The Hunters h-1

by Chris Kuzneski

  And then her thumb went down.

  Twenty yards away, Sarah disappeared in a billowing cloud of white as the hill behind her exploded up and outward, as if it had been shot from the center of the earth.

  63

  Cobb recklessly stuck his head out and stared up, as a wave of dirt and rock swung overhead on either side of the train. Those BB-shots of dirt that he’d wished on the Black Robes hit his own scalp and exposed neck as he turned to watch the mass of debris crest over the flatbed and come crashing down between the tracks and the oncoming Black Robes.

  The motorcycles veered off, swerving to avoid being buried, swept, or knocked away. Cobb was sorry there hadn’t been time to warn his own people. The horsemen reined their horses hard and scattered in all directions, and the villagers fell wherever they were.

  When Cobb ducked back in, Dobrev had not budged nor had the train deviated. It continued to groan slowly toward the billowing dust cloud where Sarah had once stood.

  ‘Sarah? You copy?’ Cobb asked.

  There was only silence.

  ‘Look!‘ Dobrev said in Russian.

  Cobb knew exactly what he meant. Incredibly, where once there was a cave, there was now an open gap through the hillside — with only powdered residue of the wall coating the tracks.

  Jasmine arrived in the engine. Her face was covered with dust.

  ‘You were watching too?’ Cobb said.

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for anything,’ she replied.

  ‘How many villagers we got on the ground?’

  ‘About twenty,’ she said.

  ‘Garcia?’

  ‘Yo!’

  ‘Get them into the freight car. The armored walls will protect them better than the other cars. McNutt?’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s gettin’ near them,’ he promised as the crack-crack-crack of the Val rang out.

  The train slowed just outside the mouth of the tunnel. As it did, Dobrev turned and shouted something to Jasmine, who quickly relayed the information to Cobb.

  ‘We have to stop,’ she reported as Dobrev grabbed a heavy iron mallet from the locker.

  ‘Why? What’s he doing?’ Cobb demanded.

  ‘He said the cowcatcher has to come off now,’ she told him.

  ‘Crap. I’m going with him,’ Cobb said as Dobrev hopped from the cab.

  Cobb told McNutt what he was doing. He told him to concentrate on not letting anyone get to the front. And most importantly, he told him to keep an eye out for Sarah.

  There was a crack and a whirring skid of tires. ‘Copy that,’ McNutt said as a Black Robe went tumbling through the dirt.

  Dobrev began swinging in hard, strong arcs at the old bolts that held the iron cowcatcher to the front of Ludmilla while Cobb drew his handgun and protected the train. Not a single Black Robe made it past the combination wall-of-gunfire and sniper-shots McNutt was unleashing. It seemed to Cobb like the man had at least three hands. Occasionally, as he paced the rocky terrain, Cobb looked around to see if he could spot Sarah.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ Dobrev groaned, in Russian.

  Cobb didn’t need a translator. He knew what that meant. As Dobrev handed the mallet back to Jasmine in the cabin, Cobb put his shoulder to the side of the heavy iron grate. Dobrev joined him, and together they pushed it toward the side of the tracks that sloped outward. It tumbled over with a dull clank, then skidded to a rest in a gully.

  The men boarded quickly, and Cobb turned back to the other pressing matter.

  ‘Sarah,’ he called urgently. ‘Where are you? I do not have a visual!’

  Jasmine looked at Cobb with concern, but all thought of Sarah left her when she glanced back at Dobrev.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered.

  Cobb followed her glance. Dobrev looked ashen — his facial muscles tight, his forehead showing a telltale sheen of cold sweat.

  Jasmine touched his cheek. He shrugged her off.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Only I can do this. I must do this.’

  ‘No, tell me how-’

  ‘Nyet!‘ he barked, and that was that.

  Jasmine choked up as she and Cobb looked through the windshield.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ Cobb told her. ‘Let him be.’

  ‘But he’s … he needs to rest.’

  ‘You make him stop now, that will kill him,’ Cobb said.

  Dobrev was talking. ‘This is the most important moment,’ he said as if the words had to be forced out between his teeth. ‘To couple the trains, I must push with the exact amount of pressure or the wheels will leave the rails …’

  The engine covered the distance between the tunnel mouth and the prince’s train in seconds. They were about thirty feet inside. Then the grated nose of the 2TE116 pressed against the coupling joint of the treasure train’s engine. Everyone on board was jolted, but it was not enough to throw off McNutt’s aim. He shot another Black Robe, who had been struggling to pull his motorcycle out of a mound of debris that the train had thrown to one side. Before the sidecar man could get to the Browning automatic rifle that he had stolen from the armory, a horseman planted a Nagant rifle round in his chest.

  ‘Come on, Ludmilla,’ Dobrev gasped. ‘You can do it, girl …’ He put the big train into reverse.

  Cobb steadied himself as the clawing fingers of the tunnel began to crack and shatter from around the royal roofs and side walls. With a pop that sounded like a massive water balloon, the eight blue and gold cars jerked forward, pulled by Ludmilla. The stubborn, clinging walls of the tunnel began to break and pebbles of granite were raining down around them.

  Cobb hazarded a look back out the window as he heard other cycles racing toward the entrance to the tunnel. But every time one tried to reach the forward cars, either McNutt, a Russian police officer, or a horseman would gun them down.

  ‘McNutt,’ he said, pulling his head in, ‘status?’

  ‘Holding them off,’ McNutt grunted. ‘But not for long. I’m running out of ammo and the horsemen’s weapons take too long between shots.’ The Nagant’s bolt needed to be pulled back and shoved forward for each round. The guns the Black Robes had taken from their armory did not. ‘And I’m worried about that grenade launcher.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Cobb suggested. ‘They want this train. They won’t risk blowing it up.’

  As they spoke, the train reversed out of the tunnel.

  ‘Sarah,’ Cobb said. ‘Elvis is leaving the building. Care to join us?’

  Still no answer.

  ‘Damn it,’ Cobb spat.

  Suddenly light flooded into the cab as they emerged from the tunnel. Cobb could see Jasmine hovering protectively over Dobrev, who was leaning forward with one hand on the control, one palm pressed against the front of the cabin. He was breathing heavily, his clothes soaked with perspiration.

  But the train was moving and picking up speed.

  As it did, the Black Robes were beginning to regroup.

  ‘Garcia, make sure everyone stays down,’ Cobb said.

  As if on cue, bullets began to splatter on the outside engine walls.

  ‘Down!’ Cobb ordered, as he and Jasmine went to one knee. Both looked as Dobrev remained rigidly standing.

  ‘Andrei!’ yelled Jasmine in Russian. ‘Get down!’

  But he didn’t respond.

  The train began to pick up even more speed. Now clouds were being reflected in the windshield glass, and tree branches were whizzing by the windows, flipping off their newly acquired dust as the train passed, still going backwards.

  Jasmine saw none of it. She was watching Dobrev.

  Cobb shouted at her, his hand out, knowing that Jasmine was going to do what she did anyway. She jumped up and grabbed Dobrev under his arms as he was about to drop.

  ‘Andrei …’ she shrieked.

  Before she could say another word, Dobrev fell back like a stone slab. She went with him and just managed to keep his head from smashing into the cab’s steel floor
. His teeth were clattering, his eyes unfocused, and his right hand was spasmodically gripping his left arm. Jasmine looked over at Cobb in alarm.

  ‘It’s a heart attack,’ she said. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Here’s what you’re going to do,’ Cobb said. ‘You’re going to drive this train.’

  She hesitated as Dobrev’s right hand clawed at her arm.

  ‘You do it,’ Cobb said sternly, ‘or he will have suffered this for nothing. He and everyone else who died here.’

  She tried to move — and then Dobrev yanked her head close to his, her eyes facing his mouth. Dobrev whispered something to her while placing his most treasured heirloom — the gold, twenty lei coin — in her grasp before he squeezed her hand closed.

  Jasmine didn’t translate right away.

  She needed a moment to fight her emotions.

  Eventually, she looked up at Cobb with tragic resolve in her eyes. She wiped away a tear while revealing Dobrev’s final words.

  ‘Andrei said, “Drive the train, and kill those sons of bitches.”’

  64

  Despite what had just happened and all that was happening around them, Jasmine was surprised by what Cobb did next. He reached through the cab window, grabbed onto a rung there, and started pulling himself onto the roof of the engine.

  Jasmine’s mouth opened as her brain filled with questions, but the train lurched before she could ask anything. She instinctively leaped up, grabbed the controls of the train, and started to drive the eleven cars with all the skill she had picked up from Dobrev.

  Cobb stood on top of the train, quickly surveying the scene. There was a mass of gathering Cossack cycles on the left, a few stragglers on the back right, and horsemen pounding through the woods after them. The tree cover was still pretty extensive, with branches all around him. The downward incline was slight at the moment, but as soon as they broke into the open, it would dip sharply.

  He wasn’t going to ask anyone to cover him. Whoever he’d ask would have his hands full as it was, and hopefully he could accomplish what he needed to do without undue attention. Thankfully, no one had yet noticed that he had climbed up there.

  Cobb took a quick look down and said a fast prayer for Andrei Dobrev. He had connected Ludmilla to the prince’s cars perfectly. Although the securing spike was not pushed through the corresponding holes in each coupler, the trains were ‘holding hands’, the fingers and thumb-like joints intertwined. This had allowed Ludmilla to pull the treasure train free.

  Cobb looked up to gauge the distance from the engine tip to the back of the prince’s cars. He silently thanked the gods of Russian train construction that Ludmilla’s roofing was relatively flat and free of projections. He turned and took a quick look along the track to make sure there were no sudden turns coming up for the backwards-running train. Then he ran and jumped.

  Jasmine gasped as she saw his body hurdle above the windshield and land on the top of the prince’s first car. He dropped, rolled, and came up on his feet in a well-balanced crouch. Barely stopping, he sprinted and leaped from one car to the next until he made it to the last car in the prince’s train. He made sure there were no Black Robes coming, then he grabbed the lip of the door, and swung inside.

  ‘Jack, what are you doing?’ Jasmine demanded.

  ‘I’m borrowing something from Rasputin,’ he replied in her ear. ‘Just keep the train as steady as possible, and be aware of the attackers’ positions. If any happen to get by McNutt-’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  Jasmine kept low. She was cognizant of her peripheral vision, but her main focus of concentration was keeping the train moving steadily and safe. She watched Cobb as he climbed back onto the roof of the prince’s last car and started sprinting across the roofs toward her.

  ‘Watch it, Jack! We’re coming into low branches,’ Jasmine warned. She saw him hold onto the lip of the car roof and hazard a glance forward. Then he looked between the car and the engine snout.

  ‘Black Robe trying to climb the engine,’ he said, calm and to the point.

  ‘Sorry,’ McNutt said. ‘They’re starting to swarm.’

  ‘Apology unnecessary,’ Cobb remarked.

  Jasmine’s head snapped left. A stranger’s face was rising in the window.

  The.38 Special was in her hand with her arm outstretched before she was completely aware of it. She squeezed the trigger just as McNutt had shown her. The weapon discharged, and the rubber grip bucked in her hand. The face disappeared from the window.

  The window frame was speckled in red.

  Cobb saw the resulting mess. The Black Robe’s head jerked back, and then his body followed. His ruined face swung down, the top of his skull banging against the train’s wheel truck, and his legs slammed across his motorcycle sidecar.

  The Black Robe smashed to the ground, and the cycle veered off into a tree, sending the driver ten feet through the air. In that amount of time, the train had already gone too far for Cobb to see him land.

  ‘Good shot,’ he said, then stood up again on the roof of the prince’s car.

  By the time Jasmine realized she had killed a man, Cobb had jumped back onto the top of Ludmilla’s engine car and raced to the gap between it and the command car. He dropped down into the doorway with ease. The command center had seen better days. Bullets had broken glass, torn up the furniture, and shattered computer screens.

  ‘McNutt, status,’ Cobb said.

  ‘The Val is out of ammo,’ he grunted. ‘Down to my last clip on the Steyr Aug, and making every round count.’ That meant he only had about thirty bullets left. ‘Could sure use the Sig that Sarah took.’

  At that moment holes started ripping into the wall at about waist level along the entire length of the command center. Cobb kept low, judging that a Black Robe was racing alongside, having fun with the Mac 11 he had stolen from them. The nine-millimeter rounds wreaked havoc on Cobb’s eardrums as the Black Robe emptied all thirty-two slugs into the command center — as if mocking McNutt’s dwindling ammo supply. The echo of the shots combined with the wreckage it caused nearly drowned out the voice he had been waiting to hear.

  Sarah shouted, ‘Can anyone hear me? I repeat, can anyone hear me?’

  ‘Finally,’ Cobb replied. ‘What’s your status?’

  ‘I’m alive and moving into position for phase two.’

  Cobb nodded. ‘Good. I’ll try to distract them the best I can.’

  Garcia, who was hunched over his tablet in the freight car amidst several frightened villagers, butted into their conversation. ‘What’s phase two?’

  ‘None of your business,’ Cobb said curtly. There were some things he refused to discuss over the air. ‘Worry about your job. Not Sarah’s.’

  ‘Sorry, chief,’ Garcia said. ‘Won’t happen again.’

  Jasmine heard none of this in the cab. The rumbling and screeching were too pervasive. All of her senses were focused on keeping the unwieldy train on the tracks. Dobrev had rhapsodized about balance, and now she fully appreciated that they were guiding a snake with two heads. She had to be hyper-aware of both the weight they were pulling and the weight they were pushing, or everything would tear off the tracks.

  Meanwhile, Cobb kept hustling through the train.

  Garcia thought he had heard Cobb in his earpiece, but soon realized that he heard him in his other ear as well. He craned his neck to see Cobb rushing by. ‘Jack?’

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ Cobb said as he grabbed a fifteen-foot by three-foot container and dragged all two hundred pounds of it back toward the flatbed car.

  ‘Let me help,’ McNutt said, turning from the slat in the wall.

  ‘No. You’re needed here,’ Cobb said without stopping.

  ‘Bullshit,’ McNutt retorted, suddenly pushing the container from the other side. ‘I can pick off these bastards just as well from the flatbed. Better, in fact.’

  ‘Giving them a better target at the same time,’ Cobb reminded him.

  ‘Like you have
to tell me that?’ McNutt blurted. ‘Shut up and pull, chief!’ He added the title to give his remark a veneer of respect rather than defiance.

  They emerged onto the flatbed car, crouched to stay beneath the five-foot fence lip that encircled the space. Tree branches cracked and snapped overhead as the train muscled through, while the crack and snap of the Black Robes’ bullets blended with the sneering roar of their cycles.

  Garcia appeared in the doorway of the freight car just as Cobb swung open the container lid.

  ‘Ohmigod,’ Garcia exclaimed. ‘Is that a GEN H-4?’

  But Garcia knew it was. Designed by miniaturization mastermind Gennai Yanagisawa in the 1980s, it was upgraded, improved upon, and enhanced until it was the most portable, most versatile, cockpit-less, one-man helicopter in the world.

  Cobb didn’t have to answer. He just started to haul the two thirteen-foot rotors out of the carrying case.

  Garcia raced over to where Cobb knelt in the center of the flatbed and helped remove the aluminum pipe framework, the bicycle-handlebar-style controls, the magnesium crankcase, and, most lovingly, the big bowl that contained the four miniature, two-stroke, two-cylinder, air-cooled engines.

  ‘Ohmigod, ohmigod.’ Garcia nearly hyperventilated. ‘Why’d you hide this in the control center?’

  ‘For safekeeping,’ Cobb replied.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘I’m going to lure those bastards away from the train,’ Cobb grunted as he started to assemble the framework.

  ‘No, no,’ Garcia snapped back, reaching toward him. ‘You’re doing it wrong.’

  Cobb locked on the techie’s eyes. ‘How fast can you do it?’

  ‘Faster than you!’ Garcia insisted.

  ‘Prove it,’ said Cobb, his Colt.45 already in his hand as he moved to join McNutt at the rail.

  The view from there was both dream-like and nightmarish. It was as if they had traveled back in time to both 1945 and 1845 in a parallel universe that was both the end of World War II and the Wild West. They were on an Iron Horse wagon train surrounded by galloping, bloodthirsty tribes. Only now, the flesh-and-blood horses were being chased by motorcycles, and the vintage rifles were being overpowered by automatic weapons.