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

the airport for my call. Only after you hear from me are you to drive to the facility to meet me and escort our prisoner back to the airplane.”

“But Sir,” one of the men protested. “You never go anywhere without personal security.”

Ivan glared at the soldier until he dropped his eyes. “Do you understand the meaning of the word ‘order?’”

“Of course, Sir,” came the response, not just from the man he’d addressed but from both of them.

“Then there is only one acceptable response to what I have told you. What is that response?”

“Yes, Sir.” Again, both men spoke at the same time.

“Thank you. Do not make me remind you again.”

Ivan placed his briefcase on the hood of the car closest him. He unsnapped it and lifted out a walkie-talkie, handing it to the first soldier. “Did you familiarize yourself with the location of the facility?”

“Of course, Sir.”

“Good. When I call, I expect you to leave the airport for the KGB facility immediately, but not a moment before I call. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Ivan nodded and closed his briefcase. He’d emphasized the men’s orders not because he didn’t think they’d understood him the first time, but rather because he wanted to take no chances the men would arrive at the facility early and catch a glimpse of the “interrogation” he planned to conduct.

Witnesses would be bad. Any witnesses would open him up to the possibility of blackmail. Ivan fully intended to deliver the American operative into KGB custody once he had finished with her, but KGB officials would not appreciate Ivan’s brand of unapproved interrogation. Despite his lofty rank, Ivan was a purchasing specialist, not at intelligence specialist, and the Soviet Union’s security service was notoriously touchy about people stepping on their toes, even if those people happened to be Red Army generals.

No one could know about what he was going to do to the woman. Even Andrei Lukashenko would be sent away until Ivan’s thirst for vengeance had been sated. The Weasel had shown excellent judgment by calling Ivan—rather than his handlers at the KGB—upon apprehending the woman, but that didn’t mean Ivan was going to trust him.

In fact, it meant exactly the opposite.

Ivan shifted the car into gear and began driving toward the open gate in the chain link fence at the far end of the tarmac. The Sevastopol airport was located north of the city, as was the KGB interrogation facility. Rather than having to circumnavigate the downtown area or fight traffic attempting to drive straight through, Ivan was looking at what he assumed would be an easy drive of roughly twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes.

In less than half an hour he would be repaying the petite, harmless-looking young woman who had broken into his home and disabled his security officer before injuring Ivan and stealing classified Soviet documents. He repay her assault blow for blow—and then some—before before turning her over to the KGB for her actual interrogation.

In the grand scheme of things, teaching her a lesson wasn’t strictly necessary. After all, she had already taken her last breaths as a free woman; she certainly would never escape the KGB once they’d taken possession of her, and after Ivan had finished working her over she would be in no condition to attempt any kind of mischief while being transported to Lubyanka.

But that fact was irrelevant.

Because this was personal.

Ivan exited airport property and turned toward the abandoned factory that had been repurposed into an interrogation and intimidation center dedicated to advancing the interests of the USSR.

He was as happy as he could recall being at any time in the recent past.

41

 

June 25, 1988

3:05 p.m.

Abandoned factory north of Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

 

Tracie was running out of time. She knew she was running out of time because Andrei Lukashenko had told her, straight out, that General Ivan Gregorovich was flying to Sevastopol from Moscow to torture her.

How long it would take Gregorovich to get here was the question, but whether the answer was two hours or six hours, the fact of the matter was that the clock was ticking down, and once Gregorovich walked into this abandoned, crumbling relic of a manufacturing plant, all realistic chances Tracie had of escaping—if she had any at all—would vanish.

Her best—and maybe her only—chance to get out was to do so while escape would require disabling just one man.

But since returning from wherever he’d gone earlier to call Gregorovich, The Weasel had kept his distance. He hadn’t come close to drifting within arm’s reach of Tracie, whose wing span was seriously limited in the first place, thanks to her right wrist being cuffed to the damned equipment arm mounted a good two feet from the edge of the table.

Lukashenko had picked Tracie’s backup gun and combat knife off the floor where he’d thrown them after frisking her, disappearing in the direction of the suite of offices to her left. Presumably he’d also gathered up the weapon he had forced her to drop in the hallway, placing all three in the office from which he’d ambushed her, or somewhere close by.

He had returned a few minutes later and spent most of the last couple of hours pacing around the mammoth room, walking back and forth, back and forth, apparently deep in thought.

In once sense, it was a relief not to have him crowding into her personal space. In addition to his sour sweat-smell making Tracie want to gag, Lukashenko was big and imposing.

Intimidating, particularly since he was armed and she was not.

Tracie knew without a shadow of a doubt she could take him down in a fair fight, or at least a fight in which she had full use of her hands and arms. But being chained up in the way The Weasel had chosen to do it