Chapter 14

The Văldani Pass, Volynia. Mid-Winter.

The convoy moved like a dark scar across the white face of the mountain.

Three armoured vehicles—heavy, black, and brutally utilitarian—laboured up the Văldani Pass, their engines snarling in protest as they clawed for purchase on the climb. Diesel fumes mixed with snow dust in their wake, a filthy plume smeared across the pristine alpine air. Chains rattled against reinforced tires, useless against the treachery beneath: a foot of fresh powder snow hiding a slick, invisible skin of black ice.

The road itself was little more than a defiant line scratched into the cliff side. On one side, a vertical wall of rock rose sheer and merciless. On the other, the land simply fell away—one thousand feet down into a frozen gorge where wind screamed like something alive and angry. Guardrails were ornamental here. Gravity ruled.

Inside the middle van, the air was suffocatingly hot, thick with the sour smell of damp wool, oiled metal, and human fear. Condensation ran down the armoured walls in greasy rivulets.

Vladimir Zoryanovich sat shackled to the reinforced floor.

Steel cuffs bit into his wrists. His ankles were chained, the links bolted through the deck plating like an afterthought meant to insult as much as restrain. He wore the grey jumpsuit of a high-security prisoner, the fabric coarse and ill-fitting—a deliberate humiliation for a man once wrapped in silk and ceremony.

Yet his posture had not slumped.

He sat upright, spine straight, head slightly tilted as if listening to a piece of music only he could hear. His eyes were closed. The whine of the transmission, the laboured down-shifts, the muted crunch of compacting snow beneath run-flat tires—he absorbed it all, cataloguing each sound with quiet precision.

Opposite him, a young lieutenant shifted his grip on his rifle for the fourth time in a minute. His helmet sat too high on his brow, the chin strap biting into raw skin. He watched Zoryanovich with the brittle stare of someone trying very hard not to blink.

Hatred warred with fear in his eyes—and fear was winning.

“It is a bad day for a drive, Lieutenant,” Zoryanovich said at last.

His voice was calm. Almost conversational. It cut through the engine noise like a blade through cloth.

“Shut up,” the guard snapped, tightening his grip. “Do not speak.”

Zoryanovich’s lips curved into a thin, private smile.

He felt the vehicle down-shift again. The pitch of the engine climbed, strained. The van slowed further, tyres whispering against ice.

They were approaching the Devil’s Elbow.

The steepest switchback on the pass. A blind curve where the road narrowed to a single, unforgiving lane, squeezed between naked rock and empty air. Accidents here were never recovered—only catalogued.

Perfect.

The convoy crawled forward. The lead vehicle’s taillights flared red through the swirling snow, reflected eerily in the glassy ice ahead. Wind roared through the pass, a white-out gale that erased distance, direction, and depth. The world beyond the windshield ceased to exist.

Then the world turned white.

Not from snow. From fire.

A precise, directional charge detonated against the cliff face directly above the lead vehicle. It wasn’t a landslide. It was a surgical strike—a hammer blow delivered with intent and timing.

Rock and ice sheared away in a thunderous roar. Tons of frozen mass slammed down, obliterating the lead SUV in a heartbeat, crushing armour and steel flat against the tarmac and sealing the road ahead in a barricade of shattered mountain.

The driver of Zoryanovich’s van slammed the brakes.

The vehicle slewed sideways on the ice, tires screaming uselessly as gravity tugged it toward the precipice. For a breathless second, the van teetered on the edge—then shuddered to a halt, boxed in by debris ahead and the chase car behind.

“Ambush!” the lieutenant screamed, panic shredding discipline. “Contact front!”

He never fired a shot.

Through the reinforced rear-view ports, Zoryanovich watched the chase car die.

A rocket-propelled grenade punched into the engine block with brutal elegance. The explosion flipped the vehicle onto its roof in a blossoming bouquet of orange fire and black smoke. Shrapnel skittered across the ice like thrown coins.

Then—silence.

A heavy, ringing silence, broken only by the wind and the crackle of burning fuel.

Out of the white-out they came.

Six figures.

Matte-black from boots to helmet, their silhouettes stark against the snow. Balaclavas masked their faces; ballistic goggles reflected firelight like dead eyes. They moved not with haste, but with certainty—ink spills against the white, flowing downhill.

They did not run.

They walked.

The lieutenant lunged for the rear door handle. “Defensive positions! We have—”

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound echoed dully against the armoured hull.

Not gunfire.

Shaped charges.

Magnetically clamped to the rear hinges with methodical precision.

“Get back!” the driver screamed.

BOOM.

The rear doors blew inward, torn from their frames in a shower of sparks, smoke, and screaming metal. The concussion flattened the guards, slammed them against the walls, ripped the air from their lungs.

Before the smoke cleared, the black-clad figures were inside.

There were no shouts. No commands. No offers of surrender.

Only the wet, suppressed phut-phut of high-calibre pistols.

Three seconds.

Three lives.

The argument ended.

Zoryanovich remained seated.

Cold mountain air poured into the ruined cabin, washing over him, carrying the sharp tang of cordite and the copper-sweet stink of blood. Snow swirled at his feet.

A figure stepped through the wreckage.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Efficient.

The man holstered his weapon and produced a pair of heavy bolt cutters. He knelt without ceremony.

Snap.

The ankle chains fell away.

Snap.

The wrist cuffs clattered to the floor.

Zoryanovich rose slowly, rolling his shoulders, rubbing circulation back into his wrists. He stepped over the body of the young lieutenant without a glance and walked out into the storm.

The wind bit savagely at the thin fabric of his jumpsuit.

He did not shiver.

He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with frozen air. Freedom tasted sharp and clean.

The mercenary leader handed him a heavy, fur-lined coat and a satellite phone.

“We are behind schedule,” the mercenary said. His voice emerged distorted, stripped of accent, age, or origin.

“The weather delayed the extraction, like it flawed the mission in South Africa.”

Zoryanovich slid into the coat, buttoning it with deliberate care. His gaze lingered on the burning wreckage, the crushed convoy, the wall of rock sealing the road like a tombstone.

“Weather is a variable,” he said mildly. “Success is the only constant.”

He looked up.

“Do you have the transport?”

The mercenary nodded toward the cliff’s edge, beyond the wreckage.

Below, rising out of the gorge like a summoned demon, the rotors of an unmarked helicopter began to churn. Snow exploded upward in a violent spiral as the aircraft clawed toward the road.

“Where to, sir?” the mercenary asked. “The safe house in Belarus?”

Zoryanovich glanced at the phone in his hand. He looked South, toward the distant horizon where his niece was currently playing house with her pilot.

“No,” Zoryanovich said, a cruel smile touching his lips. “Take me across the eastern border. To the hunting lodge near Rostov.”

The mercenary paused. “You are not going after her?”

“I do not need to chase a bird that must return to its nest,” Zoryanovich said.

“She is coming back to the palace. It is customary for an heir to the throne to visit the graves of her father and mother after the coronation. She will weep for her father and mother.”

He walked toward the cliff edge. “And when she kneels,” he whispered, “I will be waiting. She will give me back my title. A Royal Pardon with second succession to the throne.”

Zoryanovich stopped on the way to the helicopter. He looked over his shoulder at the leader of the mercenary. “And then ... then, I will give her a grave of her own.”