There was no time for a second thought, no room for hesitation. Koba initiated the assault not with a shout, but with a silent, calculated act of disruption. He scooped up a rock the size of his fist and, with a sharp, fluid motion, hurled it across the intervening space. It sailed through the fire-lit air and smashed one of the heavy lanterns at the far end of the siding. The glass shattered with a loud pop, and the immediate area was plunged into a confusing pocket of darkness, drawing the crew's attention for a single, critical second.
In that heartbeat of distraction, Koba's team struck.
It was not a gunfight. Gunshots would bring the entire camp down upon them, fire or no fire. It was a silent, brutal brawl, a whirlwind of disciplined violence that erupted from the shadows. Pavel, a mountain of pure, kinetic fury, did not bother with subtlety. He charged directly at the foreman Borodin, his heavy boots pounding the frozen earth, a low growl rumbling in his chest.
Murat and Ivan moved like a pair of hunting vipers, their urban combat instincts perfectly suited to the close-quarters chaos. They hit the two closest loggers in a coordinated strike, one going low to take out a man's legs while the other drove the steel butt of his pistol into the side of the second man's head.
The fight was short, sharp, and brutally decisive. Borodin, the ex-soldier, reacted with impressive speed. He turned to face Pavel's charge, dropping into a boxer's stance, his fists raised. He was a tough, experienced fighter. But Pavel was not a boxer. He was an avalanche. He didn't try to trade blows; he used his immense weight and momentum, crashing into Borodin like a runaway locomotive. The foreman landed a solid, desperate punch to Pavel's ribs that would have felled a lesser man, but it was like punching a granite wall. Pavel's arms wrapped around him, lifting him from his feet and driving him backward to the ground with a force that knocked the air from his lungs in a single, agonized grunt.
The other loggers were tough men, hardened by a life of physical labor, but they were not killers like the Chechens. They were stunned by the suddenness and ferocity of the attack. One of them managed to swing a heavy logging hook, but Ivan simply absorbed the blow on his thick forearm and responded with a single, devastating headbutt that ended the fight. Within a minute that felt like an eternity, it was over. Six men were subdued, groaning on the ground or unconscious, their brief, violent resistance crushed.
A new and terrible question hung in the flickering, fire-lit air. What now?
Murat, his face a cold mask in the dancing light, his blood up from the fight, drew the long, thin Chechen knife from his belt. Its edge gleamed. The "farmhouse solution" was the simplest, the cleanest. No witnesses. No loose ends.
But Koba held up a hand, a sharp, arresting gesture.
[Jake]: We can't. Not again. We promised. Thieves, not murderers. Tie them up. That's enough.
[Koba]: The Jake-protocol for witness management is inefficient and carries a high risk of future compromise. However, the secondary strategic analysis is sound. Six dead bodies constitutes a high-profile murder and will bring a full Okhrana investigation from St. Petersburg, led by a man like Sazonov. A simple robbery will be handled by the local, underfunded gendarmerie. The latter is the preferable outcome.
"No killing," Koba commanded, his voice sharp and absolute, cutting through Murat's bloodlust. "It is strategically unwise. Tie them. Gag them. Throw them in that empty supply shed. They won't be found until morning."
The decision was not about morality; it was about long-term risk assessment. It was a demonstration of a new, higher level of planning, one that looked beyond the immediate problem to the consequences of the solution itself. It was the thinking of a statesman, not just a gangster. His men, even Murat, complied without question. They dragged the six groaning men into a dark, windowless supply shed used for storing rock salt and tarps, bound them securely, and barred the door from the outside.
Now, the real race began. The fire still raged, a magnificent, roaring distraction, but it would not last forever. It was both their cover and their ticking clock.
Koba sent Murat at a run to fetch the horses and the crude sledges they had hidden. The rest of them turned their attention to the real prize. The back-breaking labor of loading the four rifle crates, which had taken them days to move a few kilometers, now had to be repeated in minutes. They worked in a desperate, frantic silence, their muscles screaming in protest. They hauled the first sledge to the siding, then manhandled the two monstrously heavy crates from the sledge up onto the flatcar. The wood groaned under the weight. They repeated the process, their breath coming in ragged, painful gasps, sweat stinging their eyes and freezing on their skin.
The noise of the fire, the distant, panicked shouts of the loggers, the hiss and crackle of burning pine—it was the soundtrack to their theft, a symphony of chaos that masked the sounds of their own desperate labor.
Finally, the last crate was loaded. They had their prize. They had the means.
Koba swung himself up into the cab of the small shunting engine. It was cold and silent, a beast of iron and steam. Jake's mind, a repository of a thousand useless documentaries and books, supplied the necessary information. He scanned the controls—the regulator, the reverser, the brake. There was still a faint warmth radiating from the boiler, and the pressure gauge showed a low but usable reading. It was enough.
He wrenched a heavy lever. With a gut-wrenching groan of protesting metal and a loud hiss of steam from the pistons, the small engine lurched forward a few feet, bumping against the flatcar with a solid clank. It was working. Pavel, standing ready on the flatcar, threw his full weight against the large, rusted handbrake lever. With a screech of tortured metal, the brakes released.
The small train began to roll.
It moved at a crawl at first, then picked up speed as it reached the slight downward grade of the spur line that led to the main track. They were moving. They were pulling away from the chaos, away from the fire, away from the scene of their crime. A ghost train, laden with a small arsenal and four fugitives, slipping silently out of the burning camp and into the vast, dark, and welcoming wilderness.
The sounds of the camp—the shouting, the roar of the flames—faded behind them, replaced by the quiet, rhythmic click-clack of the wheels on the rails. They were clear. They were victorious. They possessed the rifles, the transportation, and a clear steel path leading south.
Ivan, who had the presence of mind to grab the foreman Borodin's heavy leather satchel during the brawl, began to go through its contents by the light of a single lantern they'd managed to salvage. He tossed aside a half-eaten loaf of bread and a flask of cheap vodka, his face scrunching in disappointment. At the bottom, he found a thick, leather-bound ledger. "Shipping records," he grunted, handing it to Koba with a shrug.
By the weak, flickering yellow light of the lantern, Koba flipped through the book. His eyes, accustomed to reading official documents and party reports, scanned the neat columns of figures, cargo manifests, and destinations. He expected to see the names of timber merchants in Vologda, lumber yards in Arkhangelsk.
But the names were wrong. He froze. A shipment of "specially hardened birch" for decking. Another of "prime oak" for structural reinforcement. All with the highest priority classification. His eyes landed on the recipient column. The name was not a company. It was a state entity. He traced the line with a grimy finger, his face, illuminated by the lantern, slowly becoming a mask of ice.
Pavel, noticing the sudden, absolute stillness of his leader, shuffled closer. "What is it, planner? What's wrong?"
Koba didn't seem to hear him at first. He slowly closed the heavy ledger, the sound of the cover thudding shut seeming unnaturally loud in the quiet of the rolling train. He looked up, not at Pavel, but into the darkness ahead, as if he could see the shape of a new and infinitely more dangerous future taking form on the tracks.
"This timber," Koba said, his voice a low, stunned whisper that was almost lost to the wind. "It is a special government contract. The highest priority." He opened the book again and pointed to the recipient's name at the top of the page, a name that every subject of the Tsar knew, a name synonymous with the might of the Russian Empire. "It is all being shipped to a single destination: The Imperial Admiralty Shipyard at Kronstadt."
He let the terrible weight of that name sink in. Kronstadt. The heart of the Baltic Fleet.
"We haven't just robbed a logging camp," he said, his voice hardening, losing its shock and taking on the cold, sharp edge of a terrible new understanding. "We've stolen critical war material destined for the Tsar's new Dreadnought-class battleships." He looked at his men, at their confused, questioning faces, and delivered the final, devastating verdict.
"Our crime is no longer robbery. It is treason."