The forest felt alive—and hostile. It wasn't the trimmed woodland of a noble's estate. It was raw, ancient, and wild. Pines rose like pillars into the mist, their needles whispering with every breath of wind. Birches stood pale and skeletal among them, and the ground was a tangle of roots, slick moss, and mud that pulled at their boots. The air smelled of rot and sap. Every step felt like a struggle against a living thing that wanted them gone.
Ivan and Murat, both born to cities, moved clumsily through the green maze. They were used to narrow alleys and stone walls, not endless trees. Their instincts failed them here. Every sound made them flinch, every movement in the brush felt like an ambush. The forest made them nervous—and fear made them loud.
Pavel was stronger, steadier, but no better prepared. His muscles belonged to the streets, to close fights and quick violence. In this wilderness, his strength had no target. He could follow orders, but not the land.
They were lost. The panic creeping into their movements told Koba everything he needed to know.
Here, far from the city's alleys and politics, his strange advantage revealed itself. His leadership had always come from intellect and calculation—but now it came from something else entirely. He saw the forest not as chaos, but as a code.
Jake Vance had never camped a day in his life, but he had watched others do it—from documentaries, from books, from screens that had once glowed with instruction and trivia. Those useless facts, once buried in the mind of a bored student, had become his weapon. In this century, his knowledge was witchcraft.
"Stop," he ordered after an hour. The men collapsed, panting and soaked in sweat. "We need water. Not from streams. They'll be watched."
Murat glared at him. "And where will you find water, planner? Will you summon it?"
Koba ignored the tone. He scanned the trees, the ferns, the shadows. Then he pointed. "There. See those broad leaves and ferns? That ground's always wet. There'll be a spring."
They followed. And there it was—a small trickle of clear water seeping from a bed of mossy stones. The others stared, astonished. To them, it was sorcery. To Koba, it was science. They drank in silence.
When they finished, Pavel asked, "Which way now?"
"East for another hour," Koba said. "Then north. Moss grows thickest on the north side of birch trees. It's crude, but it will do."
He became their compass.
As hunger returned, Ivan spotted bright red berries and reached for them. Koba stopped him with a sharp word. "Poison. Baneberries. You'd be dead before sunset." He crouched near a fallen tree and broke a few brown fungi off the bark. "These are fine. Birch polypore. Tough, but safe. There's wild garlic nearby—eat that with it."
The men obeyed. Slowly, their fear began to shift. What had been loyalty born of intimidation was turning into something deeper. They followed him because they had to. Now, they followed him because they believed he could keep them alive.
Far away, in a commandeered schoolhouse at Beloostrov, Colonel Sazonov bent over a map of the Karelian Isthmus. A red circle marked where the train had stopped.
"They won't have carried the crates," he said to his adjutant. "Too heavy. They'll have hidden them nearby. Sweep within five kilometers. I want cavalry covering every meter."
He tapped three points along the map. "The motorized platoon will start here, here, and here. They'll move along the forest roads. Engines can cover in an hour what men can in a day. If the fugitives use the roads, we'll catch them by nightfall."
He was confident—calm, systematic. To him, it wasn't a chase. It was an equation that could only end one way.
In the forest, the adrenaline had worn off. Fatigue and doubt crept in.
Murat stumbled over a root and cursed. "This is madness," he spat. "We wander until they find us? We should have gone west. Finland. Boats. Real escape! Timur would've had a plan, not this aimless walk through trees!"
Ivan grunted, half in agreement. Even Pavel's silence felt uncertain. All eyes turned to Koba.
He stopped. His expression didn't change. "Timur's plan would've been to fight," he said quietly. "And we'd be corpses by now. You think like a street brawler, Murat. You must think like a wolf. The wolf doesn't fight the bear. It disappears. It waits. Then it kills."
The calm weight in his voice crushed the argument. Murat looked away. But the doubt lingered, small and dangerous.
They camped that night in a shallow ravine, shielded from the wind. No fire. Only cold, hard ground and the soft whisper of the forest around them. They chewed the last of the mushrooms. No one spoke.
Then came the sound.
At first, it was faint—a low hum, a vibration through the ground. Then it grew, steady and mechanical, unlike anything the forest had ever known. It was the growl of an engine.
They froze. The noise rose and fell, moving along a hidden road less than a kilometer away.
Sazonov's hounds were here. Steel and oil had entered the woods.
The forest, once their refuge, had become a trap. And the walls were closing fast.