They rolled past the guard shack and Tracie stared straight ahead. The KGB colonel returned the salute she had known he would receive in the manner befitting a high-ranking officer: casually and with barely a glance in the direction of the guard.
The next few seconds were excruciating, as the Volga continued to brake, the gate widening slowly. Then there was sufficient room and the colonel guided the vehicle through the opening.
And they began to accelerate, and Tracie realized she’d been holding her breath and she blew out a relieved sigh.
She still wasn’t home free.
The Soviets could send armed vehicles after them at any moment.
The skies continued to darken and the weather could very well prevent her pickup by the C-130 crew.
But it was a start. She was still breathing and was leaving the base behind.
Tracie stared through the windshield as the road to the village grew larger and larger up ahead.
39
February 3, 1988
1:05 p.m.
Mezhgorye, Bashkir
“Well, what now?” The Volga slowed as it approached the main road, and the KGB man glanced expectantly into the rear view mirror.
“Turn right,” Tracie said.
There was no oncoming traffic, and the limousine accelerated onto the roadway and turned toward the village.
“I was not asking which direction to turn,” the colonel said drily.
“Then you should learn to speak more clearly.”
He ignored the remark and said, “I meant in a more general sense. We did as you asked, and you are now outside the gates of the facility.”
“What are you looking for, gratitude? You weren’t trying to help me, you were trying to save your own ass.”
“Obviously.”
“If it’s so obvious, why did you bring it up?”
“Because gratitude is not what I was referring to. I meant now that you have successfully escaped the base, presumably this is where you kill us and dump our bodies on the side of the road to slow down pursuit once the men you murdered inside the facility are discovered.”
The base commander stiffened at the colonel’s words. He clearly didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking, and didn’t appreciate the fact his fellow officer was the one taking it there.
“I have no intention of killing you and dumping your bodies, on the side of the road or anywhere else, unless you force me to by making a move I don’t like.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s right,” Tracie said. “If I wanted to kill you and dump your bodies, I would have two options: do it inside this car and push your corpses out the door, or force you both out of the vehicle and shoot you on the side of the road.”
The base commander cleared his throat and coughed into his good hand. He seemed to have turned a shade paler, a development Tracie would not have believed possible.
“Thank you for clarifying,” the KGB man said. Even while discussing his potential death he seemed entirely unaffected.
“You’re welcome,” Tracie answered. “My point is that neither of those options is worth the risk. If I shoot you both inside the car, there will be blood everywhere. The second man I shoot will put up a fight since he’ll have nothing to lose, which will make the mess even worse. Driving around in a limousine with blood-spattered windows would invite much more attention than I prefer.”
“It is nice to know you’ve given the matter serious thought.”
“Damn right I have.”
“Then, please, do not leave me hanging. Fill me in on why you don’t wish to simply force us onto the side of the road and shoot us there.”
The base commander huffed and pursed his lips angrily. He opened his mouth to speak and then snapped his jaws closed before saying anything. His fury at the KGB officer for continuing to discuss methods of their execution was obvious, but so far not sufficient to overcome his respect for the man’s rank.
Or perhaps his fear of the man’s recklessness.
Tracie understood perfectly what the colonel was doing. He was probing, gathering information, poking and prodding in search of a way out, some bit of information he could use against Tracie to turn the tide of events in his favor.
And at the very least, if she was busy talking to them she wasn’t busy killing them.
So she understood his motivation, but was perfectly happy to play his game. For now.
“Okay,” she said. “Since you’re so curious, I’ll tell you. But first, turn left here.”
The colonel complied and then Tracie continued. “It’s midday. Even in a town the size of Mezhgorye there is far too much traffic coming and going for me to know with any kind of certainty that I’ll be able to make you stop the car, force both of you outside, and then step out and put bullets in both of your heads, all without anyone coming along and witnessing the event. Again, the potential exists for more attention in that scenario than I wish to deal with.”
This time the colonel had nothing to say. Tracie told him to turn again and he did so without speaking.
“And there’s another advantage to the situation as it currently stands.”
“What might that be?” The KGB man’s voice had turned sour, brittle.
“I believe I’ll be able to leave this town behind and be two hundred kilometers north in the mountains, even on these subpar Soviet roads, before anyone back at that base discovers anything is wrong.”
She turned to the base commander and said softly, “Your security was really lax, Major, but I suppose you’ve already reached the same conclusion, haven’t you?”
The man’s jaw muscles tensed angrily beneath his skin but he said nothing, and then Tracie turned her attention back to the driver.
“Anyway,” she said. “I think I can be two hundred kilometers north of here before anyone begins looking for me, but just in case I’m wrong, and someone back at that slipshod outfit disguised as a military base happens to stumble onto the scene back in Doctor Protasov’s lab, I feel I’m much better off with two high-ranking birds in the hand. I can trade you boys for my freedom.”
“You think so?”
She shrugged. “If you’re not valuable enough for your friends to agree to a trade, I at least get the satisfaction of executing you in front of them before I’m killed myself.”
It was all a lie.
While there was a certain amount of truth to her explanation regarding the risk involved in killing both Soviet officers, she knew she could manage it relatively easily if she chose to. She could take both of them out before either man knew what hit him, and could do so in a relatively clean and risk-free manner.
But Tracie knew that even in a facility as poorly secured as the one she’d just escaped, the bodies of the dead men would be found sooner rather than later. Someone would glance through the tiny window as they were walking past in the hallway, or would enter to ask the doctor a question, and the slaughter inside the room would be discovered.
When that happened, all available resources would be mobilized and an intense search would begin for the person who had infiltrated the base and killed two men before escaping with a pair of Soviet officers as hostages.
The Red Army would coordinate with local law enforcement, or more likely would simply steamroll local authorities. They would conduct a thorough search of a very small town, blanketing the area with police and military personnel and in all likelihood go door-to-door.
Tracie’s window for escape would slam shut.
But her entire taunting conversation had been conducted with the KGB colonel for one purpose: to plant the seed that her escape route would be to the north, over the Ural Mountains. She’d mentioned it twice in an effort to emphasize her intended direction, but had tried to do so in an offhand manner. She wanted to leave the impression that the information had slipped out mistakenly, so the intelligence officer—who was as sharp as anyone Tracie had encountered on the Soviet side of the fence in her nearly eight
-year career—would consider the information reliable.
That was her real reason for leaving the men alive.
Killing them would seal her fate, likely eliminating any possibility of escape.
Allowing them to live might just give her a chance.
40
February 3, 1988
1:25 p.m.
Mezhgorye, Bashkir
Narodnaya Revolyutsiya Apartment Complex, Bashkir
It was clear the KGB colonel sensed a trap when Tracie told him to turn into the apartment complex parking lot. He asked for clarification twice, and then tensed up more than she’d seen ay any point since taking him hostage.
His forehead wrinkled in confusion as he glanced at her in the rear view. “Stopping for a visit with old friends before we continue on? Perhaps we are going to share a cup of tea with other enemies of the Soviet State?”
Tracie ignored him. She considered mentioning her fictional northern escape route one more time but decided against it. If she placed too much emphasis on the direction, the KGB man would recognize it as a trick. Her smokescreen would either work or it would not, there was nothing she could do about it now. She would simply have to wait and see.
“Park here,” she said, indicating an open spot a few spaces away from where she’d left her four-wheel-drive Lada this morning.
The colonel gazed at Tracie through the mirror one more time, eyes mere slits in his angular face, and then eased the Volga to a stop with the grille face-in to a massive snow bank.
“Good boy,” Tracie said, and the colonel grunted in anger.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” she continued. “You’re both going to exit the car. You’re going to move to the building on our left. We will all walk through the front door and down the hallway to the middle apartment. We will then enter the apartment and close the door quietly behind us. Are there any questions?”
No one spoke and Tracie said, “I made it clear that I prefer you both alive, but if either of you raises your voice, or tries to sound an alarm, or in any way causes me the slightest concern, I will kill you without hesitation and continue on alone. My plans are extremely flexible. Understood?”
Again nobody spoke.
“Get moving,” she said.
The car emptied out, Tracie lagging behind as she had done before, ready to turn her weapon on either man until they’d both stepped into the cold. Then she slid the Beretta back into her coat pocket and joined the pair in the parking lot. She glanced in all directions for potential threats but the place seemed deserted.
The walk to the apartment entrance took less than thirty seconds, and in another thirty they’d moved the length of the hallway and stood outside Olga Trentiova’s apartment door.
Tracie’s luck held. No one exited any of the other apartments.
She risked removing the gun from her pocket and aimed it in the direction of the pair of officers as she fumbled in her pants pocket for the apartment key. She located it and tossed it to the KGB man.
“Open the door and go inside,” she said quietly.
The colonel complied and as he was inserting the key into the lock Tracie closed the distance between the men until she was standing directly behind them. She seriously doubted she had anything to worry about from the base commander, but getting within arm’s reach of the KGB officer wasn’t ideal. It was a risk she had to take, though, because if she lagged back too far it would only invite the hostages to rush inside and then slam and lock the door, sealing Tracie out.
The two men and one woman crowded into the apartment and then Tracie kicked the door closed. She moved immediately to the side, regaining the space she’d had to sacrifice to enter.
There was no door between the apartment’s living room and kitchen, just an arched entryway, and Tracie could see Olga Trentiova bound and gagged at her dinner table, exactly as Tracie had left her. She sat in a puddle of her own urine and her eyes were red and swollen from crying, and despite the fact she must have been terrified at Tracie’s return—not to mention confused as to why she’d come back with a pair of army officers in tow—she stared daggers at her over the dishtowel gag and behind all the duct tape crisscrossing her face.
The hostages stopped in the middle of the room and looked from Trentiova to Tracie and then back again. Their movements couldn’t have been more perfectly choreographed had Bob Fosse been directing the action.
Unsurprisingly, the KGB man was the one to speak. “Obviously you were here earlier.”
“Obviously,” Tracie agreed.
“You make friends wherever you go, don’t you?”
“Shut up.”
“Just making an observation.”
“I said shut up.” Tracie nodded in the direction of the trussed-up secretary. “You two will be joining Miss Trentiova now. I want each of you to pull a chair out, one on either side of her. Then you will turn your chairs around and sit. You will not move. You will wait quietly for me to secure you. Is that understood?”
The KGB man ignored her and said, “I thought you wanted to keep us with you in case you needed a bargaining chip.”
The base commander’s frustration at the KGB man’s words was palpable. He seemed to welcome the idea of being left behind, even if it came at the cost of being gagged and tied to a chair for some indeterminate length of time.
Tracie smiled. “I told you already, my plans remain flexible. Haven’t you ever heard it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind?”
He didn’t answer and Tracie said, “Do as instructed, Colonel, please. You won’t like what happens if I have to ask you again.”
The base commander had already begun moving to the kitchen table and selecting his chair. The KGB officer joined him, his forehead scrunched in suspicion. Tracie could see the colonel considering the possible ramifications of this sudden change in their captor’s plans, and she realized if she were to stand any chance of the colonel—and thus the Soviets in general—accepting her story of a northern escape route, she would have to offer some sort of explanation.
She had left her backpack containing the duct tape inside Olga Trentiova’s apartment when she left this morning, and now she backed into the living room and picked it up off the floor while keeping her prisoners covered with her weapon. She pulled out the tape and began securing the more dangerous man—the KGB colonel—first.
In a conversational tone she said, “Since I’ve got a little busy work to do here, I’ll indulge your question, Colonel. The answer is quite simple. I changed my mind because it seems obvious I’ll have no problem leaving Mezhgorye far behind before anyone inside your facility even becomes aware anything is amiss.”
Before the colonel could answer, the base commander surprised Tracie by saying indignantly, “I think you are selling my men short.”
“You can think whatever you want,” Tracie said amiably, “but the fact of the matter is I should never have been able to get onto the base in the first place, and once there I certainly shouldn’t have managed to kidnap the two highest-ranking officers within a thousand miles in any direction.”
The major opened his mouth to interrupt, but Tracie talked over him. “And once I did that, it should have been impossible to escape right out from under the noses of dozens of men armed with automatic weapons. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t put too much weight on your opinion.”
She wound the tape around the KGB man’s wrists first and then repeated the process with his ankles. It was not an easy chore to accomplish while keeping her weapon trained on the colonel and far enough out of his reach that he wouldn’t be tempted to grab for it or push it aside and hit her. She kept her voice light but breathed much easier once she’d successfully restrained the more dangerous of the two men.
As she worked, she continued to speak. “As I said, it seems clear I’ll be long gone before anyone at the base realizes anything is wrong. That being the case I can move much faster alone. By the time the alarm is sounded I’ll be so far awa
y you’ll have no chance of running me down. This area is so remote there are a million places for me to disappear. A billion.”
“I disagree,” the KGB man said. His eyes glittered dangerously and his voice was acid. “I look forward to the day we meet again. And when that day comes, you will regret ever stepping foot inside Bashkir. By the time I’ve finished with you, you will be begging to die. You will wish you could change places with your dead CIA friend.”
Tracie finished securing the base commander and then glanced up at the KGB man with a sweet smile. “Thank you for the reminder. I almost forgot to gag you.”
She stood and walked to the kitchen drawer from which she’d retrieved the towel she used to gag Olga Trentiova this morning. Removed two more and in seconds had silenced both men, only one of whom had been speaking.
“That’s better,” she said. She smiled again at the KGB colonel. “There’s nothing quite so sweet as blessed silence, don’t you agree?”
He glared at her and she winked. “’Til we meet again, comrade.”
She tossed her tape into the backpack and zipped it closed. Shrugged it over one shoulder and returned her weapon to its shoulder holster.
Then she turned and walked out the apartment door, locking it securely behind her.
41
February 3, 1988
2:20 p.m.
Somewhere south of Mezhgorye, Bashkir
The road south out of Bashkir was mostly deserted. Whether because of the impending storm or the extreme isolation of the village, Tracie encountered almost no other traffic once she’d passed a couple of miles beyond the town’s border.
After leaving the Soviet officers lashed to their chairs in Olga Trentiova’s apartment, she’d thrown her backpack into the front seat of the Lada SUV and driven at a reasonable speed toward her exfiltration point. She half expected to hear screaming sirens, to see flashing red and blue lights, to encounter roadblocks and angry-looking soldiers with automatic weapons, the entire town locked down like a prison as the Red Army searched grimly for the intruder who’d slipped into their midst and then escaped holding their two highest-ranking officers hostage.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 143