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.
The horsemen were incredible, but the Black Robes had superior numbers and firepower. What was worse was that the horses, although obviously well trained, were frightened by the Cossack cycles and unwillingly threw off their riders’ aim. In some extreme cases, they threw the riders themselves.
McNutt, meanwhile, would pop up like a whack-a-mole, target a Black Robe, and snap off a shot before ducking from an angry swarm of bullets slapping the metal wall of the flatbed fence in return. McNutt had to keep sliding from place to place along the wall so they couldn’t get a bead on him.
Cobb ran to get the Uzi. After checking for the horsemen’s positions, he simply pushed the gun up over the flatbed lip from a crouch, and sprayed bullets at anything in range.
‘Give me that,’ McNutt hissed, sliding his empty Steyr across the metal floor. He sounded like a father who was disappointed that his toddler had gotten his hands on some matches. He grabbed the Uzi from Cobb, who gave it up willingly. ‘Let me show you how it’s done.’
Cobb grinned despite the situation and said quietly, ‘You picked a good team, Papi. A very good team.’ His head snapped back around when he heard Garcia howl.
He saw the techie on his knees, holding the big engine bowl like Oliver Twist asking for more food. On either side of him were the ‘X’ shaped rotors and what looked like the skeleton of a barber’s chair. It was a simple slat of a seat, with a fuel tank as a backrest, positioned upon three wide-set, metal legs ending in tiny chair wheels. Attached to the front leg was a horizontal footrest bar.
‘I’m trying to get the motors and rotors attached,’ Garcia whined, ‘but every time I stand up, they shoot at me!’
Cobb looked back at the flatbed fence to see McNutt looking at him from a crouch. ‘The Uzi’s running out of ammo, too,’ he reported. ‘And the horsemen are getting routed. A couple more minutes and we’ll be the only ones left.’
Cobb’s mind raced. Every scenario he played out in his brain ended badly. He and Garcia could try to finish erecting the H-4, but the odds they would complete it in one piece were negligible. Cobb could try his plan without the H-4, but that would only have the Black Robes swamping the train with reinvigorated mania.
And just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse …
‘Jack!’ Jasmine cried. ‘The uncoupled compartment car is up ahead!’
Cobb didn’t have to look, and Jasmine didn’t have to explain the danger. If they hit the stationary car at this speed, the crash would likely derail them. But if they slowed now, they’d be easy pickings for the Black Robes.
Cobb could see no alternative. White flags meant nothing to these lunatics. The explorers and villagers would have to fight to their last man, and their last breaths. Cobb shook his head.
‘Jasmine, we’re going to need to-’ he started to say, but McNutt interrupted.
‘Cobb-’
‘I wasn’t talking to you, McNutt-’
‘No, Jack, look!’
McNutt stood at the rail, pointing northeast. Cobb blinked in bewilderment. McNutt was standing up straight, and no one was shooting at him. Cobb sprang to his feet and stared off to where his sniper was pointing. And then he saw it.
Roaring out of the tree line on a sidecar motorcycle were Sergeant Anna Rusinko and Colonel Viktor Borovsky.
And both were armed with assault rifles.
65
McNutt cheered as he watched Anna steer the bike while Borovsky held the AK-47 against his shoulder in the sidecar, targeting and hitting Black Robe drivers as though they were wolves.
The two had dragged the abandoned bike from a ditch near the village after hauling Black Robe corpses from it. Now they had the remaining Black Robes scattering for cover. Not a one of them charged the new arrivals.
‘White, Red, and now Yellow Russians!’ McNutt taunted.
The others weren’t paying him — or the new arrivals — much attention. Cobb told Jasmine to slow to a crawl to buy time between themselves and the rogue car. He was busy on the flatbed, helping Garcia with the last steps of building the H-4. The only assembly still required for the seven-foot-tall vehicle was the rotor and engine attachments. The footrest had been attached to the two forward legs, the seat at their top, and the spine above, where the rotors were going to be attached. There was no cabin, no tail section. The controls sat on the bicycle-like handlebars that were suspended from the rotor base at the bottom of a periscope-like extension. The whole contraption looked like a skeleton — if a skeleton consisted of a skull, backbone, sternum, two hipbones, a pelvis, and a really long coccyx.
