Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

He motioned for Dobrev to slow to allow people to get onboard. The Russian understood. They would be safer hunkered in the command center or armory than they would anywhere else. Those who could grabbed the train and climbed on. Those who couldn’t tried to keep up for protection. The rest sought cover wherever they could find it. It had been explained to them that the train would be coming back this way shortly.

At least they hoped.

Cobb knew where everybody was except for one person.

‘Sarah!’ he shouted. ‘What’s your status?’

There was no answer. Cobb stared slack-jawed at the cave entrance just a few hundred yards away.

‘Jasmine, Garcia, where’s Sarah?’

‘We don’t know!’ they yelled back.

Cobb felt a familiar, unpleasant burning in his gut.

Meanwhile, some younger, stronger villagers had hopped onto the slowing train to help their elders aboard. They started filling the command center, the freight car, and the flatbed as McNutt kept up a steady stream of defensive fire behind them. More men joined him with their old carbines.

Cobb ignored it all. He just stared straight ahead as they passed through the village. There was enough light now for him to make out the geography ahead. He saw, about a mile in the distance, the back end of the tunnel. He grabbed the binoculars and looked ahead, focused. The wall was still intact. If Sarah had fallen, or if the unstable explosive had knocked her out or even killed her, this was going to be a very short trip.

Borovsky rode alongside, his head bobbing in the cab’s east window.

‘Go back!’ Cobb shouted, pointing hard. ‘Protect the rear of the train!’ The colonel nodded and set off to do just that. Now, Cobb knew, if the train crashed, at least they would be in a better position to mount a last stand.

Cobb felt a hand on his arm. He turned to see what Dobrev wanted. Cobb saw something he wasn’t expecting: the engineer staring straight ahead in amazement. Cobb followed his gaze and saw her.

Sarah was fifty yards away, running from the stone wall, wearing only the long-sleeved T-shirt and matching leggings. Having removed her shoes for the climb, her feet were bare and her toes were bleeding. Her face was smeared with dirt. Her blond hair was wet with sweat, hanging down in ringlets around her burning eyes.

‘I couldn’t blow it from the inside!’ she panted through his earpiece. ‘That much dynamite … my ears …’

‘Right, of course,’ Cobb grinned. ‘So how …?’

‘The rocks were loose on top,’ she said. ‘I pushed one out and climbed down. Sorry I didn’t answer.’

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘So how about-’

‘Blowing this sucker?’ she said. ‘I’d rather not get buried. Give me another few seconds.’

Cobb motioned for Dobrev to slow the train. He did a quick calculation and took Ludmilla to half-speed, about thirty-five miles an hour — still fast enough to keep cutting through the dirt embankment. It was falling apart easily now that the terrain was level.

Sarah was still running. Her right hand was up, the red button on the end of a detonator stick just beneath her raised thumb. The expression on her face was one of exhausted madness.

Her lips moved as she ran.

‘Sure hope this works, Jack,’ Cobb heard in his ear. ‘In three … two … one …’

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.

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 …’