The Hunters

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 started 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.

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.