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

the tortuous journey was nearly over. He’d taken his sweet time to make the roughly twenty hour trip, stopping for the evening when he’d reached approximately the halfway point, not because he couldn’t drive straight through—he’d done exactly that on much longer journeys—but because he wanted to give a middle finger to his KGB bosses, and this was the best way to do so without risking unpleasant consequences.

Andrei briefly considered stopping for lunch in Sevastopol. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast more than six hours ago, and for a man his size, six hours without eating may as well have been six days.

Ultimately, though, he decided to push through. He would arrive at Objekt 825 in just a few more minutes. Once there, he would release the electronic device into the hands of the submarine base’s command staff.

Then he could turn around and finally be free, at least until he received his next assignment. He would stop in Sevastopol on his way north and spend a day or two there, eating, drinking and womanizing, pastimes he could not partake of while in possession of classified material.

He could almost taste the vodka already.

***

 

June 24, 1988

1:50 p.m.

Objekt 825, Russia, USSR

 

Andrei had visited closed Soviet cities while completing assignments many times in the past, and had never had a moment’s trouble getting either in or out. Today was no exception. There was no mystery why. The command staff at the base had been told to expect his arrival sometime today, and they had of course informed the sentries operating every guardhouse securing the facility.

Accessing the secured area involved no more than a ninety second stop at the sentry’s post. The young soldier on duty offered a cursory examination of Andrei’s KBG credentials, then offered a just-as-cursory set of directions that would bring him to the secret submarine base’s administrative headquarters.

“Drive straight ahead for two kilometers,” the peach-faced kid told Andrei as he passed Andrei’s ID back through the Volga’s window. “The Aleksander Marinesko administrative building will be on your left. Park your vehicle in the lot next to the security gate and then check in with the sentry. He will notify the base commander of your arrival.”

Andrei nodded once and waited impatiently for the soldier to raise the gate so he could continue. His mind was still on the vodka—and the women—he would be enjoying later. Once there was sufficient clearance, he stomped on the accelerator, leaving a swirling cloud of road dust in his wake.

The directions turned out to be unnecessary. Balaklava had been little more than a smudge on the map prior to its official erasure from existence, a tiny village of—maybe—a couple thousand people. There was not a single crossroad between the guardhouse Andrei had just left behind and the Marinesko Building, thus not a single opportunity to get lost.

Two minutes after showering the Red Army soldier in dust, Andrei pulled his Volga into the lot. He climbed out of the driver’s seat cradling the box containing the submarine electronics in one meaty arm. He was sweaty and tired, but also suddenly happy.

He was one step closer to that vodka.

17

 

June 24, 1988

1:55 p.m.

Objekt 825, Russia, USSR

 

Within an hour of locating Objekt 825’s waterborne submarine entrance and administration building, Tracie had identified a suitable surveillance location.

She had no way of knowing whether the area immediately surrounding the admin building had served as Balaklava’s downtown decades ago, but at the very least it had been a thriving neighborhood. Abandoned structures lined the narrow road leading away from Objekt 825 to the south, giving Tracie her choice of at least a half-dozen empty buildings inside which to set up shop.

She examined them one by one through her binoculars, eventually settling on a structure that looked as though it had served as a small hostel or inn. From Tracie’s vantage point it appeared to offer as unobstructed a view of her target as possible, and its windows had long-since been broken out but never boarded over.

Given the length of time it had left been exposed to the elements—just a few hundred yards from the Black Sea and in a humid, nearly tropical environment—she knew its interior would be in very rough shape, but Tracie didn’t care about that.

Comfort wasn’t her goal.

Accessing her chosen location took close to two hours, despite the fact she couldn’t have been more than a quarter-mile away when she made her selection. The direct line of sight between the old hostel and Objekt 825—the thing that made the location so desirable to Tracie—meant, of course, that the opposite was true as well: anyone at the site, including anyone coming or going in the parking lot, could see the crumbling structure clearly should they decide to glance in that direction.

She moved slowly through the woods, angling toward the old hostel, using as much of the sparse beachfront vegetation as possible as a screen. More often than not, she found herself combat-crawling on her belly, dragging her heavy equipment bag along with one hand. When she’d made it far enough that the ruined building provided cover, she pushed to her feet and moved to one of the broken-out windows at the rear of the structure. She tossed her bag inside, and then clambered through the window and dropped to the floor.

The damage the Black Sea climate had inflicted on the interior was every bit was extensive as Tracie had expected. On the bright side, though, someone had left a ruined desk inside what Tracie guessed had at one time been the hostel’s office. With a little effort she was able to position the desk in front of a window, but also far enough back in the shadows that she would be invisible to anyone outside.

Hopefully.

One of the desk’s legs had broken off, meaning it canted drunkenly to one