The gate lifts and the vehicles roll forward, tires gripping asphalt as we enter the thin mountain light. Misha calls ahead on a secure channel. His fingers fly over the tablet, pulling traffic cams, toggling to internal pings, and punching through firewalls like doors that never mattered.
“Traffic camera at mile two-twelve,” Misha reports, his eyes locked on the tablet. “Look here. Someone set up cones across the lane. No work crew, no permits, nothing on record. They’re not standard issue either. Wrong size, wrong tape. Someone staged them.”
“Fake roadblock,” I mutter, the picture coming together fast.
Misha nods. “Da. Homemade or stolen. They used the cones to force our trucks toward the shoulder, then trapped them on that curve. Our drivers never had a chance to stop in time.”
“How long ago?” I ask.
“Seventeen minutes from the last signal,” he answers. “If the ambush just happened, we might still find movement.”
Albert’s voice cuts through the radio, low and calm. “Just spotted debris on the shoulder. We are closing in.”
I press the accelerator, feeling the engine’s growl climb in my chest. The bend opens onto a plateau of chaos. Black skid marks streak across the lane, the rubber burned into the asphalt. A twisted guardrail. Shattered glass scattered along the shoulder. Bits of metal, plastic, and torn tarp drag in the wind like gutted remains.
A tractor-trailer lies on its side across both lanes, its white trailer scuffed and brutalized, the Barinov Transport logo scored by metal rakes. Another semi noses the ditch at a crooked angle, cab tilted, windshield blasted by pellets. The third sits upright, jackknifed, hazard lights pulsing in a slow false heartbeat as smoke blooms from somewhere beneath the trailer. For a moment, the scene feels frozen, a perfect snapshot of disaster, until a hiss breaks the silence and the sharp scent of propellant cuts through the cold.
I slow the SUV and pull to the edge of the asphalt. Misha is already reaching for his weapon before the tires stop rolling.
“Jesus,” Nikolay murmurs through the radio behind us. “They hit hard.”
“Not hard,” I correct, staring through the haze. “Precise.”
“Whoever set it knew the road,” Albert adds through the radio, his voice even through the low hiss.
“They used spikes,” Misha observes. “But not across the entire lane. They built a narrow path of safety between the rows to funnel our drivers. Then they moved the path with a rope to trap the second and third trucks.”
“Smart,” I acknowledge. “Cowardly, but smart.”
Nikolay’s tone fills the channel with quiet steel. “We will not assume they are gone,” he reminds us. “The first thing we recover is the living. Then we collect the dead. Then we salt the ground.”
I step out with the door still swinging. The cold slaps again, this time harsher. Gravel shifts under my boots. Misha follows, weapon low, and shoulders tight. We move together, one glanceestablishing arcs, a tap of my hand on his elbow setting his angle to the ditch. The second SUV arrives. Albert dismounts with his men, eyes cutting across sightlines, his body already angled to the right flank. The third vehicle stops near the funnel of cones. Nikolay steps out like time works for him, his eyes slitting against the sun’s glare, and his pistol held low beside his thigh.
“Cover left,” I instruct, and Albert nods once. He posts a man behind the jackknifed trailer and sends another to the guardrail.
We reach the first body near the overturned trailer’s rear wheels. The driver lies face down, his arms at angles that do not belong to living men. Blood has soaked into the cracked asphalt and pooled beneath his cheek, where the skin is bruised. I kneel and place two fingers on the carotid artery out of ritual, not hope. He’s already gone, skin cool and still, a single precise hole in the back of his head.
Misha’s mouth sets in a grim line. He checks the second man near the ditch. Same wound. Same neatness. He takes a breath, lets it out, and looks toward the third truck. “We need to move. That smoke’s wrong. It smells like an explosive, not a diesel fire.”
“Everyone back,” Albert calls, waving his men to his shoulders. “Trees. Now. If it is a controlled detonation, we stay clear of the blast arc.”
“Not yet,” I counter, and move toward the third truck. I put my palm on the trailer’s side and feel the tremor, a faint stutter that travels into bone. Someone set a device on a timer, wanting an audience.
Misha leans forward and follows the smoke to a seam near the landing gear. He points with two fingers, careful not to touch the metal. “There. The housing sits behind that plate. The wires runto the landing gear brace. The aim would be to pop the trailer without destroying the entire load. It is a message, not total destruction.”
“Remote or timer?” I question.
“Timer,” he says. “The smoke pattern matches the kind of cheap explosives we’ve seen before. A remote setup would burn cleaner.”
Albert lifts the drone case and flips it open, his hands moving quickly. He launches the small unit and sends it humming into the air. The camera paints the wreck in crisp gray on his handheld device. He sweeps the tree line. The feed shows no muzzle flare, no heat signatures clustered in the obvious places, only the cold shape of the trucks and the colder shapes of the bodies.
“Clear for the moment,” Albert relays. “But if they are smart, they left a team in the trees downhill. They would want us to pull down there to recover the third driver.”
“Where is he?” Nikolay asks, scanning beneath the jackknifed trailer.
“Not here,” Misha answers, his voice far too quiet for my liking. “His tracker’s dead, but it showed movement six minutes back.”
I round the far end of the third trailer and see him. He lies half under the rear bumper, his boots sticking out, but the rest of him hidden. I crouch and keep my weight on the balls of my feet as I look underneath. His eyes stare unblinking, mouth slack, jaw locked in death, a single hole above the ear, and his hands bound. They shot him last.
