The Russian-made ZiL-157 delivery truck was big and old and loud. It was also uncomfortable, and not just because Tracie guessed the thing had rolled off the assembly line sometime around the year she was born.
The truck had been modified from its original configuration in a small but critical way: CIA engineers had lowered the cargo box’s original floor four inches. It was now asymmetrical, with cutouts that allowed it to sit low on the vehicle’s frame, while still permitting clearance for drive shaft operation.
A new floor had then been constructed four inches above the location of the original floor, its wood worn and aged perfectly to match what one would expect to see in a work truck that had been in more or less continuous use for better than a quarter-century.
The result was a wafer-thin, eight-inch hideaway running the length of the ZiL’s cargo box.
It would soon house Tracie Tanner.
The truck rumbled along the pitted, pothole-strewn road toward the city of Kremlyov, one of the most secretive, highly secure locations in a country legendary for its secretiveness and high security.
From the moment Ekaterina Alenin uttered the words, “Kremlyov Infection,” over tea two days ago in Moscow, Tracie had known she would find herself in this situation or a similar one.
Kremlyov was a closed city, also known as a ZATO, home to a key Soviet nuclear plant. Many Russians, even lifelong residents of Moscow, located just a few hundred kilometers to Kremlyov’s northwest, were unaware of the city’s existence unless they had reason to know of it.
But Tracie knew.
Tracie was aware of the existence and location of every Russian nuclear plant, as well as every military base, airport, power plant, and other important element of Soviet infrastructure. It had been information critical to the performance of her duties as a CIA covert operative working in Soviet-bloc countries.
Following her dismissal from active CIA duty last year, she’d doubted she would ever again have use for that knowledge. But now, less than nine months later, here she was.
Back in Russia. Back in danger.
Her initial instinct had been to hike into Kremlyov, to slip into the city unnoticed. It was located in a remote area, surrounded by a harsh wilderness unusual for a city of more than eighty thousand people. There would be no shortage of places where she could enter unobserved, had Kremlyov been an ordinary city.
Hiking would represent the easiest and quickest way in.
But there were two problems with her initial plan.
One, Kremlyov was surrounded by prison-style dual parallel barbed-wire fences, two-hundred-thirty-two square kilometers worth. That configuration in itself would offer little challenge to her. It would barely serve to slow her down.
But in the area between the fences, all trees had been removed and all the soil overturned. This allowed suspicious Soviet officials to know immediately if an intruder had broken or cut his—or her—way through the fences and entered the city.
The second problem was that the Russians had buried sophisticated listening devices under the no-man’s-land ringing the city. Any attempt to breach the exterior fence and hike to the interior, even by someone as small as Tracie, even in the remotest part of the forest, would be immediately flagged and brought to the KGB’s attention.
She would most likely be apprehended before ever setting foot inside Kremlyov.
She also considered walking into the city atop the frozen Mockba River. This time of year the ice was probably at least three feet thick. But even if she could do so without setting off the underground sensors—a possibility that was by no means certain—there would be nowhere to hide. Police or KGB would see her approaching for hundreds of yards, even if she kept to the edge of the river.
Again, she would be arrested before ever getting close to her objective.
It became obvious very quickly that she would need help.
She had hoped to get in and out of Russia without ever making use of the CIA contact information Aaron Stallings had provided, given the current lethal uncertainty regarding security. Still, the mission came first, and there would be no getting into Kremlyov, which was a close to a medieval fortress as was possible in 1988, without assistance.
So, very reluctantly, she had contacted the most recent agency operative—besides herself—to arrive in country, calling him via encrypted satellite phone. Her reasoning was that the newest operative would have the least covert experience, but would also have had the least opportunity to be outed to the KGB.
It wasn’t much to bank her life on but it was the best she could manage.
That operative had then coordinated for use of the specially modified delivery truck. He was the man now driving Tracie into the lion’s den.
When Director Stallings had shared the intel regarding other agency operatives currently working in Russia, he had assured her this man had only been in country a few weeks, meaning the odds of him being compromised were minimal.
Stallings’s information hadn’t eased Tracie’s mind much then, and it didn’t now, either.
She had worked with Aaron Stallings enough to know the director was not above telling the occasional little white lie—or the occasional whopper, for that matter—if he felt it necessary to advance a mission. Stallings saying Tracie’s contact had recently arrived in Russia didn’t necessarily mean Tracie’s contact had recently arrived to Russia.
* * *
Tracie rode with her fellow CIA case officer in the truck’s cab for most of the trip from Moscow to Kremlyov. Her agency-produced identification would be more than sufficient to protect her in the event of a routine traffic stop, thus there was no reason to spend four hundred miles wedged into what felt like a mail slot.
Conversation was kept to a minimum. The other operative was a young man, curly-haired, slim and with a studious appearance. He looked to Tracie like he should be holed up inside a university library writing a doctoral thesis on some obscure historical event, not driving across the Soviet Union on an espionage assignment that could get him executed.
She supposed that was the point.
While he seemed pleasant enough, both operatives knew better than to attempt anything other than the most basic of pleasantries. Getting to know someone in this situation on anything more than an operational level would be a mistake. When the mission was complete, they would likely never see each other again. The alternative was far too risky.
Besides, she’d learned her lesson about getting close to another agent months ago in an underground tunnel beneath Wuppertal, West Germany. Working with a young man she’d initially detested, she had begun to feel a certain closeness to him as he revealed himself to be both resourceful and brave.
That young man had died a sudden and shocking death, a death for which Tracie blamed herself. The bitter regret she felt for her actions—and inactions—on that day lingered and probably always would.
It was the second time in less than a year she’d lost someone for which she’d felt the tug of attraction during a mission, and she had vowed it would be the last. She would never make that mistake again.
So the conversation was pleasant enough as the kilometers rolled past, if stilted and awkward. But it had done nothing to prevent a look of mild astonishment on the man’s face when out of nowhere, Tracie said, “Stop the truck.”
The two-lane country road was deserted, the early morning pitch-black and bitterly cold, and for a moment the agent—he had introduced himself as “Ryan Smith,” which meant that his real name was most certainly not Ryan Smith—looked quizzically across the front seat without taking his foot off the accelerator.
“Now, Ryan. Stop the truck now.”
He shook his head and pulled to the side of the road.
“Thank you. Now back up until I tell you to stop.”
“What’s this about?”
“It’s about saving our asses. Just do it.”
He shook his head but shifted into reverse and the ZiL-157 chugged back along the e
mpty road.
“That’s far enough,” Tracie said, concentrating her attention on the side mirror.
“Okay. What now?”
“Now you pull the release on the rear bumper. I’ll be right back.”
The hidden crawl space beneath the modified delivery truck was accessible only through a removable metal bumper installed on the rear of the vehicle and crafted to look identical to the ZiL-157’s factory-installed bumper. One release handle, similar to a standard vehicle’s hood release, was located in the front of the truck under the steering wheel. A second release handle had been built into the crawl space itself.
“Whatever you say,” Smith answered. “You’re the boss.”
Tracie opened her door and climbed down out of the cab. She trotted behind the truck and into the middle of the road. A squirrel that had been run down by a passing vehicle sometime in the last few hours lay in the road, its lifeless corpse frozen to the pavement.
Wrinkling her nose in disgust, Tracie prodded the squirrel with the toe of her boot to dislodge it, then picked it up and held it away from her body. She walked to the rear of the truck and motioned for Smith to pull the release.
A moment later he did, and the bumper clunked open, dropping off the frame and hanging from the rear of the truck by a pair of heavy cables. Tracie tossed the dead animal into the crawl space and then fastened the fake bumper back into position.
A moment later she had climbed back into the truck. Smith stared at her unblinkingly. It was clear he thought she’d lost her mind. Tracie pulled a package of wet naps out of her backpack and cleaned her hands thoroughly, then smiled at her companion.
“Just another day at the office,” she said sweetly.
“You want to tell me what that was all about?”
“I told you before. It’s about saving our asses.”
“How is a dead animal going to…? Ah, never mind. Any other wildlife corpses you’d like to collect before we continue on to Kremlyov?”
“Nope. One should do it.”
“And you’re actually going to crawl back there in the dark with a dead animal.”
“For a while.”
“A while? Then what?”
“I told you. I’m—”
“I know, I know. You’re saving our asses.”
He shook his head again and shifted the big delivery truck back into first gear. It rumbled on toward the fenced-in ZATO.
They drove on in silence for a few minutes, and then Smith said, “I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t shake your hand when this is all over.”
Tracie couldn’t help but laugh.
* * *
The modified truck was slightly more than ten miles from Kremlyov when Tracie said, “It’s time.”
They probably could safely have driven much closer before she slid into the claustrophobic space under the truck, but she couldn’t see taking any chances. There was far too much at risk.
No one had spoken for a long time, both operatives lost in thought. What they were about to attempt was risky, more so for Tracie, but for Smith as well. To Tracie’s knowledge, even the CIA had never attempted to breach the heavy security of any closed Russian city, much less the most fortified ZATO of them all.
If they were caught, they would be interrogated extensively, subjected to some of the most extreme methods of torture ever devised. Then they would be executed. No one in the United States would come to save them. No one would ever even know what had happened. They would simply disappear as if they had never existed at all.
At her words, Smith eased the truck to the side of the road and stopped. He flipped on his hazard lights and prepared to act as though he was changing a flat tire in the event of another motorist’s approach.
It would be an unlikely occurrence. Sunrise was still more than an hour away, and the roads had gotten progressively bumpier and more pothole-strewn the closer they came to Kremlyov. It was as if the Soviets were using any and all methods to discourage visitors.
Tracie slipped on a pair of gloves, then climbed down to the road and padded to the rear of the truck, backpack slung over her shoulder. Smith pulled the release and the rear bumper clunked down once again. Tracie pulled a flashlight and aimed it into the crawl space.
She reached inside and removed the dead squirrel, thankful for her gloves but wrinkling her nose exactly as she had done before. She couldn’t help it. She’d done plenty of distasteful things in service to her country. Some of them had been downright unsettling; a few would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life. But in terms of sheer, stomach-turning disgust, she didn’t think anything she had ever done could match this moment.
She dropped to her hands and knees and then crawled beneath the idling truck, careful to avoid scalding herself on the exhaust system. She’d done that before, a few months before in West Germany, and once was enough.
Inside the right wheel well, she shoved the animal’s still frozen corpse into the gap where the fender had been bolted to the frame. It was a tight squeeze, and she had to use her gloved hands as a hammer to seat the squirrel securely. If it fell out onto the road between here and Kremlyov, this would all be for nothing.
She pounded and pushed and prodded and eventually decided the animal was positioned as well as she could manage. She would have to hope for the best.
She crawled back out from under the ZiL-157 and grinned in the murky darkness at Ryan Smith, who was once again looking at her like she’d lost her marbles. Hell, maybe she had.
She stuck her hand out. “It’s been a pleasure, Smith. Get us inside that city and then drop me off somewhere near the address I gave you. After that, get the hell out. With luck you’ll never have to take on an assignment this suicidal again.”
Her temporary partner stared at her outstretched hand in horror and she laughed. “Just kidding about the handshake,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll burn these gloves as soon as I can.”
Ryan Smith—or whatever his real name was—chuckled uneasily.
Tracie had introduced herself to him using her preferred alias of Fiona Quinn, and after a moment, he answered. “You’re one of a kind, Quinn, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told. Best of luck, Smith, and be careful out there. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.” She trudged to the removable rear bumper and slid inside the opening.
A moment later, the false bumper clunked back into place.
A moment after that, the gears grinded and then the truck lurched forward.
Twenty minutes later, air brakes squealed and the ZiL-157 rumbled to a stop. They had arrived at the armed checkpoint to Kremlyov.
In the dark, suspended under the false floor of the delivery truck, Tracie crossed her fingers. Here goes nothing.
10
January 21, 1988
6:25 a.m.
Kremlyov, Russia, USSR
Tracie knew there would be armed Soviet soldiers at the checkpoint. There were armed Soviet soldiers at every break in the dual fences surrounding Kremlyov. Each entrance and exit to the city featured a small guardhouse, staffed twenty-four hours a day by men whose job it was to be suspicious of everyone and everything.
The men with guns didn’t particularly concern Tracie. The false bottom built into the ZiL-157 was a marvel, virtually invisible to the naked eye. No one would notice the four fewer inches of clearance in the cargo box unless they loaded or unloaded identical delivery trucks every day, and even then she doubted most people possessed the powers of observation necessary to pick up on the alteration.
The only real possibility of detection lay in the size of the removable bumper, which by necessity was slightly larger than typical for this type of vehicle. It had to be, in order to fit over the entrance to the “mail slot,” as Tracie thought of it.
But the bumper’s size difference was relatively minor. Smith told her longtime operatives in the area said this truck had been used hundreds of times over the past decade-plus, ferrying everything from Soviet dissidents
to escaped political prisoners to classified documents around and out of the Soviet Union.
The likelihood of the slightly too-large bumper being spotted by Red Army soldiers unfamiliar with this type of truck was slim, especially in the predawn darkness and the bitter cold.
So she felt reasonably confident of a smooth entry into the city.
Unless there were dogs.
If the Soviets used dogs trained to employ their superior sense of smell in order to sniff out the scent of hidden humans, the whole plan could fall apart before she ever got inside Kremlyov. It was a possibility that had gnawed at her almost from the moment Smith offered the use of the CIA-modified truck.
She lay motionless inside her hiding place as boots crunched across the pavement. A moment later the gate guards requested a bill of lading from Smith up front in the cab. The situation was eerily similar to one she had faced just months ago, when she’d hidden inside a delivery truck to gain access to a secret Nazi training camp in West Germany.
That ruse had worked. Maybe her luck would hold.
The guards didn’t seem particularly suspicious, and that was a good sign. This situation was one they faced hundreds of times a day, as the goods and services necessary to keep a fenced-in city of more than eighty thousand residents running smoothly came and went in a near-constant flow.
But then everything changed in an instant.
The scrabble of paws on the frozen ground announced the arrival of exactly what Tracie had feared most—dogs.
Dammit.
She forced herself to breathe slowly and steadily.
In and out.
It was critical she remain perfectly still.
The dog became more active as it approached the truck. Tracie could hear it straining and whining, pulling on its lead. Its handler grunted as he fought against the excited animal, and the conversation at the front of the truck that had been casual and perfunctory suddenly took on a wholly different tone.
Tracie couldn’t quite make out the words, but the guard’s voice became clipped and guttural. Officious.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 103