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

as much to her advantage as possible as she approached the home, crouching when necessary, moving from stand of trees to stand of trees, taking a roundabout route despite the time pressure.

The closer she came to the residence, the more she became convinced that no one was home. Still, she moved cautiously. She’d gotten herself in trouble in the first place by assuming she had the upper hand on Lukashenko when she’d burst into the abandoned factory, and she wasn’t about to repeat that mistake.

When she reached the edge of the tiny, weed-infested yard, Tracie paused and debated the best plan for approaching the home. She was still wearing her counterfeit Red Army uniform, and even though it was by now dirty and disheveled, she felt a direct approach would be best if anyone were home. She’d recovered her Olga Koruskaya ID, and her years working inside the Iron Curtain had illustrated to her just how much the average Soviet citizen mistrusted and feared his government’s centralized authority.

As a military officer, Tracie—“Olga”—would represent that authority. If she said she needed to make a telephone call, the resident would almost certainly allow her to do so.

And if not, she would force her way inside and do it anyway.

She stepped out of the trees and strode across the yard, head up, eyes focused on the home. Her gun was concealed inside her shoulder rig for now. Anyone who happened to glance out the window at the time she broke cover would certainly be suspicious to see her approaching from the woods and not the road, but there was nothing she could do about that now; she simply could not afford to take the time to retrace her steps and return via the pavement.

In a matter of seconds she had arrived at the front door. She lifted her hand and rapped sharply, waited the briefest of intervals and then rapped again. She was a Soviet military officer on a time-critical mission who needed to make a telephone call, and she wanted to convey that sense of urgency to anyone inside the home.

Nobody answered.

Tracie waited a bit longer and tried again, two more sets of knocks, delivered with an even heavier hand.

Still no response.

One more try convinced Tracie that her sense of the home being empty was accurate.

Or maybe the resident was in a coma.

Either way, she felt it was time to enter. She reached for the doorknob and twisted it and was unsurprised to discover it would not turn. If no one were home, of course the front door would be locked.

In keeping with the general disrepair of the structure, though, the wooden door frame looked spongy and weak, its structural integrity compromised by decades of exposure to the corrosive effects of the salty Black Sea air and high humidity. Tracie’s first instinct had been to break into the house through a rear window, but a quick inspection of the door led her to believe she might not have to take the time to do even that.

And time was of the essence.

She glanced toward the access road. It remained every bit as deserted as it had been since she’d escaped the KGB interrogation facility.

There was no way to avoid being seen if a car were to pass by as she was breaking in, but the risk seemed minimal at this point. Tracie took a step back and raised her left foot nearly to waist height. She would have preferred to use her other leg, but with a badly sprained ankle, there would be no way to generate the power she needed.

So she would improvise.

She pivoted on her right leg and fired out a sidekick, generating as much torque as she could without anything to brace herself against.

Her heel slammed against the door below the knob as her right ankle crumpled, and she was rewarded with a loud crack! She stumbled backward, catching herself against a rickety railing that creaked threateningly but supported her weight.

The door remained closed but she knew it wouldn’t for much longer, as a half-inch wide gap had opened up between its edge and the rotting frame.

She tried again, and this time the ensuing crack was more muffled, but the door swung violently open, smashing into the interior wall before rebounding toward Tracie. She had managed to remain upright this time, and caught it with her hand. Then she eased it closed behind her as she entered. The latch was demolished, so she jammed the edge of the door into the broken frame as best she could.

Clearing the house took less than a minute. No one was here, as Tracie had by now become certain would be the case.

A rotary-style telephone sat at the edge of a scarred Formica countertop in the kitchen, and she hurried toward it. The home’s resident had very thoughtfully placed a sticker on the wall behind the phone featuring the numbers of the Sevastopol Militsiya and fire service, so she didn’t even need to take the time to find a phone book and look up the number she needed.

She dialed and waited as the ancient phone line clicked and whirred, seemingly trying to decide whether to connect Tracie to the police or not. Eventually it relented and began buzzing angrily in her ear as the telephone rang at—she assumed—whatever police station was closest to this location.

A moment later a bored male voice answered, “Sevastopol Militsiya. How can I help you?”

You sure don’t sound like you want to help me, Tracie thought.

But she didn’t say that. Instead, she tried to put the appropriate amount of fear and panic into her voice as she said, in Russian, “Yes, I am at the old factory in North Sevastopol, the place where they used to make industrial fishing equipment many years ago. Are you familiar with it?”

She thought that was what