Two railcars waited for them on the tracks in Czerwona Karczma, just north of Ostroda. Jordan had been expecting a handcart with a hand pump, the ones usually seen in old movies. She was pleasantly surprised to find they would be driving what appeared to be modified truck cabs on train wheels.
“What about other trains on the track?”
“The Polish State Railways has agreed to an engineering possession for the next two hours. It means they will close the track in both directions, indicating a maintenance issue. Once the time is up, trains will be allowed to pass.”
They were on the clock in more ways than one. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
Adamski gestured to the lead vehicle. “You’re with me, Agent. You and I will take the first spur we can find,” he said. “You, go with him.” He pointed Davis toward a soldier sitting in the second railcar.
“What about the rest of the team?” Jordan asked.
“They will continue the helicopter search. From here to Małdyty, the train passes through forest, and there are a number of abandoned spurs. North from there to Elblag is all farmland. The team should be able to easily spot any sidelined train cars from the air. If and when we find something, we’ll reconnoiter.” Adamski produced an earbud and a transmitter and held them out to Jordan. “We need to get you linked in on the comm.”
The devices he produced were top of the line—a small earbud that fit out of sight and a transmitter that hooked at the waist.
“Anything special about these?” Jordan asked, slipping the device into her ear.
“These are set on VOX, voice operated exchange, so the teams can hear each other at all times.” He handed her the transmitter. “We are the white team, the duo behind us is the green team, and the crew in the chopper is the black team. If you need to talk privately, say the word koala and switch to channel three.”
“Koala?”
“My wife’s favorite animal.”
She hadn’t known he was married.
“Keep the chatter to a minimum. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Adamski activated the comms. “Let’s take roll call.”
Each member of the team sounded off in alphabetical order, each one using a code name starting with the first letter of their last name. Davis sounded off as Deadline.
Adamski signaled it was her turn next.
“Jumper.” It was the first thing that came to mind, the closest thing she could think of to floater, which in spy talk meant a person used one time, occasionally, or even unknowingly for an intelligence operation.
“Avatar,” Adamski said. “Ready, Jumper?”
Jordan nodded and climbed up into the cab, wishing she had a cooler name.
Both sides of the old Unimog were open, and the breeze felt nice. It was a warm day, clear for a change, with no chance of rain until late afternoon. The trees grew tall on both sides of them, forming a deciduous tunnel over the tracks. They were moving fast enough that it was difficult to scan the woods. Not that it mattered. She was convinced the Russians had already headed north.
“Okay, we’re approaching our first spur,” Adamski said. “You need to jump off and manually throw the switch.”
Jordan looked down. The ground rushed past at approximately thirty-five miles an hour. “Seriously?”
“I’ll slow down.”
Jordan listened closely while he explained the process. She would manually throw a lever and wait for the tracks to change. Once the Unimog cleared the switch, she would throw the lever back.
“That allows green team to continue on to the next spur,” Adamski explained. “They check that one, we check the one after that, and so on. The best anyone could tell me, there are eight or nine sidelines between here and Małdyty. Spurs four and six are heavily used. We’re on the clock, so we’ll skip them. Are you ready for the first switch?”
“Let’s do it.”
Adamski braked the vehicle. Jordan waited until they were moving at the speed of a moving walkway before stepping off. Then, running ahead, she flipped the switch. The track rotated, and Adamski and the cart diverted. Once he cleared the switch, she reversed the lever. The track had barely locked into place when the green team cruised past. They repeated the process six times. Each diversion required driving the Unimog forward and then reversing to the main track and proceeding on. Adamski and Jordan were coming up on number seven.
“This is the last one,” Adamski said.
She’d been listening to the chatter on VOX, not understanding the language, but by the sense of urgency, she realize that the GROM crew in the helicopter, the black team, had found nothing so far.
“It looks like we’re at the end.”
“Right,” Jordan said.
Adamski checked his watch. “Our two hours are up. Green team, vacate the track.”
“Copy that.”
Jordan jumped out, flipped the switch, and flipped it back. The trees weren’t as dense here. Tipping her head back, she looked up at the sky. That’s when she spotted the vultures. They were circling about a mile down the tracks.
“I think we might have found it,” she said, pointing out the birds.
“Don’t get too excited. This is the country. It could just be a dead deer.” She heard the words, but took note of his carriage. He seemed more attentive, leaning into the wheel with a sense of anticipation.
The smell reached them before they rounded the corner. An odor of burned and rotting flesh permeated the air, making it hard to breathe. The refrigerator car gaped open. On the ground in front of it were two large mounds of remains from PR Flight 91. Inside, the two false walls lay haphazardly on top of more piles scraped to the side to make way for two vehicles.
Jordan could see the tire tracks of the trucks marked by pieces of flesh and bone mixed with tattered clothing on the ramps they used for unloading. They had driven over and through the remains of somebody’s mother or father or wife or child. Jordan felt her anger swell. What type of men could be so callous, so irreverent? Were they men who believed in a cause? Were they men influenced by greed? Or were they men who blindly followed orders? It didn’t matter. She intended to make them all pay.
While Adamski called in the other teams, Jordan took her transmitter off VOX and checked in with Lory and Zhen.
“Let me put you on speaker,” Lory said.
“Any luck finding a spike in energy usage?”
“According to the power company, the only oddity was a power outage early this morning that knocked out electricity from Pasłęk to Elblag and towns to the northeast. According to the person I spoke with, the power was out for eighteen minutes thirty-seven seconds, and then it just came back on. They sent two officers out to check on things, but they radioed in that everything was fine. The video was working. There were no cut fences.”
“What time was that?”
“Sometime before dawn.”
It had to be their guys, thought Jordan. She wrote down the number for the power company and took directions to the substation, though a part of her knew both would be dead ends and they shouldn’t waste time. The Russians were moving and would be long gone from the area by now. “Where are the two officers stationed?”
“Pasłęk.”
North.
A quick call to the police station confirmed what they’d already pieced together. Then Jordan walked back over to where Captain Adamski stood staring at the piles of remains. His eyes were wet, and she wondered if it was because of the weight of their find or the stench exacerbated by the heat of the day.
He recovered quickly when the green team arrived. Shortly after that, the black team swooped in with the chopper.
Davis walked over and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She leaned against him for a moment before pulling away. “Captain . . . I can call you that again, right?”
“We only use code names when we have teams separated in the field.”
She told him about the power outage in Pasłęk. “The Russians headed north from here, stopping long enough to charge up the power source for the gun. My best guess is they kept moving in the same direction. Once the sun came up, they would have needed a place to hide. Any ideas?”
“The best place to disappear would be Elblag Upland Landscape Park. It’s a protected area—trees, reservoirs, and 134.6 square kilometers of land. We can’t cover that much ground in the time we have left. Unless we get lucky, we’ll never find them in there.”