The discovery froze them.
It wasn't fear in the usual sense—it was deeper, colder, like the blood itself had thickened in their veins. The four men slid back from the ridge until the earth rose between them and the deadly thicket. They crouched together in the gathering dark, their breaths sharp clouds in the blue twilight.
Murat broke first. His voice came out cracked, raw. "It's a trap. He knew. He knew we'd come back." He dragged a hand through his hair, wild-eyed, scanning the trees as if the forest itself might rise up against them. "We leave now. To even touch that ground is suicide."
Ivan grunted, his hand tightening on the hilt of his knife—a nervous tic more than a threat. Only Pavel stayed still, his gaze fixed on Koba, waiting.
Koba let the panic burn itself out before he spoke. His tone was measured, quiet, and absolutely in control. "No," he said. "Not a trap. A warning system."
He stooped, picked up a stick, and began to draw in the frost-hardened soil. "Sazonov is clever," he said. "He knew we might return for the rifles. He couldn't risk leaving guards—too costly, too inefficient. So he left this." He sketched a rough outline of the thicket, marking crisscrossing lines around it. "Tripwires. Not for killing—for signaling. Flares, maybe blank charges. Enough to wake every cavalry unit within ten versts."
He looked up, eyes cold and steady. "He doesn't want our bodies. He wants to hear us coming."
The words shifted the fear in their eyes into something else—terror tempered by understanding.
"This isn't a wall," Koba continued softly. "It's a web. And webs follow patterns. Soldiers laid these wires, not artists. They would have used the same logic they always do—flat ground, clear paths. The hard places, the thick brush—they'd avoid those. There's always a seam. We just have to find it."
He waited for the last of the moonlight to vanish behind the clouds, the forest sinking into perfect black. Then he said, "We move now. Pavel, you're the strength—move the crates when I call for it. Murat, Ivan—you're the eyes. Take the flanks. If you see light, hear horses, anything—one whistle, short, like a nightjar. Go."
The two Chechens nodded and vanished into the dark. Koba and Pavel crawled back toward the crest, their bellies pressed to the cold earth. Koba carried only a long, slender branch and his knife.
The work began.
Every motion was silent and deliberate. Koba flattened himself against the ground, feeling the bite of the cold through his coat. He held the branch by its end and swept it slowly above the ground in short, careful arcs. He wasn't feeling for the wire itself, but for the faint resistance—the whisper of something that didn't belong.
Minutes stretched into eternity. His breath fogged against the dirt. Then—a tiny snag. He froze. His eyes followed the tremor in the branch until he found it: a hair-thin wire, stretched six inches above the ground, trembling from his touch. At its end, half-buried at the base of a birch, a brass device no bigger than his thumb. A percussion flare.
He signaled to Pavel. The big man slid forward, silent as an avalanche waiting to fall. Koba didn't cut the wire. Instead, he dug, scraping away the frozen earth around the small wooden stake anchoring it. His fingers were numb, but his precision never faltered. When the stake was exposed, he pulled—slowly, evenly—until it came free with a faint pop. The line went slack.
One thread down.
Then another. And another. Time dissolved. The forest shrank to the scrape of his knife, the sweep of the branch, the dull roar of blood in his ears.
At one point, a loose pebble rolled from under his hand, striking a wire with the faintest metallic tink. The sound cracked the silence like a gunshot. Both men flattened themselves to the dirt, waiting for the flare, for the fire, for the thunder of hooves. Seconds became minutes. Nothing came but the wind.
They kept working.
By the time the path was clear, Koba's hands were bleeding inside his gloves. He had carved a narrow, winding corridor through Sazonov's invisible maze. He marked its edges with small white stones, a breadcrumb trail of survival.
He gave the signal.
Pavel and Murat crawled forward, their massive frames moving inch by inch through the cleared passage. The crates were where they'd left them—buried deep under thorns, monstrously heavy. Getting them free was agony. Every shift of weight, every crack of frost, felt like thunder in the quiet. But slowly, methodically, they moved the boxes back—passing them hand to hand through the cleared gap, inch by inch, muscle by muscle.
Sweat froze on their brows. Their breath came in ragged bursts. But they made no sound beyond that.
Then the last crate slid clear. They had done it.
They lay on the ridge, panting, shaking, half from exhaustion, half from the dizzy, unreal relief of survival.
They had walked through the spider's web and lived.
And then they heard it.
At first, it was faint—distant, almost a dream. Then it came again, low and mournful, echoing through the trees. Whoo—whooo.
A train whistle.
It came a third time, closer now. And with it, a light—sharp, white, and merciless—cutting through the forest like a blade. It swept across the trees, searching.
A patrol train.
The beam moved back and forth across the black wilderness, crawling toward them.
Four men. Four crates. Four hundred kilograms of rifles.
And minutes—no, seconds—before the light found them.