Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9) by Allan Leverone (year 7 reading list txt) 📗

After paying for a single night’s stay, she hauled her bag directly to her room. She hung up her uniform and fell into bed. She was asleep within fifteen minutes.

15

 

June 24, 1988

5:30 am.

Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

 

Tracie felt as though she’d been asleep for no more than half an hour when the bedside alarm began jangling in her ear. She slapped at it three times before finding the button to return blessed silence to her room.

It was tempting to go back to sleep.

Really tempting.

But there was a lot of work to do, and she’d been playing catch-up since leaving Aaron Stallings’ home. She felt guilty enough about sleeping five hours, even though she’d desperately needed the rest. Remaining in bed any longer would be a dereliction of duty.

She threw the covers aside and stumbled into the bathroom. Brushed her teeth and showered quickly. Depending on how things went from here, it was questionable when she would have the chance to do either thing again.

Then she repacked her go-bag and slipped out of her room.

She was on the road by 5:45.

***

Finding Objekt 825 on a road map would be impossible. The town of Balaklava no longer officially existed, having been scrubbed from existence decades ago. And the location of a secret Soviet military submarine base would certainly not be included on any map available to ordinary civilians.

But from the limited intel she’d received, Tracie knew the base was located south of Sevastopol. And since its purpose was for the maintenance and refitting of Soviet nuclear submarines, it would had to have been constructed along the Black Sea shoreline.

So after leaving the inn, she drove due west until reaching the water. It didn’t take long.

Then she turned south and followed the coast. At this time of the morning there was little traffic, even in a city the size of Sevastopol, but it quickly became apparent to Tracie that the roads on this side of the city were rarely traveled by anyone outside of the Soviet military.

Within three miles of leaving the city limits behind, two things occurred simultaneously: the road narrowed drastically, and signs featuring large block letters and framed in red began popping up with increasing frequency.

WARNING: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

KEEP OUT.

Even ARMED PERSONNEL AHEAD.

Tracie knew the distance from Sevastopol to the now-defunct town of Balaklava was minimal, probably not more than eight miles. By the time she’d driven five of those miles and begun seeing the dire warning signs posted closer and closer together, she decided it was time to ditch the car and continue on foot.

Despite having entered closed Soviet cities twice previously, the sense of isolation she felt as she approached the officially nonexistent settlement was as strong now as it had been on both prior occasions. She hadn’t observed a single other vehicle since probably two miles south of Sevastopol.

If she hadn’t seen for herself the bustling city not much more than a stone’s throw behind her, she would have had no idea it was there.

She slowed until the car crept forward at barely more than a walking pace, scanning both sides of the road for somewhere she could stash the vehicle where it would remain accessible but still have a reasonable chance at avoiding detection by patrolling Red Army personnel. Her search was complicated by the fact that the Lada had not been built to drive off-road, and if Tracie weren’t careful she could find herself stuck in the terrain just when she needed the car most.

Eventually she settled on a small, sandy verge next to the road that quickly transformed into heavy vegetation. She shifted into reverse, backed up ten feet or so, and then drove off the road, across the verge at as close to a ninety degree angle as she could manage, and straight into the vegetation. She turned the wheel at the last moment to slip the car behind a stand of good-sized trees.

She killed the engine and grabbed her bag. Then she stepped out of the car and tossed the bag near the verge. Working quickly, she lifted as much of the vegetation she’d flattened with the passage of the car as possible back into place, and then further screened the vehicle from view of the road using downed tree branches.

The entire process took no more than ten minutes, but by the time she’d finished, Tracie was breathing heavily and sweating. The climate in this part of Russia was humid, almost tropical, and the sun had already begun to rise before Tracie had even awoken. The temperature was climbing. It was going to be a warm day.

She stepped into the road and examined her handiwork with a critical eye. The deception wouldn’t stand up to soldiers patrolling on foot, but Tracie thought anyone driving past at normal speeds would probably not see the Lada. Its mud-brown paint job allowed it to blend well into the forest surroundings.

It would have to do.

She shrugged her bag onto her shoulder and melted back into the woods. Traveling along the side of the road would allow her to move more quickly, but the advantage of speed wasn’t worth the accompanying risk of being seen. She had no way of knowing whether she would stumble onto a guard post in fifty feet or five miles.

The only thing she knew for certain was that she would eventually encounter one.

Keeping the roadway off her right, Tracie began hiking south. The thoroughfare had hugged the shoreline since leaving Sevastopol, and she suspected it had been constructed long before the Soviet military command decided to carve a secret submarine base into the Black Sea coast. She concluded there was no reason to believe the road wouldn’t continue along the water, so as long as she kept it in sight, she would eventually arrive at Objekt 825.

The going