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

Six inches.

A foot.

Eighteen inches, and Tracie was sweating heavily. Her arm was by now behind her, and she would need to reestablish a grip farther along the chain if she wanted to continue moving the gun closer.

She leaned back against the table and lifted her left leg, bending it at the knee, giving herself a small makeshift surface upon which she could rest the chain. She released her grip and then grabbed it again, this time as far forward as possible.

Then she lowered her leg and continued.

One minute later the gun had come to rest against Andrei Lukashenko. His body lay between Tracie and the weapon, and she had a momentary—but terrifying—vision of him choosing this exact moment to regain consciousness, his eyes fluttering open just before picking the gun up, rolling over and firing two rounds between Tracie’s eyes.

It didn’t happen. The Weasel continued to lie on the floor, if not dead then gravely injured.

Now came the hard—and likely very painful—part of her plan. Tracie stepped over Lukashenko’s body with her left foot. She was now straddling the downed man, her right arm stretched across the table. She placed her left foot as firmly as possible on the floor and began lifting her right foot over Lukashenko as well, a bit of her weight supported by her foot but the majority of it by her arm.

The pain was immense. Her wrist and knuckles were on fire, bones and muscles and tendons screaming for relief as she lowered her right foot to the floor across Andrei Lukashenko.

Bringing her feet together, Tracie trapped the Makarov like a sliver between two ends of a tweezers.

Jaws clamped shut, panting and moaning, sweat flowing freely, Tracie sent up a mental prayer to God or fate or karma or whoever the hell else might be paying attention.

She squeezed her eyes nearly closed and pushed off with her feet, forcing herself to keep them pressed together, every ounce of her one hundred-ten pounds supported by just her right arm.

She screamed through her clamped jaws but maintained all the concentration she could muster on what she was doing. Her feet rose as her body twisted to the left, and then Tracie yanked her legs toward her body and pulled her feet apart, hoping she’d raised the gun high enough to clear Lukashneko’s body.

The Makarov tumbled in her direction. It bounced once on The Wesael’s chest and then fell to the floor beneath Tracie.

Her feet dropped onto Lukashenko’s body and she pushed off, desperate to release the pressure on her arm and shoulder. She scrabbled for purchase on the floor and then stood.

Lifting the gun over Lukashenko had probably taken all of half a second, but it was half a second that felt endless. Tracie’s hair hung down over her face. Sweat flowed freely into her eyes, causing them to tear and sting. She was shaking and exhausted.

But she’d done it. Andrei Lukashenko’s gun lay on the floor at her feet.

44

June 25, 1988

3:25 p.m.

Abandoned factory north of Sevastopol, Russia, USSR

Tracie still couldn’t reach all the way to the floor with her free hand, thanks to the height of the table and the angle at which she’d been restrained. This meant her career as a contortionist hadn’t quite drawn to a close, but she told herself the really hard part was over.

Maybe.

She allotted thirty seconds to her recovery, acutely aware of General Gregorovich’s impending arrival. She wiped her face on her right shoulder to clear the sweat from her eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, and then got back to work.

Lukashenko’s Makarov had fallen onto the floor almost directly beneath her, so she barely had to move to position herself over it. Once the gun was centered between her feet, she repeated the process she’d just undertaken on the other side of The Weasel, clamping her feet closed, trapping the weapon between them.

She shuffled backward until the edge of the table was pressing firmly into her lower back. For once during this nightmare you don’t have to stretch your handcuffed arm out like Gumby, she thought, and snickered aloud. It was the sound of a young woman she did not recognize, a woman who was stressed out and exhausted and terrified.

Once in position against the table, Tracie lowered her body into a half-crouch. One more time, she pushed off with her feet while pressing both hands palms-down on the tabletop. The half-jump lifted her into a sitting position on the table.

But she’d allowed her concentration to wander and her feet drifted apart, not much, maybe half an inch, but it was enough to allow the gun to slip from between them and clatter back onto the floor.

Tracie watched in horror as the Makarov bounced crazily twice, each time moving a little farther away from her. It came to rest following the second bounce close enough that she could recover it and try again, but at a dangerous enough distance that she vowed to think of nothing but keeping the weapon trapped between her feet until she’d finished doing what needed to be done.

No more stray thoughts of Gumby.

No more snickering.

She would visualize that damned gun Super-Glued to her feet. Nailed to her feet. It would become a part of her feet.

She slipped off the table and pulled the gun back into position with her left foot and tried again, moving quickly but also smoothly and carefully.

The second try was the charm. A moment later, she was once again planted in a sitting position on the top of the table, the gun still firmly trapped between her feet. She braced herself with her hands and rotated her butt, lifting her legs and swinging left until the gun dangled over the table instead of the floor.

Then she pulled her