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

bottles and protein bar wrappers would remain here, unseen, for weeks or even months, although Tracie doubted that would be the case. Her activities inside Objekt 825 would be impossible to conceal for long, and whether she was ultimately successful retrieving the electronic device or not, she knew the Soviets would launch a massive search of the area surrounding the facility.

They would quickly discover the detritus.

But its discovery wouldn’t matter. There was nothing here that could lead the Soviets to her or reveal her identity, and by the time the materials were found, she would either be far away from here, dead, or in the hands of the KGB.

The most important item she stashed away in the backpack was the GPS tracker receiver. She hadn’t given up on attempting to locate Andrei Lukashenko if she survived this assignment. He was probably hundreds of kilometers away from here by now, and likely would be hundreds more by the time she departed Objekt 825—again, assuming she ever did—but if there were even the slightest chance she could eliminate the man who’d forced or convinced dozens of westerners to commit treason against their countries, she wanted to take it.

After stashing the receiver away in the bottom of the backpack, Tracie added a half-dozen protein bars, a couple of water bottles, and one remaining change of clothes.

She zipped up the pack and shrugged it over her shoulders. By three-fifteen, she’d slipped out the rear window and begun hiking through the forest until out of sight of the sentry’s shack outside the office complex.

Once satisfied she could not be seen, she exited the woods and walked along the lonely road in the direction she’d seen Objekt 825’s employees traveling yesterday after leaving work. The night was cloud-covered and dark, and the Russian forest was close enough to the verge that Tracie knew she would have plenty of time to disappear into the trees should the headlights of an oncoming car begin glowing in the distance.

If it became necessary, she would remover the GPS receiver from her backpack and use it to follow the signal of the transmitter she’d placed on the underside of the commander’s car yesterday. But he’d driven off on what Tracie believed to be the only access road serving the base, so unless she encountered a crossroad, she knew she had to be on the right track. There was no reason to risk the receiver’s blinking red light being seen by a patrolling soldier.

It quickly became apparent that using the GPS tracker would not be necessary. Any roads that had once existed in the now-defunct town of Balaklava that were no longer required for the functioning of the secret base had apparently been torn up and removed by Red Army engineers during construction.

Tracie assumed removal of the excess roads had been undertaken as a security measure, but it had the effect of leading her directly to Objekt 825’s housing bloc. By 3:50, she could see a series of large, concrete-block apartment buildings looming in the distance. They had been constructed side-by-side and were clearly meant to function as residences for the soldiers, scientists and civilians staffing the secret facility.

She knew as she got closer to the complex she would see individual homes reserved for the base commander and probably his two or three highest-ranking aides.

Not a single vehicle had passed moving in either direction along the road during the forty minutes she’d now been walking. Her intention was to locate the base commander’s home by identifying his car parked outside it. Once she had done so, she would retreat into the cover of the forest and wait for daybreak.

She passed the three hulking apartment buildings one by one, each standing silent and still. Their windows were mostly dark. A little farther along the road she could see a trio of identical-looking single-family houses clustered together. That was her destination. One of them would belong to the base commander.

As she emerged from the shadows of the final apartment building, a voice coming from somewhere behind her commanded, “Stop right there.”

The voice was Russian and insistent.

Tracie knew the owner of the voice would be carrying a Makarov semi-automatic pistol and, in all probably, a rifle slung over his shoulder as well.

She stopped right there.

23

 

June 25, 1988

3:55 a.m.

Objekt 825

 

“Raise your hands to shoulder height and spread your fingers,” the voice commanded.

Tracie complied without speaking.

“Now turn around and face me.”

She spun slowly on her heels, and for a moment could see no one. Then a figure materialized out of the darkness between the two closest apartment buildings. It was a young man wearing a Red Army uniform and holding, as Tracie had expected, a semi-auto rifle at the ready.

The night was overcast and the lighting outside the housing complex poor, so she couldn’t tell whether or not the rifle was shaking, but the voice of the soldier holding it sounded young. She assumed if the sentry had been given the assignment of patrolling the inside of a secure closed settlement in the middle of the night, he probably wasn’t high on the seniority list.

Or maybe it was a duty all the soldiers shared. Either way, she wasn’t taking any chances of spooking the kid and getting her head blown off as a result.

She spoke softly, keeping her tone unthreatening. She hoped. “Please lower your weapon. I am no threat to you.”

Her words had no effect. The rifle didn’t move. “What are you doing out here at this time of night?”

She shrugged. “Taking a walk. I could not sleep, so I thought I would stretch my legs.”

“At four o’clock in the morning?”

“As I said, I could not sleep.”

“I do not recognize you. What is your name?”

Tracie took a step forward and then stopped in her tracks as the soldier raised his