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

and armed guards, located inside a small town that no longer officially existed.

She pressed herself to the rear wall nevertheless.

At the corner she dropped to the ground and combat-crawled toward the tree line. Time was of the essence. Presumably the base commander would remain inside the facility for the rest of the afternoon, but she had no way of knowing how much time would pass before The Weasel departed, and Tracie very much wanted to take advantage of the two-for-one opportunity with which she’d been presented.

Despite the urgency, she forced herself to move slowly and with care. After she had put what she felt was a sufficient screen of brush and trees between herself and the soldier manning the sentry’s post outside the administration building, she stood and moved quickly away from the facility, testing her balky ankle and praying she didn’t step into an unseen hole in the ground

It throbbed steadily but felt relatively flexible.

Five minutes of brisk walking later, Objekt 825’s administration building disappeared around a bend in the access road. Tracie edged toward the tree line and peered in both directions.

The area was deserted.

At any moment, though, a car could appear from either direction. Traffic hadn’t been heavy during the time Tracie had been maintaining surveillance, but it hadn’t been nonexistent, either.

She took a deep breath and left the trees behind, not crawling as she had before but walking purposefully, moving directly toward the road. When she hit the pavement she continued straight across, fingers crossed that her luck would hold and no vehicles would appear while she was so exposed.

The terrain on this side of the road was rougher, thanks to the steep hill looming over Objekt 825. The good news was that the line of trees and scrub brush was also closer to the road, and within seconds, Tracie had melted back out of sight.

Still no vehicular traffic.

She turned toward her goal: the administration building’s parking lot. By removing his uniform jacket in the heat a few minutes ago, the facility’s commanding officer had very helpfully identified his vehicle to Tracie. She thought he might represent the key to recovering the Marine Technix communication decoder.

And with any luck, Andrei Lukashenko’s car would still be parked in the lot as well.

Her two-for-one.

She remained behind the screen of trees for as long as possible while approaching the parking lot, but eventually would have to leave the comforting cover behind if she had any hope of placing a tracker on each car. The sentry manning the guard shack would represent a real challenge, but based on her surveillance from across the road, Tracie thought she might have a solution to that problem.

Assuming things lined up the way they had appeared to from old hostel.

After getting into position, Tracie paused to catch her breath. From here, only fifty or so feet from the front of the building—and maybe thirty feet from the sentry’s post—the possibility of capture felt much more real, and she worked to control her nerves.

The Soviets had installed frosted glass in every window of the admin building that Tracie could see, including the double entryway doors. Presumably they had done so to prevent anyone from seeing inside, but it seemed like an unnecessary precaution, given the armed guards and security fencing. How would a Soviet citizen ever get close enough to peek into the classified facility?

It worked to her advantage, though, because just as she could not see the interior, no one currently inside the building would be able to observe her activities outside it unless they exited the front doors.

A trash dumpster had been placed along the southern edge of the parking lot, and now Tracie edged forward, keeping the big metal container between herself and the guard shack. Moments later, she plastered herself against the rear of the dumpster, wrinkling her nose at the putrid stench. Something organic had been thrown inside and was decomposing nicely in the heat.

Now would come the tricky part. The base commander had parked along this side of the lot, relatively close to the front of the building. It meant Tracie would be forced to work within ten or twelve feet of the guard shack. The line of stationary vehicles should allow her to remain out of the sentry’s sight, but if she were anything other than completely silent, the chances were good he would hear.

She crouched down and duck-walked out from behind the dumpster. Upon reaching the parked vehicles, she turned to her left and continued shuffling forward until arriving at the commander’s car. He had nosed into the parking space and Tracie could rest her cheek against the grille if she chose to.

She reached into her pocket and carefully removed one of the GPS transmitters. She’d been able to place the transmitter securely beneath the radicals’ truck last month, but today she would have to rely on the device’s magnetized base and hope the adhesion was strong enough to prevent it from falling to the ground once the car began driving on the poorly maintained Soviet roads.

Tracie reached up under the right front wheel well and felt around until locating a relatively flat metal surface. Then she very slowly slipped the transmitter into place. The soft clank as the magnetized base contacted the car’s sheet metal made Tracie cringe.

She reached for her Beretta and waited, listening intently for any indication the noise had been heard.

Nothing. The sentry remained inside the guard shack.

Tracie took a deep breath and backtracked carefully, steadfastly ignoring Objekt 825’s front doors. Thus far they had remained closed, and all Tracie needed was for her luck to hold a couple more minutes.

Lukashenko’s car was still in the lot, and now it became Tracie’s focus. She’d thought when receiving her assignment from Aaron Stallings that the possibility of actually encountering The Weasel was the longest of long shots,