The door opened. Inside, in fitted slots, lay the pistols. Eight Makarovs.
And two boxes of ammunition. Cold, heavy, smelling of gun oil. Mike took two pistols.
They settled into his hands as if they belonged there. He checked the magazines. Full.
Then he took two spare magazines and slipped them into his pockets. He left the compartment as quietly as he had entered, pulling the door shut behind him. Now he was ready.
He held a pistol in each hand. The cold steel felt almost pleasant in his palms. He stood in the dim corridor listening to the wheels on the rails and the drunken laughter behind the compartment door.
The emptiness inside him had become a calm, icy resolve. The time of being the patsy was over. He stood in the half-dark corridor.
The clatter of wheels beat out a dull, hypnotic rhythm. From behind the compartment door came drunken laughter, the slap of cards on the table, the rattle of glasses. Those sounds belonged to another world now, one that no longer had anything to do with him.
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t feel fear, anger, or doubt. Only that cold ringing emptiness and a clear sense of purpose.
He didn’t open the door. He kicked it in. One sharp blow, and the flimsy lock gave way with a crack.
The door slammed against the wall. For a split second every sound in the compartment vanished into a stunned silence broken only by the relentless clatter of the train. The scene froze like a photograph.
Voronov, Gafurov, Yusupov, and the cook sat around a table cluttered with bottles and scraps of food. Cards were in their hands. In the doorway, framed by the broken door, stood Mike.
A black Makarov in each hand, both aimed at their chests. The grin on Gafurov’s face collapsed into a stupid, drunken look of confusion. The cook froze with a fork halfway to his mouth.
Yusupov slowly lowered his cards to the table. Only Voronov, the biggest and most dangerous of them, made an instinctive move to rise—but stopped when he saw the guns and, worse than the guns, the face holding them. Mike’s face—pale as paper, eyes like dark hollows, perfectly calm, like a man who had already died and come back to take others with him.
It was the face of judge and executioner. His voice was flat, almost lifeless, but every word cut through the drunken haze like ice:
— This is for all of it.
And in that crushing silence, just as they finally understood this was no joke and no drunken stunt, Mike pulled both triggers. The world exploded.
Inside the cramped compartment, the gunfire wasn’t just loud—it was physical, like hammer blows to the skull. Voronov was first.
As he moved to stand, the first bullet hit him square in the chest. His huge body jerked as if it had run into something solid. He slammed backward into the wall. The expression on his face was pure disbelief, as if he couldn’t accept that this was happening to him.
The second shot found him too, and the sergeant’s breath cut off at once. He made a thick choking sound and slid heavily to the floor like a felled tree. Gafurov was next.
He still sat there with his mouth open, his alcohol-soaked brain too slow to catch up. Mike swung the pistol in his left hand toward him. The shot hit. Gafurov let out a startled, almost childish squeal and clutched at his chest. A dark stain spread quickly across his uniform, soaking the table and the scattered cards. Mike fired again, leaving no chance. Gafurov went limp at once and pitched forward face-first into a bowl of cold potatoes.
Yusupov and the cook panicked in the tiny compartment, scrambling like trapped rats. They were shouting, but their voices disappeared in the gunfire.
Yusupov tried to dive under the table, but a bullet caught him in the back. He cried out and went still. The cook backed into a corner and threw up his hands as if he wanted to say something, but Mike wasn’t listening.
He just kept firing. Again and again. When both magazines ran dry, he didn’t stop.
Calmly, without hurry, he hit the magazine releases and let the empty magazines clatter to the floor. Just as methodically, he pulled the spare magazines from his pockets and slammed them home. Click. Click.
Then more shots. He fired at the men who had spent months drunk on their own impunity. He didn’t aim carefully.
He simply emptied the magazines into that little compartment, filling it with smoke, cordite, and the fact of judgment carried out. Then everything went quiet. In the silence that followed, all that remained was the steady clatter of wheels and the fading echo of gunfire.
Mike stood in the doorway. The pistol barrels smoked. The compartment had become a place of reckoning. The walls, the floor, the table—all of it stood as mute witness to what had happened there. The air was thick with the unbearable smell of what had finally been done. He lowered the pistols.
The emptiness inside him remained. If anything, it had grown larger. He stood there and felt nothing.
No satisfaction. No horror. Only that ringing void. Then, in the silence broken only by the train wheels, he heard another door in the corridor slowly open.
The car attendant stepped into view. The same man who had laughed while Mike’s feet were burned. Hearing the shots, he had apparently come to see what the commotion was.
His face was red from drinking. A curious half-smile still sat on his lips. But the moment he looked into the compartment and understood what he was seeing, the smile vanished and was replaced by pure animal terror.
His eyes widened. His mouth opened soundlessly. He saw Mike standing there with two smoking pistols, and his face went white.
Mike slowly turned his head and looked at him. Not really at him. Through him.
Without a word, he raised his right hand and pointed the pistol straight at the attendant’s forehead. The man froze. He started shaking.
— Lock the outer door.
Mike’s voice was quiet, but there was such cold force in it that the attendant didn’t dare disobey. With trembling hands, he pulled out his keys, found the right one, and locked the exterior door with a metallic clank, cutting their car off from the rest of the train. He had become a prisoner in the iron coffin himself.
Then Mike, without lowering the gun, walked into Belov’s compartment. The warrant officer was still dead asleep, flattened by alcohol. His snoring shook his heavy body.
Mike didn’t wake him with words. He kicked him hard in the side. Belov groaned and opened bleary eyes.
For a few seconds he couldn’t understand what was happening. Then he saw Mike. Saw the two pistols. The fog left him instantly, replaced by cold, sticky fear.
He sat up on the bunk, trying to cover himself with a blanket.
— What are you doing? You…!
