She killed the engine and grabbed her bag. Then she stepped out of the car and tossed the bag near the verge. Working quickly, she lifted as much of the vegetation she’d flattened with the passage of the car as possible back into place, and then further screened the vehicle from view of the road using downed tree branches.
The entire process took no more than ten minutes, but by the time she’d finished, Tracie was breathing heavily and sweating. The climate in this part of Russia was humid, almost tropical, and the sun had already begun to rise before Tracie had even awoken. The temperature was climbing. It was going to be a warm day.
She stepped into the road and examined her handiwork with a critical eye. The deception wouldn’t stand up to soldiers patrolling on foot, but Tracie thought anyone driving past at normal speeds would probably not see the Lada. Its mud-brown paint job allowed it to blend well into the forest surroundings.
It would have to do.
She shrugged her bag onto her shoulder and melted back into the woods. Traveling along the side of the road would allow her to move more quickly, but the advantage of speed wasn’t worth the accompanying risk of being seen. She had no way of knowing whether she would stumble onto a guard post in fifty feet or five miles.
The only thing she knew for certain was that she would eventually encounter one.
Keeping the roadway off her right, Tracie began hiking south. The thoroughfare had hugged the shoreline since leaving Sevastopol, and she suspected it had been constructed long before the Soviet military command decided to carve a secret submarine base into the Black Sea coast. She concluded there was no reason to believe the road wouldn’t continue along the water, so as long as she kept it in sight, she would eventually arrive at Objekt 825.
The going was difficult, with sandy terrain and low vegetation combining to slow her progress. Mosquitos began to feast on her exposed arms. She waved them away as best she could but didn’t want to slap at them for fear of the noise alerting patrolling sentries if she were getting close to civilization.
And she needed to step softly. The Soviets had been known to install underground sensors around some of their closed cities, sensors that served to alert authorities to the approach of not just automotive traffic, but foot traffic as well, if the traveler did not disguise her approach.
Tracie doubted such sensors had been installed here, due simply to the remoteness of the area. But she wasn’t about to take any chances.
By seven a.m., she estimated she’d traveled close to two miles when she finally encountered what she’d known she eventually would: chain-link fencing topped with concertina wire. Both the closed cities Tracie previously entered had been fortified in exactly the same way.
Fifteen feet ahead, the dull glint of sunlight reflecting off metal told her she had found the northern perimeter of Objekt 825. She had been hiking far enough from the road that she could not see any sign of the reinforced gate or the guard shack housing Red Army sentries, but she didn’t have to see them. She knew they were there.
She turned in the opposite direction and crept further into the vegetation, moving even more slowly than she’d been doing. Stealth was critical. If she were to be apprehended here, her situation would be just as dire as if she were caught inside Objekt 825. There simply would be no believable explanation for her presence.
Especially since she was carrying a large set of bolt cutters.
When she thought she’d put enough distance between herself and the roadway, Tracie eased her bag off her shoulder and set it gently onto the ground. She unzipped it, slowly and carefully, and removed the bolt cutters from the bottom of the bag.
She approached the fence and began snipping the links, one after the other, beginning at ground level and moving upward until she’d sliced through an area high enough to allow her to squeeze through the opening. She pulled the section of fencing back and slipped her bag through. Then she followed, closing and securing the damaged section of fence behind her as much as she could.
Once she’d secured the fence, more or less, Tracie stood still, slowing her breathing, listening for shouting, or bodies tramping through the underbrush, or any other indication her presence had been detected.
Two minutes later she decided she was alone.
She wiped the sweat from her eyes and continued.
***
June 24, 1988
7:45 a.m.
Objekt 825
Locating Objekt 825 took just minutes. Getting inside the facility would be challenging, but finding it couldn’t have been easier.
Obviously, a submarine base would have to be located on the water, so Tracie’s first move after breaching the security fence was to give the guard shack a wide berth and then follow the fence line until reaching the coast. Then she simply turned and continued hiking away from Sevastopol.
Sooner or later, she knew she would reach the sub base.
After another twenty minutes, she had done just that. The coastline along this section of the Black Sea was filled with inlets and coves, and Tracie knew Soviet military commanders tasked with selecting the location in which to construct a secret naval base would have valued privacy almost above all else.
With that in mind, spotting the seagoing entrance to the underground base was easy from ground level. It stood out like a sore thumb. Engineers had clearly taken great pains during construction in the 1950s to make it look like a natural outcropping from above, with the intention of foiling high altitude American aerial surveillance, but screening it from view along the coastline had not been a priority.
The Soviets had known they would be restricting civilian access, so they hadn’t anticipated any need to hide the entrance. For three decades they’d been right, never expecting the Americans to be bold enough—or foolish enough—to assign an intelligence operative to infiltrate Objekt 825, even if they eventually learned of the base’s existence.
Tracie took her time examining the entrance through her binoculars. A massive concrete opening built into the side of a large, steep hill funneled the submerged ships toward a huge opening sliced into the side of the gradient. It looked to Tracie like the waterway was sealed shut with massive concrete doors that probably opened on hinges only when a submarine were entering or exiting.
It became immediately obvious why the Soviets had selected this location. A natural inlet prevented Objekt 825 from being detectable by ships operating farther out in the Black Sea. The cove was narrow but apparently deep enough to allow Soviet subs to navigate into and out of the facility without ever surfacing, thus allowing them to remain unseen at all times.
Once she’d pinned down the location of Objekt 825’s waterborne entryway, determining its land-based entrance became a fairly easy task. The facility would have to be located near enough to the huge hill towering over the concrete sea-funnel to allow technicians and administrators to get to work without having to traverse hundreds of yards of underground tunnels.
Tracie picked the administration building out almost as quickly as she’d found the sub entrance. Most of the structures adjacent to the coastal road in this section of the old Balaklava were in various stages of disrepair and decay, having been ignored by Soviet bureaucrats and military leaders as they focused their attention—and their funding—solely on the hidden facility.
But one building had been renovated at some point since the 1950s. It stood out from the rest like a mansion among hovels. While similar in style and construction to the others, it appeared functional and, to Tracie’s mind, had the feel of an office in vigorous use. Additionally, there was a large, paved parking lot adjacent to the building that from a distance appeared to be in much better condition than it should.
And it was at least half filled with cars.
Tracie was certain she’d found the right place.
Undoubtedly somewhere near here was a residential complex where the Russians housed the scientists and technicians needed to keep Objekt 825 operational, and to perform the necessary maintenance and upkeep
on the Soviet Navy’s submersible fleet.
Finding that residential complex, should it become necessary, would likely prove barely more challenging than locating the base itself. Unlike the closed cities Tracie had infiltrated in the past, which had featured large populations of civilians and military, the area surrounding Objekt 825 seemed mostly abandoned. The majority of the homes and other structures Tracie could see had plainly been empty for years.
The sight of the modern—by Soviet standards, anyway—administration building standing proudly among the relics of homes and businesses whose owners had been forced to leave them behind and relocate elsewhere gave Tracie an uneasy feeling. It was like seeing a cemetery filled with lonely ghosts.
She shook her head and forced herself to focus. Every moment she spent in and around Objekt 825 increased her risk of detection and capture. Were she to be apprehended here she would never see freedom again and would likely be executed.
It was time to find a suitable location from which to conduct surveillance.
16
June 24, 1988
1:30 p.m.
Sevastopol, Russia, USSR
Andrei Lukashenko was tired. He was also hungry and unhappy.
But mostly he was tired.
He was tired of ferrying this damned electronic decoder thing around. It meant nothing to him. Supposedly it was some kind of breakthrough in submarine communication technology, but that meant little to Andrei. What the hell did he know of submarines? Nothing. He’d never set foot inside one of those metal underwater death tubes, and if he had anything to say about it, he never would.
Andrei was all about the chase. He was all about identifying the weak links inside whatever foreign government or industrial facility he’d been assigned to, and then selecting a man or woman to bribe, blackmail or terrorize into providing him with the classified material it was his job to recover.
And he was exceedingly good at his job.
He was a master.
He was better than anyone the KGB had ever employed, seen or heard of. That wasn’t his opinion—actually, it is my opinion, he thought—but it wasn’t only his opinion. That assessment had come directly from his handler during a debrief a couple of years ago, and while normally Andrei Lukashenko didn’t give a damn about the opinions of his supervisor, in this case he had to admit being reassured as to his excellence was a pretty good feeling.
But what wasn’t a good feeling was what sometimes occurred once the chase was over, what was occurring right now. Standard procedure called for Andrei to bring the object of his search—the document, or piece of equipment, or whatever—straight to Lubyanka, and to surrender it to his handlers. Andrei was fine with that.
Then he would be forced to cool his heels in Moscow for anywhere from a few hours to several weeks while KGB experts examined the intel he’d recovered. During that time, he must remain available to answer any questions that might arise as to the intel’s provenance. Questions rarely arose, but that fact seemed to matter little to the KGB big shots who made decisions on these types of matters.
Eventually, Andrei would be released; sent home or, as happened most often, immediately dispatched somewhere around the globe to his next assignment.
That was how things typically worked.
But every now and then, if the scientists and investigators employed at Lubyanka felt further analysis was necessary and the experts required were unable to travel to Moscow, Andrei’s handlers would return the item to his care and order him to ferry it to the expert’s location.
That was the part Andrei hated.
It was what he was doing now.
There was no one to blackmail, no one to kill, no one to torture, virtually no risk at all. As far as Andrei was concerned, using him as a parcel delivery driver constituted a gross misuse of his unique skillset, but when he’d told his handler as much, Major Kovalev had reminded Andrei he would be utilized in whatever manner the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics felt was appropriate.
“Besides,” Kovalev had said after putting Andrei in his place, “these items are always classified and sometimes dangerous. We could not very well send them via civilian courier, now, could we?”
Andrei wanted to tell Kovalev he didn’t give a damn what the KGB did with the items following his delivery of them, but arguing would have been pointless. Besides, he had to admit there was a certain amount of logic to Kovalev’s words.
It didn’t make them any easier to accept.
To top things off, that damned fool Gorbachev had made another in what Andrei considered a continuing series of foolish, stupid and occasionally even dangerous moves. As part of his “fighting privileges” campaign—the program designed to convince Soviet commoners that the political elite would no longer enjoy luxury items—the Communist Party General Secretary had decreed that the Russian elite would no longer utilize the luxurious GAZ Chaika automobiles they’d been accustomed to driving.
Instead they would be forced to use less prestigious Volga models.
Of course, high-ranking military and KGB officers were part of that “elite.”
So now, instead of traveling from Moscow to Sevastopol inside the automotive splendor to which he’d become accustomed, Andrei was forced to endure the cramped cockpit of the Volga. The irony of this new reality was that this particular Volga model, the 24-10, was far outside the reach of Russian commoners anyway.
He shook his head and spit out an angry curse. At least the tortuous journey was nearly over. He’d taken his sweet time to make the roughly twenty hour trip, stopping for the evening when he’d reached approximately the halfway point, not because he couldn’t drive straight through—he’d done exactly that on much longer journeys—but because he wanted to give a middle finger to his KGB bosses, and this was the best way to do so without risking unpleasant consequences.
Andrei briefly considered stopping for lunch in Sevastopol. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast more than six hours ago, and for a man his size, six hours without eating may as well have been six days.
Ultimately, though, he decided to push through. He would arrive at Objekt 825 in just a few more minutes. Once there, he would release the electronic device into the hands of the submarine base’s command staff.
Then he could turn around and finally be free, at least until he received his next assignment. He would stop in Sevastopol on his way north and spend a day or two there, eating, drinking and womanizing, pastimes he could not partake of while in possession of classified material.
He could almost taste the vodka already.
***
June 24, 1988
1:50 p.m.
Objekt 825, Russia, USSR
Andrei had visited closed Soviet cities while completing assignments many times in the past, and had never had a moment’s trouble getting either in or out. Today was no exception. There was no mystery why. The command staff at the base had been told to expect his arrival sometime today, and they had of course informed the sentries operating every guardhouse securing the facility.
Accessing the secured area involved no more than a ninety second stop at the sentry’s post. The young soldier on duty offered a cursory examination of Andrei’s KBG credentials, then offered a just-as-cursory set of directions that would bring him to the secret submarine base’s administrative headquarters.
“Drive straight ahead for two kilometers,” the peach-faced kid told Andrei as he passed Andrei’s ID back through the Volga’s window. “The Aleksander Marinesko administrative building will be on your left. Park your vehicle in the lot next to the security gate and then check in with the sentry. He will notify the base commander of your arrival.”
Andrei nodded once and waited impatiently for the soldier to raise the gate so he could continue. His mind was still on the vodka—and the women—he would be enjoying later. Once there was sufficient clearance, he stomped on the accelerator, leaving a swirling cloud of road dust in his wake.
The directions turned ou
t to be unnecessary. Balaklava had been little more than a smudge on the map prior to its official erasure from existence, a tiny village of—maybe—a couple thousand people. There was not a single crossroad between the guardhouse Andrei had just left behind and the Marinesko Building, thus not a single opportunity to get lost.
Two minutes after showering the Red Army soldier in dust, Andrei pulled his Volga into the lot. He climbed out of the driver’s seat cradling the box containing the submarine electronics in one meaty arm. He was sweaty and tired, but also suddenly happy.
He was one step closer to that vodka.
17
June 24, 1988
1:55 p.m.
Objekt 825, Russia, USSR
Within an hour of locating Objekt 825’s waterborne submarine entrance and administration building, Tracie had identified a suitable surveillance location.
She had no way of knowing whether the area immediately surrounding the admin building had served as Balaklava’s downtown decades ago, but at the very least it had been a thriving neighborhood. Abandoned structures lined the narrow road leading away from Objekt 825 to the south, giving Tracie her choice of at least a half-dozen empty buildings inside which to set up shop.
She examined them one by one through her binoculars, eventually settling on a structure that looked as though it had served as a small hostel or inn. From Tracie’s vantage point it appeared to offer as unobstructed a view of her target as possible, and its windows had long-since been broken out but never boarded over.
Given the length of time it had left been exposed to the elements—just a few hundred yards from the Black Sea and in a humid, nearly tropical environment—she knew its interior would be in very rough shape, but Tracie didn’t care about that.
Comfort wasn’t her goal.
Accessing her chosen location took close to two hours, despite the fact she couldn’t have been more than a quarter-mile away when she made her selection. The direct line of sight between the old hostel and Objekt 825—the thing that made the location so desirable to Tracie—meant, of course, that the opposite was true as well: anyone at the site, including anyone coming or going in the parking lot, could see the crumbling structure clearly should they decide to glance in that direction.
Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9) Page 9