jasmine hovering protectively over Dobrev, who was leaning forward with one hand on the control, one palm pressed against the front of the cabin. He was breathing heavily, his clothes soaked with perspiration.

  But the train was moving and picking up speed.

  As it did, the Black Robes were beginning to regroup.

  ‘Garcia, make sure everyone stays down,’ Cobb said.

  As if on cue, bullets began to splatter on the outside engine walls.

  ‘Down!’ Cobb ordered, as he and Jasmine went to one knee. Both looked as Dobrev remained rigidly standing.

  ‘Andrei!’ yelled Jasmine in Russian. ‘Get down!’

  But he didn’t respond.

  The train began to pick up even more speed. Now clouds were being reflected in the windshield glass, and tree branches were whizzing by the windows, flipping off their newly acquired dust as the train passed, still going backwards.

  Jasmine saw none of it. She was watching Dobrev.

  Cobb shouted at her, his hand out, knowing that Jasmine was going to do what she did anyway. She jumped up and grabbed Dobrev under his arms as he was about to drop.

  ‘Andrei …’ she shrieked.

  Before she could say another word, Dobrev fell back like a stone slab. She went with him and just managed to keep his head from smashing into the cab’s steel floor. His teeth were clattering, his eyes unfocused, and his right hand was spasmodically gripping his left arm. Jasmine looked over at Cobb in alarm.

  ‘It’s a heart attack,’ she said. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Here’s what you’re going to do,’ Cobb said. ‘You’re going to drive this train.’

  She hesitated as Dobrev’s right hand clawed at her arm.

  ‘You do it,’ Cobb said sternly, ‘or he will have suffered this for nothing. He and everyone else who died here.’

  She tried to move - and then Dobrev
yanked her head close to his, her eyes facing his mouth. Dobrev whispered something to her while placing his most treasured heirloom - the gold, twenty lei coin - in her grasp before he squeezed her hand closed.

  Jasmine didn’t translate right away.

  She needed a moment to fight her emotions.

  Eventually, she looked up at Cobb with tragic resolve in her eyes. She wiped away a tear while revealing Dobrev’s final words.

  ‘Andrei said, “Drive the train, and kill those sons of bitches.”’

  64

  Despite what had just happened and all that was happening around them, Jasmine was surprised by what Cobb did next. He reached through the cab window, grabbed onto a rung there, and started pulling himself onto the roof of the engine.

  Jasmine’s mouth opened as her brain filled with questions, but the train lurched before she could ask anything. She instinctively leaped up, grabbed the controls of the train, and started to drive the eleven cars with all the skill she had picked up from Dobrev.

  Cobb stood on top of the train, quickly surveying the scene. There was a mass of gathering Cossack cycles on the left, a few stragglers on the back right, and horsemen pounding through the woods after them. The tree cover was still pretty extensive, with branches all around him. The downward incline was slight at the moment, but as soon as they broke into the open, it would dip sharply.

  He wasn’t going to ask anyone to cover him. Whoever he’d ask would have his hands full as it was, and hopefully he could accomplish what he needed to do without undue attention. Thankfully, no one had yet noticed that he had climbed up there.

  Cobb took a quick look down and said a fast prayer for Andrei Dobrev. He had connected Ludmilla to the prince’s cars perfectly. Although the securing spike was not pushed through the corresponding holes in each coupler, the trains were ‘holding hands’, the fingers and thumb-like joints intertwined. This had allowed Ludmilla to pull the treasure train free.

  Cobb looked up to gauge the distance from the engine tip to the back of the prince’s cars. He silently thanked the gods of Russian train construction that Ludmilla’s roofing was relatively flat and free of projections. He turned and took a quick look along the track to make sure there were no sudden turns coming up for the backwards-running train. Then he ran and jumped.