The fire-cart thundered past the checkpoint, a chariot of lies plunging deeper into the heart of the inferno. The naval command office, a stout, imposing granite building, loomed before them, somehow untouched by the chaos that lapped at its foundations. It was an island of administrative order in a sea of fire and battle.
Koba leaped from the rear platform before the engine had even come to a full stop. "The water mains!" he roared to the handful of terrified clerks and junior officers huddled near the entrance, using the lie that had been his key. "We need access to the building's main pump room to redirect pressure to Pier Four!"
His fireman's uniform and the sheer, panicked urgency of his voice were an instant passport. No one questioned the heroes who had come to save them. An elderly, trembling adjutant led them inside, his words a babble of gratitude and fear. The building's interior was a hive of frantic, disorganized activity. Aides ran through the corridors clutching papers, their shouts echoing in the marble halls. They were all focused on the reports flooding in from the riots and the fires. Koba and Pavel, two soot-stained firemen on a vital mission, were effectively invisible, their presence not just accepted but welcomed.
They were directed down a flight of stairs to the cellar, towards the supposed pump room. The moment the adjutant's footsteps faded, they turned and darted back up a secondary staircase, emerging into a quiet, deserted corridor on the second floor. They had found the administrative wing. A brass plaque on a heavy oak door read: Office of the Port Commander, Rear Admiral Fyodor Litvin. They had reached their target.
The battle for Warehouse Three had reached its brutal, foregone conclusion. Ruslan, the berserker captain of Timur's Company Alpha, stood on a barricade of splintered crates, a smoking Nagant revolver in each hand, his wild beard matted with blood and grime. A mad, ecstatic grin was plastered on his face. Around him lay the last of his men, their bodies sprawled amidst the wreckage. The army, the endless, implacable tide of gray greatcoats, was storming their position from three sides.
Ruslan saw them coming. He knew he was a dead man. But in his mind, he was not a dying gangster in a pointless battle; he was a hero, a dragon-slayer, standing atop a mountain of gold he had won for his family. He raised both pistols and charged forward, screaming a final, defiant Chechen war cry, his guns blazing until the disciplined volley fire of the Semyonovsky Guard cut him down in a bloody heap. The ammunition had been spent. The diversion had been paid for in blood.
The lock on Admiral Litvin's office door was heavy and ornate, a testament to his rank. Pavel didn't bother with subtlety. He placed the tip of a heavy iron crowbar from the fire-cart's toolkit into the jamb and put his massive shoulder into it. With a scream of tortured wood and a sharp crack of splintering oak, the door flew open.
The office was a shrine to naval power, filled with maps, ship models, and the scent of expensive leather and old paper. But their eyes were drawn to one thing: a heavy, black, iron safe tucked into an alcove behind the admiral's desk.
"Time," Koba said, his voice a low, urgent hiss.
Pavel went to work on the safe. The crowbar, a tool of crude destruction, was a poor choice for such a task, but it was all they had. He wedged the tip into the seam of the safe's door and began to heave, his muscles bunching, the tendons in his neck standing out like steel cables. The office filled with the tortured, groaning sound of metal being bent beyond its limits.
In the teahouse, Anya received the runner's report. "Warehouse Three has fallen," the boy gasped, his face pale. "Ruslan and all his men are gone."
Anya's face was impassive. She looked at the clock. Koba and Pavel had been inside the port for seven minutes. It was not enough. They needed more time, more chaos. Without consulting anyone, without a moment's hesitation, she made a commander's decision. She grabbed a fresh runner, a wiry youth with the quick, intelligent eyes of a survivor.
"Find Company Beta," she commanded, her voice as sharp and cold as ice. "Find their captain, Idris. Give him a new target." Her finger stabbed at the map, at a large, vulnerable structure on the southern edge of the docks. "The main grain silo. Tell him to burn it to the ground."
The runner's eyes widened. The grain silo was not a military or strategic target. It held the city's winter flour reserves. Burning it was a purely destructive, nihilistic act of terror, an attack on the civilian population itself.
"Go," Anya ordered, her gaze unwavering. "The General needs more time."
She was no longer just following Koba's plan. She was improvising on his theme, composing her own verses in his symphony of destruction, proving she had fully and irrevocably embraced his monstrous, ends-justify-the-means philosophy.
With a final, agonized shriek of metal, the safe door burst open, its hinges twisted and broken. Koba was on it in an instant, his hands rifling through the contents—deeds, private letters, a bottle of French brandy. And then he found it. A leather-bound folder, stamped with the seal of the Imperial Russian Navy. He tore it open. Inside were the official, signed shipping manifests and transfer orders for the following morning. He had it. The prize. The key. The piece of paper for which dozens of men had just died.
He was in the process of shoving the precious documents inside his heavy fireman's coat when the ruined office door was thrown open.
Rear Admiral Fyodor Litvin, a stout, choleric man with a face the color of boiled ham, stood framed in the doorway. He had clearly been returning to his office to retrieve some vital document, his face a mask of fury at the chaos engulfing his command. That fury instantly transformed into shocked, sputtering disbelief as he took in the scene: his splintered door, his ravaged safe, and two soot-stained firemen standing over it like vultures.
His naval officer's mind, accustomed to order and discipline, struggled for a moment to comprehend the violation. Then his eyes widened in full, horrified understanding. These were not firemen. They were thieves. Saboteurs.
"Guards!" he bellowed, his hand instinctively flying to the ornate, holstered pistol at his belt. "Guards! Intruders!"
Pavel moved.
He did not rush. He did not charge. He simply exploded across the room, a force of nature, a blur of motion that seemed to defy his immense size. He covered the ten feet between them before the Admiral's fingers had even closed around the grip of his pistol.
There was a brief, brutal, and almost entirely silent struggle. Pavel's left hand, a slab of granite, clamped down on the Admiral's gun hand, crushing his fingers and preventing him from drawing the weapon. His right arm snaked around the stout man's neck, a thick, muscular python of an arm that locked into a perfect, inescapable chokehold.
The Admiral let out a strangled, gurgling sound. His face, already red with fury, began to turn a deep, terrifying shade of purple. His booted feet drummed a frantic, useless tattoo on the expensive Persian rug. He clawed at the arm around his throat, his eyes bulging with a mixture of terror and disbelief.
Pavel held him fast, his expression a grim, impassive mask. He looked over the struggling Admiral's shoulder at Koba, his one good eye asking the terrible, silent question.
Koba's mind raced. They could not let him raise the alarm. A single, successful shout would bring the entire building's guard detail down upon them. They could not shoot him; the sound would be a death sentence, echoing through the marble halls. There was only one option. The silent option. The final option.
Jake Vance screamed, a silent, soul-tearing howl from the depths of his mental prison. No. Not this. Not another one. Not like this.
But Koba simply looked at Pavel, at the dying man in his arms, and gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
Pavel, needing no further command, applied a final, brutal surge of pressure. There was a sickening, wet, cartilaginous crack that was shockingly, obscenely loud in the quiet office. The Admiral's struggling ceased instantly. His body went limp, a dead weight in Pavel's arms.
They had their prize. They had their key to escape. But they were no longer just revolutionaries or thieves. They were murderers, their hands stained with the blood of a high-ranking officer of the Imperial Navy. And the price of their piece of paper had just been paid in full.