The Hunters

by Chris Kuzneski

  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.’

  48

  Cobb ignored his team’s bickering and focused on the handsome older man in a dark, zip-up jacket, pants, boots, and wool cap.

  He rode his horse as if he were born on it.

  The man trotted alongside the still slowly moving train in perfect rhythm. Yet as much as he looked the part of an old-guard horseman, Cobb sensed there was something off about him - something modern. The straight teeth he flashed? The hands that didn’t look like they spent much time moving rocks or swinging an axe? His
posture in the saddle seemed formal: more trained and drilled than native-born.

  Jasmine told the rider what Cobb had asked her to say. The old man listened to the young woman’s fluent Russian words then spoke again.

  ‘What do you want?’ the man asked in Russian.

  Jasmine translated it for the group.

  Sarah spoke in their ears. ‘What are you going to tell him, Jack? No truth, half-truth, or whole truth?’

  Cobb had been thinking about it. For the first time in awhile he was unsure how to attain the best result.

  ‘Jack?’ Jasmine urged quietly.

  The Russian looked at Cobb expectantly.

  ‘I’m talking because I want him to hear words,’ Cobb said. ‘Otherwise he’ll think I’m standing here formulating a lie.’

  ‘Are you?’ Jasmine asked.

  ‘Considering it,’ Cobb admitted.

  Suddenly, a hand fell on Cobb’s shoulder. Dobrev was beside him, the train slowing to a crawl. He said something that Jasmine translated.

  ‘Andrei wants to tell the man something,’ she said.

  Dobrev didn’t wait for Cobb’s approval. Technically, that was his prerogative since rules of the rail put him in charge of the train. Cobb had the manpower to disagree but not the right. So Cobb deferred. Dobrev stuck his head out the window and immediately started talking to the leader of the horsemen. His tone was affable, familiar, even jocular, but still somehow sincere.

  Cobb and McNutt both looked at Jasmine.

  ‘Andrei is telling the man about his life and travels,’ she said. ‘About how he and his family have dreamed of these hills since he was a boy. He says he finally decided to bring his old self and his old train here. The horseman laughed at that, wants to know whether we are vacationers. Dobrev says not exactly and that your description of “explorers” is more accurate. He says that the man’s accent tells him that he, too, is a proud Russian, and that our visit carries a purpose that is important to all loyal Russians as well as our hosts, the Romanians.’

  ‘Does he say what the purpose is?’ Cobb wanted to know.

  That was really the crux of it.

  ‘Andrei just - what is the football word? Punted?’

  ‘That’s the word,’ McNutt said.

  ‘What did Dobrev tell them?’ Cobb asked.

  ‘That you would explain the purpose, man-to-man, over a glass.’

  ‘In other words, he bought you time, boss,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Time and an equal standing,’ Jasmine said. ‘Chief to chief. That’s a big concession to someone who was “not welcome” just a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ said McNutt quietly. ‘This guy’s good.’

  Jasmine looked straight at Cobb. ‘Andrei asked the man to come onboard. He declined. He wants us, all of us, to come out. The horseman is telling him to stop the train and we can share a glass of tuica in their village.’ Before anyone could ask, Jasmine explained. ‘It’s a Romanian peasant drink; a brandy made from apples or plums.’

  ‘I am so in favor of that,’ McNutt blurted.

  As the gunman was speaking, Dobrev moved back and started to brake the locomotive without awaiting instructions. Meanwhile, the lead horseman started speaking again.

  ‘He wants to talk to you,’ Jasmine told Cobb.

  Cobb shrugged a silent ‘okay’ and stuck his head back out the train window. While the man spoke, Cobb took a moment to savor the beautiful countryside and the remarkable sight of the surrounding horsemen. It was as if they had now fully been transported to the dawn of the twentieth century.

  ‘He says, “You are their leader, yes?”’ Jasmine translated.

  ‘Da,’ Cobb replied.

  ‘Americanski?‘ the man asked.

  ‘Da.’

  ‘Is that really how they refer to us?’ McNutt asked.

  Jasmine nodded.

  ‘Wow. I thought that was a joke,’ he said.

  The horseman paused. He was studying Cobb’s face with the wisdom of many years more than Cobb had under his own belt.

  The man spoke again. ‘He says, “This is going to be a very interesting talk, is it not?”’ Jasmine translated.

  Cobb smiled philosophically, and nodded. ‘Da.’

  The Russian leader of the Romanian villagers shrugged in return, spoke once more, and started to turn his horse back to where they came.

  ‘“A bad peace is better than a good quarrel”,’ Jasmine translated. ‘Old Russian proverb.’

  ‘They’re all full of them, aren’t they?’ McNutt asked.

  ‘This man more than others,’ said Jean-Marc Papineau, very unexpectedly, in the ears of the team. ‘He is Colonel Viktor Borovsky of the Russian police. He questioned me in—’

  Cobb didn’t hear the rest of Papineau’s statement. Not because the feed was cut, but because a shot rang out from the nearby trees. A split-second later, the horse ridden by Colonel Borovsky lost its head in an eruption of bloody shreds as bone, brain, and hair filled the air.

  49

  To reach the isolated village, Colonel Borovsky and Anna Rusinko had boarded a helicopter that he had commandeered from the Gosudarstvennaya Avtomobilnaya Inspektsiya - better known as the GAI, or the Moscow highway patrol. The chopper had ferried them unobtrusively to Kursk where, during a refueling stop, Borovsky called an associate in the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs to clear their passage to Vascauti. After surrendering their sidearms to local authorities, Borovsky had told the deputy minister that they were just going to meet some old friends - friends he had met long ago on an archeological dig.

  From there, it was smooth sailing.

  At least until the train arrived.

  Anna had tried to discourage Borovsky from his plan to stop the train, on horseback, with old rifles. But ever since they had left Russia, he had become increasingly less communicative. Anna had a stronger and stronger sense that he had a private mission apart from finding Andrei Dobrev and solving a murder. The colonel belonged to some century other than his own. He certainly didn’t belong in this era with its layers of bureaucrats and desk-police and regulations.

  In that regard, he was more cowboy than cop.

  An old-school hero in a new world.

  Standing on a rise while glancing through seventy-year-old binoculars - with superb optics, she had to confess - Anna had seen Borovsky ride toward the train, fire at the ground, then trot alongside the engine. The entire time he was smiling, like he was having a total blast.

  From her vantage point, it had looked like a nest of insects swarming around a toy train. She had looked helplessly at the villagers around her. They were not fearful of the sharp reports of weapons or the danger faced by loved ones. They were completely silent while they watched, intently, as events unfolded.

  A few had even seemed proud.

  But that only made sense. It wasn’t every day that the local peace officers received a call from a colleague in Moscow - one who wanted them to join him and do what they were trained to do. And on a matter of international importance. Most of these people had never been more than twenty-five miles from their village.

  To do something that affected the world was an honor.

  But after ten minutes, the action was over.

  That part of it, anyway.

  She was about to get in a waiting hay cart - a hay cart! - for a ride back to the village when a crack had rolled ominously from somewhere behind her. In a panic, she quickly raised the binoculars and studied the scene before her.

  Only one man had appeared to be hit.

  Colonel Viktor Borovsky.

  * * *

  Cobb slammed onto the floor of the train cab, temporarily dazed by the blood and horse brains that had splattered the side of his face.

  Jasmine ducked as she yanked up the shotgun like she was about to blow the roof off the train, riding the fear as she’d been taught. Her survival depended upon treating her emotion like an unwelcome friend, not the enemy itself.

  ‘Can I kill som
eone now?’ McNutt spat sarcastically as he spun in the direction of the shot. He saw the attackers a second after Garcia did.

  ‘ATVs, AK-47s - Black Robes!’ they all heard in their ears.

  A dust cloud filled the horizon. Tearing up from the southern woods with the ear-slicing roar of a hundred dragons were dozens of dark, four-wheel, all-terrain vehicles, ridden by men cloaked in black robes and carrying AK assault rifles. They tore up the grass and shredded the flowers as their bulky, industrialized, heavy-tired machines buzz-sawed furiously up the slope, while the horsemen raced for the far side of the train where their leader still was.

  Cobb’s head came up as McNutt dragged Jasmine and Dobrev down.

  ‘Full metal jackets!’ the sniper hissed as he grabbed the Benelli shotgun from Jasmine, twisted toward the southern side of the cab, then cursed.

  ‘What?’ Cobb said.

  ‘Too far, damn it!’ McNutt said. ‘Out of range!’

  Then McNutt was gone, out the back of the cab, so fast that he practically left a puff of cartoon smoke.

  Jasmine stared after him then spun her head back toward Cobb, who was still on the floor, his head raised. Half his face looked like it was slapped with red warpaint. He was trying to look out the window without losing the top of his head.

  ‘Jasmine, you stay back,’ Cobb said. ‘I can’t afford to lose my translator.’

  The remark stung a little. His concern wasn’t for her, it was for what he had often referred to as the ‘mission assets’. Whenever she thought she might be starting to like him or one of the others, that reality always intruded.

  As Jasmine stepped back, Sarah appeared in the cab door. She was fully dressed in her Type IV Modular Tactical Vest and Ops Core Ballistic helmet - the best bullet-resistant gear money could buy. The former looked like a tailor-made down vest, and the latter looked like a particularly aggressive bike-riding helmet. Even so, they were made to withstand everything up to, and including, thirty-zero-six armor-piercing bullets.

  Sarah’s arms were full of additional gear for the rest of the team. She tossed vests and helmets to Cobb and Jasmine, along with a spare for Dobrev, then she swung a SIG 553 Commando assault rifle around from where it was strapped on her back. The seven-pound, twenty-eight-inch, five-point-six-millimeter, thirty-round weapon was also considered one of the best in the world.