— he stammered.
— Get up, Warrant Officer, — Mike said evenly. — Party’s over.
Under the pistols, Belov—shaking, sweating—hurried into his pants and tunic. He mumbled in a broken, pleading voice:
— Sokolov, son, think this through. Don’t ruin yourself. Let’s talk.
But Mike wasn’t listening. His face was unreadable.
— Into the corridor.
He pushed Belov out into the narrow passage where the deathly pale attendant stood pressed against the wall. Mike jabbed the pistol into the warrant officer’s back and forced him forward toward the compartment.
— Go on. Look.
Belov resisted, muttering, but Mike shoved him hard enough that he stumbled and looked inside. Even for a man who had seen plenty, the sight hit him hard. He vomited right there onto the corridor floor.
Then he sagged, clutching at his chest, his face turning bluish.
— Look, Warrant Officer. Look carefully, — Mike said in an icy voice, standing over him. — This is your work. You were in charge. You were responsible for all of it. This is on you.
Then he turned to the attendant, who stood frozen with fear:
— You. Get on the line to the conductor. Tell him there’s an armed emergency in the prison car. Tell him to have police waiting at the next station. Everybody. Armed. Understood?
The attendant, unable to form words, only nodded frantically.
— Do it.
Stumbling over himself, the attendant rushed to the service phone. Mike remained in the corridor, between the vomiting warrant officer and the compartment. He had changed the rules of the car.
Now it was in a different mode.
Waiting. He was the only authority left in that place now. He and the two pistols in his hands.
The train kept moving with its same dull rhythm, but now it was no longer just a train. It was a trap racing toward its conclusion. The night in the car dragged by slowly, like a nightmare that refused to end.
Mike sat on a hard chair in the corridor with both pistols across his knees. He didn’t sleep. He barely even thought.
He just waited. His eyes fixed on nothing, his face still as stone. Nearby, the attendant cowered in a corner, shaking.
And Warrant Officer Belov lay on the floor, wheezing, slipping in and out of consciousness. His body was giving out under the strain. In the compartment that had become a grim monument to their cruelty, there was a dead, unnatural silence.
But even that silence said more than words. Four men would never humiliate, beat, or drive anyone to despair again. Their reign of hazing was over for good.
Near dawn the train began to slow. Mike lifted his head.
— Where are we?
The attendant peered out the window with shaking hands.
— Coming into Cherkasy, — he bleated.
Mike nodded.
— Then this ends soon.
The train screeched to a stop at the station. Outside came shouting, running feet, commands. Police had arrived.
And not just a few. It looked like half the region. Mike stood and took the pistols in hand.
He walked slowly to the window and looked out. The platform was crowded with men in uniform. Rifles, body armor, dogs.
A perimeter. Floodlights aimed straight at the car, turning night into day.
— Sokolov! — a voice boomed through a loudspeaker. — We know you’re in there. Come out with your hands up. You have five minutes.
Mike stepped back from the window. He understood this was the end. But it didn’t frighten him.
If anything, he felt something close to relief. This was the finish line. The logical, unavoidable end of the nightmare that had begun the day he first walked into the barracks.
He walked over to the trembling warrant officer, who looked back at him with dull, emptied eyes.
— Well, Warrant Officer? — Mike said quietly. — Let’s wrap this up.
Belov only made a weak sound in reply. His mind was barely functioning.
— Two minutes, Sokolov. Come out! — the loudspeaker boomed again.
Mike didn’t answer. He bent over Belov, who was lying on the floor drooling, and hauled him upright without a trace of pity. The warrant officer was like a rag doll.
His body wouldn’t cooperate. Mike dragged him toward the exit.
— You go first, boss, — he said hoarsely.
He pushed the door open. Blinding floodlight hit his face. The snipers trained on the car tensed.
Using the half-conscious warrant officer as a human shield, Mike forced him out onto the platform step of the rail car.
— Look at him! — Mike shouted into the glaring light.
His voice cracked, but they heard him.
— Look at him! He’s the one responsible! Him and the ones inside! They did this!
At that moment Warrant Officer Belov finally went limp and collapsed onto the steps. The shield was gone. Mike stood alone on the platform, under dozens of gun barrels and in the crosshairs of the floodlights.
He stood there for a fraction of a second. Then, with a gesture full of contempt and exhaustion, he threw both pistols onto the platform. They hit the concrete with a metallic clang.
And after that he slowly—very slowly—raised his hands. He didn’t even get one full step. The tactical team rushed him from the platform in black masks and body armor.
A hard blow from a rifle butt to the back knocked him down. His face was driven into the cold ridged metal floor of the vestibule.
Someone planted a boot on the back of his neck, grinding him into the dirt. His arms were yanked behind him. Handcuffs snapped shut around his wrists.
The revolt was over. The investigation began. It began immediately, right there on the platform in Cherkasy.
The prison car was sealed off and turned into a crime scene. Military investigators stepped inside carefully, moving over the dark floor. Men in severe suits whose faces didn’t change at the sight of the slaughter.
They had seen worse. But even for them, the scene was shocking. Not because of the violence, but because of how ordinary it looked.
Scattered playing cards, half-empty bottles, the remains of a holiday meal—silent props in a terrible reckoning. It looked less like combat than a sudden, total purge. Warrant Officer Belov and the attendant, the two main witnesses, were taken away at once.
Belov was in deep shock. He could barely put two words together. He only moaned and cried.
The attendant, by contrast, talked nonstop in a near-hysterical rush, telling everything he had seen and heard, mixing up details and repeating over and over: “He’s crazy.” Mike himself was taken to a detention cell.
Beaten during the arrest, bruised across the face, he sat on a hard bench in a small airless room. Across from him sat a military investigator, an older major with tired eyes and a heavy stare. He asked questions. Calmly. Methodically. Without emotion.
Name, date of birth, unit, reason for the act. And Mike answered. Just as calmly. Just as without emotion…
