“Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint you, but I won’t be sticking around this place much longer. It’s been fun and all, but you’re not interesting enough to make me want to stay.”
“Is that so? And how do you propose to make your escape?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet, but once I do I guarantee you’ll the first to know.” The creeping terror she’d felt since The Weasel had first pressed his gun to her skull continued to grow, but she’d be damned if she was going to let Andrei Lukashenko see it.
She tried to do a little mental math, to figure out how much time she had before Gregorovich’s arrival in Sevastopol. If Lukashenko had told the truth about Gregorovich flying in—and why would he lie?—then she guessed maybe…three hours? Less?
She wasn’t exactly sure, but one thing she knew for certain was that a man like Ivan Gregorovich fancied himself far too important to come alone. He would bring multiple bodyguards, and once two or three more people joined this particular party, she would be well and truly screwed.
Any chance for escape would be gone forever.
Whatever action she was going to take, she had to do it soon.
She just had no earthly idea what that action might be.
40
June 25, 1988
3:05 p.m.
Sevastopol Airport, Sevastopol, Russia, USSR
The Yak-48 touched down at Sevastopol Airport, rolled to a near stop, and then turned onto the taxiway in what felt to Ivan Gregorovich like an absurdly short distance. The wheels hit the runway, the reverse thrusters screamed, and then they were taxiing toward the terminal building.
Sevastopol was a military airfield, meaning Ivan would not be forced to walk through crowds of civilians as he made his way through the airport. His executive assistant, Mikhail, had assured him that transportation would be parked immediately outside the main terminal entrance, fully fueled and engines running.
The aircraft had barely rolled to a stop when Ivan was out of his seat and moving toward the exit. His security team waited for him to pass in the narrow aisle and then rose as one and fell in behind him. Standard procedure on any flight, military or civilian, was to remain seated until given permission by the captain to move around the cabin, but as a high-ranking general, Ivan had long-ago stopped worrying about pointless rules.
The first officer glanced back and saw the three men waiting to disembark. He leaned over and spoke softly into the captain’s ear and then the captain turned around with a smile and lifted one finger in the universal “Just one moment” gesture.
That wasn’t good enough for Ivan, who glowered at the pilot and lifted his right hand, twirling it in a circle in the universal “Move it along” gesture. His headache had eased on the flight, and now all he cared about was getting started with his planned interrogation of the CIA agent who had so humiliated him a few weeks ago.
The pilot killed the engines and the high-pitched whine eased off. Before it finished fading away, the first officer hurriedly unbuckled his safety harness and climbed to his feet. He squeezed past Ivan and his security detail and then opened the Yak-48’s exit door before lowering the stairs for his passengers.
“Tell the captain I said thank you,” Ivan said. “Please have the aircraft fueled and ready to depart in two hours.”
“Of course, Sir.”
Ivan paused for a moment, thinking. Then he said, “On second thought, make it three hours.” Exacting vengeance on the young woman who’d assaulted him was practically all he could think about from the moment he’d left his office, and he couldn’t come up with a single good reason why he should limit himself to two hours.
In fact, he thought, perhaps Mikhail was right after all. Perhaps spending the night would be wisest.
“Three hours. Yes Sir, we will be ready,” came the response.
Ivan was already moving, clambering down the stairs as he decided to worry about the length of his stay later. He was pleased to see a pair of vehicles idling no more than twenty meters away at the edge of the tarmac.
A Red Army private stood at attention in front of each car, both men ramrod stiff. Even from this distance, Ivan could see they were terrified. It was to be expected; he represented probably the highest-ranking officer they would ever come in contact with. He smiled to himself and hurried across the ramp, leaving the airplane behind, not bothering to check on the progress of his two security men.
If they knew what was good for them they would be right behind him.
They did and they were.
Ivan snapped off a salute to each of the privates and dismissed both. Presumably they had been dispatched from Objekt 825 with the two vehicles; it was the closest military base to the airport and thus the most likely possibility. How the soldiers would get back to their base he had no idea and did not care. If return transportation had not been provided, they could walk as far as he was concerned.
He stood silently until the two men had returned his salute and marched off across the tarmac toward the terminal building. Then he turned to his security detail and said, “I requested two vehicles because you men will not be accompanying me to the KGB facility. You are to wait here at the airport for my call. Only after you hear from me are you to drive to the facility to meet me and escort our prisoner back to the airplane.”
“But Sir,” one of the men protested. “You never go anywhere without personal security.”
Ivan glared at the soldier until he dropped his eyes. “Do you understand the meaning of the word ‘order?’”
“Of course, Sir,” came the response, not just from the man he’d addressed but from both of them.
“Then there is only one acceptable response to what I have told you. What is that response?”
“Yes, Sir.” Again, both men spoke at the same time.
“Thank you. Do not make me remind you again.”
Ivan placed his briefcase on the hood of the car closest him. He unsnapped it and lifted out a walkie-talkie, handing it to the first soldier. “Did you familiarize yourself with the location of the facility?”
“Of course, Sir.”
“Good. When I call, I expect you to leave the airport for the KGB facility immediately, but not a moment before I call. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Ivan nodded and closed his briefcase. He’d emphasized the men’s orders not because he didn’t think they’d understood him the first time, but rather because he wanted to take no chances the men would arrive at the facility early and catch a glimpse of the “interrogation” he planned to conduct.
Witnesses would be bad. Any witnesses would open him up to the possibility of blackmail. Ivan fully intended to deliver the American operative into KGB custody once he had finished with her, but KGB officials would not appreciate Ivan’s brand of unapproved interrogation. Despite his lofty rank, Ivan was a purchasing specialist, not at intelligence specialist, and the Soviet Union’s security service was notoriously touchy about people stepping on their toes, even if those people happened to be Red Army generals.
No one could know about what he was going to do to the woman. Even Andrei Lukashenko would be sent away until Ivan’s thirst for vengeance had been sated. The Weasel had shown excellent judgment by calling Ivan—rather than his handlers at the KGB—upon apprehending the woman, but that didn’t mean Ivan was going to trust him.
In fact, it meant exactly the opposite.
Ivan shifted the car into gear and began driving toward the open gate in the chain link fence at the far end of the tarmac. The Sevastopol airport was located north of the city, as was the KGB interrogation facility. Rather than having to circumnavigate the downtown area or fight traffic attempting to drive straight through, Ivan was looking at what he assumed would be an easy drive of roughly twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes.
In less than half an hour he would be repaying the petite, harmless-looking young woman who had broken into his home and disabled his security officer before injuri
ng Ivan and stealing classified Soviet documents. He repay her assault blow for blow—and then some—before before turning her over to the KGB for her actual interrogation.
In the grand scheme of things, teaching her a lesson wasn’t strictly necessary. After all, she had already taken her last breaths as a free woman; she certainly would never escape the KGB once they’d taken possession of her, and after Ivan had finished working her over she would be in no condition to attempt any kind of mischief while being transported to Lubyanka.
But that fact was irrelevant.
Because this was personal.
Ivan exited airport property and turned toward the abandoned factory that had been repurposed into an interrogation and intimidation center dedicated to advancing the interests of the USSR.
He was as happy as he could recall being at any time in the recent past.
41
June 25, 1988
3:05 p.m.
Abandoned factory north of Sevastopol, Russia, USSR
Tracie was running out of time. She knew she was running out of time because Andrei Lukashenko had told her, straight out, that General Ivan Gregorovich was flying to Sevastopol from Moscow to torture her.
How long it would take Gregorovich to get here was the question, but whether the answer was two hours or six hours, the fact of the matter was that the clock was ticking down, and once Gregorovich walked into this abandoned, crumbling relic of a manufacturing plant, all realistic chances Tracie had of escaping—if she had any at all—would vanish.
Her best—and maybe her only—chance to get out was to do so while escape would require disabling just one man.
But since returning from wherever he’d gone earlier to call Gregorovich, The Weasel had kept his distance. He hadn’t come close to drifting within arm’s reach of Tracie, whose wing span was seriously limited in the first place, thanks to her right wrist being cuffed to the damned equipment arm mounted a good two feet from the edge of the table.
Lukashenko had picked Tracie’s backup gun and combat knife off the floor where he’d thrown them after frisking her, disappearing in the direction of the suite of offices to her left. Presumably he’d also gathered up the weapon he had forced her to drop in the hallway, placing all three in the office from which he’d ambushed her, or somewhere close by.
He had returned a few minutes later and spent most of the last couple of hours pacing around the mammoth room, walking back and forth, back and forth, apparently deep in thought.
In once sense, it was a relief not to have him crowding into her personal space. In addition to his sour sweat-smell making Tracie want to gag, Lukashenko was big and imposing.
Intimidating, particularly since he was armed and she was not.
Tracie knew without a shadow of a doubt she could take him down in a fair fight, or at least a fight in which she had full use of her hands and arms. But being chained up in the way The Weasel had chosen to do it made her feel extremely exposed and vulnerable.
She breathed deeply and sighed. A Lukashenko walking around fifteen feet behind her was not a Lukashenko who could be disabled, and if she stood any chance of acquiring her freedom, she would have to disable him.
There was no longer the luxury of time to wait for the perfect situation to develop.
She had to make something happen.
She cleared her throat and said, “Um, excuse me?” Her goal was to sound meek and submissive and she hoped she’d accomplished that, although the concepts of meekness and submission were so foreign to her that she had no earthly idea whether she’d succeeded.
“Yes? What is it?” He’d stopped his relentless pacing, but only for a moment. Before she could answer, he started up again.
“Um, I really need to go to the bathroom.”
He waved his hands like a man shooing away a fly. “I do not care. Just hold it.”
“I’ve been holding it. Being nervous makes me have to go, and I’m not sure I can hold it much longer. I’m very nervous.” That part, at least, wasn’t a lie. She was not looking forward to what would happen if she ended up a prisoner inside Lubyanka.
Another annoyed hand-wave. “That is not my problem.”
“It will be your problem if I pee my pants. Do you think General Gregorovich is going to want me staining the seats of his airplane and stinking up the cabin when he flies me back to Moscow? Not to mention the fact that if he interrogates me after I’ve peed myself, he’s going to get my urine all over him.”
He stopped pacing again and stared at her. Then he said, “I do not think you will be flying to Moscow, I think I will be driving you. But even if you are right, I do not care about Gregorovich’s airplane or the fact that he may have to change into a new uniform.”
“Actually,” Tracie shot back, “I kind of think it is your problem. I can’t imagine he’d be too pleased with you for allowing me to get in the situation to begin with. Maybe he really doesn’t care. But are you willing to take that chance when all you have to do is unchain me and allow me to relieve myself?”
Lukashenko glared at her. He hadn’t yet resumed pacing and Tracie took that as a positive development. “There are no working toilets here,” he said grudgingly.
“I don’t care about that. I just need to go.”
“You would not have any privacy. If I gave you privacy, I know you would run.”
Not until after I snapped your miserable neck, Tracie thought but didn’t say. Instead she said, “I don’t care about privacy, either. You can cuff me to you if you’d feel better. I just have to pee.”
He took three steps in her direction and then said, “I am not going to unchain you and give you the opportunity to attack me.”
Tracie tried to manage a disbelieving laugh, but it wasn’t easy. She was getting frustrated and angry, and still the invisible clock was ticking down to her doom. “You’re worried about me attacking you? You outweigh me by probably seventy kilos and you’re holding a gun. How the hell do you figure I’m going to attack you?”
“I know what you did to the sentry at General Gregorovich’s home, and he was armed as well. I am not going to unchain you. You will simply have to pull down your pants and urinate where you are.”
Her temper spiked. She was getting nowhere, and she almost cursed at Lukashenko.
Then a thought occurred to her. Maybe he’d given her the tiniest opening.
She wouldn’t know unless she tried.
“Fine,” she said. “But I only have one free hand. There is no way I can unbutton and unzip my pants and then pull them down with one hand. I will need you to do it for me.” Just saying the words made her skin crawl. The thought of allowing Andrei Lukashenko anywhere near her in the most intimate of ways was sickening.
But it had to be better than the lifetime of torture she was facing at the hands of the KGB.
He took a couple more steps and stopped.
Pulled his gun.
Continued moving until he was right behind her.
“I want you to remember something,” he said. “If you make one wrong move, just one, I will not hesitate to pull the trigger and blow your brains all over this table.”
“I understand.”
“Do not forget.”
He leaned his bulk against the table to her left and then reached down toward her waist, still holding the gun in his right hand. He brought his hands together and unfastened her belt, then began fumbling with the button.
That was when she acted.
She reached up with her left hand and grabbed hold of his flowing silver hair, scratching his mangled ear and yanking downward before he could react. As she pulled, she twisted her body to the right in an attempt to generate as much torque as possible.
His face smashed into the corner of the metal table.
There was a sharp crack! followed immediately by the sound of his Makarov firing as he instinctively pulled the trigger.
The slug whizzed past Tracie’s head and Lukashenko crumpled to the floor, dazed.
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He was still conscious, though, and retained enough awareness to try rolling out of Tracie’s reach. As he turned, she kicked him in the face with her boot, unable to put much behind the blow, thanks to her position against the table.
It was enough to stun Lukashenko a second time.
She leaned against the table top with both hands and pushed off, leaping as high off the floor as she could and landing squarely on The Weasel’s head with both feet, hearing the sound of a wet crack even over the ringing in her ears from the gunshot.
The sound was as sickening as it was exhilarating.
The moaning stopped.
The rolling stopped.
Everything stopped.
Andrei Lukashenko lay unconscious on the floor, face down, blood leaking from his ear and—she assumed from the rapidity with which the blood was darkening the concrete around his head—numerous other locations on his skull.
She was breathing heavily, adrenaline racing through her system, making her feel shaky and ill.
But she’d done it. She’d disabled her captor. Now all she needed to do was pick up his gun and fire a shot through the short length of chain keeping her wrist secured to the equipment arm and she would be—
Tracie stared at the floor in horror.
When Lukashenko fell, his gun dropped to the floor and bounced away. In the wrong direction.
She stretched out as far as she could, until the handcuff was digging painfully into her right wrist, balancing her body over the top of the prone Andrei Lukashenko, reaching with her left foot in an attempt to drag the Makarov back toward her.
She couldn’t do it. The gun lay at least three feet beyond her reach. She almost screamed in frustration.
Great. I might be even worse off now than I was before. What the hell am I going to do?
42
June 25, 1988
3:10 p.m.
Abandoned factory north of Sevastopol, Russia, USSR
Tracie had watched enough horror movies as a young teen to know that the bad guy was never more dangerous than when his victim thought he was dead. Invariably that was when the chainsaw-wielding maniac would rise up and butcher the remaining secondary cast members, leaving the star to fight for survival.
Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9) Page 20