The silence after the train stopped felt alive—a crushing, suffocating weight that pressed down on them. The steady rhythm of the wheels was gone, leaving only ringing ears and the ragged sound of men trying not to panic. Outside, the forest waited, vast and indifferent.
Murat broke first. His eyes were wide, darting between the windows and the motionless body of Captain Morozov on the floor.
"We are dead," he hissed. "He pulled the brake. They'll know where we are. The army will come. They'll surround us in minutes!"
His fear spread fast. Ivan shifted his stance, his fingers white around his rifle. Even Pavel's single eye held a flicker of doubt.
Then Koba moved.
His head throbbed where it had hit the wall, his vision swimming for a moment. Jake Vance—the man buried somewhere beneath—wanted to scream. But Koba rose instead. The pain burned away the panic, leaving only clarity.
He stood straight, steady, silent. The calm that settled around him was unnatural, almost inhuman.
"Panic is a luxury we can't afford," he said quietly. His tone was sharp enough to cut through the air. Murat froze mid-breath. "Murat, if you can't control yourself, I'll do it for you. Pavel, Murat—get the crates on the tracks. Ivan, help me with the body."
The command in his voice was absolute. It left no room for argument. They didn't just hear orders; they believed them. His certainty made survival feel possible again.
"We have ten minutes," Koba said. "That's how long it takes for a patrol to reach us from the nearest station. Everything we do in those ten minutes decides if we live or die."
Ten minutes—he turned their fear into a deadline.
Running wasn't enough. Running was predictable. His mind was already working through angles and patterns, rewriting the battlefield before the enemy even arrived.
"They'll send cavalry," he continued, pulling Morozov's body toward the door. "They'll expect us to flee west, toward Finland. So we'll go east—back toward Petersburg. Along the rail ties. Step only on the wood. No footprints in the gravel. They won't expect it."
Simple, logical misdirection. It would confuse men trained to think like soldiers of the early century, not strategists of a later one.
Koba glanced down at Morozov's body. "They'll use him to identify us. We can't allow that."
He stripped the insignia and papers from the dead officer's coat with quiet precision. The task was grisly but methodical—just another piece of work to be done.
Outside, Pavel and Murat dragged the heavy wooden crates from the freight car. Each was filled with rifles and ammunition, and each weighed more than a man. The effort tore at their shoulders, sweat mixing with grime and fear. Every sound—the scrape of wood, the crunch of gravel—felt too loud in the still morning air.
Koba and Ivan hauled the body fifty meters into the trees, where the ground turned to black, sucking mud. Together they dumped Morozov into a stagnant ditch that swallowed him with a wet, bubbling sound. They threw branches and leaves over the spot until it looked untouched. Then they listened—hearts pounding—for any sound of pursuit.
Ten kilometers down the line, a telegraph operator named Sasha noticed the signal die. The steady tick of the repeater fell silent. He stared at the blank machine, then began to tap furiously.
TRAIN 77B, MILITARY SPECIAL. UNSCHEDULED STOP AT KILOMETER 117. EMERGENCY BRAKE PULLED. NO RESPONSE FROM GUARD CAR. POSSIBLE DERAILMENT OR HOSTILE ACTION. URGENT ASSISTANCE REQUIRED.
The message raced through the wires and landed minutes later on the desk of Colonel Sazonov in St. Petersburg.
He read it once. Then his hand tightened, crumpling the paper. "He's off the rails," he muttered. The ghost had escaped again—but now he had left a trail.
Sazonov began firing orders like bullets.
"Cavalry from Vyborg and Petersburg—ride the line, converge at kilometer 117! Set a one-hundred-kilometer cordon. No one crosses without inspection. No one."
He turned to another officer. "Forestry maps. Every road, every river, every track. I want it on my desk."
And then, almost as an afterthought, "Tell Petergof Barracks their motorized infantry platoon is live. Engines running by dawn."
The full weight of the empire began to move—telegraphs, horses, engines—all focused on four men on foot.
Back at the line, the crates were hidden in a thicket a hundred meters off the tracks. The spot was burned into Koba's memory. The rifles they carried were enough for now. They had no more time.
Koba looked once down the empty rails. Then he said, "Into the woods. East. Move."
They left the line and entered the forest, swallowed by shadow and silence. The trees closed around them—pine and birch in endless ranks, the ground soft and cold beneath their boots. The smell of oil and steel faded behind them, replaced by damp earth and resin.
They had gone less than five minutes when the sound reached them—a faint cry at first, then rising, clearer, closer.
The whistle of a steam engine.
The hounds were coming.