Page 256 of The Devil's Thorn

I stayed where I was. Didn’t need to see it. Just needed to seethem—how they moved, how they worked, how they looked at the product like it was money, not risk.

“Offload happens at 5:10 sharp,” I said. “No noise. No lights. Three trucks, staggered ten minutes apart. No one leaves this yard until I say so.”

They all nodded.

Maksim spoke low. “You want the coke weighed?”

“No,” I said. “It was cut before it got on the ship. If it’s light, someone dies in Colombia.”

Yuri exhaled through his nose. “Efficient.”

“Necessary,” I said again.

Always necessary.

Everything here was quiet. Clean. Controlled. But the silence underneath it told me something else was coming. It always did.

The cold sting of ocean air mixed with the scent of steel and diesel. My world.

The hum of work buzzed beneath the surface—forklifts shifting weight, crates being moved under cover of darkness, hushed orders passed between men who didn’t speak unless they were told to. No chaos. No confusion. Just order. Precision.

The rifles were catalogued and marked. The coke re-weighed, triple-checked, sealed again. Manifest documentation was logged and fake-dated for the customs system in Marseille. Our inside man would clear it by noon.

“Back row’s heavier than expected,” Maksim said beside me, voice low. “Weight variance of twelve kilos. Not product—packaging. Overstuffed crates.”

“Repack them,” I said. “Even if it costs time.”

“We’ll be tight for the truck drop.”

“Then move faster.”

He nodded once and peeled off.

Yuri exhaled nearby, his eyes flicking across the container yard like a wolf counting bodies. “Feels clean,” he muttered. “Too clean.”

“You saying you miss the shootouts?” I asked.

He grinned. “Not at all. I like my blood on the inside. Just saying—something’s off.”

I agreed. I just didn’t knowwhatyet.

Until I saw him. Nikolai. Ten feet away. Still. Focused. But the tension in his posture was wrong. His jaw was set tighter than usual. His hand wasn’t on his gun—but it was close.

He didn’t speak to anyone. Didn’t interrupt the offload. Just stepped away from the others with the kind of precision that said he didn’t want to be followed butexpectedto be. Which meant it was for me.

“Watch the rest,” I told Yuri.

He gave a quick nod. I moved.

When I reached Nikolai, he didn’t speak. Just caught my eye and angled his head slightly—toward the far side of the yard. Away from the containers. Away from the lights. I followed without asking.

Yuri trailed behind us.

We reached the corner of the storage shelter—metal frame, shadowed, flanked by steel crates high enough to drown out sound. Nikolai stopped and turned, his voice low, clipped, even colder than usual.

“We have a problem.”

I said nothing. Just waited.