The Hunters h-1

by Chris Kuzneski

After Jasmine translated for Borovsky who then translated for Decebal, the men agreed. With a look that was a cross between disbelief and admiration, the two men left the team to go about their business. Cobb sent Jasmine and Garcia with them. He knew they would be safer with Borovsky and Decebal than they would be with him.

  It was the middle of the night when Cobb, McNutt, and Dobrev walked quietly down the incline they had ridden up just hours ago.

  Dobrev was dressed in dark clothes that Decebal had supplied from the villagers when they first arrived, along with soft calfskin boots that allowed him to walk without making a sound. Cobb and McNutt wore only the long-sleeve T-shirts and matching pants, with combat boots.

  None of the three wore camouflaging make-up.

  McNutt kept a Russian Val assault rifle in his hands. He found it to be one of the most effective sound-suppressed guns he’d ever used. It could also hold twenty rounds and a night vision scope, which greatly improved its already impressive efficiency.

  In his holster at his waist was a Heckler Koch USP Tactical nine-millimeter automatic, complete with a specifically designed sound suppressor. He had thrown these into his duffel bag because, as he explained to Cobb, ‘I wasn’t sure if we’d have to sneak away quietly from the village in the middle of the night.’

  Cobb would make do with the leftovers — the only other weapons that McNutt had stuffed in the duffel that included silencers. Those were the Ruger Mark III with built-in suppressor that McNutt had carried while hunting the first Black Robe under the train back in Moscow and an Uzi-Pro — an improved version of the Micro-Uzi, made by the Israeli military to be even smaller, lighter, and more effective than its older big brothers.

  If it had come to a firefight with the honor guard in the middle of the village, the villagers wouldn’t have stood a chance. But Cobb was grateful it hadn’t come to that. These people were good, and honorable. Just because they were on a different side of a situation didn’t seem like a good reason to slaughter them. Taking their treasure, however, was an unfortunate necessity. Hopefully, it could be done without hurting anything more than their civic pride.

  As for the Black Robes, they would receive no such con-sideration. They were the ones who had invited death to play at the table. It was too late to fold.

  Cobb and McNutt would make sure of that.

  59

  Four Black Robes armed with AK-47s were spread between the front of the engine and the northern tree line. They were supposed to be vigilant. Luckily, they were not.

  It corroborated what Cobb had been thinking. The zealots were all passionate but they were not all trained fighters.

  The first guard was standing beside the engine, looking off at the countryside — glorious even in the darkness. The stars twinkled, the treetops rustled in the cool breeze, and the flowered grassland shifted like an animated work of art. The second guard leaned on the other side of the engine, admiring the Bren Mark I he had stolen from the armory. The third was actually stretched out in the grass between the two others, apparently napping.

  Cobb motioned for the others to stay put. Thankfully, they didn’t have to wait long. The fourth guard, who was leaning on the front of the engine, smoking — a glowing bull’s-eye to mark the location of his head — pushed himself up and wandered into the woods. This was apparently his definition of a ‘patrol’.

  He roamed far enough away from his associates that no one but Dobrev noticed two shadows converging on the Black Robe’s back from either side. The engineer was amazed at how quick and quiet the men were.

  Dobrev saw the two shadows seemingly blend into the man’s back, but he was surprised when they hesitated. Then he realized why. McNutt was waiting until he had clear access to the man’s head, after which he snapped a garrote around the man’s throat — blackened so it didn’t glint in the moonlight. No sooner had he done so, even before the man could gag, Cobb slammed his palm into the man’s nose using the cigarette as a guide. McNutt yanked the man back, holding him upright, as Cobb punched the Black Robe in the gut like a jackhammer.

  Dobrev listened carefully. The man had barely made a sound; the attackers had made none at all. Since McNutt was now holding the man slightly off the ground, all there was to hear was the fluttering cloth of his robe. The dead man made more noise being lowered to the ground than the living man had made when they killed him.

  Cobb and McNutt stripped the dead guard of his jacket, pants, and tunic in seconds — the garroting shadow slipping the outfit on in the same amount of time.

  Leaving his rifle and automatic with Cobb, McNutt took the Ruger Mark III and held it low to his side so it blended in with his new pants. He calmly and silently walked out of the woods in the direction that the patrolling Black Robe had come, and sauntered purposefully toward the Black Robe who was resting on the ground.

  Without attempting conversation, he simply sat next to the napping guard. The moment that the guard’s body blocked the other guards’ view, McNutt snaked the Ruger over so the suppressor’s end was a millimeter away from the man’s upper ear. McNutt coughed and pulled the trigger at the same time.

  The dead guard turned his head, seemingly by himself — the small, 22 caliber round remaining within his skull. McNutt had fired at an angle that sent the spray of blood and tissue up and away from the man’s tunic. They needed three more robes, and it wouldn’t do to have bloodstains on their outfits, even if black robes covered it well.

  ‘Be healthy,’ said the guard nearest McNutt.

  Dobrev knew it was the customary Russian reaction to a sneeze: the equivalent to ‘gesundheit’. McNutt didn’t know that, but he didn’t need to. He just quietly mimicked the cough of the firearm as he got up and approached the well-wisher.

  The third guard smiled and muttered something in Russian, apparently suggesting McNutt might be better off with a cigarette than with fresh air. McNutt passed, head down, and leaned on the side of the engine beside him with one arm, chuckling. A little laugh was a good response to just about anything that was said in a lighthearted voice. As soon as the third guard called over to the ‘resting’ guard to get up, McNutt placed the Ruger beside the man’s temple. His head snapped hard to the opposite side and then back — a muscle reflex — as McNutt jumped aside to avoid the blood.

  The moment the third guard went down, the fourth guard’s head opened like a blossoming flower on the other side of the engine, courtesy of the Val that was now in Cobb’s hand. As soon as they had three unstained outfits, it didn’t matter how bloody the fourth one was — and it was soaked, as the nine-millimeter subsonic bullet drilled right through the man’s brain and emerged from the other side, taking half his skull with it.

  The final sound was the gentle clatter of a rifle hitting the ground as the fourth guard fell. Only the moon, stars, trees, and grass saw two more human shapes emerge from the wood and start dressing in the clothes taken from the fallen guards.

  Holding a Val assault rifle in one hand and wearing his new disguise, McNutt moved silently alongside the length of the train and pulled himself up into the cab of the engine. He didn’t expect it to be empty, and it wasn’t. There was another Black Robe, peacefully sleeping against the wall. He put the end of the Ruger a hair from the bottom of the sleeping man’s skull and pulled the trigger.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ he mouthed silently.

  McNutt moved the body to the back of the cab, out of their way, as Cobb helped Dobrev inside. If Dobrev was bothered by the presence of the dead man, he did not show it.

  Heading for the back of the sleeping compartment car, McNutt heard talking. With the train engine off there were no compartment lights available, and the remaining guards were obviously conserving whatever battery power they had.

  In fact, based on the cursing he heard and the gestures he saw when he peeked through the window between the cars, it looked as though their hacker even had to cut his work short when his PC battery ran low. Without their own satellite, there was no cell phone communication.
No one had thought to build towers this deep in the middle of nowhere. Only their leader had a direct connection to his headquarters: a radio using non-digital technology.

  Cobb stopped behind McNutt. They slowed as they neared the rear of the train, wary of any sentry. There was one, sitting on the lip of the door, his legs dangling above the track. He was casually holding an AK-47, looking out on the southern tree line. He seemed noncommittal, as if he wasn’t guarding anything or watching for anyone — just resting while thinking of home.

  From the safety of the empty adjoining car, McNutt conveyed his thoughts on the situation. ‘Everyone’s just sitting around. Like they’re waiting for Rasputin.’

  ‘They probably are,’ Jasmine whispered in their ears.

  With that, McNutt took three silent steps across the junction that linked the two cars, aimed his rifle at the base of the Black Robe’s head, and squeezed the trigger. Pffft. The body slumped forward, but McNutt caught it before it fell from the train. He quietly laid the torso on the floor and then relieved the body of the AK. He didn’t bother looking to see if anyone else was there before racing back the way he had come.

  ‘Go,’ McNutt said quietly as he leaped onto the ladder on the side of the freight car.

  Cobb heard him in the doorway between the engine and the command center. He turned and saw Dobrev waiting tensely in the doorway of the cab, a dead body on the floor behind him.

  Cobb gave Dobrev the thumbs-up. Dobrev turned, stepped over the corpse, gripped the end of the ignition key, and twisted it.

  Ludmilla roared to life.

  60

  The entire, shuddering train seemed to come alive as the turnover of the engine began to power the generator, causing all the lights to flicker.

  From his position on top of the train, McNutt saw silhouettes stirring in the freight car, and Cobb could hear activity in the command center from his station in the cab.

  ‘We’ve got about one minute to button things up,’ Cobb said, knowing that Dobrev would need time for the engine to warm up.

  Black Robes poured from the freight car across the flatbed. McNutt let the first man almost reach the far door of the command center before he pumped a round into the back of his head.

  The five other Black Robes barely had time to assess the situation when McNutt began picking them off one by one, going from front to back, shifting his Val by just centimeters, his steel grip unfazed by the vibration of the train.

  The last of the six to emerge was the only Black Robe who had time to spin around to see McNutt standing on the roof of the freight car. It was the last thing he ever saw. McNutt took him down with a subsonic round between the eyes, then quickly surveyed the area. From this vantage point, he could not only cover the armory and the flatbed car but also see the terrain around the train. He was ready to mow down any that tried to get outside.

  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 st
arted 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.