The Hunters h-1

by Chris Kuzneski

  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 ahead 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.

  Co
bb 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.’

  ‘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 knocke
d 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 …’