The Hunters

47

McNutt charged into the engine cab, swinging his bag in ahead of him. Dobrev was crouched, his eyes just over the ledge of the controls, while Jasmine had her back against the lavatory door, her revolver up by her head. She was breathing heavily through her nose, her chest was heaving. But she was alert, steady.

McNutt threw the duffel down and thrust the Benelli shotgun into Jasmine’s other hand. ‘Take this, would you?’

She looked incredulously at him. ‘I’ve never fired one of—’

‘Good time to start,’ McNutt said.

‘Seventy-five yards,’ Garcia said in their ears.

Jasmine examined the weapon.

‘Use it as a club if you have to,’ McNutt said. ‘Though if it was up to me, they wouldn’t get that close.’

‘It isn’t, so shut up,’ Sarah said in his ear.

McNutt was now too busy to argue. He was on one knee, intent on getting the duffel open.

Dobrev said something.

‘What does he need?’ Cobb asked over the earpiece.

Jasmine answered. ‘He just wants us to know he can’t put on more speed and plow through them. He doesn’t want to go off these old tracks.’

‘Thank him for the alert,’ Cobb said. ‘But that’s not my plan.’

‘Yeah, we’d run out of track, and then they’d be on us, really pissed,’ Sarah said.

Jasmine translated for Dobrev as she flattened herself back against the lavatory door. They all heard more snapping and cracking sounds from the riders’ rifles.

‘Fifty yards,’ they heard Garcia say.

‘Jack said “no killing”, Jack gets “no killing”,’ McNutt said. He straightened, holding the weapon up proudly and looking at Jasmine with a big grin. ‘But I still get to shoot.’

To her eyes, the weapon looked like the back of a big, gray flare pistol, with a muzzle or barrel or whatever you called it that seemed like a cross between the end of a fireman’s water hose and a big flashlight. As she watched, McNutt added a shoulder stock for better control, then a sniper’s scope for better aiming. She looked down. In the duffel bag were five more devices.

‘Twenty-five yards,’ Garcia croaked.

‘Net gun,’ McNutt proudly announced while pushing open the cab’s small side windows.

‘What?’ Jasmine said. ‘It fires—’

‘Nets. Yes. I figured we might need something, or someone, caught and—’

‘Josh!’ Jasmine screeched, pointing behind him.

McNutt whirled to see a rider coming up the engineer’s side, pointing his rifle at Dobrev.

McNutt only got a glimpse of the ruddy, mustachioed rider in his baggy, beige pants, brown boots, belt, and vest before there was a bang and a whoosh — and what looked like a baseball shot from the end of McNutt’s big-mouthed weapon. Once it was outside the window, the casing of the projectile opened and fell off to the sides, then a big, flying spider’s web spread out and slammed into the rider from his head to his waist.

Jasmine watched, mesmerized, as the rider was thrown from his horse as if he’d been swatted off by the hand of God. She instinctively leaned forward and checked that the man landed okay before Dobrev pushed her back. She saw, in fact, that the man hit the ground as if he were used to falling off a horse. The net didn’t let him get right up, but the way he was kicking and clawing, it didn’t cause any permanent damage either.

McNutt was already screwing in another net ball when Cobb came barging in with a tablecloth tied to a curtain rod. Pulling Jasmine out of the way — but protecting her with his own body — he shoved the makeshift white flag out the window and began waving furiously.

‘What the fuck, chief?’ McNutt exclaimed, almost with resentment.

‘Shut up!’ Cobb snapped. ‘They’re peasant villagers!’

‘So? They can still kill us.’

‘Dammit, will you think with your brain instead of your trigger finger?’ Cobb yelled. He continued to wave the flag, making sure it was seen as far as the most distant rider. ‘Why would they attack us? You think they’ve never seen a train before?’

Dobrev said something. He sounded reflective.

‘He says we’re trespassing,’ Jasmine said. ‘But the word he used… it’s not exactly trespassing…’

‘He means we’re not welcome here, not just uninvited.’

‘Yes,’ Jasmine said, impressed. ‘That’s exactly what he means.’

Cobb said, ‘That’s because they’re protecting something — something that makes them risk their lives to attack a train while on horseback!’

‘The treasure,’ Sarah gasped in their ears.

McNutt and Jasmine looked at Cobb with newfound appreciation.

‘They might know about the treasure,’ Sarah said accusingly, ‘and you wanted to gun them down, McNutt.’

‘Sorry if I didn’t want any of my teammates to take a musket ball in the brain!’

‘They didn’t want to kill,’ Cobb said. ‘They just wanted to let us know they can.’

‘How considerate,’ McNutt said.

‘Jack, do you know the story of the Golden Fleece?’ Jasmine said.

‘Oh goody,’ Sarah said. ‘A story.’

‘A relevant one,’ the historian said. ‘Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Thessaly to Colchis to steal the Fleece. King Aeetes allowed them to make landfall — then attacked them. Though Jason got what he came for, it came at loss of life on both sides.’

‘I won’t cut them down,’ Cobb said.

‘Humanitarian gesture — or because they know where the treasure is?’ Sarah asked.

Cobb didn’t reply. Which was a reply. The answer was both. Plus, it occurred to him that this generation might be happy to be rid of their stewardship after a century. For the right price, they might even help them load up the train.

McNutt clearly didn’t agree, but he said nothing as he watched and waited for his next target to ride by.

Dobrev said suddenly.

‘He wants us to be quiet and listen,’ Jasmine said.

Cobb did, still waving. The engineer’s trained ears had listened through the noise of the train and heard what they had all missed.

‘No more shooting,’ Jasmine said, smiling.

‘He’s right,’ Sarah said.

The horsemen were whooping, whistling, and waving their rifles, but they weren’t aiming and shooting any more. They rode around, beside, in front of, and behind the train with remarkable displays of horsemanship, but it was now obvious they weren’t intending to attack.

‘I’m thinking they just don’t want to get netted,’ McNutt said.

Cobb lowered his arms and tightened his grip on the flagstaff out of frustration. He turned on the sharpshooter. ‘If you’d been paying attention, you would have noticed they didn’t go for the tracks. All it would have taken was a mallet or axe head to bend a single rail enough to force us to stop. They didn’t have to put themselves at risk. But they didn’t do that.’

‘Not if it was some macho Cossack thing,’ McNutt grumbled.

‘Why don’t you just admit you were wrong?’ they heard Sarah say.

McNutt looked away, annoyed that they weren’t even allowing that he could be right — which he still believed he was, having put on reckless, bravado-induced displays like that himself. But he brightened when he saw the man he had net-gunned reappear outside of the side window. The man was back on his horse with a gap-toothed smile that went from ear to ear, holding his rifle up proudly, angled slightly outward.

‘Wow,’ McNutt breathed.

‘What?’ Jasmine asked.

‘He just saluted me with a Mosin-Nagant M91-30,’ McNutt marveled, seeing three R’s surrounded by crossed stalks stamped on the rifle’s breech. ‘Those were specially modified for Romania and reserved in case of invasion.’

Suddenly, the team was distracted by a voice from outside the window where the white flag flew. It was a commanding, male voice, rough from years of sharp mountain air and tobacco.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded in a Slavonic language.

Everyone in the cab looked to Jasmine.

‘He’s the leader, asking who we are,’ she informed them.

‘In Romanian?’ Cobb wanted to know.

‘No, Russian,’ Jasmine told him.

‘Maybe he recognizes the markings on the train,’ Sarah suggested.

‘Only one way to find out,’ Cobb said. ‘Tell him we are explorers who come in peace.’

‘Tell him we have every intention of upholding the Prime Directive,’ McNutt added.

Jasmine looked at him as she maneuvered past Cobb, back to the window.

‘Star Trek,’ McNutt said. ‘Don’t interfere with indigenous life forms.’

‘Oh great,’ Sarah sighed. ‘Our gunman’s off in fantasyland again. I wish we could beam his ass back to Florida.’