Project Sparta (The Xander Whitt Series Book 1) (15 page)

Chapter 29

Alexandria, VA

July 1
st
2016

Mass confusion and panic spread through the public from the street-side explosion in DuPont Circle. The mercenaries and the black SUVs cleared out as quickly as they had arrived. The press was on-site immediately and, of course, built it up with speculation. It was the second explosion in DC in 24 hours and public paranoia had begun to stir. BNA News was already on the scene, but there was nothing to learn about the tenant of the apartment, for he was a ghost.

Mac was now on the move with Xander. They knew that they needed a haven where they could have the time to analyze the evidence hacked from the NSA database. Fortunately, Xander had his own safe house in downtown Alexandria where he often conducted Spartan business.

Within thirty minutes of circling back on their routes to ensure they had no tails, Xander and Mac arrived in Old Town Alexandria, an area of the city that had retained much of its old world charm and remained one of the most prominent historic districts in the region.

Mac and Xander entered the safe house to a rush of stale air. It was a neglected studio apartment with brick walls and large windows. It had a hand-me-down college dorm couch and a couple of thin mattresses laid out on the floor. Xander opened the bay window to filter out the months of dust and stale air that had been trapped in the confines of the apartment. Mac immediately swung his bags off his shoulder and began assembling a workstation with the three laptops and the external hard drives that he had grabbed on his way out the door of his apartment. The small coffee table was transformed from a wobbly old foot prop to a top-of-the-line command center in a matter of minutes. Xander inspected the apartment, looking for the stash of canned food and old clothes he had planted.

“Nice digs,” Mac said, dripping with sarcasm.

“It’s clean of bugs and no one knows it exists. Better than I can say about your apartment,” Xander jabbed back. Mac rotated his head toward Xander, his face frozen. “Too soon?” Xander asked before surrendering to a fit of laughter. He regained his composure and then grew serious. “When are we going to be able to run this flash drive? Hamal Abadi is our only lead to opening this box. We need to see what Anni pulled on him.”

“Let me set up security and then we will be ready.”

“Well, how much security have you got to set up?” Xander was eager to see what Anni was able to retrieve. Mac noticed the lack of patience in his tone.

“Do you want this apartment to end up like mine?”

Xander conceded the point and remained silent as Mac’s fingers tapped a drum roll out on the keyboard. Xander paced through the room, mentally reviewing the recent developments of the mission.

“Agent Zero could also be Duke. I mean he disappeared just before Agent Zero surfaced. Don’t you find the timing of it all curious?”

“Yeah, of course I do. But you have to understand, we must approach this objectively and exhaust all possibilities before branding Duke a traitor,” Xander explained. He went over the phone conversation with Agent Zero in his head over and over again. He was very careful to remain objective in his decision-making and investigation, as he heard Agent Zero’s distorted words repeat.

There’s the choice, Xander. Will you act on emotion, or reason? I know that conflict is in you… And I really want to know the answer.

After an hour, Mac’s rolling fingers slowed to a stop. He cracked his knuckles and leaned back on the couch as if to signal his completion of the task at hand.

“Firewall’s up, encryption installed, server’s secure. Now let’s see what we’ve got.”

Xander took the flash drive from his pocket and handed it over. After inserting it in one of the laptops, Mac scrolled through the hundreds of files until he found the two that Anni had downloaded.

“Let’s take a look at who was following us,” Mac said as he navigated to the facial recognition results. A thousand faces flashed sequentially over the screen, searching for a match. Xander peered closer in anticipation but backed up from the screen when the match was made.

“What the hell?” Mac asked.

A different photo of the same man gave them a facial match, but the bio on file was blank.

“His file has been scrubbed. Agent Zero definitely has help from on high.” Mac sat back in his chair and considered the hypothesis. He then turned and nodded to Xander, affirming his theory with a nod.

“Let’s see what else we have,” Xander instructed.

Mac spun back to computer and opened the second file. There was a headshot of Hamal Abadi and a much more in-depth profile, including known associates. There were twelve pages to the profile, all of which Xander filed away in his memory like any other file.

“Now that’s more like it,” Mac responded.

“A few known associates of interest. Could have a lead there, nothing concrete or immediate, though. No recognizable names.” Xander assessed the file. “Cross reference those associates with the directory of government employees.”

“If Agent Zero is in fact connected to a man on the inside, it would most likely be an operative, government official, or a high rank in the military. Clearing someone’s name from the US Customs watch list is almost impossible, as you know” Xander speculated aloud, dissecting the variables as Mac ran a search.

Thousands of headshots blinked by on the monitor at rapid speed. After a few minutes of waiting, the search results came.

No Results Found
.

Xander exhaled. “Dammit.”

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did ya?”

“Open the next file,” he directed sternly.

Mac navigated back to his J drive and clicked on the second file extracted by Anni. A local program with sound waves came up on the screen similar to the one that Anni 2.0 had spoken through.

“It’s an audio recording. Looks like a tapped phone call.” Mac cued it up, pushed the play button, and they both leaned an ear toward the speaker.

“Is this line secure?” a distorted voice answered. The cadence, despite its manipulation, was different from Agent Zero’s.

“Yes. Agent Zero needs to get stateside to carry out Phase One,” Abadi replied, his voice answered, unfiltered.

“My man will meet you to provide what you will need. You will have the target?” the distorted voice asked.

“Yes. Per instructions from Agent Zero, you will receive the location for where we plan to detonate the device. Can you ensure there will be no reconnaissance on our meet?” Abadi asked.

“Yes. You have my word.”

Xander turned to Mac and quickly identified the parties on the call. “This is Abadi talking on behalf of Agent Zero. The distorted voice has to be the Inside Man if they are talking about safe passage and transit to the States.” Mac nodded and listened closely as the conversation continued.

“How can you guarantee that?” Abadi asked. The Inside Man laughed.

“I am a powerful and influential figure in the US government, not some common jihadist like yourself. Why wouldn’t I offer a veil of protection? If this is traced to me, I’m finished and I’m no good for our cause. And let’s get something straight: your employer works for me, so you don’t question my abilities.” A long silence ensued, only broken by Abadi after a considerable pause.

“Okay then. I will meet your man in the market of Loi Kolay Village in the Kunar Province of the Korengal Valley at nine a.m. local time on June twenty-sixth.” Abadi’s voice was clear and calm, despite the lashing he had just received.

The distorted voice did not respond. The Inside Man just hung up the phone, leaving Xander and Mac to their speculations.

“This is Agent Zero’s insurance,” Xander realized.

“What do you mean?”

“The first question was,
Is this line secure?
It wasn’t, which is why we were able to find it in the NSA database. Agent Zero must have instructed Abadi to not secure the line. If Agent Zero’s man on the inside did not in fact ensure a veil of privacy to the meet, which they didn’t, causing the meet to blow up, which it did, quite literally, the hunt would be on and we would inevitably find this piece of evidence.” Xander marveled at the cleverness of Agent Zero.

“You think Agent Zero planned all that?” Mac asked.

Xander nodded with a grave expression, now fully aware of the genius they were dealing with.

I’ve left you enough breadcrumbs to follow.

“What about the Inside Man saying, ‘Your employer works for me’? Do you think there could be a larger network here?” Mac questioned.

“It’s definitely a possibility. We may not just be dealing with the Skeptics but a larger terrorist network that Agent Zero is only a part of,” Xander explained.

They both fell to their own thoughts as they let the theories marinate. After a minute of considerations, Xander turned to his fellow Spartan.

“Mac, is there any way we can make that voice clearer and get behind the voice manipulator?” Xander asked.

“Yeah, it will take awhile, though. I’ll have to realign the scrambled voice inflections. It’ll be like putting the pieces of a shredded piece of paper back together.” Mac responded almost as if it were a challenge.

“Get working on it.”

Mac immediately set to work and narrowed his focus on one sentence, rearranging the components of the sound wave. It was a trial and error process and neither Mac nor Xander knew how long it would take.

Xander was left to his thoughts as he stared at the large, blank apartment wall, dimly lit by the translucent bay window facing it. He folded his arms, cocked his head to his shoulder, and stared sideways at the blank canvas before him. He tapped his foot and jittered toward a thought.

“I need to get organized,” he murmured to himself.

Xander walked over to the kitchen and flung open a drawer where various odds and ends were stashed. He grabbed a black Sharpie marker, uncapped it, and brought it to the drywall. He began mapping out the events of the last forty-eight hours. With both Mac and Xander fully immersed in their work, the only sounds throughout the apartment were the clicking of the keyboard and the squeak of the Sharpie. The once-empty wall was now covered with over a hundred notations, including the players in the game, both identified and unidentified.

The Inside Man – The Financier

Identity: Unknown

Position: US Government Official/Financier for Agent Zero

Notes:

-Shares a common cause with Agent Zero

-Remains Agent Zero’s superior within the cell.

-Samir Vashad (deceased) was courier

-Delivered money (via Samir) to Hamal Abadi (see below).

Agent Zero – The Terrorist

Identity: Unknown

Position: Leader of the Skeptics

Notes:

-Associated with Project Sparta

-Has group of mercenaries

-Subordinate to inside man.

-Made direct contact with Xander

Hamal Abadi (The Courier)

Identity: Unknown

Position: Associate of  Agent Zero’s

Notes:

-Appears to be right-hand man to Agent Zero

-Organizes affairs

-Escaped meet in Afghanistan.

He also wrote out a timeline of events and the full phone dialogue between Xander and Agent Zero. It was a complex mystery—one Xander knew he had to approach in an organized manner to solve. He reviewed the wall to see if anything would surface. Words from the phone call jumped out at Xander again.

There’s the choice, Xander. Will you act on emotion, or reason?

Several hours had passed when Xander heard Mac’s typing stop.

“I think I cracked it,” Mac said. If it wasn’t such good news, the voice would have startled Xander. “I had to sift through the sound map and take out the manipulating waves. Parsing it out and finding them was pretty difficult, but I think we’re ready to hear the one line I was able to revert it back to its original state. And I don’t think it is an Inside
Man
, either.” He pushed the play button on the unscrambled sentence.

The scrambled voice belonged to a woman. “And let’s get something straight: your employer works for me.”

Xander’s eyes widened and his ears perked. He’d deciphered whose voice it was midway through the sentence. It was a woman from their past. She was a shade of a person left to the rumor mill among the Spartans, one of the most mysterious presences in the Compound. And now she was betraying her country to aid a terrorist cell, alongside someone else from the Project.

“That bitch!” Fire ignited behind Xander’s eyes, Mac perked up and locked on to Xander’s reaction.

“Who is it?”

“Mac, we need to bring the team in. All hands on deck. Send the signal out to the Spartans.”