weren’t agrarian, since the ground is pretty dead, and they weren’t fishermen, since the catch isn’t significant. Here, in the mountains, I’m guessing a mine or quarry. The track used to go through this cave. I’m guessing it also knocked on the back door of the village. Is it still there, by chance?’
Borovsky’s grin broadened. ‘There is a trunk line about half a kilometer behind where your train stopped. It takes you right into the village.’
‘But you buried it,’ Cobb said, ‘so that anyone who came this far wouldn’t try to develop the village and its resources.’
Borovsky nodded. ‘That culvert we crossed was dug by the villagers. They used that earth to build the berm that runs from the main line to the village.’
‘We crossed that ridge,’ Cobb said. ‘Didn’t suspect a thing.’
‘Years of compacting, growth,’ Borovsky said.
‘Which brings me to question number four,’ Cobb said. ‘Money. The honor guard is well equipped, the village well fed. There’s not a gaunt face among them. My guess is that the prince set up a trust fund to support their mission, and that he did it in the name of the Borovsky family, his devoted servants.’
‘Impressive … and correct,’ Borovsky said. ‘All of the town’s basic needs are financed by a portion of the wealth the Romanovs distributed among institutions throughout Europe.’
Jasmine’s mouth and eyes were again open wide.
Suddenly, Sarah’s voice whispered into Cobb’s ear. ‘I’ve got it, Jack.’
‘Good,’ he answered. ‘Be right there.’
Cobb told Jasmine to tell the others that he would not permit the villagers to be harmed and assured them that he would be back momentarily. Instructing Jasmine and Dobrev to stay put, Cobb motioned for McNutt to join him. Then the duo headed deeper into the cave at a slow jog.
They followed the barely discernible path beyond the railroad cars to where Sarah’s powerful penlight was flickering. She was crouched by what looked like a few mounds of loosely packed dirt, but as the men got closer they could see slat-like wooden cases.
‘I’m surprised they didn’t take it with them,’ Sarah said.
McNutt peered as close as he could, whistled as he saw the outlines of howitzer shells, large cigar-shaped cylinders of black powder, and several big corkscrew-shaped implements used for boring holes. ‘Looks like Prince Felix absconded with more than treasure.’
‘He needed enough munitions to turn any tunnel, natural or unnatural, into a cave,’ Cobb said. He turned his flashlight on the walls. ‘You can see the darker blast markings, the parts where harder rocks scooped out chunks of softer ones.’
McNutt followed the light. Parts of the wall looked like the surface of the moon. ‘So this section of the cave was an add-on?’
‘No,’ Cobb said. ‘It wasn’t a cave. It was a tunnel. They sealed it.’
McNutt’s face uncreased in a big ‘ohhhh’ of understanding. ‘He closed the door. But it was still letting a little bit of a draft through.’
‘There are tracks buried under here,’ Sarah confirmed.
‘That lead to where?’ McNutt asked.
It was Garcia who responded through their earpieces. ‘To a whole set of tracks with a generous selection of destinations. Sorry I didn’t notice it before. I didn’t know where to look.’
As the group took that in, McNutt borrowed Sarah’s light and ambled over to the wall in front of them. ‘Brilliant. All of it.’
‘What?’ Sarah asked.
‘The guys who made this wall knew what they were doing,’ McNutt said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘They used high explosives to take down the top of the walls and part of the tunnel ceiling. They wanted to pulverize the rock.’
‘To keep from damaging the rails?’ Sarah asked.
‘No,’ McNutt said. ‘They knew they weren’t going to hurt the tracks.’ He grabbed a handful of black soil. ‘This used to be bark. They covered the tracks with logs to protect them from the impact of falling rock. Then they simply left the logs to rot. But they pulverized the rock to make sure that a subsequent explosion —
‘How does the explosion play out?’ Sarah asked. ‘You can’t just blow up the rock wall without blowing up the track.’
‘You’re right,’ McNutt said, calling upon his background in demolition. ‘We use the boring tool and the explosives they left behind. Set the TNT up and down the walls. The blowback from the walls and ceilings will be focused right on this spot, on the blockade. The small rocks become smaller rocks. The smaller rocks turn to dust. We drive right through. That’s why I said all of it was brilliant. This was not something the prince and his team just improvised.’
Sarah walked over and took back her penlight. She shined it over the wall that she would have to climb to set the unstable, ancient explosives.
‘Can you rig it?’ Cobb asked.
‘Sure.’
‘How long?’
‘Three days if McNutt helps. Before dawn if he leaves me alone.’
McNutt grimaced. Not at her comment, but at the steep walls of the cave. ‘Don’t you need a grappling hook?’
Sarah made an ‘are-you-kidding-me?’ face.
‘What about the fuse?’ Cobb asked.
‘I found a detonator,’ she assured him as she shooed them away.
Cobb left and McNutt followed. They met Jasmine and Dobrev at the mouth of the cave.
‘Borovsky, Anna, and Decebal went back to the village to prepare the people for a showdown,’ Jasmine said. ‘What did you find?’
‘The way out,’ Cobb said. ‘But first, we need to get our train back.’
McNutt looked as if dark clouds had parted and a shaft of heavenly light had shined directly on him. He cracked his knuckles in anticipation.
‘How do you know they haven’t started driving it back to Russia by now?’ Jasmine asked.
Cobb smiled at Jasmine. ‘For one thing, they think they’ll need it to haul out Rasputin and the rest of the treasure,’ he said before pointing at Dobrev. ‘For another …’
The engineer looked like a cat that had just eaten a canary.
He held up the ignition key.
58
McNutt stared at the key. ‘It’s really that simple?’
‘It’s that simple,’ Cobb replied. ‘We needed something that wouldn’t destroy the engine or take too long to rectify, so no sugar in the gas tank. He also blocked the air intake, but that’s neither here nor there.’
‘Can’t they just bypass it?’ he asked.
Cobb looked over to Jasmine, who passed the question to Dobrev.
When the engineer finished his derisively tinged words, Jasmine said, ‘It generally translates to-’ She stuck her tongue between her lips and made a slobbering sound.
‘Russian raspberry,’ McNutt laughed. ‘I like it.’
‘Nobody knows that engine better than Dobrev,’ Cobb said. ‘I had Jasmine ask him for a favor when we
