The Hunters

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.