Colonel Nikolay Ustyuzhanin is a former military counterintelligence operative, a master of shooting and hand-to-hand combat, ready to sacrifice himself to achieve his goals. One day, an operation in which Nikolay participates fails and one of the agents dies. Ustyuzhanin is sure that there is a "mole" in the department, but he is suspended from service until the end of the investigation. In order to lure out the traitor, who, according to the man's calculations, will want to kill him, Ustyuzhanin goes to a remote village to visit his colleague, the head of the border region, and gets a job as a forestry manager. The new position turns out to be almost more dangerous than Nikolay's main job: he has to deal with smugglers, poachers, black diggers, and learn that some of his predecessors went missing or were killed.
