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

and she could not reasonably begin putting that plan into action until the middle of the night, so after watching Objekt 825 empty out and its day shift workers head for their homes, Tracie decided to use her time as wisely as possible.

First she took stock of her remaining food and water supply. She pulled the protein-infused bars and bottles of water out of her equipment bag, and as she munched slowly on one of the bars, did a little calculating. She decided she could easily manage two more days holed up here, and could stretch it to three if necessary, four if she absolutely had to.

There wouldn’t be enough food for four days, not even close. But getting by for a relatively short period of time without food was doable. It involved nothing more than pushing through the hunger, willing herself to continue while not operating at an optimal level. It was no different than continuing a mission while injured. She’d done both before, and for longer periods than four days.

But water was a different story. Dehydration would incapacitate a human body much faster than would hunger, and given the warmth and high humidity present along the Back Sea coast at this time of year, running out of water was a real possibility.

And doing so could be deadly.

Four days was realistic, and in all probability four days was three more than she would need. She would begin putting her plan for recovering the communication decoder into action before sunrise, meaning that in less than twenty-four hours she would have accomplished her mission and escaped.

Or she would be sitting inside a Russian jail awaiting interrogation by the KGB.

Or she would be dead.

In neither the second nor the third scenario would a lack of water be her major problem.

She reloaded her supplies into her bag and examined her surroundings, checking out the floor of the large room she’d been using as a base of operations for most of the day. She’d had plenty of time to familiarize herself with it, but by giving it a closer examination had hoped to find a spot that might offer a little comfort for the next few hours.

No such luck. The floor was littered with dust, dirt, damage from the elements, and chunks of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling.

The graffiti and drug paraphernalia she would have expected to find inside an abandoned building at home was missing—vandals were just as prevalent in the USSR as the United States, but the sterilization of the area by the Soviet military had eliminated that issue here—however, the condition of the interior was poor enough that Tracie suspected any sleep she might manage would be uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Still, she had to try. Remaining sharp-witted and fully aware of her surroundings during the op tomorrow might spell the difference between success and failure.

She sighed softly and moved to the northwest corner of the room, as far from the window that looked out on Objekt 825 as possible. Using her shoe as a makeshift broom, she cleared the debris from roughly a six-foot by eight-foot section of floor. Then she placed her equipment bag at one end and used it as a pillow, stretching out along the rear wall.

The sun wouldn’t set for more than three hours, but Tracie had long ago become accustomed to getting needed rest on an assignment whenever the opportunity presented itself. She didn’t think the lack of darkness would be a problem any more than was the lingering heat and humidity.

She was right. Within fifteen minutes, she’d fallen into an uneasy slumber.

***

 

June 25, 1988

3:05 a.m.

Objekt 825

 

There had never been any danger of Tracie sleeping past three a.m., the time she’d decided it was necessary to get up and get moving. For one thing, the floor was hard and uncomfortable, meaning she didn’t sleep soundly as much as doze fitfully.

But the real reason she’d had no concerns about oversleeping when it was critical she arise in the middle of the night was that over the course of nearly a decade’s worth of covert operations, her body had developed a finely-tuned interior alarm clock. If her intention was to awaken at three o’clock in the morning—and it was—she knew she would do exactly that within a window of just a few minutes either way.

She rose to a sitting position at 2:55, turned and unzipped her bag. Breakfasted on a protein bar and three sips of water. Then she pushed to her feet and brushed the dirt and grime from her clothing.

From out of her bag she lifted her Red Army uniform and held it up for inspection. In the nighttime gloom of the abandoned building it was impossible to tell whether wrinkling might be an issue or not. She shrugged and began peeling off her dirty clothes. The condition of the uniform was irrelevant, really; it wasn’t as though she had any other choices if she were to execute her plan.

After changing into her uniform she squatted down on her haunches next to the equipment bag, eying it and thinking. Now that she had developed a concrete strategy, she thought the big bag—and most of the materials inside it—had become unnecessary, serving no purpose other than to slow her down. It was heavy and unwieldy, and worst of all, it magnified the effects of her sprained ankle on her mobility.

She nodded to herself as she reached a decision. She turned the open bag upside down and emptied it onto the floor. One of the items contained inside was a neatly folded backpack. She unfolded the pack and opened its pockets, then began filling them with only the items she deemed necessary for the successful completion of her mission. Everything else she would leave scattered on the dirty floor of this abandoned hostel.

With any luck, the clothing, empty water