The Hunters

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘If they haven’t been killed yet, they won’t be,’ Cobb said. ‘At least not at the hands of the villagers.’

  ‘Trial or deprogramming?’ McNutt asked. ‘What do they do here?’

  ‘Russian gunmen in Romania?’ Cobb said. ‘They’ll have their brains rewired by the Serviciul de Informatii Externe, the Foreign Intelligence Service. Then they’ll be sent back to Moscow to spy.’

  ‘Better than a bullet in the back of the neck,’ McNutt opined. ‘Speaking of bullets, you okay?’

  ‘Dandy,’ Cobb replied.

  ‘We haven’t found anyone that we consider, shall we say, “leadership material” amongst the Black Robes,’ Garcia prodded. ‘We were thinking maybe you knew something about that?’

  ‘I do,’ Cobb answered. ‘And he’s been neutralized.’

  ‘Neutralized? Neutralized how?’

  ‘Shot. Crushed. Incinerated.’ Cobb answered. ‘That good enough?’

  ‘It wasn’t the first time around!’ McNutt joked. ‘They did all that and more to good ol’ Raspy, and he’s still sitting in the damn train - wherever that is.’

  Cobb nodded, smiled, and exhaled with honest relief. It was the first time in a while that he allowed himself to enjoy McNutt’s humor. Then he visibly brightened and slapped McNutt on the back. ‘Nice shooting out there.’

  ‘Anna kept her steady when all get-out was … well, getting out,’ he said.

  Cobb stepped forward to where Anna was hovering protectively over Borovsky and saluted her. With a smile, she saluted back. Then he put his hand out, and she took it.

  ‘Spasiba,’ he said.

  ‘You … are … velcome,’ she replied.

  Cobb knelt beside Borovsky, whose right arm was in a sling. He slipped a hand under the Colonel’s shoulder, raised him slightly, pointed to the front of the train. On the track, in front of the locomotive, were three large, burlap sacks bulging to near bursting.

  ‘Gold,’ Cobb said. ‘For the village. They can start over, anywhere.’

  Borovsky nodded in understanding. It would have been an exaggeration to call him happy, but he seemed contentedly resigned.

  He said something in Russian before Cobb laid him back.

  Jasmine’s voice was in his ear. ‘He said, “If I had to lose the treasure to a thief, at least it was an honorable one.”’

  Cobb wanted to point out that the man was protecting stolen treasure. For that matter, the gold itself was probably bought with awful taxes levied on the Romanian people.

  Instead, he simply nodded and walked away.

  68

  Choban, Romania

  (63 miles east of village)

  It was mid-afternoon when a virtually unrecognizable Sarah and Jasmine - dirty and sweaty from the blast and the battle - stepped off the treasure train on the edge of the sun-dappled town of Choban. Waiting for them was Jean-Marc Papineau, who had hired a crew of armed guards to protect the treasure on its journey to its final destination.

  ‘Well done, ladies,’ the Frenchman said.

  ‘That was quite a ride,’ Sarah said, running her hand through her soot-permeated hair. She took off her sunglasses and shook them. Black ash from the engine and white powder from the explosion drifted down, but her blue eyes gleamed.

  Papineau’s eyes settled on Jasmine. ‘You learned quickly. I’m very proud.’

  ‘I had a master class,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘Under fire,’ Sarah added.

  The moment Jasmine had finished the coupling maneuver with the rogue car, Sarah suddenly appeared in Ludmilla’s cab. She had explained that there was a new plan - one that only she and Cobb had known about. If the engine of the treasure train was operational, they were to uncouple the ancient cars and leave immediately. While everyone else was busy with the Black Robes, they would ensure that the treasure was safe.

  Jasmine hadn’t wanted to leave Dobrev, but Sarah convinced her that they needed to put distance between the train and the Black Robes in case the fanatics triumphed; and that the conductor would be happier to lie in state with his lady.

  Jasmine couldn’t dispute either point. When the old engine didn’t make an argument - it started immediately due to years of continual maintenance - she agreed to drive. As Ludmilla made her way back toward the main line they had traveled earlier, Sarah, Jasmine, and the treasure train took off in the opposite direction, down the other side of the mountain.

  Under the watchful eyes of the armed guards, Papineau did a quick inventory of the treasure. He didn’t stop smiling until he reached the final car.

  ‘Is it all there?’ he asked with a cocked eyebrow.

  ‘We had to use some of it,’ Sarah said.

  ‘We?’

  She cleared her throat. ‘Chief, care to explain?’

  Cobb answered in their ears. ‘I told her to leave three bags of gold for the village. They need to start anew. They’ve suffered. They saved our lives. They earned it. If you’ve got a problem with that, you can send some of your armed guards to collect it.’

  Papineau wanted to argue but decided against it. The treasure, or at least part of it, was in his hands. That was enough for now. He removed his earpiece and walked toward his waiting limousine for a drink.

  69

  Monday, October 6

  Uelen, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia

  (77 miles west of Tin City, Alaska)

  Bundled in a warm jacket, Sarah stared out the window at the tundra. For the last hour, her view hadn’t changed. ‘And I thought we were in the middle of nowhere in Romania.’

  Compared to the wilds of the Chukchi Peninsula, the Transylvanian Plateau was downtown Las Vegas. Stretching two hundred and eighty-five thousand square miles across the northeastern tip of Russia, this place was home to only fifty thousand hearty souls.

  ‘It’s the only part of Russia that partially rests in the Western Hemisphere,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘Very interesting,’ Sarah admitted. ‘Useless, but interesting.’

  They soldiered on, using equipment Papineau had secured for them to cross the miles of undeveloped, unforgiving, and nearly uninhabitable wasteland. The air was heavy with frozen mist, created by the waves that continually crashed against the rocky shores of the Bering Strait.

  ‘Who on earth would think a tunnel could be built out here?’ Sarah wondered.

  ‘The Russian railway, that’s who,’ Jasmine said. ‘Andrei told me that Trans-Siberian rail links had been discussed for more than a century, and the Bering Strait tunnel had been planned ever since the nineteenth century. They had built all the way to Vladivostok before they figured out you were right: it’s crazy to build out here.’

  They were inside a converted Toyota Hilux off-road truck, specially made for Arctic regions. Complete with forty-four-inch tires, the dependable, comfortable Hilux would hardly look out of place even on tropical roads. Here it was their versatile, reliable home away from home. It was even outfitted with sleeping berths in the back and a satellite dish for cell phone communication.

  ‘There were boats. Then there were airplanes. Why a tunnel?’ Sarah continued.

  ‘Why anything?’ Jasmine asked. ‘Simple. People are builders.’

  ‘People are crazy,’ Sarah said. ‘I once went whaling up here. It’s only—’

  ‘You went whaling?’ Jasmine looked at her disapprovingly. ‘But that’s—’

  ‘Illegal?’ Sarah blurted. ‘Is that what you were going to say, Little Miss Shot-a-bad-guy-in-the-face?’

  ‘I told you, he was trying to attack me.’

  ‘Because you were stealing gold! And a body!’ Sarah laughed.

  ‘Tell me again,’ Jasmine teased, ‘why are you here?’

  ‘Do you really think after all we’ve been through that I was going to miss this? Besides, you need me. I can smell a hiding place for miles.’ She looked out the windshield. ‘At least it doesn’t snow much here.’

  ‘Not much,’ Jasmine agreed. ‘Not in the coastal regions.’
r />   In the rear driver’s side seat, Garcia fumbled with one of the numerous electronic gadgets he had crammed into the vehicle. Even with the limited space available, Garcia had still insisted on two tablet computers, two military-grade GPS units, and two satellite-linked communications systems. On the opposite side of the second row, McNutt inspected his personal items: an FN Herstal P90 submachine gun and a Kahr PM9 pistol. Both were considered ‘smaller’ firearms, but each packed more than enough firepower for McNutt’s satisfaction.

  Each man had his own understanding of redundancy.

  ‘Can you get a ballgame on that thing?’ McNutt asked. ‘Anything. I don’t care if it’s a bobsled race. I just can’t listen to them anymore.’

  Garcia chuckled as he shifted images around the screen of his iPad. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Seriously, I think I liked it better when they didn’t like each other.’ McNutt closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. ‘At least I don’t think they liked each other. Who knows? I give up.’

  ‘Not exactly what one wants to hear from their fearless leader,’ Garcia said. ‘If Papineau knew you were in charge …’

  McNutt opened his eyes and looked across the vehicle. ‘Hey, I never asked Cobb to put me in charge of anything. If he thinks I should make the final call on things because of my military training, then that’s his problem. As far as I’m concerned, you guys can do whatever you want.’ He closed his eyes again and pulled his hat down low over his brow. ‘Just let me know when you need me to step in and settle things.’ With that, he raised the P90 that was strapped to his shoulder, signifying the method with which he would handle any arguments.

  Garcia just shook his head and laughed. ‘Speaking of Cobb, what could possibly take him away from all this?’

  ‘All this?’ McNutt asked. ‘You mean frostbite and constant bickering?’

  ‘I mean the possibility of frozen assets,’ Garcia replied, smiling at his pun.

  ‘Oh … all of that. Yeah, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’d say it’s a little more than that.’

  * * *

  Cobb had decided against joining the rest of the team who were en route to Alaska. The prospect of freezing temperatures didn’t bother him; rather, he sensed an opportunity to get some answers. As the others traveled east by rail, Cobb drove west in his rented car - he’d had more than enough of trains. He sped through Hungary and Slovenia, across the northern edge of Italy and a quick stretch of highway in France, finally arriving at his destination after nearly twenty straight hours behind the wheel.

  The Hotel Beau-Rivage.

  Geneva, Switzerland.

  * * *

  Jasmine pointed out the windshield. ‘Right there!’

  They had locked their GPS onto one of Papineau’s satellites and punched in the coordinates that they had established from what Andrei had told Jasmine. They had learned that while Prince Felix’s Romanov military escort fled via Yalta, the officers loyal to the crown had gone in the opposite direction - settling in a place the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would never find them or what they carried.

  Now all four could see what little remained of the pole that marked the start of the last attempted excavation of the Bering Strait Tunnel between Russia and America. Sarah drove around it as Jasmine craned her neck over her shoulder to face the back seat.

  ‘Hector, you’re up,’ she said.

  The undercarriage of the Hilux had been fitted with ground-penetrating radar, and Garcia now studied the images it produced on his tablet. ‘The buried rail line will have some sort of unique metal signature,’ he said. ‘Something that should make it stand out against the rock and ice. All we have to do is follow it.’

  The women stared through the windshield, surveying the area for anyone or anything. There was coal, natural gas, tin, and tungsten being mined near the peninsula’s few cities, but here the sparsely pocketed indigenous people, the Chukchi, who were descended from Paleo-Siberians, survived by fishing, whale hunting, and even reindeer herding.

  Thankfully there was no sign of any of that. From what they could gather, the Chukchi and Siberian Yupiks considered this area ‘spoiled’ by the early twentieth-century incursion.

  Sarah turned her head and impatiently addressed Garcia. ‘Well, what do you see?’

  Garcia sighed in frustration. He pulled a cable from his backpack and plugged it into the side of his tablet. He tossed the other end of the cable over Jasmine’s shoulder.

  ‘Plug it in. See for yourselves,’ he said.

  Jasmine plugged her end of the cable into the auxiliary port on the vehicle’s in-dash display, which mirrored what Garcia saw on his screen. Sarah and Jasmine huddled closer to the monitor in the front seat while McNutt leaned toward Garcia to see for himself.

  As the image panned forward, a distinct, bright line appeared on the screen.

  ‘Is that a crack in the ice?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Cracks are jagged,’ Garcia replied. ‘That’s straight. That’s—’

  ‘Bent track!’ Sarah screamed.

  With that, she opened the overhead moonroof to get a better look.

  Following Sarah’s lead, Jasmine also stood up in the cab.

  The view was magnificent: as if a furry, white rug stretched out to a sparkling green sea, with a ceiling of the bluest skies any of them had ever seen. It was cold. It was windy. But it was worth it.

  After only a minute, the biting weather forced them back inside. Their noses were red and their cheeks were chapped, but their smiles were warm and bright.

  Jasmine couldn’t hide her excitement. ‘Let’s go see what’s down there!’

  * * *

  When Cobb’s team viewed the contents of the treasure train for the first time, Papineau had given Garcia not one, but two IP addresses that were to receive the feed of the broadcast.

  The first IP address - a unique, numerical identifier that allowed computers to find each other across the Internet - belonged to Papineau’s computer, which Garcia traced to Papi’s train outside of Vladivostok. But the second IP address led somewhere strange: to a computer at Quai du Mont-Blanc 13, 1201 Geneva, Switzerland.

  The site of the Beau-Rivage hotel.

  Garcia’s research had told them that the Beau-Rivage was one of the finest hotels in the world, a five-star, ninety-room, eighteen-suite enclave for those wishing to experience the height of luxury. It was also the international headquarters of Sotheby’s auction house. Cobb wondered if the person on the other end of the video feed had been making arrangements to sell the Romanov treasure to the highest bidder - either through a legitimate auction that would have given the Romanian government a chance to reclaim their treasure, or through off-the-books transactions that would see the treasure sold, piece by piece, to the world’s elite collectors.

  Either way, Cobb figured he had little time to waste.

  As he took his parking stub from the valet, Cobb felt confident he had come to the right place. He knew that whoever had financed their operation - and it wasn’t Papineau - had more than enough money to burn, and this place reeked of old-world opulence. The building appeared to be constructed of polished stone blocks, with twenty-foot-high, arched windows spaced evenly around the main floor. Everything about the building was warm and inviting. The dusky glow behind the hotel and the recessed lighting under the eaves of the roof gave the hotel an ethereal, heavenly look, which only added to the moment.

  Cobb had come for a name.

  He wouldn’t leave until he had one.

  70

  Sarah used the small plow extension of the Hilux to dig away the frosty surface and reveal a small, metal plate in the ground.

  ‘They used a dromos,’ Jasmine said enthusiastically. ‘It’s a marked entrance that leads to a passageway. The Egyptians used them to mark the entrances to their tombs.’ She beamed at Sarah. ‘In many countries they’re virtually invisible amid the hillsides—’

  ‘Jasmine,’ Sarah said,
putting her hand on her shoulder. ‘Give it a rest for just a minute, okay? I need to focus.’

  ‘Sure,’ Jasmine said, wounded. ‘Focus.’

  Meanwhile, McNutt pulled a heavy chain from the storage in the bed of the truck. He anchored one end of the chain to the tow rings at the front of the Hilux while Sarah looped the hooked end of the chain behind the metal plate. When she was finished, she used a hand gesture to let McNutt know that things were secure on her end. McNutt nodded and slapped the hood of the truck. Garcia shifted the truck into reverse and floored the accelerator. The metal plate, locked in by decades of frost, held for a breathless moment, then gave in to progress.

  It popped off, revealing a small rectangular opening in the tundra.

  All four hurriedly grabbed their supplies from the truck and prepared to enter the unknown. Guided by flashlights and glow sticks, they squeezed through the gap they had created and entered a gently sloping hall. Pressing forward, they quickly discovered that the passage widened into a great cavern that sloped down and stopped just a hundred feet ahead.

  Against the north wall were three blue and gold Romanov train cars.

  The group ran toward them, barely able to contain their excitement. Jasmine jumped up into the first car as the rest of the group raced past her to investigate the others.

  ‘It’s a passenger car,’ Jasmine announced. ‘Nothing but seats.’

  ‘Same here!’ Sarah yelled.

  ‘Seats and crates,’ McNutt shouted. ‘Broken, empty crates.’

  ‘Garcia?’ Sarah screamed, hoping for good news.

  ‘Nothing but wood,’ he said as he glanced through several wooden crates that had been discarded near the train cars. ‘They’re empty.’

  ‘Shit!’ Sarah cursed as she kicked a seat. ‘Shit! Shit! SHIT!’

  After a few minutes of searching, the four explorers regrouped beside the train. They sat in the snow, deflated and depressed, trying to come to grips with the fruitless end of their adventure. The light from the glow sticks that had once seemed warm and welcoming now cast an eerie radiance on the train as it lay there, taunting them.