The Hunters h-1

by Chris Kuzneski

‘It is … it is to find him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sidorov breathed. ‘They slit his stomach open. He did not die. They poisoned him. He did not die. They shot him three times. He did not die. They beat him. He did not die. They drowned him. He did not die. They burned him. He … did … not … die. Our master still lives!’

  Sidorov turned from his associate. ‘I have spent my life following his example. I have sinned. I have repented. I have gained influence.’ He started to move around the room, as if gaining power from the trappings of royalty. ‘I have followed every lead, I have explored every clue. And finally — finally — I discovered a way to locate him.’

  He was back by Dvorkin, just behind his chair. He put his left hand on Dvorkin’s right shoulder and sneered. ‘All you had to do was wait, and watch, and let the Americans find him for us, but you were too weak to do your part!’

  Fueled by rage and disgust, Sidorov plunged a silver fruit knife into the left side of Dvorkin’s stomach, then dragged it across to the right. The part of Dvorkin’s brain that wasn’t in paralyzed shock, that wasn’t shrieking in high, inaudible agony, was impressed at the strength it took to pierce flesh, cut across organs, and slit muscle with a fruit knife, even one from Imperial Russia.

  Dvorkin opened his mouth to scream, but only a small ‘uh’ emerged. His hands came up, but they stopped when his mind couldn’t decide whether to claw at the knife, the hand that held it, or Sidorov’s face. Ultimately, his reflexes decided for him, and he reached down to try to keep his intestines from spilling onto his knees.

  Sidorov cut as far as he wanted, then shoved Dvorkin to the floor. The man fell mostly on his side, his hands clutching at the jagged, blood-wet wound. He looked up at his leader, his eyes bulging and his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish.

  Sidorov stood there, the bloodied fruit knife now in his left hand. ‘Our master is waiting for my arrival — waiting to give me his power. All you had to do was wait. But no, you wanted to cut corners. You wanted to follow the Americans from inside a nice warm room. So you tried to plant a bug on their train. And one of them saw you. She came to investigate. You panicked and seized her. And now they know we are tracking them.’

  Sidorov grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and turned him onto his back. ‘But don’t worry: you will get the same chance that the prince, the duke, and the Duma delegate gave our master.’

  Sidorov wrapped his hands around Dvorkin’s throat and squeezed.

  A soft gurgle escaped his mouth as the life was choked out of him.

  Satisfied with the punishment, Sidorov rose and walked over to the sofa. With a bemused smile, he sat next to the still, young woman, and tenderly removed the heavy blindfold — heavy because he had soaked the cloth in a transdermal anesthetic that had seeped through her skin and into her bloodstream within moments of its application.

  He watched her sleeping for a few moments.

  She had never looked better, he thought.

  Like an innocent angel.

  He realized this is what she must have looked like before family abuse, self-loathing, and desperation had brought her here.

  Sidorov lay beside her and took the unconscious beauty in his arms. She would help him repent, he decided. Long into the night.

  43

  Thursday, September 20

  Vascauti, Romania

  (870 miles southwest of Moscow)

  Garcia followed their progress on his Goldfinder program. They had traveled nearly nine hundred miles since they had left the station, and thus far everything had gone smoothly. ‘Good news: we have left the Ukraine and entered Romania. Next stop: Gold City.’

  McNutt groaned at the comment. He was an optimistic fellow, one who lived in a dream world where bears could fire cannons, but he knew this mission was still a long shot unless all of the team’s theories proved to be accurate.

  First, they assumed that Prince Felix had taken the treasure train from Moscow. Second, they believed that every soldier capable of walking had been massed for an aborted attempt to slash through Poland and attack East Prussia. This meant that the treasure could not have been offloaded from the train because there was no one on board to do the heavy lifting. Third, they guessed that the train would head to at least one major spur where they could change directions to confuse would-be followers. However, this change needed to be done without witnesses. That meant a well-hidden spur in a thinly populated region.

  After punching all that information into the Goldfinder program, it spit out a logical choice: the Transylvanian Plateau in Romania. Despite its name, the Transylvanian Plateau was a land of steep hills and valleys. The higher peaks of the Romanian Carpathian Mountains rose in nearly every direction, but here in the middle the rocky terrain gave way to vast forests and scenic cliffs. Given the difficulty of locating anything among its seemingly endless woodlands, they figured it was a great place to hide treasure.

  Now all they had to do was find it.

  McNutt, who had openly wondered if they were on the wrong train heading in the wrong direction, glanced at the screen. ‘There’s the calm before the storm, but this is nuts. Nearly twenty hours, and there isn’t even a breeze out there.’

  He was right. There was nothing ominous on the overhead satellite feed, nothing in the 360-degree video sweep, no radio chatter, no complaints from the pressure-sensitive tabs in the couplings, and nothing but Russian folk tunes from Andrei Dobrev in the engine. Dobrev had shown Jasmine the rudiments of how to run the engine so that she could spot him for rest periods. She was up there with him now.

  Cobb, via his earpiece, told McNutt not to worry. ‘Sometimes a day with nothing but sunshine is just that: a sunny day. Don’t read into it.’

  ‘Actually, I’m pissed because it’s sunny.’

  Garcia turned around. ‘You’re pissed at the sun?’

  McNutt nodded. ‘I was hoping to do some sightseeing before we left Moscow, and today would’ve been a perfect day to stand in line at Red Square. I could’ve worked on my tan.’

  Cobb ignored the ‘tan’ part and focused on ‘Red Square’. He was stunned that McNutt wanted to visit a historical site. ‘I didn’t know you were a history buff.’

  ‘I’m not,’ McNutt assured everyone, ‘but I’m a huge Beatles fan. Before we left town, I was hoping to visit Lennon’s tomb.’

  Laughter erupted all over the train, so much so that Garcia had to temporarily excuse himself from his workstation to avoid laughing in front of McNutt. Even Jasmine, who could barely hear the chatter over the roar of the engine, laughed so hard she started to cry. Confused by her outburst, Dobrev demanded to know what had happened on his train. While giggling uncontrollably, it took her nearly five minutes to translate the story into Russian, but once she did, Dobrev laughed harder than anyone — so much so, he had to run to the bathroom because he was afraid he was going to wet his pants.

  Meanwhile, McNutt had no idea what had set them off.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he mumbled to no one in particular. ‘Is it because I like the Beatles? I know they’re old, but I love their songs. Lennon was a musical genius.’

  It took a while for the laughter to subside. Once it did, things returned to normal.

  With Papineau elsewhere, Cobb had commandeered the desk, which was covered with paper maps and charts. Garcia returned to his workstation where the extra monitors he had initially ordered as back-up were now arrayed to accommodate the new security cams he had installed on, over, and under the train. The screens now stretched around him like blinders.

  Between fits of pacing, watching over Garcia’s back, and doing squat-thrusts and deep knee bends to stay limber, Sarah was lying on the sofa, studying maps on her tablet. Except for a few bruises on her neck, she was outwardly recovered from the Black Robe attack.

  ‘This is so boring,’ McNutt announced from a chair beside the couch, where he was enjoying a pungent sandwich he had just made in the galley — black bread, chopped sweet gherkins, crushed garlic cloves
mixed with olive oil, black forest ham, Kusendorf Swiss cheese, and cucumber slices. ‘Come on, Jack. I want to shoot somebody. When is that going to happen?’

  ‘Hopefully, not on this trip,’ Cobb said.

  ‘Bite your tongue,’ McNutt snapped.

  Sarah rolled her eyes. McNutt was still having trouble with the big picture. ‘Let me ask you a question: why would anyone try to stop us when we have no real idea where we’re going?’

  ‘Because Russians are ornery that way.’

  ‘You make it sound like we should be watching out for Cossacks on horseback.’

  ‘Hey, watch what you say,’ Jasmine cautioned from the engine. ‘There are still large pockets of Cossacks, and they are intensely xenophobic.’

  ‘See?’ McNutt said.

  Sarah and McNutt both happened to glance over at Cobb. He seemed to have tuned them out. His focus was a pin that let the air out of the conversation. The car was quiet, save for the endless clack of the heavy cars passing over old rails set in a slightly uneven track bed.

  They were all wearing what had rapidly become their uniforms. Black, ultra lightweight, long-sleeve T-shirts made of the latest sports fabric. It kept them cool in heat and warm in cold. Their Eisenhower-style jackets and cargo pants were dark olive and featured stealth material that made the soft, strong cloth virtually silent. They were equipped with cunningly placed pockets for a variety of each person’s needs — mostly extra ammo, since the jackets were long enough to cover their dark brown holster belts. Their shoes were also black and looked like a cross between hi-top slippers and combat boots. They were waterproof, slip-proof, and insulated, much like their shirts. In addition, every team member wore a watch that was synchronized and had a reflection-free face. The crystals were polarized along a vertical axis, meaning no one could read the watch except the owner, and ambient light bounced up, not out.

  After a few minutes of silence, Cobb told Sarah to bring up a specific map on her iPad. He pointed to a variety of lines he had made on his own map with different colored pencils.

  ‘I think the prince was trying to both find a place to hide the treasure and make sure his family’s path to Yalta was still clear,’ he said. ‘So we’re looking for a road less traveled.’

  ‘To Yalta?’ she said.

  ‘Toward Yalta,’ he corrected.

  ‘Aren’t we a bit far afield, then?’ Sarah asked, pointing east. ‘We’re headed southwest. Isn’t Yalta a few hundred miles that way?’

  ‘I don’t think the prince wanted to hide the treasure in the Ukraine — or, as it was known then, Little Russia.’ He shook his head. ‘Too close to anti-Romanov armies. I’m betting that somewhere along this path he split the two groups — family one way, the way which led out, and the treasure another way.’

  ‘Was it Malta or Yalta that his family left from?’ McNutt wondered, chewing on a crunchy bite of sandwich. ‘I can never keep those straight.’

  ‘Malta,’ Jasmine said. ‘British warship — remember?’

  ‘No,’ he said as he wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin.

  Changing the subject, Cobb drew his thumb across his throat, signaling that everyone should deactivate his or her microphone. He wanted a private conversation.

  Everyone nodded in understanding. Around the room, team members whispered their personal codewords, the ones they had personally chosen to mute their individual microphones. One after another, their vocal feeds shut down. Cobb scanned the room, watching his team as they gave him the sign they were all clear.

  He finished with Garcia, who gave him a thumbs-up.

  ‘We’re good, Hector?’ Cobb asked.

  ‘Good as gold,’ Garcia replied.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course, I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  Cobb held up his hand, signaling Garcia to be quiet.

  ‘Panther,’ Cobb stated. It was the code word for his microphone, which was now reactivated. ‘Jasmine, do me a favor.’

  Garcia scanned the room nervously, suddenly realizing that not everyone was present and accounted for in the command center.

  Cobb continued. ‘Please confirm that Garcia’s microphone is still active. Did you hear his chatter from a moment ago?’

  ‘I sure did,’ Jasmine said. ‘He said we’re as good as gold, then you challenged it.’

  Cobb grimaced. ‘That’s what I figured.’

  McNutt instantly raised his MP7 and aimed it at Garcia’s chest. Garcia looked down and saw the bright red dot that was projected by the laser sight attached to the rifle’s barrel.

  One false move, and he was dead.

  44

  As part of his operational checklist, Cobb had insisted that Garcia divulge the location of every camera on the train. That way, Cobb knew every angle he could call upon if there was an emergency.

  Shortly after the train had left the station, Cobb asked McNutt to check the control center for renegade cameras. The weapons man had found one, and only one. It was set in a screw at the base of a window. It was also a camera that Garcia had not mentioned in his discussion with Cobb. At the time, they weren’t sure who had planted it: the Black Robes, the Russian government, or someone on their team.

  So Cobb and McNutt had run an internal op to find out.

  While glancing at Garcia’s wall of monitors, Cobb had found the diagnostic screen that tracked the status of every video and audio signal being fed into the system. To the untrained eye, the feeds appeared as little more than solid green lines that continually scrolled across the screen. Only the time stamps that periodically marked their progress gave any indication as to what these lines represented. Fortunately, Cobb was familiar with the software. A green line meant that the feed was streaming normally. If the line turned red, it meant that an error had occurred. Clicking on any point in the timeline would open the data stream and allow the user to view or listen to anything recorded by the device.

  In his gut, Cobb sensed that Garcia was involved.

  To test his theory, Cobb monitored the communication feeds on Garcia’s computer screen while McNutt placed a mug of coffee in front of the camera. A few minutes later, the coffee had spilled, as planned, when the train took an especially hard turn. The liquid caused a short circuit in the camera. Cobb knew if Garcia had been aware of the hidden camera, its feed would be among those listed on his screen. As Cobb watched, the corrupted feed had changed from green to red on Garcia’s system. Just like that, they knew that Garcia had planted the rogue camera in the control center. They weren’t sure why, but they knew he had done it.

  Of course, they didn’t challenge him right away.

  That would have been a wasted opportunity.

  Instead, Cobb called the team together, minus Garcia, for a private meeting. He warned them to watch what they did and said in front of Garcia until they could use the hidden camera to their advantage. Cobb guessed it would take twenty-four hours — tops — for the circuits to dry, and that time was almost up.

  That meant it was time to confront Garcia.

  Garcia went from relatively calm to totally panicked in a flash. His face, which was normally a medium brown, turned shockingly pale — as if he was about to pass out.

  ‘I had to!’ Garcia pleaded. ‘Papi’s got enough on my hacking to put me in jail for years!’

  Cobb dismissed that with a grimace. ‘I’m sure he’s got something on all of us, Hector. That’s irrelevant.’

  ‘To you, maybe. But not to me! I’d never survive in pris-’

  Cobb cut him off. ‘Not interested. Just shut up and listen.’

  Garcia forced himself to sit still. At least as still as a terrified man with sudden facial tics could manage.

  ‘I figured you were Papi’s inside man from the start. I knew he had one, and I assumed it was you.’ Cobb shook his head with disappointment. ‘That’s fine. Part of your job description, I guess. But it has to end now. You can’t — I repeat, can’t — feed him our plans or let him deprive us of inf
ormation. That could have tragic consequences.’

  ‘You — you know everything,’ Garcia protested.

  McNutt stormed toward Garcia but was stopped by Cobb’s extended arm. One word from Cobb, and McNutt would finally get to kill somebody.

  ‘Couldn’t find dirt on Papi or the Black Robes?’ McNutt shouted as spray flew from his mouth like a junkyard dog. ‘Give me a fucking break!’

  Garcia’s eyes went from one member of the team to the next, but he found no sanctuary. ‘No, really. There wasn’t anything of significance. I swear, I would have told you! My life is on the line, too!’

  ‘More than you realize,’ Cobb said menacingly. He lowered his arm a few inches. McNutt leaned forward as though he were on an invisible leash. ‘So how about this, then? We need you, and you need me. As far as I’m concerned, the past is the past. No hard feelings. But here’s the deal: get me that information. Now.’

  Garcia opened his mouth again to plead, then he saw the look of disappointment on Jasmine’s face. He lowered his head in shame. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good,’ Cobb said, speaking for the group. ‘You get our trust back when you get us that information. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘Of course,’ Garcia said, sniffing. ‘I’m-’

  McNutt cut him off. ‘Don’t say you’re sorry! The only reason you’re apologizing is because you’re afraid I’m going to throw your ass off a moving train.’

  ‘No,’ he protested. ‘The guilt’s been killing me.’

  ‘Cry me a river! I knew you were a weasel from the start. Your kind always is!’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Cobb ordered.

  ‘My kind?’ Garcia blurted. Despite his guilt, he knew he needed to stand up for his family and its proud Mexican heritage. ‘Take that back!’

  ‘No way!’ McNutt shouted. Suddenly, he felt the harsh glare of his teammates focused on him. He glanced around the train car, trying to figure out why. ‘What’d I say?’

  Jasmine spoke up. ‘There’s no place for racism on this team.’