We slide through the stacks of steel at the docks without a sound. A big blue crown on a reefer box points at us from a hundred meters away like a middle finger. The crane grinds, cables swaying, then lowers the prize to the asphalt with a low, old groan.
There are two men in a white van idling three lanes over, just like the broker promised. They don’t notice us until it’s too late to matter.
“Zavid.”
I don’t have to say more than his name.
He steps into their headlights, raises a hand, and smiles like a saint. While their eyes are focused on him, my world snaps clean and I move too quick to be seen. I wrench their passenger door off its hinges and toss the man to the ground. Misha drags the driver out by his hair, and he gets one syllable of a prayer out before Sasha ends the conversation with an elbow and zip ties.
“Boss.” Dragomir’s tone is sharp. “Do you hear that?”
There, under the hum of the generator, is a thin insistent ticking that doesn’t belong on this dock.
The hairs on my forearms rise as I recognize the tone.
My men move without thinking, placing their bodies between me and the container as I step to the lock.
“Careful,” Misha barks, his eyes scanning the world around us.
I snap the lock and roll the doors, cold air exhaling against my face. The inside of the container should be stacked with fish. Instead, it is a theatre set up for our entertainment. Empty metal shelves line either side like pews and in the center is a chairbolted to the floor with a man tied to it. His mouth is sewn shut with a coarse black twine, and his shirt is open to the sternum where one word is carved neat and deliberate.
ALMOST.
The ticking gets louder, and my blood turns to ice before heating.
“Bomb,” Sasha says.
“Find it now,” I order.
Sasha slides under the chair the man is bound to. “There. Left rear under the rails. HG switch. Mercury trigger. There’s a glass capsule filled with liquid metal. Tilt it, jostle it, breathe wrong, and the mercury rolls, closes the circuit, and the whole damn thing lights up. It’s an anti-handling bastard, which means the bomb’s rigged to kill anyone trying to move it. If that silver bead sloshes to the wrong end, we’ll paint the sky red, Boss.”
“Can you defuse it?” Misha asks.
“Yes.” A pause as he studies it more. “No.”
“Which is it?” Dragomir grinds out.
Sasha slides out from underneath the chair carefully and his mouth tightens. “Timer’s short. Whoever packed this wanted us to find it in time to be scared and not in time to be safe.”
I step into the cold and over to the bound man. His eyes roll to me, wild with tears dripping down his face. The stitches in his mouth tremble as he tries to plead with me.
There’s a moment where I wish I didn’t remember every face I can’t save.
“Kon,” Misha says, low and urgent.
Choose.
I put my hand on the man’s forehead. “You are seen,” I tell him in Russian.
He won’t understand, but it doesn’t matter.
The dead speak all languages.
“I am sorry.”
Then, I move.
“Clear,” I roar, catching the chair in both hands and lifting.
