The refrigeration was turned off when the train turned north, and in the past eight hours, the rotting debris in the car had heated. The smell of death choked the air, triggering Kozachenko’s gag reflex. He dry heaved. They were out of food, out of vodka, and the car had stopped hours ago.
Kozachenko had insisted Yolkin remain quiet in case of listeners outside, but the time had come to break his own rule. He turned on his phone, dialed, and hoped Anatoliy picked up. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, unless I’m dead, and this is what hell smells like,” Barkov answered. “How do we get out of here?”
“Stas said it was arranged. That someone would come.”
“They better come quickly. We’ve searched the barrier wall, and there’s no way out, Vasyl.”
“In another hour, I’ll place a call to the pakhan.”
* * *
As his self-imposed deadline approached, finally there was a noise outside. Two men talking in Russian.
“Hey!” Kozachenko yelled. “Get us out of here.”
It seemed an eternity before the walls came down. Kozachenko didn’t wait for the wall to be entirely removed, but climbed out over the debris. The piles of detritus smelled like burning trash and rotting flesh, and Kozachenko found himself gagging again.
Even distancing himself from the train car didn’t help. The smell had permeated his clothes and his senses. He would be smelling death for days.
“What took you so long?” he demanded of the men. “It’s well after midnight.”
“We had to wait. Polish Special Forces came to the station asking questions. They looked at everything. They checked the camera feeds and the work orders. The paperwork showed the long car headed to Gdánsk. The soldiers finally left, but we must assume they’ll be back. We need to hurry.”
While the men worked to free the vehicles, Kozachenko signaled Barkov to follow him over to one of the trainmen’s trucks. Opening a map on the hood, he pointed to Elblag. “We are here, correct?”
Barkov shook his head and pointed to the town of Piławki. “They know we are getting close.”
A helicopter flew low over the trees above them, close enough to set the leaves overhead quaking.
Kozachenko closed his eyes and drew a breath. “I’m thinking that once the vehicles are free, we get on the road and beat a path toward the border. When the sun rises, we take cover until the time comes to fire the weapon. Then in the chaos that ensues after the weapon is fired, we’ll make our run for the border.”
“They will have eyes on the main roads, Vasyl. We’ll have to go a back way. We don’t have much time.”
“They’ll expect us to go east, so we’ll go north,” Kozachenko said.
“Agreed.”
“Good. We will take this road toward Pagórki and Elblag Upland Landscape Park.” He pointed to a small winding road that went north, one without too many towns to navigate. “By the time the sun rises, we will have over one hundred square kilometers of forest in which to hide.”
Barkov nodded his approval. “It’s a good plan, Vasyl. It leaves only one more problem.”
Kozachenko bristled. “And what would that be, Anatoliy?”
“The compulsator isn’t charged enough to fire the weapon.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The compulsator charges when we drive the trucks. We drained the power when we fired the weapon. Now because we haven’t been driving enough, there is not enough charge.”
“I don’t see the problem. As soon as they free the trucks from the debris, we can charge the battery.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Kozachenko rubbed his temples and wished for a vodka. “Explain to me again how this works.”
Barkov leaned against the truck. “The gun works off an electromagnetic pulse driven by the compensated pulse alternator. It’s small and must be recharged either by running the diesel engine or by hooking it up to another electrical source.”
“How long does it take to recharge?”
Barkov took his time doing the math. “Using the truck engine, it would take five hours, possibly more.”
Kozachenko slammed his hands down on the truck’s fender. They couldn’t afford to run the truck engine that long for fear of running out of fuel. “What if we hook the machine up to more than one engine?”
“We don’t have enough horsepower available to cut the time by much. Bundling the truck and the GAZ, it would still take several hours to charge.”
Kozachenko threw back his head and stared up at the branches of the tree above him. The leaves rustled in a light breeze, allowing glimpses of clear sky and stars. The night was clear, and the stars winked overhead as if taunting him, reminding him that with the rising of the sun came the chance of detection. “Can we use another type of power?”
“To charge it instantly would take something big. If we hook up to a large enough electrical source, we can fire the gun all day. What we need is a big generator.”
He’d been the one to nix hauling the extra equipment. The plan called for the weapon to only be fired once, so he had erred on the side of mobility. None of them knew they would be forced to fire the gun multiple times.
“What do you mean by large power source, Anatoliy?”
“The compulsator needs twenty to thirty megawatts to create a pulse strong enough to launch the projectile. Only a small substation or large transformer could instantly provide that kind of power.”
Kozachenko gestured to the overhead power lines. “What about those?”
“Maybe, if we had an insulated bucket and hot sticks. We don’t. And I don’t feel like getting fried today.”
Kozachenko didn’t appreciate Barkov’s flippancy. “There are worse ways to die, Anatoliy.”
Barkov nodded. “A substation would be better, Vasyl.”
“Why is that?”
“We can throw breakers and use a t-tap. Even a small base would allow us to bundle enough power to instantly charge the compulsator.”
“Then we have a plan.”