by Chris Goff
Jordan peered through the windows. The station was empty and locked for the night.
Davis rattled the door again. “What now? Do we call in the train crew?”
“And have them tell us the same thing they told Adamski’s team? I’d rather see for myself.”
“You’re not going to break in, are you?” When she pulled out the lock pick she kept tucked in her holster, he stepped back from the door. “Of course you are. Do we know what the punishment is for breaking and entering in Poland?”
She worked the pick in the door until she felt the latch give. “What are you talking about, Davis?” she said, turning the handle. “The door was unlocked.”
It didn’t take them long to find what they were looking for. The security camera feed was on the second shelf of the bookcase. Jordan rewound the tape and played it forward. The image was blurred, like the tape was old and had been recorded over a number of times, and the angle made it next to impossible to get a clear enough look at the train to tell anything about the length of the cars. Still something was off.
Jordan ran the tape again. “How many cars were on the train that left the station in Rzeszow?”
“Where would that be listed?”
“It’s on the top of the operations paperwork.”
Davis rifled through the papers stacked on the trainmaster’s desk and pulled out a sheet. “It says here the engine was hauling twenty-four cars.”
“Which is the number of cars I count on this tape.” Jordan stuck her hand in her back pants pocket and pulled out the sheet the yardmaster in Rzeszow had copied for her. Flattening it on the desk, she found the notation she was looking for and stabbed at it with her finger. “Right here it indicates the train left Rzeszow with twenty-five cars. The long car never made it this far.”
* * *
Back aboard the helicopter, the radio crackled. Adamski picked up the mic. A deep voice came over the static. “We checked the camera feeds in Gdánsk. The long car wasn’t part of the train when it pulled in.”
More confirmation that it hadn’t passed through Elblag. Jordan signaled for Davis to hand her the tablet. “Soldier, do you know what time the sun sets?”
“Around nine fifteen PM,” the voice came back.
Jordan pulled up the last satellite images of the area. “These would be the last pictures taken. They would have been shot around eight ten PM.”
She scanned the thumbnails with Davis looking over her shoulder.
There was the train!
Tapping the tablet screen, she enlarged the picture. The shadows had been long, but the train slithered along the track, a white snake in a sea of green trees. Near the middle, the long car was clearly visible.
“I found it,” Jordan said. “Where was this picture taken?”
Davis tapped the coordinates from the picture into the GPS app on his phone. “Just coming into Ostroda.”
“That’s south of here,” the captain said.
She skimmed through the rest of the images just to be sure. “The satellite moved out of range before the train left Ostroda. We have no way of knowing if the car was cut from service, switched to another track, or headed on toward Elblag.”
The captain’s face tightened.
“What?” she asked.
“There are some heavily wooded areas near there. If they jumped the train car near Ostroda and went into the trees, we may not be able to find them.”
“Except they couldn’t stay there,” Jordan countered. “Even if this is where they jumped off, it’s too far south. It’s at the edges of the gun’s firing limit. In order to hit their target, the Russians would have to move north.”
“Unless they headed northeast for the border,” Davis said. Jordan looked over at him, and he shrugged. “I’m just saying you have to consider the possibility they’re headed for Kaliningrad.”
Jordan shook her head. “I don’t buy it. There are easier ways to transport a weapon to the Russian enclave. But that’s not the point. The point is, we know they left the train somewhere between Ostroda and Elblag.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover,” the captain said.
“The train car has to be on the tracks somewhere. Let’s find it first and go from there.”
While the captain readied for takeoff, he pointed to a cargo box near Davis. “Take out two Kevlar vests and put them on.”
Davis dug into the box, producing one vest that fit him and one that came close to fitting Jordan. She strapped it as tightly as she could, overlapping the sides under her arms.
“That’s still a lot of spurs and sidelines to cover,” he said through the mic. “This is farming country. Many of the towns have silos with train car access.” He pointed to a duffle lying near Davis’s feet. “There are some night vision goggles in there. The two of you should put them on.”
He flew south along the tracks, skimming close to the trees, while she and Davis searched the ground. Even with the night vision goggles, it was difficult to see.
“What about thermal imaging?”
He pointed to a screen mounted near the control panel. “There have been some hot spots, but they could be houses just as easily as anything else. I haven’t seen any unusual activity.”
From Ostroda, they flew west to east over heavily wooded areas that provided ample cover. Jordan stowed her night vision goggles and watched the thermal imaging screen.
They searched for over an hour and came up with nothing.
“I need to refuel again soon,” Adamski said, turning back after their last pass. “Once dawn breaks, we can take a small railcar and drive along the tracks. If they’re under cover of the trees, that’s the best way to find a sidelined train car. We’ll have better luck in the daylight.”
Jordan hated the idea of turning back, but she agreed with Adamski. They were getting nowhere like this.
“Have your men talked to the train’s driver?” she asked. “He should be able to tell us where a car was removed from the train.”
“Unless it happened at a stop where cars were to be added or removed. In that case, he might not have realized anything was out of the ordinary.” Adamski radioed his team. The news that came back wasn’t good. They had detained the driver in Gdánsk, but he’d come on in Elblag.
Jordan thought it a little too coincidental. “Is that a normal place to exchange drivers?”
She could hear the soldier asking the questions, the driver’s muffled response, and then the soldier’s voice came on again. “He says no, but sometimes it happens. In this case, it was prearranged.”
“Why didn’t the crew in Elblag say anything about it?” Jordan said.
“The change had to be done. The original driver had outlawed, meaning he’d been driving too long without any sleep. When we go back to pick up the handcar, we will question them again.”
“If they’re even around.” Jordan figured they were long gone by now.
Chapter 38
The refrigeration was turned off when the train turned north, and in the past eight hours, the rotting debris in the car had heated. The smell of death choked the air, triggering Kozachenko’s gag reflex. He dry heaved. They were out of food, out of vodka, and the car had stopped hours ago.
Kozachenko had insisted Yolkin remain quiet in case of listeners outside, but the time had come to break his own rule. He turned on his phone, dialed, and hoped Anatoliy picked up. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, unless I’m dead, and this is what hell smells like,” Barkov answered. “How do we get out of here?”
“Stas said it was arranged. That someone would come.”
“They better come quickly. We’ve searched the barrier wall, and there’s no way out, Vasyl.”
“In another hour, I’ll place a call to the pakhan.”
* * *
As his self-imposed deadline approached, finally there was a noise outside. Two men talking in Russian.
“Hey!” Kozachenko yelled. “Get us out of here.”
&
nbsp; It seemed an eternity before the walls came down. Kozachenko didn’t wait for the wall to be entirely removed, but climbed out over the debris. The piles of detritus smelled like burning trash and rotting flesh, and Kozachenko found himself gagging again.
Even distancing himself from the train car didn’t help. The smell had permeated his clothes and his senses. He would be smelling death for days.
“What took you so long?” he demanded of the men. “It’s well after midnight.”
“We had to wait. Polish Special Forces came to the station asking questions. They looked at everything. They checked the camera feeds and the work orders. The paperwork showed the long car headed to Gdánsk. The soldiers finally left, but we must assume they’ll be back. We need to hurry.”
While the men worked to free the vehicles, Kozachenko signaled Barkov to follow him over to one of the trainmen’s trucks. Opening a map on the hood, he pointed to Elblag. “We are here, correct?”
Barkov shook his head and pointed to the town of Piławki. “They know we are getting close.”
A helicopter flew low over the trees above them, close enough to set the leaves overhead quaking.
Kozachenko closed his eyes and drew a breath. “I’m thinking that once the vehicles are free, we get on the road and beat a path toward the border. When the sun rises, we take cover until the time comes to fire the weapon. Then in the chaos that ensues after the weapon is fired, we’ll make our run for the border.”
“They will have eyes on the main roads, Vasyl. We’ll have to go a back way. We don’t have much time.”
“They’ll expect us to go east, so we’ll go north,” Kozachenko said.
“Agreed.”
“Good. We will take this road toward Pagórki and Elblag Upland Landscape Park.” He pointed to a small winding road that went north, one without too many towns to navigate. “By the time the sun rises, we will have over one hundred square kilometers of forest in which to hide.”
Barkov nodded his approval. “It’s a good plan, Vasyl. It leaves only one more problem.”
Kozachenko bristled. “And what would that be, Anatoliy?”
“The compulsator isn’t charged enough to fire the weapon.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The compulsator charges when we drive the trucks. We drained the power when we fired the weapon. Now because we haven’t been driving enough, there is not enough charge.”
“I don’t see the problem. As soon as they free the trucks from the debris, we can charge the battery.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Kozachenko rubbed his temples and wished for a vodka. “Explain to me again how this works.”
Barkov leaned against the truck. “The gun works off an electromagnetic pulse driven by the compensated pulse alternator. It’s small and must be recharged either by running the diesel engine or by hooking it up to another electrical source.”
“How long does it take to recharge?”
Barkov took his time doing the math. “Using the truck engine, it would take five hours, possibly more.”
Kozachenko slammed his hands down on the truck’s fender. They couldn’t afford to run the truck engine that long for fear of running out of fuel. “What if we hook the machine up to more than one engine?”
“We don’t have enough horsepower available to cut the time by much. Bundling the truck and the GAZ, it would still take several hours to charge.”
Kozachenko threw back his head and stared up at the branches of the tree above him. The leaves rustled in a light breeze, allowing glimpses of clear sky and stars. The night was clear, and the stars winked overhead as if taunting him, reminding him that with the rising of the sun came the chance of detection. “Can we use another type of power?”
“To charge it instantly would take something big. If we hook up to a large enough electrical source, we can fire the gun all day. What we need is a big generator.”
He’d been the one to nix hauling the extra equipment. The plan called for the weapon to only be fired once, so he had erred on the side of mobility. None of them knew they would be forced to fire the gun multiple times.
“What do you mean by large power source, Anatoliy?”
“The compulsator needs twenty to thirty megawatts to create a pulse strong enough to launch the projectile. Only a small substation or large transformer could instantly provide that kind of power.”
Kozachenko gestured to the overhead power lines. “What about those?”
“Maybe, if we had an insulated bucket and hot sticks. We don’t. And I don’t feel like getting fried today.”
Kozachenko didn’t appreciate Barkov’s flippancy. “There are worse ways to die, Anatoliy.”
Barkov nodded. “A substation would be better, Vasyl.”
“Why is that?”
“We can throw breakers and use a t-tap. Even a small base would allow us to bundle enough power to instantly charge the compulsator.”
“Then we have a plan.”
Chapter 39
While Adamski went to bring his team up to speed, Jordan and Davis took a cab to the Gdánsk Grand Hotel. At this hour of the morning, the only people around were a desk clerk and a janitor. The clerk stopped them on the way in.
“Boardroom II?” Jordan said.
The clerk nodded and pointed them past. “Fourth floor.”
Standing in front of the elevators, she grabbed Davis’s hand. “You might want to wait for me down here. Lory won’t be happy to see you.”
“I have a thick skin.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not benching me now—”
She wasn’t sure if he was asking a question or making a statement. “From here on out, it’s not going to be up to me.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Jordan let go of his hand before stepping off the elevator. Two agents stood in the hall. One opened the door of the boardroom.
“Nice place,” she said, stepping into the room. A bank of windows faced the sea, while the other three walls were painted a tasteful beige. At the far end of the room was a large flat screen mounted over a credenza. Lory and Zhen sat at a burnished wood table in overstuffed leather chairs. They both looked up. Then Davis entered behind her, and Lory came out of his seat.
“What the hell is he doing here? Get him out, now! The last thing we need is for this to leak to the press.”
The two agents in the hall came through the door. One of them grabbed Davis by the arm.
“Wait!” Jordan said. She’d known this was coming, but she wasn’t going to alter her alliances now. “He’s with me.”
Lory stared at her like she’d lost her mind. The two agents stepped back.
“You can trust him,” she said, as if that decided the matter.
“Have you forgotten he leaked information about Zhen?”
She hadn’t, and maybe she didn’t trust him completely. She hadn’t confided any of the secrets surrounding her father, world-changing secrets that jeopardized her job. “What’s the old adage, keep your friends close, your enemies closer?”
Lory remained on his feet. “I’m still in the with friends like that, who needs enemies camp.”
Jordan pled her case. “Without Davis and his resources, we wouldn’t be as close as we are to catching the Russians, not to mention one of the prototypes would be sitting at Yulin Naval Base in Hainan, China. He understands he’s been privy to classified information he can never reveal.” She glanced up at the man standing beside her. “Right?”
“I just want a story I can tell at the end.”
“He’s earned a second chance, sir.”
“Plus, I can be useful,” Davis said. “I have great sources I’m not afraid to use.”
“He did help us obtain those satellite images.”
Lory flopped back down in his chair, and Jordan knew they had won the battle. Now they just needed to win the war.
Chapter 40
It took them an hour to get on the road. Kozachen
ko drove while Barkov navigated. Much to his relief, Yolkin joined the others in the GAZ. In addition, they’d picked up four new men, two who were part of the train crew and two from Kaliningrad.
“We should charge the compulsator soon,” Barkov said.
The moon had set, leaving the night dark. Only the hum of the tires marred the stillness. They had encountered no traffic, but potholes scarred the surface of the road, making the driving slow.
Barkov lowered his phone with the GPS. “There’s a road coming up on the right. You need to turn there. There is a substation six hundred meters up on the left. We should let the men go in first and make sure it’s secure.”
Kozachenko geared down and braked, alarmed by the loud growl of the engine. Barkov stuck his hand out the window and signaled the tailing vehicle to pass. The GAZ shot past, then braked hard and turned sharply in front of them.
“Yebat’!” Kozachenko cursed, stepping on the floor pedals, the screech of tires rolling across the farm fields.
“They’re hot shots,” Barkov said, coming up off the seat, palms flat against the dashboard. “Not unlike you and I in our day, huh? In a few minutes, you will appreciate their youth.”
Kozachenko glanced sideways at the major and wondered how much this man actually knew about him. Kozachenko had at least ten years on him, and he’d worked hard to keep knowledge of his past private. When they were done here, he planned to ask. For now, he let the comment pass, pulled the truck to the side of the road, and doused the headlights.
“What’s the next move?” he asked.
Barkov keyed the radio. “Yolkin, have the men check for security and report back.”
As they waited, a car appeared in the distance. Kozachenko restarted the truck, but left the headlights off. Slipping the rig into gear, he pulled forward and turned off onto the gravel road taken by the men.
Startled, Barkov twisted toward him. “We haven’t gotten the all clear.”
“It’s more important that we not be noticed sitting by the side of the road.”
Parking the truck in the deep shadows, Kozachenko waited for the car to speed past. Weak headlights hugged the road, and metallic rock blared from open windows. As the car’s taillights disappeared into the distance, the truck radio crackled. It was Yolkin.
