He engaged the front-wheel drive with a heavy clunk . The transfer case groaned, but it bit. He let out the clutch. The old 12.8-liter V8, producing just 180 horsepower but a mountain of torque, dug in.

“Let it slide.”

He knows that if he turned the key, the air-cooled engine would catch on the third compression stroke. The six wheels would bite. And the last great beast of the Eastern bloc would go to work again.

Three weeks later, the road was rebuilt. A shiny new European truck made the first official delivery. The Roco K706 was declared surplus. Vasily bought it for scrap value.

The Roco tilted. For a terrifying second, Miro felt the universe shift. The right wheels left the ground. They were balanced on two axles, teetering over a fifty-meter drop.

They slid. Stones bounced off the undercarriage. Miro closed his eyes.

They reached the station at 2:00 AM. The landslide was worse than expected. The road was gone—just a scree of wet shale angling down into blackness.