Tracie sure didn’t feel like the star of this particular life-and-death drama.
On the other hand, Andrei Lukashenko didn’t look like he would be rising up to menace anyone anytime soon; maybe not ever. Tracie wasn’t sure whether he was alive or dead, and given her current situation, partly stretched across the table, she was unable to crouch down and check for a pulse.
But he wasn’t moving, and the halo of blood surrounding his head led her to believe she could safely eliminate him as a threat.
Just to be sure, she nudged him with her boot, shoving it against his ample midsection.
No response.
“Andrei,” she called, not quite shouting but speaking much more loudly than would have been necessary if he were conscious. “Andrei, wake up!”
Still no response.
She turned her attention to his head, placing the tip of her boot against the back of his skull and pushing slightly, while calling to him again. It was the closest she could come to slapping his face in an attempt to force him to regain consciousness.
Again, no response.
If she had to guess, she would have said he was alive. It appeared that perhaps his sport jacket was rising and falling very slightly, in rapid, shallow respiration.
She shrugged. Whether The Weasel was alive or dead made no difference to her, except as it applied to her present, very dire, situation. The second half of her assignment was to eliminate him, so if her instincts were wrong and he had already died, all it meant was that she wouldn’t need to waste a bullet in his brain if she managed to figure a way out of here.
Satisfied Lukashenko represented no threat, Tracie returned her attention to her predicament. It hadn’t changed in any positive way while she evaluated Lukashenko’s situation. In fact, with the passage of a couple more minutes, it had grown demonstrably worse, since Ivan Gregorovich was now a couple minutes closer.
I wonder if I could slip my hand out of the cuff?
She pressed her thumb tightly against her palm and closed her fingers together at their tips. The result was a narrowing of the diameter of her hand into a funnel shape, more or less. The difference was slight but noticeable.
She squinted and gazed carefully at the metal bracelet encircling her wrist. Shook her head and cursed under her breath. Her hand still wasn’t close to being narrow enough to allow her to pull free of the restraint. There simply wouldn’t be any way to compress her knucklebones enough.
Just to be sure, Tracie backed away from the equipment arm until the handcuffs had been pulled taut. Then she attempted to move further, concentrating on narrowing her hand, visualizing it slipping through the cuff, squeezing her eyes closed as the pain increased.
Pain was nothing.
Pain could be ignored.
Physical injuries would heal.
Any damage to her hand would be minimal in comparison to the fate awaiting her upon General Ivan Gregorovich’s arrival, his torture, and then her subsequent delivery to the KGB.
Trickles of sweat inched down her forehead. Tracie realized she’d begun moaning softly. She’d squeezed her eyes shut but now she opened them and glanced at her hand, still trapped inside its circular metal prison, careful not to let up on the steady pressure she’d been exerting upon it.
It was no good. The cuff remained jammed against her hand a solid inch shy of the knucklebones. She flopped down on the table, releasing the awful strain she’d been putting on the bones of her hand. The painful experiment served to verify what she’d already known: it would be impossible to slip a hand free of properly applied handcuffs.
If it could be done, criminals everywhere would have been escaping capture for decades.
She knew she’d done no serious damage to the hand, but now it throbbed incessantly, joining the pain in her skull and her ankle to form a symphony of suffering. But the throbbing didn’t particularly bother Tracie. She’d experienced pain before, often much worse than this, and managed to continue and complete missions in spite of it.
The mental anguish was something else.
If she’d managed to eliminate Lukashenko, that portion of her assignment was complete. But after risking her life and freedom to successfully recover the submersible communications decoder from Objekt 825, the notion that she was within hours—maybe minutes—of delivering it right back into the hands of the KGB was galling beyond belief.
She closed her eyes again and breathed deeply, in and out, counting to ten and then starting over. Her panic and fear had begun building to the point they threatened to overtake reason and crowd out rational thought. There was nothing wrong with fear; it was a natural human emotion and could actually help an operative by ensuring she remained cognizant of danger.
But panic was something entirely different. There was no scenario in which panic could be in any way helpful, and Tracie concentrated on pushing it away, walling it off in a tiny portion of her brain, then slamming an imaginary door closed and locking it.
There would be plenty of time for panic later, if she were not able to free herself. Right now, she needed a clear head and a calmness of spirit, as hard as that might be to accomplish. Anything less, anything, would ensure her death or capture.
After several rounds of deep breathing, Tracie opened her eyes, determined to examine her surroundings with fresh viewpoint.
Think outside the box. There is always a way.
Her plan had been to access Lukashenko’s gun and fire as many rounds into the steel chains as necessary to break them apart. The cuff would still encircle her right wrist, but it would no longer be attached to its partner.
Since accessing the gun had become impossible, maybe she could accomplish the same thing—breaking apart the metal links—using a different method. Something sharp to cut the links, or something heavy to smash them over and over until they finally snapped.
The problem was that most of the detritus littering the ancient manufacturing plant could be eliminated immediately as a potential knife or battering ram. It was either too small to be effective, or contained no sharp edges, or…
Wait a minute.
What about the length of chain Tracie had focused on before? Would that be heavy enough to batter the links into submission?
Maybe. It definitely held possibilities. She examined the chain as it lay on the table several feet away. Caked in a heavy coating of rust, the metal links were thick. Whatever the chain’s purpose had originally been, Tracie thought there was at least a chance she could use it to bludgeon the much smaller links connecting the two sides of the metal bracelets.
The slightest glimmer of hope ignited inside her.
But there was a problem, and it was a big one. The length of chain was coiled on top of the table several feet to Tracie’s right, well out of reach even if she lay on her back atop the table and stretched out with her left arm and hand.
She felt the panic threatening to return and forced it back. Think outside the box. There’s always a way.
Her position, back against the metal table with her arm trailing behind her, was causing her feet to keep slipping on the smoothness of the concrete floor. She regained her footing, annoyed, and then gasped as she realized exactly how she was going to retrieve the chain.
Outside the box.
She lifted her left leg and pushed off with her right, slipping her left leg onto the table as she rotated her hips. Then she braced herself with her hands and lifted her right foot onto the surface as well. Now she lay flat on her back atop the table, her right arm stretched painfully over her head.
Her feet rested a few inches shy of the prize.
Goddammit. Nothing can be easy.
She gritted her teeth and inched toward the chain, pulling herself along the table with her heels as she pushed with her hands and arms. The pain from her earlier attempt at sliding her hand out of the cuffs came rushing back as she stretched.
It felt like hours but was probably not more than thirty seconds, and then Tracie’s left foot hover
ed over the coiled chain. She lowered it slowly, carefully, trying to position her heel so that it descended into the middle of the coil, as if dropping it into a tiny open volcano.
Then she arched her back and began retreating. The pain gradually eased as the chain began to slide along the smooth metal. It was uncoiling slowly as she pulled, but also moving closer. The plan was simple: move the length of chain far enough with her foot that she could reach it with her hand.
At last she lowered her feet to the floor and pushed herself to a standing position, once again facing the table. She massaged her throbbing right hand with her left, and then reached across her body, smiling despite the pain as her fingers wrapped around the rusty links.
She had no idea whether her desperate plan would work, but she was taking action, and that was Step One.
Now, she would discover whether Step One would lead to a Step Two, or if she’d just wasted much of the dwindling time she had remaining.
43
June 25, 1988
3:15 p.m.
Abandoned factory north of Sevastopol, Russia, USSR
Immediately, she could see there was a problem.
Of course there was.
The iron equipment arm was bolted to the table via a thick metal support bracket attached to each of its four sides. Those brackets were preventing Tracie from placing the links flat on the table when she stretched them taut.
Her plan had been to grind the heavy links of the chain over the top of the smaller handcuff links, forcing the handcuff links against the metal surface. Theoretically, Tracie believed, the friction created by that action would eventually cause the lighter links to break apart.
But her plan was contingent upon getting the damned handcuff links flat against the table. The half-inch or so that the equipment arm’s support bracket lifted the links off the table was going to be a problem.
She tried anyway.
Stretching her right hand as far from the equipment arm as she could manage, ignoring the pain as it flared in her knucklebones, Tracie gripped the rusty chain in her left. Then she began grinding, sliding the chain back and forth in something resembling a sawing motion.
It was slow going, and hard work. Being right-handed, Tracie’s grip on the chain with her left hand felt awkward and unsteady. Her knuckles throbbed, and her dual head wounds throbbed, and she felt sweat drip down her forehead in rivulets as she forced the chain over the handcuff links.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Her intention when she started had been to continue until the damn handcuffs snapped apart and she was free. But now she realized that she had neither the strength to continue working in such an awkward manner, nor the patience to avoid examining her handiwork to see if she was making any headway.
She lifted the chain and slid it to the side, squinting as she gazed down at her work surface. Rust flakes and dust covered both sets of links. She blew on the surfaces and a pair of tiny brown clouds flew away toward the back of the table, leaving the handcuff links free for examination.
Tracie cursed. She’d made virtually no dent in the tough metal. Maybe one or two of the links had been bent slightly—maybe, she couldn’t even be sure the dents weren’t a trick of the light—but otherwise, the goddamned handcuffs looked as though they’d just come off the assembly line at the goddamned factory.
She felt tears begin to gather in her eyes, acutely aware of the sand running through her personal hourglass. How much longer would it be before Ivan Gregorovich arrived and began rearranging her guts before transporting her to KGB Headquarters?
She cursed again and forced the tears away.
I’m NOT going out like this.
There has to be another way, I just haven’t found it yet.
Think outside the box.
She glanced down at The Weasel, who lay unmoving exactly as he’d fallen a few minutes ago. It was a good thing, too. Tracie had been so wrapped up in trying to bludgeon her way out of her handcuffs that she’d more or less forgotten he was there. If he was still alive and had awakened, he could easily have overpowered her before she even noticed.
He wouldn’t be overpowering anyone anytime soon, though, and maybe not ever. The circle of blood surrounding his head on the concrete floor had continued widening. Its progress had slowed but not stopped, which led Tracie to believe Lukashenko was still alive. But she saw nothing to make her change her earlier assessment that she needn’t count him among her problems.
She blew out a breath and forced herself to concentrate.
Think outside the box.
Lukashenko’s gun lay on the floor out of her reach. It hadn’t magically crept closer while she worked with the heavy iron chain on the assembly table, and it taunted her with its relative closeness. It was less than four feet out of her reach, but that four feet might as well be four miles.
Unless…
Think outside the box.
Tracie glanced from the gun on the floor to the chain on the table and then back.
Gun to chain.
Chain to gun.
Then she shrugged. What the hell. She had no other plan and nothing to lose by trying something that seemed likely to end in failure.
She picked the chain up in her left hand and slipped it off the table. The free end clanked to the floor, kicking up a mini storm of rusty dust. Then she gauged the distance between herself and The Weasel’s Makarov, doing her best to slip the chain through her hand until she guessed she had roughly five feet remaining between her hand and the floor.
She lifted her hand until it was even with the top of her head. The end of the chain dangled maybe three to four inches off the floor.
Five feet.
Next, she began swinging her hand forward and backward, generating momentum, the free end of the chain swinging farther each time until it made wide, arcing turns, like the pendulum inside a giant grandfather clock.
The chain was thick and heavy, and Tracie’s arm began to tire, but she ignored it and continued. When she’d managed to achieve what she felt was the maximum arc, she waited until the end of the chain had begun its forward motion and then lowered her arm as it moved, effectively tossing it toward the gun.
Tracie’s heart was in her throat. She was attempting to thread an impossible needle, dropping the end of the chain down on top of the gun without sending it spinning across the floor in the wrong direction.
It was a plan born of desperation and the knowledge she was down to her last chance, and she had no clue whether it stood a snowball’s chance in hell of working.
She held her breath as the chain flew gracefully across the short distance, dropping down onto Lukashenko’s body and his gun at the same time. The forward momentum of the chain forced the gun away from Tracie, moving it nearly another foot in the wrong direction.
But the weapon remained covered by the heavy chain and Tracie felt a surge of adrenaline. Her fear of sending the gun skittering across the floor had not materialized.
Her plan still had a chance.
She realized her hands were shaking, and she took a moment to steady them, breathing deeply and forcing herself to relax. It wasn’t easy.
After a moment, she began pulling back on the chain, as slowly as she could, willing Lukashenko’s pistol to remain wedged between the thick iron links and the floor.
Six inches.
A foot.
Eighteen inches, and Tracie was sweating heavily. Her arm was by now behind her, and she would need to reestablish a grip farther along the chain if she wanted to continue moving the gun closer.
She leaned back against the table and lifted her left leg, bending it at the knee, giving herself a small makeshift surface upon which she could rest the chain. She released her grip and then grabbed it again, this time as far forward as possible.
Then she lowered her leg and continued.
One minute later the gun had come to rest against Andrei Lukashenko. His body la
y between Tracie and the weapon, and she had a momentary—but terrifying—vision of him choosing this exact moment to regain consciousness, his eyes fluttering open just before picking the gun up, rolling over and firing two rounds between Tracie’s eyes.
It didn’t happen. The Weasel continued to lie on the floor, if not dead then gravely injured.
Now came the hard—and likely very painful—part of her plan. Tracie stepped over Lukashenko’s body with her left foot. She was now straddling the downed man, her right arm stretched across the table. She placed her left foot as firmly as possible on the floor and began lifting her right foot over Lukashenko as well, a bit of her weight supported by her foot but the majority of it by her arm.
The pain was immense. Her wrist and knuckles were on fire, bones and muscles and tendons screaming for relief as she lowered her right foot to the floor across Andrei Lukashenko.
Bringing her feet together, Tracie trapped the Makarov like a sliver between two ends of a tweezers.
Jaws clamped shut, panting and moaning, sweat flowing freely, Tracie sent up a mental prayer to God or fate or karma or whoever the hell else might be paying attention.
She squeezed her eyes nearly closed and pushed off with her feet, forcing herself to keep them pressed together, every ounce of her one hundred-ten pounds supported by just her right arm.
She screamed through her clamped jaws but maintained all the concentration she could muster on what she was doing. Her feet rose as her body twisted to the left, and then Tracie yanked her legs toward her body and pulled her feet apart, hoping she’d raised the gun high enough to clear Lukashneko’s body.
The Makarov tumbled in her direction. It bounced once on The Wesael’s chest and then fell to the floor beneath Tracie.
Her feet dropped onto Lukashenko’s body and she pushed off, desperate to release the pressure on her arm and shoulder. She scrabbled for purchase on the floor and then stood.
Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9) Page 21