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

He surprised her by complying without argument.

While he was maneuvering, Tracie unzipped her backpack and removed a roll of silver duct tape. She’d left it on top because she knew she would need it, so it took no more than five seconds, and then the pack was re-zipped and placed at her feet.

“Hands behind your back,” she said after he’d lain down. She wrapped the tape quickly, three times around his wrist before repeating the process with his ankles.

Then she slammed the door closed and crossed behind the car. Opened the door adjacent to his head and covered his mouth with tape, again using three layers, wrapping them tightly around his skull.

“Try to scream,” she said.

He glared but did as he was told, and all that came out was a weak, muffled grunt, something that would be impossible to hear by anyone passing more than six feet from the car.

It wasn’t a perfect arrangement but it would do. Now that she’d been forced to eliminate the soldier, there was no real reason to leave Morozov alive. He could identify her, but that in itself wasn’t reason to kill him. Plenty of other people from Objekt 825 could identify her, too, including the scientist who’d reluctantly handed over the communication device, the receptionist inside the administration building, and the sentry standing guard outside the front entrance. Undoubtedly they would remember her vividly, particularly given the ugly scar running down the side of her skull.

She couldn’t very well kill them all.

Besides, she simply couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger on a defenseless man, especially a man like Morozov. He was a nervous character, the kind of person who seemed utterly out of place in a military uniform, but he was as innocent as it was possible to be in his situation, a guy just following orders. Tracie was happy she could leave him alive and avoid one more in a seemingly never-ending stream of nightmares based on people she’d eliminated while completing assignments.

She closed the rear door and slipped behind the wheel. Adjusted the seat and then called over her shoulder, “Hang on.”

Her words were greeted with another grunt.

She pulled into the middle of the road, careful not to run over her backpack, which was still sitting on the edge of the pavement. She spun the wheel and shifted into reverse, then hit the gas hard, bouncing across the verge and through the scrub brush before knifing into a gap between two good-sized evergreens. Spinning the wheel one more time, Tracie turned the car sideways and it jounced to a stop behind the tree.

“Are we having fun yet?” she called to Morozov.

His lack of a reply led her to believe he wasn’t having much fun yet.

“Since you’ve been such a good boy, doing exactly as you’ve been told—more or less—I’m going to leave the windows cracked so you can get some air,” she said. “It will probably be awhile before anyone finds you, but considering the alternative was two slugs in the back of your skull, I guess you don’t have much to complain about.”

Still nothing.

Tracie shrugged and climbed out of the car, moving quickly. Her escape wasn’t complete yet; there was still plenty to do. She picked her way through the underbrush, lifted her backpack onto her shoulder, and then disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road, skirting the Jeep with the dead soldier lying next to it.

She forced herself to ignore all the blood.

29

June 25, 1988

8:40 a.m.

Sonnoye Utro Motel, Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

Andrei Lukashenko pushed the bed sheet off his naked body and groaned. His head was pounding. Too much cheap vodka last night and nowhere near enough sleep made for a rough morning, but he’d never been one to sleep the day away and he wasn’t about to start now. He would probably receive a new assignment in less than a week—maybe a lot less—and once that happened there would be no telling when he could relax again.

So even though he felt like a steaming pile of der’mo, he intended to enjoy as much of his time off as possible.

He eased into a sitting position and smiled, holding his head in his hands. As badly as he felt right now, he imagined his companion from last night was feeling even worse. Marisha had nearly matched him drink for drink inside the little seaside bar where they met, and she was probably seventy kilos lighter than he, tiny and pretty and young.

They had made an odd-looking pair as they strolled out of the bar arm-in-arm, more likely to be mistaken for father and daughter than for sexual companions. Andrei didn’t care, though. He had always enjoyed the company of much younger women, and despite his steadily expanding paunch and lack of any features the opposite sex might consider attractive, had never had any problems finding those women.

He’d known the minute he checked into the motel that he would search out someone with whom to spend the evening, and while last night’s paramour was probably prettier than his average date, she wasn’t all that unusual, either. They had strolled back to his room—more like stumbled back, he thought with a rueful grin—and then proceeded to spend the next several hours exploring various sexual positions and more than a few of his favorite kinks.

By the time they’d finished, Andrei was a sweaty, exhausted mess. Marisha had indicated in no uncertain terms her desire to continue, but one thing Andrei had learned over the years was that while you could always lead the horse to water, as that horse got older there was a very definite limit to how much it could drink.

And Andrei had drunk his fill.

So he kicked her out.

He chuckled at the memory. She’d been spitting mad, calling him names and swinging