She dropped the two transmitters into her pocket and exited the building through the same smashed-out rear window she’d used hours earlier to enter. After dropping silently to the ground, Tracie moved to the northeast corner of the building, the corner farthest from Objekt 825.
She was reasonably certain there were no soldiers patrolling who might catch sight of her behind the old hostel. What would be the point? Objekt 825 was a secret facility surrounded by concertina wire fencing and armed guards, located inside a small town that no longer officially existed.
She pressed herself to the rear wall nevertheless.
At the corner she dropped to the ground and combat-crawled toward the tree line. Time was of the essence. Presumably the base commander would remain inside the facility for the rest of the afternoon, but she had no way of knowing how much time would pass before The Weasel departed, and Tracie very much wanted to take advantage of the two-for-one opportunity with which she’d been presented.
Despite the urgency, she forced herself to move slowly and with care. After she had put what she felt was a sufficient screen of brush and trees between herself and the soldier manning the sentry’s post outside the administration building, she stood and moved quickly away from the facility, testing her balky ankle and praying she didn’t step into an unseen hole in the ground
It throbbed steadily but felt relatively flexible.
Five minutes of brisk walking later, Objekt 825’s administration building disappeared around a bend in the access road. Tracie edged toward the tree line and peered in both directions.
The area was deserted.
At any moment, though, a car could appear from either direction. Traffic hadn’t been heavy during the time Tracie had been maintaining surveillance, but it hadn’t been nonexistent, either.
She took a deep breath and left the trees behind, not crawling as she had before but walking purposefully, moving directly toward the road. When she hit the pavement she continued straight across, fingers crossed that her luck would hold and no vehicles would appear while she was so exposed.
The terrain on this side of the road was rougher, thanks to the steep hill looming over Objekt 825. The good news was that the line of trees and scrub brush was also closer to the road, and within seconds, Tracie had melted back out of sight.
Still no vehicular traffic.
She turned toward her goal: the administration building’s parking lot. By removing his uniform jacket in the heat a few minutes ago, the facility’s commanding officer had very helpfully identified his vehicle to Tracie. She thought he might represent the key to recovering the Marine Technix communication decoder.
And with any luck, Andrei Lukashenko’s car would still be parked in the lot as well.
Her two-for-one.
She remained behind the screen of trees for as long as possible while approaching the parking lot, but eventually would have to leave the comforting cover behind if she had any hope of placing a tracker on each car. The sentry manning the guard shack would represent a real challenge, but based on her surveillance from across the road, Tracie thought she might have a solution to that problem.
Assuming things lined up the way they had appeared to from old hostel.
After getting into position, Tracie paused to catch her breath. From here, only fifty or so feet from the front of the building—and maybe thirty feet from the sentry’s post—the possibility of capture felt much more real, and she worked to control her nerves.
The Soviets had installed frosted glass in every window of the admin building that Tracie could see, including the double entryway doors. Presumably they had done so to prevent anyone from seeing inside, but it seemed like an unnecessary precaution, given the armed guards and security fencing. How would a Soviet citizen ever get close enough to peek into the classified facility?
It worked to her advantage, though, because just as she could not see the interior, no one currently inside the building would be able to observe her activities outside it unless they exited the front doors.
A trash dumpster had been placed along the southern edge of the parking lot, and now Tracie edged forward, keeping the big metal container between herself and the guard shack. Moments later, she plastered herself against the rear of the dumpster, wrinkling her nose at the putrid stench. Something organic had been thrown inside and was decomposing nicely in the heat.
Now would come the tricky part. The base commander had parked along this side of the lot, relatively close to the front of the building. It meant Tracie would be forced to work within ten or twelve feet of the guard shack. The line of stationary vehicles should allow her to remain out of the sentry’s sight, but if she were anything other than completely silent, the chances were good he would hear.
She crouched down and duck-walked out from behind the dumpster. Upon reaching the parked vehicles, she turned to her left and continued shuffling forward until arriving at the commander’s car. He had nosed into the parking space and Tracie could rest her cheek against the grille if she chose to.
She reached into her pocket and carefully removed one of the GPS transmitters. She’d been able to place the transmitter securely beneath the radicals’ truck last month, but today she would have to rely on the device’s magnetized base and hope the adhesion was strong enough to prevent it from falling to the ground once the car began driving on the poorly maintained Soviet roads.
Tracie reached up under the right front wheel well and felt around until locating a relatively flat metal surface. Then she very slowly slipped the transmitter into place. The soft clank as the magnetized base contacted the car’s sheet metal made Tracie cringe.
She reached for her Beretta and waited, listening intently for any indication the noise had been heard.
Nothing. The sentry remained inside the guard shack.
Tracie took a deep breath and backtracked carefully, steadfastly ignoring Objekt 825’s front doors. Thus far they had remained closed, and all Tracie needed was for her luck to hold a couple more minutes.
Lukashenko’s car was still in the lot, and now it became Tracie’s focus. She’d thought when receiving her assignment from Aaron Stallings that the possibility of actually encountering The Weasel was the longest of long shots, and now she realized that if she played her cards right—and also got lucky—she might actually manage to pull off both prongs of the mission.
She reached under the collar of her blouse and fingered Ryan Smith’s gold cross necklace. It gave her a sense of strength, and of community, like her fellow operative was with her, like she wasn’t exposed and alone, thousands of miles from anyone who could help if she got in trouble.
Lukashenko’s parking spot was located farther from the guard shack than the commander’s, two-thirds of the way along the side of the lot. Tracie reached his vehicle in less than sixty seconds. She secured the second transmitter under his right front wheel well, exactly as she had done with the base commander’s.
By now the muscles in her legs were burning from duck walking, and her injured ankle was screaming for relief. She ignored it all and moved in the same manner back to the safety of the foul-smelling dumpster.
Once behind it, she dropped into a sitting position and leaned back against the hot metal. Sweat was pouring off her and she wished she’d been able to bring a water bottle.
She gave herself two minutes to rest and used every second of the allotment. Then she rose and began moving back the way she’d come. She would return to her observation post and wait to see what happened next.
20
June 24, 1988
3:50 p.m.
Objekt 825
Andrei was still enjoying the pleasant alcohol buzz as he stepped through the front door of the administration building and strolled toward his car.
One of the major drawbacks of spending so much time working inside the United States and Great Britain was the substandard quality of the dishwater-like swill they called vodka in those countries. He still drank it, of cours
e he did, and in copious quantities. Coming home to Russia, though, served to reawaken his taste buds.
Sharing two glasses with Commander Morozov before his impromptu facility tour had been perfect: enough to take the edge off his impatience and frustration with acting as a glorified delivery boy, but not so much that he lost his operational edge. It would take much more than two moderate-sized glasses of vodka for that to happen.
The afternoon had grown even warmer and more humid during his time inside Objekt 825, something Andrei wouldn’t have thought possible. But now that the vodka was running through his veins, he found he didn’t care. He was sweating and looking forward to a shower, but so what? With the delivery of the electronic thing in the shoebox-sized container complete, he was now officially off the clock.
It was time to relax and enjoy a little time to himself, something he hadn’t done since beginning this latest assignment.
He unlocked the car and rolled down the driver’s side window, then repeated the exercise with the three remaining windows. He’d parked beneath a shade tree, so it shouldn’t take long for the interior to cool to at least a reasonable level.
He shrugged out of his suit coat and placed it on the front passenger seat, then bent and folded it carefully to prevent wrinkles. He wished he had done so a couple of hours ago when Morozov had tossed his uniform jacket into his own car, but had at that time been so anxious to complete delivery and be on his way that he hadn’t wanted to take the thirty seconds to return to his car.
Live and learn, he thought.
He leaned against the front fender and lit a cigarette. He really needed to learn how to relax. Take time to smell the roses, as the Americans would say.
That was easier said than done, however. Working to foment treason in enemy territory, and smuggling classified material out of countries where he would be imprisoned for the rest of his life should he be caught, wasn’t the sort of career field that leant itself to smelling many roses.
Tonight, though, he was not working in enemy territory.
He was not working at all.
Tonight, he would smell a few roses.
His vision for the remainder of the day was simple. He would depart Objekt 825 moving north, in the direction from which he’d come. Sevastopol was just a few kilometers away, and as a Black Sea coastal city it was a popular tourist destination this time of year. He would drive just far enough to find a decent hotel that was located close to bars and nightclubs, and once he found one he would rent a room for a couple of days.
Then he would drink lots of quality Russian vodka. He would stroll the shops and attractions in Sevastopol. He might even spend a little time on the beach.
But most of all, he would search out a young woman with whom he could share a night or two of carnal pleasure. American women were okay; he’d spent more than one enjoyable evening in the arms of more than one Western girl. But most of them were a little more independent than Andrei preferred.
When it came to pleasuring a man, Russian women were different; at least the ones he associated with were different. He knew that with a little effort on his part, he would find the perfect girl in Sevastopol, someone to whom Andrei’s pleasure would be more important than her own.
He smiled as he tossed the remains of his cigarette to the pavement and ground it out beneath his shoe. Then he dropped heavily into the driver’s seat. The car was still hot but not unbearably so.
He started the engine and motored slowly away from Objekt 825.
21
June 24, 1988
5:05 p.m.
Objekt 825
It was hard for Tracie to sit inside her surveillance cubbyhole and watch the murderous Andrei Lukashenko, The Weasel himself, climb into his car and drive away. Eliminating the man would immediately stop the flow of critical defense secrets into the Soviet Union, or at least slow it to a trickle.
And she may never get another chance to fulfill the second half of her assignment. The stubby antennae sticking out of the tracker she’d placed on the underside of Lukashenko’s car had broadcast a useable signal over a much greater distance than she’d expected it to last month, but there was no question it suffered from limitations. Once The Weasel drove more than a few kilometers from Object 825, the tracker would likely become useless, just an odd-looking lump of metal and electronics.
In this case, though, as frustrating as it was to lose Lukashenko, there was no decision to be made. Her primary assignment was to recover the submersible signal decoder. That’s what she had been sent to Objekt 825 to so, and that’s what she would do.
Or die trying.
Lukashenko leaving the facility more than an hour ago had represented the only noteworthy development she’d observed since resuming her surveillance. The rest of the afternoon had seen no vehicles come or go. None.
Apparently the technicians working inside the underground base, as well as the administrative staff above ground, worked a typical nine-to-five day, because for the last five minutes, people had been pouring out of the admin building. Mostly military personnel, but a few civilians here and there as well.
What captured Tracie’s attention was that while probably half the departing workers climbed into cars and drove away, the other half bypassed the lot entirely and headed off down the road on foot.
She’d known there had to be a housing unit somewhere inside the secure portion of the town that was once known as Balaklava, because that was how the Soviets did it. That was the whole point of maintaining a closed city. The people working on a secret project could live their lives without ever leaving the secure perimeter. Restaurants, movie theatres, nightclubs, all would be provided, thus minimizing the risk of security breaches.
That was how an actual closed city operated, anyway. Objekt 825 was slightly different, because of the relatively small number of workers assigned to the facility. Tracie guessed there weren’t more than a couple hundred, unless the base featured multiple entrances, a possibility she considered highly unlikely.
Tracie’s takeaway was that if people were walking home after work, their housing accommodations could not be far. It was an important point, because while she doubted the base commander would live inside an apartment building with the lowly workers, his home was likely close to that housing bloc.
She’d been a little concerned with the logistics of tracking the man once he left work for the day. Normally she would just steal a car if she needed to follow someone; she’d hotwired so many over the course of her career that she thought she could probably do it in her sleep, and within ninety seconds, too.
But stealing a vehicle inside the Objekt 825 security perimeter could be problematic. The entire settlement seemed so small that a stolen car would be noticed almost immediately, and when it was, the military would go on high alert.
The only chance Tracie had of completing her mission without being captured or killed was for her presence at Objekt 825 to remain undetected. The minute anything out of the ordinary occurred—and she guessed having a car turn up missing would qualify as out of the ordinary—her situation would change, and not for the better.
Stealing a car would be a last resort. Fortunately, it was beginning to look like that would not be necessary.
Tracie grabbed a water bottle out of her equipment bag and returned her attention to the facility just in time to see the man she’d identified as the base commander exiting the building.
She checked her watch. It was 5:15. He’d waited to depart until most of his people had already left, either because he wanted them to think he was working harder than they were, or maybe because he just didn’t like dealing with his underlings.
He walked to the now-mostly-empty parking lot and cranked down all the windows in his car, exactly as Lukashenko had done roughly ninety minutes ago. He didn’t light a cigarette, though, as The Weasel had. He simply leaned against the car’s closed front door and gazed off into the distance.
Directly toward Tracie’s surveillance loc
ation.
For one unsettling moment, Tracie thought the commander could somehow see inside the abandoned hostel. Could see her. It was patently impossible though, due to her distance from the parking lot and the fact that Tracie was hidden deep within the shadows, close to fifteen feet from the broken window.
She decided he must be admiring the heavily forested area directly behind the ruined building, the area from which she had approached earlier today. If he had detected her presence, he certainly wouldn’t have maintained his casual pose. He would have hurried to the guard shack located just a few feet away. He would be pointing in her direction and instructing the sentry to check out the hostel.
He did none of those things. He leaned against his vehicle and stared into the distance like a man waiting for his car to cool off so he could slip inside and drive home. After three or four minutes he did exactly that.
When he left the lot, he turned in the same direction everyone else had after leaving the facility for the day. Tracie watched his car until it followed a bend in the road and disappeared.
22
June 24, 1988
5:20 p.m.
Objekt 825
Cooling her heels while there was work to be done went against the grain. It went against everything Tracie believed in, particularly when every minute spent here made the chances of her retrieving the communication device and escaping safely a little less likely.
On the other hand, she’d decided on a plan of attack, and she could not reasonably begin putting that plan into action until the middle of the night, so after watching Objekt 825 empty out and its day shift workers head for their homes, Tracie decided to use her time as wisely as possible.
First she took stock of her remaining food and water supply. She pulled the protein-infused bars and bottles of water out of her equipment bag, and as she munched slowly on one of the bars, did a little calculating. She decided she could easily manage two more days holed up here, and could stretch it to three if necessary, four if she absolutely had to.
Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9) Page 11