The Hunters h-1

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘I’m not even sure what you’re talking about,’ the Frenchman said in his ear.

  He sounded genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Jack,’ Jasmine said, frustration in her voice, ‘what are we doing?’

  ‘You saw the track we were on earlier, outside,’ Cobb explained. ‘It ended. Decisively. No hidden rails that would’ve let us push farther. Isn’t that right, Garcia?’

  ‘There was no iron anywhere up ahead,’ he agreed.

  ‘But this train got in here,’ Sarah stressed in their ears, ‘so there had to be more track at some point.’

  ‘And after they drove this train inside, that track was pulled up and removed, probably melted,’ Cobb said. ‘Getting the treasure out again would take a small, properly equipped army to replace a missing kilometer of rail — all the while being picked off by the members of the honor guard.’

  ‘Wait,’ Jasmine said. ‘Are you saying there’s another way out? That the Romanovs never had any intention of going back, but they gave themselves the option of going forward?’

  ‘I’ll let you know soon enough,’ Sarah offered.

  Cobb checked his watch. ‘Garcia, is that Papi-cam dried out yet?’

  A moment later Garcia replied. ‘Nope. Still not online.’

  Cobb heard a snort from Papineau. Cobb felt a pinch of anger — not at the Frenchman’s reaction but about his secrecy. If he had told Cobb that there was a camera in the command centre, Cobb wouldn’t have short-circuited it and they could be getting valuable intelligence on the Black Robes right now. That was Papineau’s error, not his.

  Cobb motioned for Jasmine to follow as he went to confer with Borovsky.

  Grigori Sidorov, the leader of the Black Robes, was not happy.

  ‘I told you not to shoot at them!’ he shouted, banging the flat of his hand on the table in the command center of the train.

  Vladimir Losovich held the Heckler amp; Koch 91 sniper rifle he had taken from the freight car. He cradled it as if it were his child. ‘We weren’t shooting at them,’ he grunted. ‘We were shooting at the horsemen.’

  The Black Robes were crawling all over the train, looking for whatever they could use, examine, or loot. After they had piled up their dead and removed the net to make sure it wouldn’t get underfoot, a group of six went into the woods and tried to follow the trail. There was distant gunfire in the woods, but no indication of whose it was or what the result might have been. The majority of the Black Robes went back to the train.

  Sidorov twisted his head toward the big, metal bracket holding the array of computer screens, where three Black Robes toiled. ‘Any progress breaking their security?’

  The one on the right, watching the actions of the one hunched in the middle as if he were playing a video game, shrugged noncommittally.

  Sidorov sat down heavily where Papineau and Cobb once sat. He dismissed Losovich with a wave of a hand. He let the hackers continue to click away as he surveyed the situation.

  They were close. The body he had sought all his life was out there, just beyond his reach. But not for long. The biggest danger, if not the biggest impediment, was his own desperation.

  He finally admitted it to himself. He wanted it so badly that he had been reckless in his attack. Over-eager. Part of that, too, was that he felt alone. He drew strength from the knowledge that Rasputin must have felt the same way. But I am just an aspirant, a pilgrim, a strannik.

  Sidorov missed Kazan: not just the city but the people. He missed his palace. He had been feeling the withdrawal from sin more and more, the same way an addict felt the absence of drugs. He needed a fix soon, and the shooting of a few villagers and horses had not sufficed.

  A slaughter, he thought distractedly. That would do. Finding these horsemen, their women, their children. Where were the six men he had sent out? Why had they not called, or sent a messenger, or returned? Could this golden opportunity be slipping away?

  Sidorov pulled his phone from his coat pocket and pressed the button that immediately linked him with his offices. ‘Where are my reinforcements?’

  ‘They’ll be there soon, starets. We’ll double your numbers before dawn.’

  Sidorov smiled. Although they were based in Kazan, the Black Robes were a powerful organization with recruiting posts in Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. As luck should have it, one of their largest armories was located less than two hundred miles away.

  ‘And the vehicles I requested?’

  ‘We got you everything you asked for — and more.’

  57

  Cobb and Jasmine approached the Russian colonel, the woman police officer, the village elder, and the train engineer — who had joined them at the entrance of the cave.

  "Я сожалею." Cobb said in Russian. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Jasmine was openly surprised at the preciseness of his accent. She would not have been surprised to learn that wherever Cobb went he filled his head with the basic vocabulary of the place, but speaking with the effortless tongue of a native was a different matter.

  Borovsky sighed, his chin sinking to his chest. Decebal turned away and stared through the close-knit branches of the protecting trees, as if seeing the past, present, and future of his village. Only Dobrev and Anna didn’t understand the full import of what Cobb was saying.

  ‘Why?’ Anna asked through Jasmine. ‘What’s the matter? What have you done?’

  ‘I’ve brought an end to their obligations,’ he answered as Jasmine translated. He nodded toward the old men. ‘They feared it when they decided to talk with us rather than fight us. They knew it when the Black Robes appeared.’

  ‘It’s the war we’ve always prepared for, but one we’ve feared,’ Decebal said.

  ‘But can’t you just go?’ Anna pleaded with Cobb. ‘You are honorable people, are you not? Can’t you just lure the Black Robes away and let these people be?’

  Borovsky shook his head. ‘He could lure them to the other end of the earth, but it would not be enough.’ He turned to Decebal and put a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘It is time, my friend.’

  Decebal hesitated.

  Borovsky continued. ‘The treasure is no longer safe here.’

  Decebal looked away from all of them, his face in his hand.

  Borovsky turned to Cobb. ‘We will deal with the treasure later. But first we must protect these people, yes?’

  Cobb nodded. ‘Yes. But first, a few questions. The train and the locomotive are still here. How did the prince and his entourage get out of here? Out of this region?’

  Jasmine translated as Borovsky revealed, ‘The loyalists took the prince and four personal bodyguards by horse cart to a waiting boat, where they went to Bacau, Odessa, and finally Yalta.’

  ‘Why Odessa?’ Jasmine asked. ‘That was one of the hearts of the Revolution, the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin-’

  ‘It was chaotic, occupied by no fewer than five competing armies,’ Borovsky agreed. ‘They were too busy fighting each other to worry about another small, nondescript group of refugees making their way through the city.’

  Jasmine paused, no longer translating. Her eyes were wide with wonder. ‘This is amazing, truly amazing historical information.’

  ‘Second question, Jasmine,’ Cobb said firmly. She closed her open mouth and nodded. ‘Those cauldrons back in the village, the ones they used to make our dinner. Pretty big. Where did the metal come from?’

  Borovsky grinned. ‘The melted iron of train tracks. You have a good eye. Would you care to work for the Moscow police department?’

  ‘Maybe someday,’ Cobb said, smiling. ‘I’m guessing the village was here before the prince arrived. They weren’t agrarian, since the ground is pretty dead, and they weren’t fishermen, since the catch isn’t significant. Here, in the mountains, I’m guessing a mine or quarry. The track used to go through this cave. I’m guessing it also knocked on the back door of the village. Is it still there, by chance?’

  Borovsky’s grin broadened. ‘There is a
trunk line about half a kilometer behind where your train stopped. It takes you right into the village.’

  ‘But you buried it,’ Cobb said, ‘so that anyone who came this far wouldn’t try to develop the village and its resources.’

  Borovsky nodded. ‘That culvert we crossed was dug by the villagers. They used that earth to build the berm that runs from the main line to the village.’

  ‘We crossed that ridge,’ Cobb said. ‘Didn’t suspect a thing.’

  ‘Years of compacting, growth,’ Borovsky said.

  ‘Which brings me to question number four,’ Cobb said. ‘Money. The honor guard is well equipped, the village well fed. There’s not a gaunt face among them. My guess is that the prince set up a trust fund to support their mission, and that he did it in the name of the Borovsky family, his devoted servants.’

  ‘Impressive … and correct,’ Borovsky said. ‘All of the town’s basic needs are financed by a portion of the wealth the Romanovs distributed among institutions throughout Europe.’

  Jasmine’s mouth and eyes were again open wide.

  Suddenly, Sarah’s voice whispered into Cobb’s ear. ‘I’ve got it, Jack.’

  ‘Good,’ he answered. ‘Be right there.’

  Cobb told Jasmine to tell the others that he would not permit the villagers to be harmed and assured them that he would be back momentarily. Instructing Jasmine and Dobrev to stay put, Cobb motioned for McNutt to join him. Then the duo headed deeper into the cave at a slow jog.

  They followed the barely discernible path beyond the railroad cars to where Sarah’s powerful penlight was flickering. She was crouched by what looked like a few mounds of loosely packed dirt, but as the men got closer they could see slat-like wooden cases.

  ‘I’m surprised they didn’t take it with them,’ Sarah said.

  McNutt peered as close as he could, whistled as he saw the outlines of howitzer shells, large cigar-shaped cylinders of black powder, and several big corkscrew-shaped implements used for boring holes. ‘Looks like Prince Felix absconded with more than treasure.’

  ‘He needed enough munitions to turn any tunnel, natural or unnatural, into a cave,’ Cobb said. He turned his flashlight on the walls. ‘You can see the darker blast markings, the parts where harder rocks scooped out chunks of softer ones.’

  McNutt followed the light. Parts of the wall looked like the surface of the moon. ‘So this section of the cave was an add-on?’

  ‘No,’ Cobb said. ‘It wasn’t a cave. It was a tunnel. They sealed it.’

  McNutt’s face uncreased in a big ‘ohhhh’ of understanding. ‘He closed the door. But it was still letting a little bit of a draft through.’

  ‘There are tracks buried under here,’ Sarah confirmed.

  ‘That lead to where?’ McNutt asked.

  It was Garcia who responded through their earpieces. ‘To a whole set of tracks with a generous selection of destinations. Sorry I didn’t notice it before. I didn’t know where to look.’

  As the group took that in, McNutt borrowed Sarah’s light and ambled over to the wall in front of them. ‘Brilliant. All of it.’

  ‘What?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘The guys who made this wall knew what they were doing,’ McNutt said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘They used high explosives to take down the top of the walls and part of the tunnel ceiling. They wanted to pulverize the rock.’

  ‘To keep from damaging the rails?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘No,’ McNutt said. ‘They knew they weren’t going to hurt the tracks.’ He grabbed a handful of black soil. ‘This used to be bark. They covered the tracks with logs to protect them from the impact of falling rock. Then they simply left the logs to rot. But they pulverized the rock to make sure that a subsequent explosion — our explosion, as luck should have it — would reduce it to itty-bitty pieces that a train with a cowcatcher like Ludmilla’s could push right through.’

  ‘How does the explosion play out?’ Sarah asked. ‘You can’t just blow up the rock wall without blowing up the track.’

  ‘You’re right,’ McNutt said, calling upon his background in demolition. ‘We use the boring tool and the explosives they left behind. Set the TNT up and down the walls. The blowback from the walls and ceilings will be focused right on this spot, on the blockade. The small rocks become smaller rocks. The smaller rocks turn to dust. We drive right through. That’s why I said all of it was brilliant. This was not something the prince and his team just improvised.’

  Sarah walked over and took back her penlight. She shined it over the wall that she would have to climb to set the unstable, ancient explosives.

  ‘Can you rig it?’ Cobb asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Three days if McNutt helps. Before dawn if he leaves me alone.’

  McNutt grimaced. Not at her comment, but at the steep walls of the cave. ‘Don’t you need a grappling hook?’

  Sarah made an ‘are-you-kidding-me?’ face.

  ‘What about the fuse?’ Cobb asked.

  ‘I found a detonator,’ she assured him as she shooed them away.

  Cobb left and McNutt followed. They met Jasmine and Dobrev at the mouth of the cave.

  ‘Borovsky, Anna, and Decebal went back to the village to prepare the people for a showdown,’ Jasmine said. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘The way out,’ Cobb said. ‘But first, we need to get our train back.’

  McNutt looked as if dark clouds had parted and a shaft of heavenly light had shined directly on him. He cracked his knuckles in anticipation.

  ‘How do you know they haven’t started driving it back to Russia by now?’ Jasmine asked.

  Cobb smiled at Jasmine. ‘For one thing, they think they’ll need it to haul out Rasputin and the rest of the treasure,’ he said before pointing at Dobrev. ‘For another …’

  The engineer looked like a cat that had just eaten a canary.

  He held up the ignition key.

  58

  Friday, September 21

  Midnight in Romania

  McNutt stared at the key. ‘It’s really that simple?’

  ‘It’s that simple,’ Cobb replied. ‘We needed something that wouldn’t destroy the engine or take too long to rectify, so no sugar in the gas tank. He also blocked the air intake, but that’s neither here nor there.’

  ‘Can’t they just bypass it?’ he asked.

  Cobb looked over to Jasmine, who passed the question to Dobrev.

  When the engineer finished his derisively tinged words, Jasmine said, ‘It generally translates to-’ She stuck her tongue between her lips and made a slobbering sound.

  ‘Russian raspberry,’ McNutt laughed. ‘I like it.’

  ‘Nobody knows that engine better than Dobrev,’ Cobb said. ‘I had Jasmine ask him for a favor when we started out. He tied the cylinders into a central “starter” unit. Easy to do, given the way the fuel feeds into the engine. If you don’t know how to untie and reconnect everything, the train won’t run.’ Cobb smiled appreciatively at the old engineer. ‘You might not have been able to cripple the whole thing with one key before he got his hands on it, but you can now.’

  ‘I’m still confused,’ Garcia said. ‘I thought there was nowhere for the train to go?’

  ‘If nothing else, they could have gone in reverse and stranded us,’ Cobb said. ‘That would have bought the Black Robes time to call in reinforcements.’

  ‘They’re nothing if not well connected,’ Jasmine said.

  Cobb glanced at Dobrev. ‘You sure he won’t sit this one out?’

  Jasmine shook her head. ‘He’s adamant. He says you need him. And more importantly, Ludmilla needs him!’

  Cobb sighed. God save him from people who did things for love instead of money. There was no talking them into or out of anything.

  Carrying a lantern that Cobb had appropriated from the train — amazingly, it still had oil inside and the wick still took a flame — they began walking
the mile toward the village. As they traversed the dark woods, Cobb quietly discussed the plan of attack with McNutt. When they reached the edge of the settlement, not far from the site where the Black Robes had gone down, Cobb and McNutt checked the remaining ordnance in McNutt’s duffel bag.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Garcia said as he met them outside the village. ‘The train is crawling with Black Robes, all of whom now have access to everything remaining in the freight car armory, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Cobb said.

  ‘And you’re going to take the train back from them.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘There’s something back there we need,’ McNutt said. ‘Jack’s toy.’

  ‘No more a toy than anything you use,’ Cobb said. There was bite in his response. He enjoyed his work and his tools, but he never confused war for recreation, and he never took pleasure from it unless it was used for a purpose. ‘We’re going to teach the Black Robes the difference between someone who knows how to do this and someone who just thinks they do.’

  ‘Even so,’ Garcia pressed. ‘You’re severely outnumbered. What are you going to do, just hike over and take the train?’

  McNutt grinned. ‘More or less.’

  Borovsky saw the lantern and came over with Decebal. They weren’t sure what to expect, whether the team would be trying to make off with treasure. If they noticed that Sarah wasn’t with them, they did not mention it.

  They looked like they were going to throw a fit about the flaming lantern, but Cobb, through Jasmine, cut them off with a description of his intentions. That shut them up and ensured their cooperation. Both men said they wanted to go after the train. But Cobb impressed upon them the importance of concealment and surprise — not to mention that this was not a scorched-earth mission. At least not yet. This was retake and extract.

  Besides, the leader of the honor guard already had plenty to do.

  ‘If for some reason the Black Robes decide to come after the village,’ Cobb said, ‘you’ll have to lead the defense.’