Tracie passed the end of the administration building and moved toward the closest of the three subway stations. She moved hurriedly, but not so fast she would draw undue attention to herself. She was a worker anxious to escape the bitter cold, nothing more.
So far, so good. No alarm bells rang, no sirens wailed, no soldiers with guns came running to challenge her.
She’d made it slightly more than halfway between the administration building and the closest subway station when a man exited the building through the only visible door. She willed him to turn right and follow an empty pathway but instead he walked straight ahead.
Directly toward her.
It was unfortunate but she’d known it was bound to happen eventually. Tracie swallowed heavily, nerves thrumming, and kept walking. She maintained her previous steady pace and met the man’s eyes briefly, offering the polite-but-uninterested half-smile of a woman sharing an elevator with a stranger, or a worker-bee just trying to get through the day.
The man wasn’t a soldier, or at least was not wearing a Red Army overcoat. She hoped that meant he would be less likely to challenge her. Tracie had turned her ID around before exiting Olga Trentiova’s car in the parking lot, meaning the head shot photo wouldn’t be visible to him.
Unless it had flipped back over as she walked. She hadn’t really given the possibility any thought until now.
She watched as his gaze flitted from her face to her ID and then back to her face. He didn’t react, which meant he hadn’t seen that the photo didn’t match the face.
He seemed to hesitate, slowing just a bit, even in the brutal temperatures of a Ural Mountain February morning. Then they passed and she breathed a silent sigh of relief. The man continued walking toward the area of the base that Tracie had just left, and for the moment at least, nobody else was around who could be considered a threat.
She glanced up at the door the man had just exited.
It was secured with a cipher lock.
Dammit. Tracie wanted to hit herself in the head like the guy in the V-8 commercials on television. Except, instead of saying “I could have had a V-8,” she would say, “I could have preplanned better.”
Why hadn’t it occurred to her that the damned door would be locked?
What the hell do I do now? She couldn’t very well loiter in front of the door, waiting for someone else to exit so she could slip inside. The guards in the ubiquitous towers dotting the facility would notice something like that in about fifteen seconds. Roughly fifteen seconds after that she would either find herself face down on the cold ground and leaking blood from multiple bullet holes, or cuffed with her hands behind her back being marched to wherever Ryan Smith was being held.
She continued to walk at the same rapid, measured pace, knowing she had just seconds to come up with some kind of plan or become as noticeable to the Soviets as if she started waving her arms and shouting, “I’m an American spy!”
She reached the door.
Turned three hundred sixty degrees.
Tried to think.
Came up with nothing.
25
February 3, 1988
8:10 a.m.
Ipatiev Military Research Facility
Tracie made the snap decision to try the only ploy she could think of.
“Excuse me!” she shouted at the back of the man who’d passed her moments ago on the icy concrete pathway.
He stopped and turned, eyebrows raised curiously. He glanced in all directions as if unsure whether she was addressing him.
“I’m so sorry,” she continued. She raised her hands in the air and trotted toward the man, arranging her expression into the best “helpless female” look she could manage.
“I am sorry to bother you,” she repeated when she had gotten close enough that shouting was no longer necessary. She knew at least some of the guards up in the towers must be watching the exchange by now, so she had to make this convincing.
She smiled brightly and shrugged. Be ditzy. “I noticed that you just exited the building I need to enter. My coworker gave me the code to unlock the door, but I’ve already forgotten it. Would you be so kind as to rescue me?”
The man took a step or two in her direction. His forehead was wrinkled in confusion but the instant suspicion she would have expected from a soldier was missing. This guy was something else, maybe a researcher or scientist, but she didn’t think he was a man who carried a gun for a living.
Still, she would have to be very careful; there were plenty of guys who carried guns for a living within shouting distance.
Or shooting distance.
“You…don’t know the code?”
She scuffed at the frozen ground with the toe of her boot in feigned embarrassment and tried to force tears into her eyes. “No, and I am going to get in so much trouble if I have to go all the way back to the administration building and ask. I just started working here, and one of the other girls sent me over to get something, and she told me the code before I left the office and now I can’t remember it and they already think I don’t know enough to work here and I’ll probably lose my job and—”
“Please, do not cry,” the man interrupted. He raised his hands and shook them, palms down, in a clumsy attempt to calm the nearly hysterical young lady in front of him. “I can help you. We will make sure you do not lose your job today, okay?” He started walking back toward the warehouse-looking building as Tracie followed.
She sniffled, hoping she wasn’t laying it on too thickly. But no woman could reach her late twenties without becoming acutely aware of how uncomfortable most men—especially strangers—became at the prospect of dealing with a crying woman. Was it sexist? Maybe, but Tracie had always been far too busy running ops to worry about societal norms. And she was not above using sexism or any other tool at her disposal when her life was on the line.
The man turned his head as they walked and glanced at Tracie. The confused expression had returned and he seemed to be slowing his pace. “You…need something…here?”
Oh-oh.
She nodded shyly and met his eyes for a half-second, then looked down at the ground.
“What could you possibly need…here?”
“Um…I…”
His eyes hardened. “Why do you need to get in here?”
“It’s female stuff, alright? I just started my period and I don’t have anything with me and one of the girls in the office told me where to find a supply of tampons and oh my God this is so humiliating and…” She started to cry.
The man took a step back. His eyes were wide and his expression couldn’t have been any more shocked if Tracie had admitted to being an American spy.
He raised his hands, this time to ensure she didn’t start speaking again. “It is okay, really. You do not need to explain further.” He hurriedly punched the numbers into the cypher keypad as Tracie watched carefully, still pretending to sob with downcast eyes.
He pulled open a heavily reinforced steel door and held it open for her, the perfect gentleman. She looked up at him through eyes wet with tears and said, “Thank you for understanding. Thank you so much.”
“It is nothing,” he said without meeting her gaze. He released his hold on the door after she stepped through it and then hurried away as it began to close on its own.
She tried to suppress a smile as the door clanged shut.
***
Tracie’s first thought was that her assumption as to the purpose of the three subway stations—at least if this one was any indication—had been spot-on.
The structure was nothing more than a heated tin half-moon plunked down on top of a concrete foundation, like a large Quonset hut. As far as Tracie could tell, the doorway through which she’d just entered offered the only access. The interior of the building consisted of a series of elevators and stairways, all offering below ground access, presumably to different portions of the base.
Judging from the number of elevators and stairways inside this unit, the Soviets ha
d constructed a massive facility below the snowy surface of the Urals, especially if the other two subway stations contained an equivalent number of underground portals.
Construction must have taken years, and it had all been kept hidden from United States intelligence services until recently. Tracie shook her head. How many other secret military bases were tucked away in the hundreds of thousands of square miles of desolation making up so much of the Soviet Union?
It was a frightening thought but one that was irrelevant to her current situation. Right now, Tracie needed to get moving. Anyone could exit a stairway or elevator at any time, and the next person to do so might not be as friendly—or as gullible—as the last man Tracie had encountered.
The question was where should she go? Each elevator and stairway was labeled, but unfortunately the labeling system the Soviets had designed was utterly useless to someone with no working knowledge of the facility: Area A, Area B, Area C, and so forth. The signs meant nothing to her.
Might as well start with A. Once she’d made the decision, Tracie wasted no time. She had no intention of getting trapped inside an elevator, so she strode to the stairway beneath the metal sign with rusting edges marked “Area A,” and began descending.
The stairway was dank and the lighting poor, consisting of a single electric bulb placed inside a wire cage and bolted to the side wall every ten feet or so. The bulbs couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty watts each, meaning the descent was conducted in a murky semi-darkness that reminded her of dusk inside a heavily wooded area.
She moved slowly and quietly, not wanting to telegraph her presence to anyone who might be climbing in the opposite direction. The stairway had been constructed in sections, each consisting of a half-dozen steps down to a corrugated metal landing, then a one hundred eighty degree turn and another six steps down to the next landing and another one hundred eighty degree turn.
The design made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, so Tracie would need the advantage of surprise should a soldier turn the corner and become suspicious at encountering a civilian in the stairwell. Presumably the majority of the workers used the elevators, but it wouldn’t be a military facility without regular armed patrols that undoubtedly included these stairways.
She rounded the second landing, wondering how deep into the side of the mountain the Soviets had dug, and froze at the sound of the metal door clanging open at ground level above. A pair of male voices echoed down the stairwell, sharing a laugh at a joke Tracie hadn’t heard.
At least two people had just entered the subway station.
Instinct told her to flee, to charge down the stairs in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of the men should they begin descending to Area A. She took one quick step toward the next landing and then stopped.
The stairs were constructed of the same corrugated metal as the landings, and they were contained inside a square metal shaft. Their method of construction tended to magnify even the faintest of noises, sounds reverberating through the shaft at a volume that reminded Tracie of sitting in the front row at a heavy metal concert. If she started clomping down the stairs now she would almost certainly draw the attention of the men standing above her head, not to mention anyone else who might be within earshot.
So she waited, eyes narrowed in concentration, ears attuned to the slightest whisper of sound, straining to hear whether the heavy boots would begin descending. The men had lots of choices, including any of the elevators, so the odds were in her favor that if she simply stood still and kept quiet that within ten seconds the footsteps would fade away and all would once again be still.
But of course it didn’t work out that way.
The men paused for a moment, still chuckling over the joke Tracie hadn’t heard, and then the boots began pounding down the stairs, the sound loud and menacing.
Tracie wasn’t even surprised. She had just seconds to react and then the two men would round the corner and they would be face-to-face.
Time to execute Plan B.
If only she had one.
26
The way she saw this situation she had just two choices: confront the men when they turned the corner or continue down the stairway and try to stay ahead of them.
Each option offered distinct disadvantages. She had every confidence she could disable two men, even if they were armed and trained Red Army soldiers. She would have the advantage of surprise, which she could use to devastating effect. The men would never expect to be accosted deep inside a highly secure military facility. She could have them on the floor and unconscious almost before they knew what hit them.
But she had no way of knowing how long it would take before someone else used this stairwell and stumbled over the men. If that happened, an alarm would certainly be sounded and then she would be trapped on the base. She would be hunted down and eventually captured. It would be inevitable.
On the other hand, descending the stairs ahead of the men was a risky proposition due to the very fact she was operating blind. She had no clue what might be beyond the next landing, and whatever it was might well represent a greater danger than she currently faced.
All of this went through Tracie’s mind in an instant, and she made her decision before the men had passed the second step.
She would continue down the stairs.
There were plenty of disadvantages to being a petite woman, particularly in a business where a premium was often placed on brawn. But Tracie had always managed to rely on intelligence and quick thinking to more than make up for what she lacked in physical strength. And this was one time she was thankful for being small and light.
She raced down the stairs, holding the iron handrail with both hands, using it to take as much pressure off her feet as possible. She stepped lightly on the portions of the stairs that had been bolted to the risers in an effort to minimize noise, and in seconds had rounded the next landing.
Still the stairs continued, winding farther and farther underground. They seemed to go on forever. The men rounded the first landing, boots clattering, arguing loudly about which one had gotten drunker last weekend. They were utterly oblivious, and it occurred to Tracie that she could probably take the stairs three at a time, leaping down to each landing with a loud thud, and the men would likely not even notice.
Two more landings and she finally arrived at a door. It was constructed of metal, exactly like the one she’d tricked the researcher—or whatever he was—into opening for her up on the ground floor, except this one had been built with a small window of wire-reinforced impact-resistant glass located at approximately eye level, perhaps three inches wide by nine inches high.
Decision time again. Plunge through the entryway or take on the men still descending the stairs?
She pressed her eyes to the little window, praying now wasn’t the time someone would fling open the door from the other side and catch her in the face with the reinforced metal corner.
A long hallway stood on the other side of the window, populated with a series of closed wooden doors running down each side. The hallway was empty, at least for the moment. After a long distance—sixty feet? More?—the corridor terminated at another metal door identical to this one.
The emptiness of the hallway made Tracie’s decision an easy one. She eased the door open and slipped through it. There was no other option for the men behind her but to take the identical route, so Tracie knew she had to move quickly.
She had played soccer and run track in high school, and even now, ten years after graduation, could beat almost anyone she knew in a one hundred yard dash. But she could have been an Olympic gold medalist sprinter and she still wouldn’t have been able to make it the length of the hallway before the men following her reached the landing.
She stepped to the first door on the right and peered through the small reinforced window, her heart pounding and her hands shaking from the adrenaline racing through her system. The interior looked empty, and although the rooms were labeled only with
a letter-number sequence—this was room A-1—it appeared to be nothing more than a simple storage closet.
Tracie doubted there would be many better options and in any event knew she was just about out of time, so she pushed open the door and stepped through.
She reached under the heavy winter parka for her Beretta, snugged up next to her right breast in a shoulder holster, and eased the door closed. The latch caught with a snick that sounded like thunder under the circumstances.
The room was illuminated brightly—at least relative to the subterranean dimness of the stairwell—by a series of ceiling-mounted fluorescent bulbs, with no way Tracie could see to dim them. Probably the lights on the entire underground level were controlled by one master switch.
Dammit.
If she could shut off the lights, she could step back from the door and watch the men pass by in the hallway without risking being seen herself. But with the lights on, that plan would be a recipe for disaster.
Instead of moving to the middle of the room, Tracie flattened herself against the wall next to the door on the hinged side. If the men entered, the door would open and Tracie would be shielded behind it. She could then step out from behind it and take them down once they were inside the storeroom.
She eased her head forward until she could see just enough of the hallway to know when the men were passing. A second later the door clanked open out in the hallway and two male figures passed Tracie’s hiding place. The men were still arguing good-naturedly, paying little attention to their surroundings.
Tracie decided to push her luck. It was clear the men weren’t entering this storage area, but if possible she wanted to see where they were going. So she twisted the knob and eased open the door, moving slowly, leaving just enough room to see the length of the hallway with her left eye. These two idiots were so oblivious they would never notice, but there was always the chance someone else would descend the stairs and enter the hallway behind her.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 136