Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

‘Not much,’ Cobb stated. ‘Jasmine, what’s happening in the village?’

‘Decebal left orders to organize then went to scout ahead,’ she said. ‘They’re doing the best they can.’ The young woman was ducked behind one of the iron cauldrons, watching as villagers were running all around her, some carrying rifles, others in a panic. ‘Viktor and Anna are trying to organize them, but until they get orders from Decebal …’

‘Decebal is dead,’ Cobb guessed, the image of the galloping horse still fresh in his mind.

‘That gunfire we just heard?’

‘Yes,’ Cobb said. ‘The Black Robes killed him.’ He refrained from adding ‘probably with one of our own guns’.

McNutt, however, did not hold back. ‘They stripped the armory of our weapons before leaving the train as a diversion.’

‘Not now, McNutt,’ Cobb said. ‘Jasmine, tell Borovsky and Anna we’re coming to get them and the villagers. We should get in okay because the Black Robes don’t know there’s track out there. But I have a feeling we’re going to have to fight our way out.’

‘Got it,’ Jasmine said.

‘What’s with uncoupling the sleeper car?’ Garcia asked.

‘The Black Robes uncoupled it. They knew if we moved the train, it would stay as a roadblock,’ McNutt explained.

‘The armory was stripped? How stripped?’ Sarah demanded.

Cobb and McNutt exchanged worried glances.

‘Very stripped,’ McNutt admitted. ‘They got every gun we didn’t take with us, including a Russian RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade launcher.’

Cobb looked disbelievingly at McNutt.

‘You said prepare for anything,’ the gunman complained. ‘I didn’t bring it before we got here, but when Papi said I could have whatever I wanted …’

‘Sarah, be ready to blow open that tunnel,’ Cobb said. ‘When you do, run for it.’

‘She’s going alone?’ Garcia asked incredulously.

‘For the moment,’ Cobb said.

‘What does that mean?’ Sarah asked.

‘The track that goes to the village doesn’t end in the village,’ Cobb said.

‘How do you know that?’ Garcia asked. ‘There’s no-’

‘The village was a load-on terminal for timber,’ Cobb explained. ‘Which means the flatbeds would have to be pulled even with the stacks. Otherwise, you’d have to move the wood down the rail, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.’

‘The track is a circle!’ Jasmine said. ‘Of course!’

‘Exactly,’ Cobb said. ‘The trains would loop through to load up the timber, then head back down the line. They never reversed. Too inefficient.’

Jasmine nodded in understanding. ‘The prince tore it up on one end, but the treasure train still could have come out and joined the main trunk through the village. That is, if you could find a way past the blockade.’

‘And,’ Cobb added, ‘if everything goes well, that’s how we’re going to do this.’

‘Dobrev must have known that or at least guessed it,’ Jasmine said. ‘He kept talking about how Ludmilla could go both ways.’

‘Wow,’ McNutt said. ‘Normally that statement would turn me on.’

Garcia ignored him. ‘But what about the cave? And all of that stuff clinging to the prince’s train cars? And any debris that falls on the tracks?’

‘He says Ludmilla will take care of that,’ Jasmine reported.

McNutt saw the engineer mutter something encouraging to his cab and pat its wall. ‘He can promise whatever he wants. First we have to get through the molehill these people built.’

‘Get ready,’ Cobb told them all. ‘This promises to be interesting. Oh, and pass the word not to shoot us.’

‘Why would they?’ Sarah asked.

Cobb replied, ‘We’re dressed as Black Robes.’

‘Maybe that’ll make them hesitate as well,’ Jasmine said.

‘Exactly,’ Cobb said.

The train was running hot and hard. In the glare of the single headlight, Dobrev could see a log fence where the track supposedly ended. He throttled up and tore through the barricade, then hit the end of the two-foot-high berm. Sparks spit from the wheels and lit the ground that was still dark beneath the dawning sky. The metal shrieked and the three occupants were jerked forward as the train slowed — but it did not stop. Like a snowplow it pushed through the sunbaked soil, which blew apart in clods. They heard the dirt crunch under the wheels, saw it fly like thousands of gnats in both directions. The screeching was terrible. Cobb hoped that the Black Robes were close enough to be deafened and pelted by BB-fast grains of dirt. It might not penetrate those robes, but it sure as hell would slow them down.

‘Don’t derail, don’t derail, don’t derail,’ was McNutt’s mantra for the seeming eternity it took to cover what was, in fact, less than a half-mile. The longer they moved, the leveler the ground and the easier it was to push through the mound.

And then the village came into view.

Garcia saw the Black Robes before anyone else did.

The attack started as distant black dots on a postage-stamp-sized section of his crowded computer screen. They emerged from the grove line bathed in the dull red, orange, and yellow glow of coming sunrise. The tech looked above his computer to the lip of the bluff itself.

‘They’re coming from the grove, three o’clock east!’ Garcia yelled, pointing.

Cobb ran through the engine to the command center and found the screen showing the northeast view. It was getting lighter outside every minute, and the train was picking up speed.

‘They either want to follow us or escort us in,’ Cobb decided. ‘Either way-’

‘They ain’t,’ McNutt seethed, charging past him toward the freight car.

‘What are you going to do?’ Cobb demanded.

‘Welcome them with open arms, and I do mean arms !’ McNutt shouted back without pausing, shaking the Val assault rifle in the air.

Cobb ran back to the cab. He and Dobrev exchanged intent glances, then both watched as the village came closer through a line of trees — one that would just allow the train to squeeze through. They also saw the honor guard horsemen waiting with their rifles.

‘Other side!’ Cobb yelled at Jasmine. ‘Have them ride along the far side. Let the train take the brunt of the attack!’

‘Viktor is way ahead of you,’ he heard Jasmine say in his ear.

Cobb smiled grimly, gripped Dobrev’s shoulder reassuringly, then ran to the gap between the engine and the command center. He balanced there, staring carefully off to the east. He saw the Black Robes coming around the sloping bend in the distance.

They were on IMZ-Ural ‘Cossack’ motorcycles, each with a sidecar. They were made in Russia, based on the superior BMW sidecar cycles of World War II. They were designed to battle storm troopers and Panzer tanks in the brutal terrain and climate of the Eastern Front. They could easily take this landscape and this ancient train.

Cobb recognized some of the weapons in the riders’ hands: machine guns, fifteen-round automatics, even the shotgun he had declined all those hours ago. He looked at the Uzi, essentially ineffective at this range.

The horsemen who were unlucky enough to be within range fell under a peppering of fire.

As Cobb watched, McNutt shot the motorcycle driver closest to the back of the train. The man’s head erupted like a popcorn kernel and the cycle veered off, the sidecar passenger shrieking.

The shooting had the proper effect. Now that they knew they were in range of McNutt’s weapons, the cyclists slowed down and fell back.

Cobb raced back to the cab. Through the windshield he could see the village up ahead as if it were a diorama model. He could actually pick out Jasmine and Garcia at the front of a long line of rifle-toting villagers. He saw Borovsky astride a horse, pointing and barking out orders to the riders. He saw all the people start to surge forward as the train entered the trees.