Free The Good Spy by Jeffrey Layton

to remain out of Yuri’s sight. They watched as he drove around the marina’s east side and disappeared.
    â€œWhat now?” Nick asked.
    â€œLet’s wait a couple of minutes for him to park. Then we’ll check.” Laura pulled off the road onto the shoulder. She opened her purse and removed the tracker.
    Nick eyed the device. It was the size of a cell phone. “How does it work?”
    â€œIt’s a transceiver. Has a range of around two hundred meters.”
    Embedded within the logo of Elena’s business card she’d given Yuri was a minuscule radio frequency identification chip. When energized by a unique RF signal emitted by the transceiver, the nanotech RFID tag broadcast its location.
    * * *
    Laura remained a prisoner in the master bedroom. Twenty minutes earlier, she’d heard the knock at the front door but could not respond. Before leaving, her captor had anchored her to the bed on her back with arms and legs moored to each corner of the frame with rope. Tape once more sealed her lips.
    Laura shifted her torso, trying to get comfortable. She turned her head toward the nightstand and checked the clock: quarter past four. A couple of hours had passed since “John” left.
    Laura took several deep inhalations, trying to relax. It didn’t help. The pressure in her bladder was increasing but she’d just have to hold it until he returned.
    Perhaps tonight she would get her chance.
    Laura was waiting for the right circumstances. But they had not yet occurred. She remained patient. He would eventually slip up and she’d escape.
    Laura wouldn’t bother with the local deputy sheriff. She planned to head straight for the U.S. border station, running if she had to; it was only a couple of miles away.
    They would have FBI agents here in no time at all .

CHAPTER 16
    C aptain Borodin entered the Neva ’s engineering compartment. “Has there been any improvement?” he asked.
    â€œNo, Captain,” the reactor officer said. “Unit Two’s barely maintaining itself. If the efficiency drops much more, it’ll automatically shut down.”
    Restarted the day before, the starboard nuclear reactor’s heat output remained a fraction of normal. Just enough seawater streamed into the Neva ’s cooling system to keep the reactor from redlining. If the flow increased, more bottom sediment would be ingested, further plugging the condensing units. The cooling system efficiency would deteriorate, initiating an automatic shutdown. Without heat from the reactor, the steam-powered generating plant would stop producing electricity—the ship’s lifeblood.
    â€œHow are the batteries?” Borodin asked, referring to the reserves in Compartment Five; the mains had fried, shorted out by seawater when the first two compartments flooded.
    â€œThey’re about fifty percent recharged so far, but I don’t trust ’em. They were due for replacement last year.”
    â€œI know.”
    Deferred maintenance was the norm for the Neva . Within three years, the nuclear cores for both reactors would be spent but they would not be refueled. The ship would be retired soon. Held in reserve for eight years after commissioning due to military funding limitations, the Neva had been in active service for nearly two decades. It had performed well above the standard for its class thanks to an advanced propeller design secretly purchased from the West and to several acoustic-quieting upgrades to its running gear. Because of its superior stealth, the Neva had become an ideal platform to conduct covert reconnaissance. Nearly half of the submarine’s patrols during the past eight years involved espionage.
    As Borodin headed aft, continuing his once every two hours tour of the boat, the reactor officer asked, “Sir, the man that tried to escape, what happened to him?”
    â€œDrowned. Somehow he punctured his suit and it flooded.”
    â€œWhat