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

had walked right behind her as he forced her onto the production floor and had never backtracked into the hallway before leaving the facility, so it stood to reason the gun was still there.

Two guns and a knife, all less than fifty feet away, all utterly useless to her.

Tracie forced the frustration from her mind—it wasn’t easy—and continued her desperate visual search. There had to be something she could use to effect an escape. It quickly became obvious, though, that nothing else inside the mostly empty room would be of any use to her even if she could reach it, which she could not.

Her last hope was the table that had once housed the assembly line. A few ancient tools had been left scattered across it, abandoned for some unknown reason upon the facility’s decommissioning.

There was a hacksaw to her right.

A claw hammer that would serve wonderfully as a makeshift weapon to her left.

A length of heavily rusted chain, partially coiled along the table, also to Tracie’s left.

All could serve a purpose in a possible escape.

The length of chain was closest to her, but all were beyond Tracie’s reach. She knew they were because she tried, one by one, stretching her arms as far as she could, reaching for each.

Failing in every attempt.

Lukashenko must have realized the tools represented no threat to him, which was why he hadn’t bothered to move any of them.

Tracie cursed again.

Her head, shoulder and ankle continued to throb.

She was in big trouble.

38

 

June 25, 1988

12:25 p.m.

Soviet Army Headquarters, Moscow, Russia, USSR

 

General Ivan Gregorovich did not even bother replacing the telephone handset onto its cradle at the conclusion of his very strange—but wonderful—conversation with the KGB man known as Andrei Lukashenko. He pressed the button on his phone’s console to terminate the connection and then immediately pressed a second button, the one that would buzz his personal aide in the office’s reception area.

The line was picked up almost instantly, as Ivan had known it would be. “Rudnev,” a male voice said.

“Mikhail, I need to fly to Sevastopol on urgent business. Please arrange for an aircraft to be fueled and ready to depart in thirty minutes.”

“You are flying to Sevastopol…today?”

“Did I not just say that? Yes, Mikhail. Today.”

“But Sir, your afternoon schedule is filled with appointments and meetings, some of which are extremely—”

“MIKHAIL,” Ivan interrupted, his voice not just loud but authoritative. He knew it would be effective in getting his administrative assistant’s immediate and undivided attention because he’d used it before and it had never failed to serve its purpose.

“Yes, Sir?”

“I know my schedule. I have my schedule right in front of me. You will cancel my appointments and advise my colleagues I will be unable to attend my meetings. I told you once already, this trip to Sevastopol is urgent. Do you understand?”

“Of course, Sir. How long will you be staying? Would you like me to arrange for accommodations?”

“No accommodations. I expect to return to Moscow this evening. If plans change, I will handle my own accommodations. In that event, I will offer you as much advance notice as I am able, so you may adjust my schedule for tomorrow.”

“Understood. How many men will be traveling with you to Sevastopol, Sir? The number of passengers will determine which airplane I reserve for you.”

“Any airplane is fine. I will be bringing just a small security detail, say, two men.”

“Very good, Sir. I will select a pair of soldiers from today’s security roster.”

“No, Mikhail. I will choose my own men. This trip is of a highly sensitive nature and I must be certain I can trust their discretion.”

Ivan’s assistant fell silent, his surprise obvious. To classify this conversation as unusual would be an understatement. The Soviet military’s highest-ranking acquisitions officer had never before abandoned his schedule in the middle of the workday to fly to a Black Sea coastal city on some unspecified, “highly sensitive” mission.

The reaction didn’t bother Ivan in the least. As one of the half-dozen or so most influential members of the Red Army hierarchy, he had long-since grown accustomed to being obeyed instantly and, more importantly, unquestioningly. He felt confident today’s situation would be no different.

“Of course, Sir,” his assistant said after the short pause. “Will you be needing anything else?”

“Da. Please arrange for transportation to be waiting upon arrival in Sevastopol. Two vehicles.”

“Very good, Sir.”

***

The Vnukovo Tupolev Airport was located just twenty-eight kilometers from downtown Moscow, making it less than a thirty-minute drive from Ivan’s office. The two soldiers he’d selected to accompany him as a security detail were being shuttled to the airfield in a separate car, which left Ivan alone—aside from his driver, of course—to consider the implications of this morning’s surprising news.

He had been obsessed with the pretty, redheaded American CIA agent from the moment she had invaded his private residence—during his daughter Irina’s twenty-first birthday party, no less!—and assaulted Ivan and one of his men, stealing classified information right out of Ivan’s home office and escaping into the night.

It was a brazen act of hostility, one he could not seem to move past. In fact, the more time that elapsed since that awful night, the more the desire for vengeance burned inside Ivan. The woman had put not just Ivan’s life in danger, but also those of his family and friends.

Worse, she had made him appear weak and ineffectual in front of his military colleagues, and that was something Ivan simply could not countenance.

The fact that she had single-handedly prevented the Russian radical group Sovetskiy Soyuz Navsegda from detonating a tactical nuclear device and murdering thousands of Soviet citizens in the process did little to assuage his smoldering hatred for the petite—but lethally effective—American operative.

In fact, the opposite was true. Ivan’s men