The Hunters (29 page)

‘Jack!’ Sarah started.

‘Just a glancing hit,’ he said quickly. ‘Maybe even a ricochet.’

‘What are you looking for?’ Sarah exploded.

Cobb stood in the middle of the command center and calmly said, ‘Does anybody know where I can get a tablecloth?’

McNutt charged into the engine cab, swinging his bag in ahead of him. Dobrev was crouched, his eyes just over the ledge of the controls, while Jasmine had her back against the lavatory door, her revolver up by her head. She was breathing heavily through her nose, her chest was heaving. But she was alert, steady.

McNutt threw the duffel down and thrust the Benelli shotgun into Jasmine’s other hand. ‘Take this, would you?’

She looked incredulously at him. ‘I’ve never fired one of—’

‘Good time to start,’ McNutt said.

‘Seventy-five yards,’ Garcia said in their ears.

Jasmine examined the weapon.

‘Use it as a club if you have to,’ McNutt said. ‘Though if it was up to me, they wouldn’t get that close.’

‘It isn’t, so shut up,’ Sarah said in his ear.

McNutt was now too busy to argue. He was on one knee, intent on getting the duffel open.

Dobrev said something.

‘What does he need?’ Cobb asked over the earpiece.

Jasmine answered. ‘He just wants us to know he can’t put on more speed and plow through them. He doesn’t want to go off these old tracks.’

‘Thank him for the alert,’ Cobb said. ‘But that’s not my plan.’

‘Yeah, we’d run out of track, and then they’d be on us, really pissed,’ Sarah said.

Jasmine translated for Dobrev as she flattened herself back against the lavatory door. They all heard more snapping and cracking sounds from the riders’ rifles.

‘Fifty yards,’ they heard Garcia say.

‘Jack said “no killing”, Jack gets “no killing”,’ McNutt said. He straightened, holding the weapon up proudly and looking at Jasmine with a big grin. ‘But I still get to shoot.’

To her eyes, the weapon looked like the back of a big, gray flare pistol, with a muzzle or barrel or whatever you called it that seemed like a cross between the end of a fireman’s water hose and a big flashlight. As she watched, McNutt added a shoulder stock for better control, then a sniper’s scope for better aiming. She looked down. In the duffel bag were five more devices.

‘Twenty-five yards,’ Garcia croaked.

‘Net gun,’ McNutt proudly announced while pushing open the cab’s small side windows.

‘What?’ Jasmine said. ‘It fires—’

‘Nets. Yes. I figured we might need something, or someone, caught and—’

‘Josh!’ Jasmine screeched, pointing behind him.

McNutt whirled to see a rider coming up the engineer’s side, pointing his rifle at Dobrev.

McNutt only got a glimpse of the ruddy, mustachioed rider in his baggy, beige pants, brown boots, belt, and vest before there was a
bang
and a
whoosh
- and what looked like a baseball shot from the end of McNutt’s big-mouthed weapon. Once it was outside the window, the casing of the projectile opened and fell off to the sides, then a big, flying spider’s web spread out and slammed into the rider from his head to his waist.

Jasmine watched, mesmerized, as the rider was thrown from his horse as if he’d been swatted off by the hand of God. She instinctively leaned forward and checked that the man landed okay before Dobrev pushed her back. She saw, in fact, that the man hit the ground as if he were used to falling off a horse. The net didn’t let him get right up, but the way he was kicking and clawing, it didn’t cause any permanent damage either.

McNutt was already screwing in another net ball when Cobb came barging in with a tablecloth tied to a curtain rod. Pulling Jasmine out of the way - but protecting her with his own body - he shoved the makeshift white flag out the window and began waving furiously.

‘What the fuck, chief?’ McNutt exclaimed, almost with resentment.

‘Shut up!’ Cobb snapped. ‘They’re peasant villagers!’

‘So? They can still kill us.’

‘Dammit, will you think with your brain instead of your trigger finger?’ Cobb yelled. He continued to wave the flag, making sure it was seen as far as the most distant rider. ‘Why would they attack us? You think they’ve never seen a train before?’

Dobrev said something. He sounded reflective.

‘He says we’re trespassing,’ Jasmine said. ‘But the word he used … it’s not exactly trespassing …’

‘He means we’re not welcome here, not just uninvited.’

‘Yes,’ Jasmine said, impressed. ‘That’s exactly what he means.’

Cobb said, ‘That’s because they’re protecting something - something that makes them risk their lives to attack a train while on horseback!’

‘The treasure,’ Sarah gasped in their ears.

McNutt and Jasmine looked at Cobb with newfound appreciation.

‘They might know about the treasure,’ Sarah said accusingly, ‘and you wanted to gun them down, McNutt.’

‘Sorry if I didn’t want any of my teammates to take a musket ball in the brain!’

‘They didn’t want to kill,’ Cobb said. ‘They just wanted to let us know they can.’

‘How considerate,’ McNutt said.

‘Jack, do you know the story of the Golden Fleece?’ Jasmine said.

‘Oh goody,’ Sarah said. ‘A story.’

‘A relevant one,’ the historian said. ‘Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Thessaly to Colchis to steal the Fleece. King Aeetes allowed them to make landfall - then attacked them. Though Jason got what he came for, it came at loss of life on both sides.’

‘I won’t cut them down,’ Cobb said.

‘Humanitarian gesture - or because they know where the treasure is?’ Sarah asked.

Cobb didn’t reply. Which was a reply. The answer was both. Plus, it occurred to him that this generation might be happy to be rid of their stewardship after a century. For the right price, they might even help them load up the train.

McNutt clearly didn’t agree, but he said nothing as he watched and waited for his next target to ride by.

Dobrev said suddenly.

‘He wants us to be quiet and listen,’ Jasmine said.

Cobb did, still waving. The engineer’s trained ears had listened through the noise of the train and heard what they had all missed.

‘No more shooting,’ Jasmine said, smiling.

‘He’s right,’ Sarah said.

The horsemen were whooping, whistling, and waving their rifles, but they weren’t aiming and shooting any more. They rode around, beside, in front of, and behind the train with remarkable displays of horsemanship, but it was now obvious they weren’t intending to attack.

‘I’m thinking they just don’t want to get netted,’ McNutt said.

Cobb lowered his arms and tightened his grip on the flagstaff out of frustration. He turned on the sharpshooter. ‘If you’d been paying attention, you would have noticed they didn’t go for the tracks. All it would have taken was a mallet or axe head to bend a single rail enough to force us to stop. They didn’t have to put themselves at risk. But they didn’t do that.’

‘Not if it was some macho Cossack thing,’ McNutt grumbled.

‘Why don’t you just admit you were wrong?’ they heard Sarah say.

McNutt looked away, annoyed that they weren’t even allowing that he could be right - which he still believed he was, having put on reckless, bravado-induced displays like that himself. But he brightened when he saw the man he had net-gunned reappear outside of the side window. The man was back on his horse with a gap-toothed smile that went from ear to ear, holding his rifle up proudly, angled slightly outward.

‘Wow,’ McNutt breathed.

‘What?’ Jasmine asked.

‘He just saluted me with a Mosin-Nagant M91-30,’ McNutt marveled, seeing three R’s surrounded by crossed stalks stamped on the rifle’s breech. ‘Those were specially modified for Romania and reserved in case of invasion.’

Suddenly, the team was distracted by a voice from outside the window where the white flag flew. It was a commanding, male voice, rough from years of sharp mountain air and tobacco.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded in a Slavonic language.

Everyone in the cab looked to Jasmine.

‘He’s the leader, asking who we are,’ she informed them.

‘In Romanian?’ Cobb wanted to know.

‘No, Russian,’ Jasmine told him.

‘Maybe he recognizes the markings on the train,’ Sarah suggested.

‘Only one way to find out,’ Cobb said. ‘Tell him we are explorers who come in peace.’

‘Tell him we have every intention of upholding the Prime Directive,’ McNutt added.

Jasmine looked at him as she maneuvered past Cobb, back to the window.

‘
Star Trek
,’ McNutt said. ‘Don’t interfere with indigenous life forms.’

‘Oh great,’ Sarah sighed. ‘Our gunman’s off in fantasyland again. I wish we could beam his ass back to Florida.’

Cobb ignored his team’s bickering and focused on the handsome older man in a dark, zip-up jacket, pants, boots, and wool cap.

He rode his horse as if he were born on it.

The man trotted alongside the still slowly moving train in perfect rhythm. Yet as much as he looked the part of an old-guard horseman, Cobb sensed there was something off about him - something modern.
The straight teeth he flashed? The hands that didn’t look like they spent much time moving rocks or swinging an axe? His posture in the saddle seemed formal: more trained and drilled than native-born
.

Jasmine told the rider what Cobb had asked her to say. The old man listened to the young woman’s fluent Russian words then spoke again.

‘What do you want?’ the man asked in Russian.

Jasmine translated it for the group.

Sarah spoke in their ears. ‘What are you going to tell him, Jack? No truth, half-truth, or whole truth?’

Cobb had been thinking about it. For the first time in awhile he was unsure how to attain the best result.

‘Jack?’ Jasmine urged quietly.

The Russian looked at Cobb expectantly.

‘I’m talking because I want him to hear words,’ Cobb said. ‘Otherwise he’ll think I’m standing here formulating a lie.’

‘Are you?’ Jasmine asked.

‘Considering it,’ Cobb admitted.

Suddenly, a hand fell on Cobb’s shoulder. Dobrev was beside him, the train slowing to a crawl. He said something that Jasmine translated.

‘Andrei wants to tell the man something,’ she said.

Dobrev didn’t wait for Cobb’s approval. Technically, that was his prerogative since rules of the rail put him in charge of the train. Cobb had the manpower to disagree but not the right. So Cobb deferred. Dobrev stuck his head out the window and immediately started talking to the leader of the horsemen. His tone was affable, familiar, even jocular, but still somehow sincere.

Cobb and McNutt both looked at Jasmine.

‘Andrei is telling the man about his life and travels,’ she said. ‘About how he and his family have dreamed of these hills since he was a boy. He says he finally decided to bring his old self and his old train here. The horseman laughed at that, wants to know whether we are vacationers. Dobrev says not exactly and that your description of “explorers” is more accurate. He says that the man’s accent tells him that he, too, is a proud Russian, and that our visit carries a purpose that is important to all loyal Russians as well as our hosts, the Romanians.’

‘Does he say what the purpose is?’ Cobb wanted to know.

That was really the crux of it.

‘Andrei just - what is the football word? Punted?’

‘That’s the word,’ McNutt said.

‘What did Dobrev tell them?’ Cobb asked.

‘That you would explain the purpose, man-to-man, over a glass.’

‘In other words, he bought you time, boss,’ Sarah said.

‘Time and an equal standing,’ Jasmine said. ‘Chief to chief. That’s a big concession to someone who was “not welcome” just a few minutes ago.’

‘Oh,’ said McNutt quietly. ‘This guy’s good.’

Jasmine looked straight at Cobb. ‘Andrei asked the man to come onboard. He declined. He wants us, all of us, to come out. The horseman is telling him to stop the train and we can share a glass of
tuica
in their village.’ Before anyone could ask, Jasmine explained. ‘It’s a Romanian peasant drink; a brandy made from apples or plums.’

‘I am
so
in favor of that,’ McNutt blurted.

As the gunman was speaking, Dobrev moved back and started to brake the locomotive without awaiting instructions. Meanwhile, the lead horseman started speaking again.

‘He wants to talk to you,’ Jasmine told Cobb.

Cobb shrugged a silent ‘okay’ and stuck his head back out the train window. While the man spoke, Cobb took a moment to savor the beautiful countryside and the remarkable sight of the surrounding horsemen. It was as if they had now fully been transported to the dawn of the twentieth century.

‘He says, “You are their leader, yes?”’ Jasmine translated.

‘
Da
,’ Cobb replied.

‘
Americanski?
‘ the man asked.

‘
Da
.’

‘Is that really how they refer to us?’ McNutt asked.

Jasmine nodded.

‘Wow. I thought that was a joke,’ he said.

The horseman paused. He was studying Cobb’s face with the wisdom of many years more than Cobb had under his own belt.