Hot summer, 1941. A small railway station near the front line. A group of criminals (a made man and a repressed general among them), are entrained in a carriage of a special military train. A young KGB lieutenant guards the convicts. Hardly the train covers a couple of kilometers, it is subjected to a German army assault, and the landing operation starts. After a short fight only 3 persons survive: young lieutenant, made man and political criminal. They head for the forest farther from the crashed train and pursuing Germans. The criminals, seemingly, can consider themselves as free, though, the lieutenant has another point of view and is intended to bring them to the destination place.