Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9) by Allan Leverone (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

the two-to-ten shift, sipping whiskey from a flask he kept in his top desk drawer and listening to the sounds of the Marine Technix lab facility emptying out. During busy times, when Marine Technix was facing a deadline or dealing with multiple contracts, the facility ran three shifts, operating continuously, twenty-four hours a day.

But this was not one of those times, and was a Friday evening to boot. He knew if he maintained a low profile and stayed squirreled away in his cubicle, no one would notice he hadn’t left and inside of a half hour or so he would have the entire damned place to himself. It wasn’t like he had friends that would be waiting for him to go out on the town with them.

He was right, although it had taken slightly longer than his original thirty-minute estimate. It was now quarter to eleven, and despite listening intently, Carson had heard absolutely nothing from inside the lab over the last few minutes. He assumed the rest of the facility had long-since emptied out, as even the most dedicated of the administrative personnel—and layabout bigshots like Gordon Saunders—would have departed more than five hours ago.

The drawback to sitting at his desk for forty-five minutes on his own time was that his body took full advantage of the three quarters of an hour with nothing to do by becoming steadily more tense and jittery, until by now he felt as though an electric current was surging through his veins. His nerves could probably power the entire facility for an hour.

On the other hand, there was an advantage to sitting around after his shift with nothing else to do: unlike during the workday, he could sip from his flask uninterrupted by any of the annoying tasks required of his gainful employment. After nearly an hour doing nothing but listening and sipping he had achieved quite a pleasant little buzz.

Carson hadn’t known specifically how he would be expected to earn his twenty grand from the silver-haired man during their meeting last week, but he had a general idea, even half drunk. A guy with a faint but noticeable Russian accent offers another guy working in a defense-related industry a large amount of untraceable cash to do what he claimed would amount to two hours of work.

So when the man, who would only identify himself to Carson as “Andrei,” sketched out what Carson would be expected to do, it didn’t come as any great shock.

It also didn’t strike him as any kind of big deal. He was to retrieve the prototype of an item the Marine Technix R and D department had been working on for years, deliver it to Andrei so the man could take a few photos of it, and then return it to its place inside the lab’s safe.

All in one night.

No one would be the wiser.

And Carson would be twenty thousand untaxable bucks richer.

He coughed nervously and stepped out from behind his desk. Moved across the lab fingering the copy he’d had made of the key to the massive R&D safe, where the Research Department stored those experimental items small enough to fit inside it.

The key to the safe was theoretically kept locked up inside the security department’s office. But during the week, when research technicians typically entered and exited the safe multiple times per shift, it had become standard practice over the years simply to leave the key lying on the desk inside the security office. It had been almost too easy for Carson to filch the damned thing at the beginning of his lunch break, drive into Norfolk to have a copy made, and then return it to its original position without anyone noticing.

Once he’d taken that small risk, the rest of the plan should be a piece of cake. He wouldn’t get to bed until the wee hours of the morning, but how long would it take Boris Badenov to snap a few photos? Carson should be able to return the shoebox-sized item to the safe well before sunup, and it would all be over.

The plan wasn’t quite foolproof, but close enough.

Carson slipped the key into the safe’s handle and turned it, then pulled the heavy door open. The safe was similar in size and dimension to a large restaurant’s walk-in freezer. Its interior was lined with shelves upon which rested dozens of items currently in production at Marine Technix. Carson had been heavily involved in development of the item the silver-haired Russian wanted to photograph—how the man would get that kind of information he had no idea and didn’t really want to think about—so he knew exactly what he was looking for.

In seconds he had plucked it from its shelf, exited and relocked the safe, and then moved to the lab’s rear entrance. He paused at the door, partly to scan the empty parking lot to ensure he wouldn’t step outside and walk directly into the arms of the patrolling security guard, but also to take a deep breath and calm his nerves.

He was shaking like a fucking leaf in a hurricane.

He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself.

Opened them up and took a good long look outside.

The lot was empty, both of vehicles and security personnel. Carson had known that to park his car behind the building would invite unwanted scrutiny should the guard see it sitting there after hours, so for today he’d used one of the visitor lots at the edge of the Marine Technix campus. It would require a ten-minute walk at a brisk pace while cradling the item in his arms, but that was a small price to pay to avoid answering uncomfortable questions about why he was still at work at eleven o’clock on a Friday night.

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered to himself as he pushed through the door and began crossing the lot. He’d made it