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

road, while every bit as rough, bumpy and rugged as the side into which she’d driven Morozov’s car, had the advantage of slightly less sandy terrain. It was more compacted, with beach grass, moss and small vegetation serving to make the ground more solid, easier to achieve enough traction to move.

At least that was Tracie’s hope.

Walking back to Sevastopol was doable, the distance was less than ten miles and even on her injured ankle Tracie knew she could travel triple that distance on foot with no problem. But doing so would take time she didn’t think she had. Morozov was the commanding officer of a secret Soviet military base; in other words, he was a Big Deal. Tracie guessed that it wouldn’t take long before he missed a meeting, or wasn’t around to take an important phone call, or any one of a hundred other things happened that would raise suspicions as to his whereabouts.

Once that happened, it would be just as unhealthy for Tracie to be spotted walking along the road leading away from Objekt 825 as it would be to be caught driving the commander’s car. And she would be spotted. The drawback of such isolated access roads leading into and out of the secret facility was that she would stand out like a sore thumb walking along it.

She turned the key and gave a brief mental pep talk to the Russian-made car. Then she pressed down on the gas and hoped for the best.

The car lurched forward a foot or two before the drive wheels began spinning, digging a hole in the ground and spraying dirt and forest detritus everywhere.

Dammit.

She pulled her foot off the accelerator and then tried again, this time easing it down gently. The Lada inched forward and then the wheels slipped again, the car dropping back into the steadily deepening hole.

She had one last shot. She recalled a hiking trip she’d taken with her dad when she was a little girl, maybe eight years old. It had been wintertime, and while suburban Washington, D.C. wasn’t exactly a winter wonderland, snowstorms weren’t unusual. They’d returned from their hike to find themselves stuck in a situation very similar to this one: the car refused to move forward, digging itself into the snow the way the Lada was digging itself into the loose terrain.

She’d been worried they were going to run out of gas and freeze to death, but her father had just smiled at her. “There’s more than one way out of every situation,” he’d said. “If what you’re doing doesn’t work, try something else.”

He had done exactly that, shifting the car rapidly between Drive and Reverse, rocking it back and forth in the snow until building enough forward momentum to break the tires free of the hole. Then he had maintained a light but steady pressure on the accelerator, moving the car continually forward until coaxing it onto more solid ground where he could drive it normally.

She couldn’t think of any reason why the same technique wouldn’t work in loose terrain. She took a deep breath and shifted into Reverse. Gave the car a little gas before shifting quickly into Drive and doing the same thing.

Back and forth she went, the car moving a little further each time.

Then it was free, out of the hole it had dug into the ground and creeping toward the Objekt 825 access road. Momentum started to slow so she eased slightly farther down on the gas, not wanting to get stuck a second time and have to start over.

After what was probably no more than thirty seconds but felt much longer, Tracie found herself on solid pavement.

She stopped the car and unzipped her backpack.

Removed the GPS receiver and turned it on.

And was stunned to see a red light blinking on the screen.

31

 

June 25, 1988

9:05 a.m.

Access road north of Objekt 825

 

She almost hadn’t bothered taking the time to check the receiver.

After seeing Andrei Lukashenko drive away from the Objekt 825 administration building yesterday, Tracie had been certain The Weasel would immediately return to KGB Headquarters in Moscow, or at least drive far enough from her receiver that the tracking device she’d placed on the underside of his car would be taken out of what she assumed was a very limited range.

When she had used the tracker last month, its range had been greater than she’d expected, but she still didn’t believe it could possibly be more than ten miles or so. The transmitter’s antenna was short and stubby, and it was hard to imagine the battery-powered device putting out a strong enough signal to travel any greater distance than that.

Yet here was the tiny dot on the receiver’s screen, blinking away, indicating that Lukashenko—or at least Lukashenko’s car—was somewhere north-northeast of Tracie’s position, likely in or around Sevastopol. The city was located so close to Objekt 825 that it was hard for Tracie to believe Lukashenko would have stopped there for the night after leaving the secret base yesterday.

But electronics didn’t lie.

She gazed at the screen, thinking. The dead soldier lying in the road complicated matters immeasurably. She could move the body and his Jeep, but she’d already hidden one vehicle in the sparse foliage. Concealing a second effectively—at least within the immediate area—would be next to impossible.

And doing so would take time, even more than she’d already expended in her determination to avoid executing Commander Morozov. The appearance of the patrolling soldier in the first place indicated the seriousness with which the Soviets viewed the matter of protecting Objekt 825’s security, her “lax security” comment to the young soldier last night outside the base’s housing complex notwithstanding.

No, her best bet was to get the hell away from this location ASAP. Sevastopol’s population was big enough that she was confident she could elude any pursuit in its