This book is about people of a very recently classified profession, Far Eastern gold miners. About hard work, about the worries and meager joys that fall to their lot. The book is a taiga detective story, the main characters of which - experienced prospectors - find themselves in extreme conditions and get out of them with honor. The author, at one time a figure of regional scale, writes first-hand: he worked for a long time in a large gold-mining artel and is well acquainted with the life of miners. And the “incompleteness” of the famously twisted plot is compensated by the interview placed at the end of the book, taken from the author by Yu. Mokeev, a prominent journalist of our time, well known not only in the Primorsky Territory for its integrity and versatility. “Cargo-500” is a work by A. Tokovenko, based on true facts, and we are confident that the reader, having come into contact with his heroes, will not regret the time spent on reading. Names and some geographical names, according to the laws of the genre, have been changed.