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

stop the flow of critical defense secrets into the Soviet Union, or at least slow it to a trickle.

And she may never get another chance to fulfill the second half of her assignment. The stubby antennae sticking out of the tracker she’d placed on the underside of Lukashenko’s car had broadcast a useable signal over a much greater distance than she’d expected it to last month, but there was no question it suffered from limitations. Once The Weasel drove more than a few kilometers from Object 825, the tracker would likely become useless, just an odd-looking lump of metal and electronics.

In this case, though, as frustrating as it was to lose Lukashenko, there was no decision to be made. Her primary assignment was to recover the submersible signal decoder. That’s what she had been sent to Objekt 825 to so, and that’s what she would do.

Or die trying.

Lukashenko leaving the facility more than an hour ago had represented the only noteworthy development she’d observed since resuming her surveillance. The rest of the afternoon had seen no vehicles come or go. None.

Apparently the technicians working inside the underground base, as well as the administrative staff above ground, worked a typical nine-to-five day, because for the last five minutes, people had been pouring out of the admin building. Mostly military personnel, but a few civilians here and there as well.

What captured Tracie’s attention was that while probably half the departing workers climbed into cars and drove away, the other half bypassed the lot entirely and headed off down the road on foot.

She’d known there had to be a housing unit somewhere inside the secure portion of the town that was once known as Balaklava, because that was how the Soviets did it. That was the whole point of maintaining a closed city. The people working on a secret project could live their lives without ever leaving the secure perimeter. Restaurants, movie theatres, nightclubs, all would be provided, thus minimizing the risk of security breaches.

That was how an actual closed city operated, anyway. Objekt 825 was slightly different, because of the relatively small number of workers assigned to the facility. Tracie guessed there weren’t more than a couple hundred, unless the base featured multiple entrances, a possibility she considered highly unlikely.

Tracie’s takeaway was that if people were walking home after work, their housing accommodations could not be far. It was an important point, because while she doubted the base commander would live inside an apartment building with the lowly workers, his home was likely close to that housing bloc.

She’d been a little concerned with the logistics of tracking the man once he left work for the day. Normally she would just steal a car if she needed to follow someone; she’d hotwired so many over the course of her career that she thought she could probably do it in her sleep, and within ninety seconds, too.

But stealing a vehicle inside the Objekt 825 security perimeter could be problematic. The entire settlement seemed so small that a stolen car would be noticed almost immediately, and when it was, the military would go on high alert.

The only chance Tracie had of completing her mission without being captured or killed was for her presence at Objekt 825 to remain undetected. The minute anything out of the ordinary occurred—and she guessed having a car turn up missing would qualify as out of the ordinary—her situation would change, and not for the better.

Stealing a car would be a last resort. Fortunately, it was beginning to look like that would not be necessary.

Tracie grabbed a water bottle out of her equipment bag and returned her attention to the facility just in time to see the man she’d identified as the base commander exiting the building.

She checked her watch. It was 5:15. He’d waited to depart until most of his people had already left, either because he wanted them to think he was working harder than they were, or maybe because he just didn’t like dealing with his underlings.

He walked to the now-mostly-empty parking lot and cranked down all the windows in his car, exactly as Lukashenko had done roughly ninety minutes ago. He didn’t light a cigarette, though, as The Weasel had. He simply leaned against the car’s closed front door and gazed off into the distance.

Directly toward Tracie’s surveillance location.

For one unsettling moment, Tracie thought the commander could somehow see inside the abandoned hostel. Could see her. It was patently impossible though, due to her distance from the parking lot and the fact that Tracie was hidden deep within the shadows, close to fifteen feet from the broken window.

She decided he must be admiring the heavily forested area directly behind the ruined building, the area from which she had approached earlier today. If he had detected her presence, he certainly wouldn’t have maintained his casual pose. He would have hurried to the guard shack located just a few feet away. He would be pointing in her direction and instructing the sentry to check out the hostel.

He did none of those things. He leaned against his vehicle and stared into the distance like a man waiting for his car to cool off so he could slip inside and drive home. After three or four minutes he did exactly that.

When he left the lot, he turned in the same direction everyone else had after leaving the facility for the day. Tracie watched his car until it followed a bend in the road and disappeared.

22

 

June 24, 1988

5:20 p.m.

Objekt 825

 

Cooling her heels while there was work to be done went against the grain. It went against everything Tracie believed in, particularly when every minute spent here made the chances of her retrieving the communication device and escaping safely a little less likely.

On the other hand, she’d decided on a plan of attack,