Tracie smiled. “That’s the best you can come up with? You’ve already shoveled that pile of crap at me, and I’m not paying any more attention to it now than I did the first time you tried it.”
“Fine with me. It is your funeral.”
“We’ll see about that soon enough, I guess. Now, if you want to avoid your funeral, here’s what’s going to happen. The three of us will leave this room and walk to the elevator. If anyone is in the hallway you will ignore them unless directly addressed by someone.”
“And if we are directly addressed?”
“Then you will deal with the person as briefly and in as general terms as possible.”
The KGB colonel scoffed. “And you do not think that will raise suspicions?”
“Not even a little bit. This is a military facility, yes, but it’s largely staffed with civilian personnel. And not just any civilians, but researchers and scientists. The type of people who will be intimidated by the presence of the military in general, and officers in particular. I think the people on this base for the most part will go to great lengths to ignore you in the hope that they will go unnoticed in return.”
The colonel did not answer and Tracie continued. “We will take the elevator up to ground level and will then move across the quadrangle to the front parking lot, near the administration building. We will maintain a brisk pace. After all, you’ve been called away on an emergency, isn’t that right, Colonel?”
No answer.
“We will move directly to your car, where we will climb in and exit the front gate, which will be standing open for us. Does anyone have any questions?”
Silence.
Tracie looked both men in the eye, KGB colonel and then the base commander, and said, “I want to emphasize something to both of you. If things go south, you two will be the first to die. What happens after that will be irrelevant to you because you WILL be dead. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal clear,” the KGB colonel said. “And may I remind you if that happens, you will die also.” He still appeared calm and collected, in stark contrast to the base commander, who was plainly terrified. This KGB man was one tough customer.
“Thanks for the reminder,” Tracie said, “and now I have one for you. My weapon will be in my coat pocket. My finger will be on the trigger at all times. Not on the trigger guard, on the trigger. I strongly suggest you do not do something stupid simply because my weapon is no longer visible. Now, help the major with his overcoat and let’s get moving.”
As she finished speaking, Tracie reached back and clubbed Doctor Protasov in the side of the head with the butt of her Beretta. Smith had said the rooms were soundproofed, but she wasn’t taking that statement on blind faith. A conscious Protasov would undoubtedly start screaming within seconds of Tracie leaving the room, and if it turned out Smith was wrong about the room’s acoustical properties, she wouldn’t make it within five hundred feet of the front gate.
Protasov moaned softly and his head fell to the side as blood leaked out of a gash in his skull. He was still semiconscious, but was stunned and would take at least a few minutes to regain enough of his senses to comprehend his situation and then to attempt to do something about it.
Hopefully that would be long enough.
She’d never taken her eyes off the Soviet officers, even as she was pistol-whipping Protasov. The KGB colonel had reluctantly lifted the major’s overcoat from the floor and helped him into it while Tracie was dealing with Protasov.
Now she flicked her gun in the direction of the door. She hated leaving Ryan Smith’s body, but getting it off the base would be impossible and burial was not an option. She knew she would never forgive herself for what she’d done to him, so the guilt of leaving him now would simply comprise one more addition to the ever-growing mountain of regrets she would somehow have to live with.
One by one the hostages stepped over the prone body of the man Tracie had shot to death. She was pretty sure it was the same man she’d seen writing at a desk in the office when she first entered the tunnel.
Not that it mattered now.
While the two Russians moved toward the door, Tracie quickly unscrewed the sound suppressor from her Beretta. The silenced weapon was far too long to fit into her coat pocket—squeezing it in there was going to be a challenge even without the suppressor—and the moment they left this room it would be rendered meaningless, anyway: if she had to shoot one or both of the officers, it would be because they were trying to signal their situation to other Russians with guns.
Tracie would at that point be emptying what was left of her magazine before being cut down herself.
The base commander reached the door first. He pulled it open and stepped into the hallway. The KGB colonel lagged behind, exactly as Tracie had known he would. He was trying to give the commander an opportunity to pass a message should someone be standing or passing by in the hallway.
Tracie shoved the colonel hard in the back and slipped the gun into her pocket as she followed him through the door. A quick look in both directions confirmed the hallway was empty.
She pulled the door closed. There was no way to lock it but Smith had said he’d been ignored by everyone inside the facility except the doctor and his assistant, the man she’d just killed. She would have to hope her luck held and nobody decided within the next few minutes they needed to retrieve something from inside that room.
The KGB man’s disappointment at encountering an empty hallway was plain, and even in the face of almost debilitating pressure Tracie suppressed a smile. The odd-looking group moved awkwardly along the hallway to the elevator, where the base commander pressed the call button.
The disparity between the two hostages was striking and might have been humorous were the situation not so dire. The base commander wanted nothing more than to do exactly as he was told, get Tracie off the base as quickly and quietly as possible, and by doing so maybe survive. The KGB man was delaying and cooperating as little as he could get away with, obviously hoping for the situation to turn in his favor.
The elevator had just a single floor to descend so it took only a moment to arrive. The men entered first and Tracie forced them to the side of the elevator car. Once inside, she stepped behind them as the doors creaked closed.
Less than a minute later they had arrived above ground. Tracie took the opportunity to remind the men of their fate should they act suspiciously or in any way arouse her ire. The base commander swallowed heavily and the KGB man pursed his lips in annoyance, but neither answered.
When the door opened, all three stepped into the vestibule and Tracie was relieved to find it empty. The half-dozen researchers she’d seen on her way inside had long-since returned to work, their breaks over. She realized she’d probably passed by a room or rooms containing some of them on the way to the elevator.
They moved to the entryway and trudged out into the bitter cold. The day had begun overcast and grey, but during the time Tracie spent underground the clouds had lowered, and that was cause for concern. Tracie’s pickup from Bashkir was scheduled for this afternoon, and as competent as the flight crew had proven to be during her ride from Turkey a few days ago, she knew there was no way they would be able to land the big bird on a frozen lake if the ceiling dropped so low they could not safely descend into the mountainous terrain.
There would be no navigational aids to follow, so the crew would be flying blind if the weather got much worse than it was right now.
They would be forced to abort the mission for their own safety.
Return to Turkey and try again tomorrow.
Tracie would be stranded, undoubtedly with the entire Soviet Army hunting her.
For the first time, the near-hopelessness of her situation struck her, and panic threatened to overcome reason. What had started out as one of the simplest missions she’d ever been assigned—conceal herself on the side of a mountain and observe a military base from a safe distance for a few days—had gone straight downhill with the
appearance of the truck carrying Ryan Smith.
Now, not only had she been unsuccessful in extracting Ryan, she’d killed him herself and in all likelihood would wind up facing the same fate he’d suffered. If she were to be captured and survive, there could be little question she would become the next test subject for the loony Doctor Protasov.
And he wouldn’t be inclined to treat her gently.
She realized she’d begun to breathe shallowly and rapidly, the panic building, and she forced herself to lock the fear away. Get your act together. Worry about one thing at a time. If you let your attention wander, you’ll never make it off this base and your fears will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They made it halfway between the subway station covering Protasov’s tunnel of horrors and the identical station Tracie had first explored upon her arrival on the base. That was the good news.
The bad news was that a man was rapidly approaching on the snow-covered concrete path, and it was not a researcher. It was a Red Army soldier.
A patrolling guard.
And all at once the significance of the bullet wound to the major’s right arm occurred to her.
The approaching soldier would salute his commanding officer as they passed.
He would be expecting a return salute.
He would not receive one.
Tracie tightened her grip on the Beretta and tried to remain calm as the soldier approached.
38
February 3, 1988
12:55 p.m.
Ipatiev Military Research Facility
Central quadrangle
The guard slowed and saluted.
The base commander’s right hand flinched as he tried to return the salute, but he was successful in moving it no more than a few inches and then he gasped in pain.
The soldier’s forehead wrinkled in confusion and he stopped moving. He was blocking the narrow pathway, there wasn’t enough room for the three of them to clear him without shoving him into the snow, and Tracie could smell trouble.
She knew she could fire through her coat and put him down before he could draw his sidearm or lower the automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, but what would be the point? Almost before the man’s body hit the ground the sentries in the guard towers, most of whom were undoubtedly tracking the progress of their CO and his guests visually after the unusual telephone instructions they’d received, would have drawn their own high-powered rifles and returned fire.
Tracie would die.
Her finger twitched on the Beretta’s trigger as she tried to maintain a bland outward expression.
The soldier said, “Are you…is everything alright, Sir?”
The base commander coughed and then he stammered something unintelligible, and Tracie knew she was seconds away from capture or worse.
And then the KGB colonel returned the sentry’s salute. It was the last thing she would have expected, given the man’s previous hostility and lack of cooperation, but he snapped off a salute of which any military man in any branch of any country’s service would have been proud.
Obviously he’d taken Tracie’s warning to heart regarding who would fall first once the shooting started.
The soldier looked from his commanding officer to the KGB colonel and back again, and then glanced at Tracie for good measure. He’d become instantly suspicious at the lack of a return salute from the major and this turn of events didn’t seem to have done much to lessen his concern.
Finally the base commander found his voice. “Will there be anything else, soldier?”
“Uh…no sir. No.”
“Did you get the message about the colonel being called away from the base on an emergency?”
The sentry had begun eying Tracie more closely after his first bewildered look between the pair of Soviet officers, but now his attention was fully engaged by his commanding officer. “Uh, yes sir, I did.”
“Then is there some reason you are blocking our path when you know it is essential our guest leave as quickly as possible?”
“No, sir. I am sorry, sir.” The kid stepped back and to the side like he was being pushed by an invisible bulldozer, his previous suspicion of Tracie forgotten in his concern for his own wellbeing.
The two officers brushed past him imperiously and Tracie trailed behind, knowing she had to follow them but well aware how odd it must look for an unknown civilian woman to be trailing behind two high-ranking Soviet officers.
With her right hand jammed into her coat pocket.
She stared straight ahead as she passed the kid and felt his eyes boring into her back as they continued toward the administration building. She wanted to glance back to see whether he’d continued his patrol but knew doing so would be a mistake.
She hadn’t been cut in half by a hail of bullets—yet—so she supposed she should consider it a win.
They circled past the first subway station without further interruption and the administration complex loomed straight ahead. Above ground pedestrian traffic was minimal, presumably because the noontime lunch break had been less than an hour ago. Most researchers had probably eaten at that time and were now back at work in their labs.
Tracie began to think maybe this spur of the moment escape plan would actually work.
Moments later they were skirting the front of the administration building. The small group was retracing the route Tracie had taken upon her arrival inside the facility a few hours ago virtually step for step, but in the opposite direction.
The skies continued to darken and it seemed inevitable the snow would start falling at any moment, and her previous concern about getting stranded with no way out of Bashkir returned. Simply making it off the base would do little to ensure her survival. The village of Mezhgorye was isolated and remote, and it would be an easy matter for the Soviets to seal off the town’s few access roads and begin an exhaustive search.
If that happened, she would be trapped and would eventually be found. So she needed not just to escape the gates of the base, but the confines of the village as well. If she could be on the road to her extraction point by the time the carnage inside Protasov’s lab was discovered, she felt confident she could elude the Red Army long enough to get on that plane.
Assuming the plane could land.
She tried to estimate the cloud height and guessed the ceiling was still sufficient to allow the crew to descend through the clouds and make a safe approach to the frozen lake. But if the weather continued to deteriorate, that would not be the case.
And she would be stuck alone overnight in the brutal subzero temperatures of the Ural Mountains in February.
The panic started to rise again, and again she forced herself to focus on the here and now. They passed the front steps of the administration building and had almost arrived at the parking lot. The car sitting in the base commander’s designated space closest the building was a Volga limousine, nearly new, and Tracie knew the commander had given up his prime slot for the day so the KGB colonel could park as close as possible to the admin building.
The KGB man angled toward the driver’s side door and reached to pull it open. Before he could, Tracie stopped him.
“No. Wait right here and allow the base commander to get into the front passenger seat first.” Managing the two men’s entry into the vehicle would be tricky. If it wasn’t handled properly, one of the men could take advantage of an opportunity to race away from the car and begin screaming for help, bringing the weight of the Soviet military crashing down on Tracie in seconds.
Based on what she’d seen, the KGB man would be far more likely to try something like that than the base commander, so Tracie stood just behind him and waited as the other officer pulled open his door with his uninjured left arm and slid into the vehicle reluctantly but without undue delay.
She knew the incident might look odd to anyone paying attention but didn’t care. Her feeling was that this represented the least risk out of her available options. It was a split-second decision and she woul
d live—or perhaps die—with the result.
Once the base commander had sat, Tracie said, “Go,” to the KGB colonel. The man opened his own door. The moment he’d pulled on the handle, Tracie opened her own rear door and entered the car at the same time as the Russian.
“Start the car and move.”
The moment the colonel began backing out of the parking space the first of the two security gates began swinging open, exactly as the base commander had ordered. The colonel shifted into first gear, and within seconds the car crossed the lot and turned toward the access road.
Seconds after that they were rolling through the open first gate.
This was where everything could fall apart. If sufficient suspicion had been raised, or if the commander had somehow managed to alert the sentries to the fact something was wrong, the gate guards could simply close the first gate without opening the second, and the Volga would be trapped between the two.
Tracie risked a glance behind her and saw the first gate swinging slowly closed. The second had yet to open.
She resolved to go down fighting. She would kill the base commander first and then swing the gun over to the KGB colonel’s head, taking him out immediately after. Once both men were dead she would leap into the driver’s seat, shove the colonel’s body onto the floor, and then jam the accelerator to the firewall and ram the exterior gate with as much speed as she could muster.
Hopefully she would break through it and race down the access road.
Failing that she would take out as many Soviets as she could before they cut her down. She would not allow herself to be taken alive, to become another lab rat upon which Doctor Protasov could conduct his grisly mind control experiments.
She pulled the Beretta out of her coat pocket and began raising it, keeping it hidden below the passenger window and out of sight of the guards, but training it through the back of the seat on the spine of the base commander, and her jaw dropped in surprise as the second gate began to open.
It was moving slowly, much more slowly than Tracie would have preferred, but damned if it wasn’t opening! The Volga would have to slow to a crawl to compensate for the leisurely rate at which the damned thing was swinging open, but she didn’t think they would have to stop completely.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 142