Project Sparta (The Xander Whitt Series Book 1) (13 page)

Chapter 25

DuPont Circle

July 1
st
2016

Xander’s truck rumbled down the side roads of the busy DC streets toward Mac Morrison’s apartment. He had heard the news of the bus bombing when he woke up, which gave him a renewed purpose as he squeezed the steering wheel tight. Mac and Tobias both lived and worked out of DC full-time as Spartan support. Mac’s surroundings were far different than those of Tobias. His residence was located in DuPont Circle, a young professional’s playground. He lived in a swanky, chic apartment, stylized with a modern edge. Being from San Francisco, Mac had always had his own sense of style. Xander remembered that. Even back in the days of the Compound, Mac used to add his own flair to the uniforms, flipping the cuffs of his jeans up above his ankles or rolling his sleeves. He always seemed to be an edgier, alternative breed to that of the typical teenager. When Xander stepped out of the elevator on Mac’s floor, he noticed that Mac’s door had already been opened, inviting him to enter.

Xander stepped into the chic apartment, everything ordered in a tidy and deliberate manner. He surveyed the interior and noted the small changes that had been made since his last visit. All in all, it was the same abode that he remembered. One of the walls was exposed brick, the color schemes were mostly darker pastels, and the furniture was pristine, as if it were straight out of a catalog spread. Against the brick wall was a cohort of computers, monitors, and hard drive cabinets.

“Knock, knock!” he announced himself from the center of Mac’s apartment to no response. Xander approached the brick wall and scanned the central set of monitors, showing different angles of the exterior of the buildings. He also noted the surrounding monitors with feeds of people on the street and cars driving by. He recognized a sign that read
Morton’s
in the background of one of the surveillance feeds.

Morton’s Steakhouse? That’s two blocks from here. It seems Mac has expanded his perimeter. I knew he always liked to see you before you see him, but damn… It looks like he’s hacked into security cameras, traffic cameras, even an ATM. Impressive…

Xander remembered that the top secret lifestyle was a difficult transition for Mac. He became a recluse, rarely getting out to breathe fresh air. Rumor had it that the paranoia necessary for an effective cyber security specialist had gotten the best of him. Xander could tell, as he noticed his friend develop certain neurotic mannerisms over time.

“Xander.” Mac walked in with a hand towel.

“Hey, buddy!” Xander approached Mac with a hug, which was returned with a couple pats on his back.

“Been awhile. You look good,” Xander said. Mac didn’t look much different than he did at the Compound. His glasses had only gotten thicker and his hair was styled in the modern comb-over of the age. He was wearing blue corduroys and a red-and-white gingham shirt that looked like it could have been a picnic tablecloth.

“Not too bad, yourself.” Xander replied.

“I know, I know. I’m a stone cold fox these days, aren’t I?” Mac laughed at himself. The pleasantries settled and the conversation shifted to business.

“What brings you by?” Mac asked. Xander knew that Mac could tell that something dire was at play and that he could use a helping hand.

“I need everything you’ve got on a Hamal Abadi.” Xander noticed Mac’s eyes perk up. “You know him?”

“No, I’m just curious why. A little context would help my digging.”

Xander proceeded to recount the events of the last forty-eight hours. Mac stumbled back at the news that a defector was among them.

Xander analyzed Mac’s demeanor as he revealed the intel, cognizant of the possibility that Agent Zero could be anyone, but hopeful that it wasn’t Mac. Mac began tapping his fingers in the air as if typing on a keyboard, just as he did in the Compound.

Mac appears genuinely surprised and not much surprises him. He is processing this step by step. I can almost see his brain churn over this one. There doesn’t seem to be anything amiss here. He and Tobias can’t be Agent Zero. Agent Zero would most likely be a field operative anyways.

“So we’ve got a traitor in Project Sparta,” Mac said.

“It would appear so.”

Mac adjusted his stance as if to gather himself. “Well, you know who my first suspect is…”

“I know. Duke is a person of interest.” The name had been resting in the back of his mind since he found the stone.

“He always marched to his own drum. You know he went dark three months ago?” Mac asked.

“Yeah, I heard, but I am not ruling out anybody. I need you to try to find him, Mac.”

“I won’t be able to. I mean, come on, Spartans can go off grid if they want at any moment. We were trained to…” Mac tried to find the words. “Well, we were trained to not exist.”

“I want you to try anyway, but only after you get everything you can on Hamal Abadi. He’s our best lead at the moment.” Mac nodded his acceptance to the challenge. He had grown close to Xander—almost all the Spartans had. Although their missions were mostly on an individual basis, the few times they did work together, they always viewed Xander as the leader.

“Let’s see what we can do.” Mac cracked open a Coke and slouched into his high-backed chair.

“You gonna access the CIA?”

“The CIA doesn’t know as much as they think. The agency with the most power when it comes to information is the NSA. Since the Patriot Act and USA Freedom Act, they’ve collected more raw intel than all the other government agencies combined. It’s just a matter of being able to comb through it quickly once I’m in. This will take a while but I like the challenge.” Mac‘s fingers tap danced on the keyboard at a feverish pace.

«————————»

After a couple of hours of prep, Mac stopped typing. The silence was deafening, causing Xander to turn from his contemplation to his friend.

“Xander…” Mac’s features fell.

“What is it, Mac?”

Mac’s eyes searched the floor as if for a theory.

“We know that Agent Zero is from Project Sparta…” Mac began to piece together a thought. “You know I’ve tried to find her over these years.”

“I know, Mac…” Xander’s tone fell.

“I know you loved her… but she didn’t just betray you, she betrayed us all. We have to be cognizant of the possibility that…” Mac’s words trailed. He exhaled and raised his eyes to Xander’s. “…that Fiona Jenkins could be back.”

Chapter 26

DuPont Circle

July 1
st
2016

Xander froze at hearing Mac’s theory. His hand came to his brow as he focused on the floorboards of the apartment. A silence came over the room – the only audible sounds were distance car horns and the cooling units on the computers. Xander shook his head with difficulty – eyes lost in the distance

“I mean doesn’t it make sense?” Mac continued to explain in the earnest. “Fiona Jenkins, the double that somehow infiltrated Project Sparta, escapes the Compound and goes on the run. She disappears for six years and returns as Agent Zero to finish the job she started,” Mac wrote the story out for Xander’s consideration.

“Everyone is a suspect… nothing is as it seems,” Xander murmured. Mac stepped closer to Xander.

“You have to open your mind to that possibility, Xander.”

“You’re right.” Xander admitted, as he shook off his tunnel vision and returned his focus to the room.

“So the NSA has the most secure system in the world. How are you going to be able to find what I need once you’re in and how are you going to back yourself out and cover your tracks?”

“I’m going to have the help of this beauty.” He held up a small chip. “I call it Anni 2.0”

“Anni? From the Compound?”

Mac plugged the chip into his CPU and the top right monitor populated with vertical lines running across the screen, it displayed a sound wave. These thin lines took the shape of lips and began talking in a voice that Xander hadn’t heard in a long time.

“Good afternoon, Spartans.” Anni 2.0 had the same prosaic intonation.

“Good afternoon, Anni.” Mac spoke to her like a friend; Xander remained speechless.

“Mac, how did you get your hands on this?”

“Anni, why don’t you share with Xander how you got here?” Mac instructed.

“Mac was given a training mission similar to other Spartans while in the Compound. His objective was to hijack me and smuggle me out of the Mainframe. He slowly gathered parts of my code and reassembled the code in his house over the course of his training. He used an eight gigabyte flash drive that he stole from Cusick one day and hid it inside the cuff of his pants. Mac was able to keep me for a mission well done. It’s good to hear your voice again, Xander.”

“You can recognize my voice?” Xander asked.

“I was able to account for the lower octaves in your voice and match your audible signature,” she explained.

“Impressive.”

“In the past, I was a reactionary program that did what I was told. Mac has upgraded me to be a proactive program that can be let loose within a system. As I probe through files, I attract files to attach to me before I exit the system. I am able to extract data by acting as a passing magnet through the most secure systems in the world, so long as I am given certain parameters,” she explained as Mac continued to navigate a back door on another monitor

“Anni, I’m about to send you into the Level Five data bunker of the NSA mainframe, I would like you to search their database as quickly as possible and find anything you can on someone named Hamal Abadi.”

“Okay, Hamal Abadi, spelled H A M A L space A B A D I.”

“Correct, Anni,” Xander confirmed. Mac continued to duck behind firewall after firewall. Computer dialect streamed down the black screens before him. After fifteen minutes of intense and concentrated efforts, the NSA login page appeared on the main monitor with a message reading
Login Successful
.

“Go, Anni!” Mac hit the
Enter
key and all four screens flashed like strobe lights as page after page came up in immediate succession. Anni scanned each page instantaneously and pushed them aside as she continued to dig. After two minutes of intense searching, Anni logged out of the server and announced her findings.

“Two hits, Mac.”

“Great job!” Mac hastened to open the files that Anni had retrieved for him, but the surveillance monitor started to blink, as if there was a system glitch. A panic came over the room. “No, no, no!” Mac generated more dialogue boxes at an even faster speed, running query after query until his fingers froze and his mouth dropped. His eyes focused on his surveillance feeds of the surrounding area and his fear was confirmed. A system security message came up on the screen in big bold letters:

COMPROMISED

At the sight of this word, Mac stuck a thumb drive into his modem and commanded a download. He then jumped from his chair, dropping a string of obscenities, and bolted around his apartment, collecting things and throwing them loose in a bag. He was very methodical in his evacuation. His paranoia had materialized and his crisis management plan was underway.

“What happened? Was it Anni?” Xander knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t good. That level of computer security was lost on him. He was much better in the field than he ever was on a computer, a script kiddie compared to the legendary hacktivist before him.

“It wasn’t Anni or the hack. Someone is
here
! Our perimeter has been breached!”

Xander looked up at the monitor of the camera several blocks down and saw three black Suburbans en route. Usually in a situation like this, the police would come first, then the FBI. But this was neither because there was no siren.

“Agent Zero’s mercenaries. Abadi said during the meet that Agent Zero had hired some muscle,” Xander explained.

“Well, whoever they are, they aren’t far so you better hope those files download quickly.” Xander eyed the download status bar on the screen as the computer slowly cleaned and copied the files onto the small flash drive. Mac seemed to be working faster than his computer as he continued packing up laptops, hard drives, and dirty clothes.

The status bar was at 50 percent complete
,
and it continued to creep toward completion.

“Okay, I got everything. Let’s go!” Xander shook his head as Mac rumbled back into the brick wall room and pointed at the screen. They couldn’t go anywhere yet. Mac looked at the high surveillance monitor and watched the Suburbans come to a stop outside his apartment. A militia of men got out of the SUVs, all dressed in military fatigues.

“Who the hell are those guys?” Mac asked frantically as Xander analyzed their appearance on the feed.

“Most of them are Caucasian. Their uniforms are American military,” Xander said.

“Dated, though,” Mac noted. “They’re not wearing the current standard-issue.”

“No plates on the Suburbans.”

“Anni, do an analysis on the men outside.” The computers started to whir as the facial recognition software ran a red box across the surveillance feed. Upon finding a face, it boxed the image and began computing. “Anni put your findings into the flash drive.”

“Copying screenshots and facial recognition results into the flash drive.”

The status bar was at 75 percent complete and slowed as more information was being copied to Anni’s memory stick. The air grew heavy as the download bar continued to fill. The men outside unloaded military grade assault weapons from the SUV, preparing for invasion. Another thirty seconds passed. Each tick of the clock had grown louder.

They waited in silence, uncertain if they’d make it. Xander had cocked his Glock ready for anyone to burst through the door. Xander was calm but intense as he stared down the door.

Ninety-seven percent.

The final three percent was the hardest to watch because Xander’s adrenaline started to spike. The men had entered the building and had begun their ascent up the front stairwell of the apartment building. Mac’s hands were shaking, but Xander’s remained calm and composed.

Ninety-eight percent.

Xander thought he could hear their footsteps marching up the steps outside the door. A creak of the staircase squealed in the outside hallway.

Ninety-nine percent.

Xander hoped Mac had a way out because he didn’t have the area mapped out in his head. With gun readied, Xander inhaled a deep breath, preparing for the storm of activity that was about to follow.

One hundred percent. Upload complete.

Mac yanked the flash drive out of the computer and took his position behind Xander. Xander led him into the hallway, surveying the interior of the building from behind his raised Glock, making sure all was clear before they commenced their evacuation.

All was clear.

Xander realized the men had not had enough time to create a perimeter, so they slowed their gaits to a quick pace and headed toward the back exit. Mac led the way toward the fire escape on the backside of the apartment building while Xander continued to offer cover. Mac’s movement was decisive and quick as he carried out what he had rehearsed so many times in the past. They passed a red
X
on the wall that Mac had drawn. He brought his hand up to his mouth and spoke into a device.

“Anni, Mac has left the building!” Mac shouted.

Anni sent a shockwave command through the computers in Mac’s apartment, powering them down and activating the demolition charges behind the server. A raging explosion ripped through the apartment. Shattered glass rained down on the sidewalks. Pedestrians panicked as they ran every which way. Seamus had helped Mac design the explosive charges planted around his apartment to angle inward, as opposed to outward, to ensure that all hard drives, files, and confidential information would be incinerated and collateral damage would be minimal.

Smoke billowed out and over the streets of DuPont Circle, stirring a hysteria that echoed through the streets. Sirens sounded in the distance as the scene remained in tumult. Mac kicked an iron ladder loose, prompting it to fall to the street. They descended the ladder into the side alley, where Old Red was waiting for them.

They hopped into the truck’s cabin and cranked the engine. Xander’s foot hit the gas to the floor and peeled out onto the street, speeding away from the scene.