Project Sparta (The Xander Whitt Series Book 1) (20 page)

“You know, Ashton, I like that look on you. You’re kind of hot,” Seamus said into the team’s communication units.

“Shut the hell up. It’s all padding and it is incredibly uncomfortable,” she said adjusting her bra in the elevator.

“Can’t be any more uncomfortable then these hipster pants. They look so comfortable in the commercials,” Jooles chimed in. “Why did you need a blogger again?” Xander ignored the question and updated the team on the next steps.

“Mac is gonna run a recording over the hallway cam as we approach. But we can’t approach together. Team, stay sharp. And Seamus, this isn’t one of those online dating sites that you like to flirt with chicks in, so cut it out,” Xander ordered as he climbed the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building and approached security.

“Just staying loose, boss,” Seamus responded over the cacophony of laughter on the comm channel.

After going through security, Xander passed by Jooles, who got up and followed him at a five-foot distance. Ashton appeared at the end of the hall on the other side; everything had timed out well.

“Run the feed,” Xander directed.

In the van, Mac clipped a recording from the surveillance footage and inserted it into the live feed on a loop.

“You’re good to go,” Mac said.

The team walked at separate distances down the hallway until they all came to a tall mahogany door. On the outside of the door was her nameplate:
Sen. Helen Bashfield
.

Xander, Jooles, and Ashton entered the ornate office, which had two desks at the front where phones were answered by a senior assistant and this season’s interns. An oak coffee table with every major magazine and newspaper laid out on it and a love seat crowded the entryway. Xander checked the date on the newspaper—it was yesterday’s.

The staff bought Mac’s email. They haven’t been in yet this morning.

To the right was a room of desks that belonged to the different legislative assistants. The chief of staff’s desk was off the entryway room. To the left was the massive office of the senator herself. The door was cracked and Xander saw that there was no activity inside. As expected, the office was empty.

The three Spartans exchanged looks as they entered the eerie air in the office. Ashton nodded toward the senator’s office door. Xander crept forward over the carpet with caution, knowing that their mark should be present. He tilted his head to peer through the cracked office door. Senator Bashfield’s chair was turned away from them; her salt-and-pepper head could be seen over its high back, slightly angled. She was looking out of the window behind her desk.

He creaked the door open and entered—she did not stir. He glanced around the room and confirmed that he was alone with her. Each step brought him closer to her large desk. He passed an oil painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware River on the wall.

And then he saw a rope hanging from the chair sprawled out on the floor.

And then he saw the puddle of blood.

He reached the office chair and spun it violently with a hand. A resounding gasp sounded through the office as the bloody mess came into view. Senator Bashfield’s mouth was covered in a strip of duct tape and her body was tied to her office chair. Her eyes were fading into the back of her head. Blood streamed from a gold-handled letter opener, driven into her midsection. The body was beginning to lose color.

Agent Zero double crossed her. Probably sent one of those mercenaries to do it.

The immediate impact of the sight was not lost on the Spartans. They could tell by the bright red shade in the blood that it was fresh. They were here now and might as well be holding the letter opener themselves. Bashfield’s eyes narrowed weakly upon seeing them.

“She’s alive. Pulse is weak,” Ashton said, her fingers on the senator’s carotid artery.

“Well, let’s wake her up a bit,” Xander growled, approaching her. He ripped the duct tape off her lips and looked her in the eye. “Listen, we can save your life right now by dressing this wound so when the medics get here you won’t have already bled out.”

“P-p-please,” she huffed in terrified agreement.

“Who is Agent Zero?” Xander asked. He didn’t know if it was hesitation or a temporary lapse in focus, but she did not answer immediately.

“You have company,” Mac said in their earpieces. “Security has received a call.” The Spartans remained lost by the scene with no weapons and no answers.

“Jooles, lock the door,” Xander commanded. It would buy them some time.

“Guards are suiting up. You probably have sixty seconds until they get there,” Mac updated them.

Jooles started throwing useless files out of a nearby cabinet, searching for something of use. Ashton tore the fabric on the couch into strips to dress the senator’s wound.

“Who is Agent Zero?” Xander growled. The Spartans’ only lead was fading toward death before their eyes.

“Forty-five seconds, Xander. They are on the move.”

When all hope was almost lost to finding any answers, Xander grasped the letter opener and twisted it, shocking her out of delirium. Her eyes widened as she gritted her teeth and groaned.

She exhaled one last breath and said, “We…are…the Collective. Are you?” She flashed a bloody smile and then fell dead in the chair. Her lifeless eyes settled on a side table.

Three pairs of Spartans eyes slowly turned to the table where an envelope sat. Two words were written on it:

To Xander

Mac’s voice chimed in their ears again.

“Thirty seconds, guys.” Xander jumped to life and snatched up the heavy envelope, ripping it open to reveal a key topped with an iron snake’s head. Xander immediately recognized the figurine as a symbol of the Sons of Liberty of American history.

Join or Die

Xander pocketed the key and directed the team calmly into his microphone.

“Change of plans. Meet at Pickup Spot C. I repeat, Pickup Spot C.”

«————————»

“En route.” Seamus’s voice came over the communication as he cranked the engine and peeled out of the parking spot and down 1st Street. A crash could be heard over the comm as the passengers in the back of the van tried to remain upright. The van was in a chaos as the blueprints and equipment flew off the workstations set up in the back. Mac and Tobias hurried to close up their command post, preparing for three more passengers.

“Xander, you better get out of there now,” Mac yelled over their activity in the van.

«————————»

Xander knew the front office door was blocked because guards were already approaching from down the hallway. He picked up an office chair and hurled it as hard as he could at the window behind the Senator’s desk. The chair bounced off, causing only the slightest scuff.

“How many men, Mac?” Xander asked.

“Three!” Mac responded. Xander took a deep breath.

There’s no way out of here. If we lock them out, they’ll gather more men and there will be too many to take down. Let them through, isolate them, and use their guns to break the window.

“Jooles, unlock the door!” She obeyed without question and slid back into Bashfield’s office, finding cover just in time.

The front office door opened. Jooles and Ashton consulted Xander. He quickly flashed their positions with Spartan hand signals and squatted behind the door. The senator’s door creaked open and guards entered, semiautomatic rifles in readied position. Xander looked to his right as the door covered him and saw Jooles positioned behind the senator’s desk. He had positioned her at an angle to view the doorway from the reflection of the wall mirror.

He waved his hand, flashed the number three and a tapped on his arm to signal to Ashton that he would take the last one. She relayed the message effectively with quick and direct hand signals just before all three guards entered the room and saw the dead senator before them.

Xander made his move before they could sound an alarm. He launched out from behind the door and elbowed the last guard in the head so hard he immediately went unconscious. The other two guards turned around at the sound of the body falling limp to the ground. The second guard was immediately met by Ashton, who jammed a palm blow up and into his nose. Xander knocked the second guard’s gun away and kicked him hard in the chest, sending him backward, toward the desk, where Ashton engaged with him. The first guard raised his gun at Xander and fired off as many rounds as he could until Jooles locked him into a sleeper hold. Xander dove sideways, parallel to the ground and dodged the misaimed bullets as they whizzed past him. The guard fell limp. Xander and Jooles watched as Ashton beat the second guard to a pulp. Her bloody knuckles rose to her gnashing teeth.

“Ashton, let’s go,” Xander shouted, shaking his head at the sight of Bashfield’s corpse.

We are the Collective. Are you?

Xander picked up one of the guard’s guns and fired off seven or eight rounds into the window behind Bashfield’s desk. Shards of glass exploded out onto the sidewalk just as Mickey’s AC Repair van barreled down the street. The Spartans jumped out of the first-story window onto the grassy knoll and rolled. The van door slid open as it drove up and the Spartans piled in. Mac slammed the door behind them.

Upon hearing the alarm sound in the distance, Seamus’s foot lightened up on the gas to adopt an unassuming demeanor. On their way off of Capitol Hill, they passed several police cars flying by toward the scene.

“Mac! Are you working on the traffic cams?” Xander asked.

“Yeah,” he responded from his keyboard.

“Agent Zero double-crossed Bashfield,” Jooles said.

“That’s what she gets for blowing the meet in Afghanistan. Agent Zero isn’t fucking around,” Seamus yelled back as he examined the rearview mirror.

“She bled out,” Ashton said.

“One less traitor and threat to national security to worry about.” Seamus shrugged, as his eyes rose to the rear view mirror. Xander spun to see two police cars screeching to a stop, blocking the street off and forming a perimeter. A wide smile crossed his face.

“We’re outside the perimeter,” Seamus explained. A collective sigh of relief filled the back of the van.

Xander looked at the others. “She said something before she died…”

“‘We are the Collective. Are you?’” Ashton recounted.

Tobias’s eyes widened. “W-w-what the h-hell is the C-C-Collective?”

Xander scratched his jaw as he considered the dying senator’s words.

Something bigger is at play here. The Skeptics are just an arm of the real cell.

Xander shook his head, uncomfortable with another variable added to the equation. “I don’t know. The timing
is
peculiar. Agent Zero has Bashfield assassinated and we show up right after, practically holding the knife…”

Are we being framed for Bashfield’s murder? How did Agent Zero know we would be there?

Xander kept his thoughts to himself as he surveyed his comrades in the van, wondering if he had a leak in his operation.

“Did you get anything, Xander?” Mac asked, breaking him away from his speculations.

Xander fished the heavy, iron key out of his jacket and held it up for the team to see the coiled snake atop it. They each inspected the key and smiled. The mission had been a success, despite walking into an unexpected assassination.

“Agent Zero wanted us to find this key in Senator Bashfield’s office. It’s a key to the package that was meant for us all along – the box recovered in Afghanistan. We are one step closer to finding the target. Mission accomplished. Good work, guys.”

Chapter 37

The Compound

June 8
th
2011

Xander was running down the cold, snowy streets of an unfamiliar city. It was a grimy metropolis littered with drunks and hobos bundled in blankets. Xander realized that he was carrying a gun by the weight that tugged at the back of his pants. At first, he didn’t know if he was chasing someone or being chased as he sprinted down an alley and came out on an adjacent street. Then he saw someone ahead who was running and looking back over their shoulder at him.

I guess I’m chasing that person
,
he thought, unsure of where he was or what he was doing.

He followed the figure into an abandoned apartment complex that was covered in graffiti. Rats scurried down the hallway as he raised his gun and aimed ahead, combing the first floor of the complex. He brought his ear to his corner cover. No footsteps. The person he was tailing must have taken a position and was awaiting his arrival. Each time he rounded a corner, his pistol met a barren wall. He was nearing the end of the hallway but as he did, a pistol came out from behind the corner and fired aimless rounds in his direction. He flung himself to a wall for cover as if it was a magnet, sucking him in.

He followed the hallway around so he could effectively flank the shooter. When he heard the reloading of a magazine and the final snap, he popped out from the corner and steadied his gun on the back of the figure.

“Freeze! Drop your gun.” The figure raised its hands in surrender, loosening its grip on the gun. Just as Xander stepped toward the figure, it lunged to the side and fired at will. A couple of bullets zoomed by his head; one caught him in the shoulder.

But before the figure could continue the firefight, Xander shot three rounds into the person’s chest. Blood squirted up at the point of impact.

Xander approached his target and saw a pale face look up at him. There were locks of red hair poking out from her skullcap. It was Fiona—her breath froze in the cold air with each exhale. A fire blazed behind her glacier-blue eyes. Blood flooded her teeth.

Shocked and trembling, Xander looked down at Fiona and whispered through tears, “I’m sorry.”

Fiona snarled up at him and spat a wad of blood in his face, growling, “Nothing is as it seems!”

Xander awoke. He wiped a trembling hand across his sweating brow. He fell back on the pillows and focused on his breathing, trying to calm his heart rate.

«————————»

Xander’s body lay rigid throughout the night as his mind raced through different schemes.

Maybe that’s the point of all this…to hone in on the paranoia every operative must have in the field. Maybe they get a bunch of recruits in a hangar together and have them secretly spy on each other. It’s actually pretty clever when you think about it. Sick, but clever.

He had decided not to enlist the help of Rearden, although he was supposed to report to her on the progress of his mission. He couldn’t trust anyone but himself at this point. He was already an operative, gathering intel on a traitor who had somehow accessed the deepest recesses of American intelligence. Active field duty was quickly approaching as the training wound down. He would have to make his move soon—if Fiona left the Compound, the trail would run cold. She had been trained to disappear.

Anni’s morning update sounded. “Good Morning, Spartans. Today’s forecast is warm with cool breezes, a lovely spring day for final exams. Please report to the Armory for your first exam by oh-nine-hundred. Have a good day, Spartans, and remember, nothing is as it seems.”

After getting dressed, Xander stood by his bedroom window and peered out from behind the curtains at the street. Fiona’s gait carried a nervous twitch as she headed toward the Armory.

She is…guarded, pensive, cautious. She’s…vulnerable. Her time is running thin and she knows someone is on to her.

Xander glared at the head of red locks that once took his breath away. She had betrayed and manipulated him. She had used his feelings to get close. But he knew that if he was going to bring justice to the mole in Sparta, he would have to wear a smile.

Captain Axle welcomed the Spartans at the Armory, standing at a table with the different weapons that they had trained with earlier in the year.

“There will be two parts of your exam, Spartans—assembly and accuracy.” A groan sounded in the room. The Spartans hadn’t been practicing the assembly of their firearms, especially Xander. Duke would be the best at this exam by far, as his assembly was the fastest by five seconds. Xander remembered on his way to retrieve the reconnaissance equipment from Cusick that he had stumbled upon Duke in the shooting range. Duke was distancing himself from Xander, who was in second place, on the scoreboard. It was Xander’s turn.

“All right, Mr. Whitt, you’re up.” Axle tied a blindfold around Xander’s head, covering his eyes. His legs were then hoisted up in a loop where he hung upside down like an acrobat. Axle clicked a stopwatch. “Begin.”

Xander’s hands fitted parts into others. He realized that his photographic memory could only help so much in an exercise that required muscle memory. The assembly of the firearm was going well until a memory flashed before his eyes – Bronson standing nervously in the cargo bay of the play just before his HALO jump. The snapshot caused Xander to fumble a couple parts. Blood rushed to his head and stalled his concentration as he tried to load the spring in the chamber. After a few minor adjustments, he slid the chamber on the gun and cocked it back, completing his test. Axle clicked the stopwatch and announced the time:

“Fifty-eight seconds. Not bad, Mr. Whitt.” A short round of applause followed as two Spartans helped Xander down.

Duke gave him a cold stare. The fissure between them hadn’t closed. Duke had it out for him and it would always be that way. Xander had tried to remain above it all the whole year, but he needed somewhere to direct his anger. His anger at leaving everything he knew, losing his best friend, and being played by the girl he had fallen in love with…it all raged inside him. He had been called an orphan one too many times this year. This test and the final battle the next day were his chance for payback.

As Xander watched Duke take his stance on the shooting mat, he remembered the first day of training where the rivalry had formed. Xander was a natural after learning the basics, but Duke had put the work in and it paid off as six of the seven bullets hit the target with pinpoint accuracy.

“Congratulations, Duke,” Captain Axle said. A short applause followed. Other Spartans filtered in and out for their rounds, but Ashton was the only one to receive a perfect score up to that point. She was a true marksman. Then Xander stepped up for his turn. The silhouette targets were carried down the gun range and rested against the far wall. Xander steadied his stance and readied his hand to equip the pistol lying in front of him.

“Begin!” Axle barked. Xander’s hands darted so fast the others couldn’t see them. He popped the first target, the second, and the third, hitting between the eyes of each target as they cut across the range at random intervals. He popped the next three with ease and then as his finger tightened on the trigger to fire the seventh and final target, an image flashed in his head. It was Fiona, bundled in a coat and scarf, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. Her red hair was sprawled on the snowy streets and she shouted, “Nothing is as it seems!” Xander blinked the image away and misfired the gun, missing the target altogether. Duke sniggered at his awful miss; others murmured their confusion to each other. Axle arched an eyebrow as he announced the score.

“Six out of seven for Mr. Whitt.”

Xander had a difficult time shaking the image from his head. It haunted him for the remainder of the day and his emotions consumed his focus. The other exams proved difficult. It had taken him four minutes longer than Mac, the first place finisher, to navigate his way past a firewall in Cusick’s final. His vision blurred the digital text on the monitors. His fingers typed with fever but his eyes couldn’t make out his queries and commands on the screen. He saw continuous flashes of Fiona marking the bench with a line of chalk. He was hit by each flash, derailing his train of thought and causing his fingers to stumble into typos.

Rearden’s final was the same simulation in the Thicket as the first day of class. But this time, the Spartans were not trying to find Rearden, she was trying to find them. Xander sat in the tree that he and Ezra had perched in on the first day of class, playing reverse psychology against his instructor. Recollections of Ezra came flooding back to him.

Nothing here is real, Xander. This place has fake walls, ceiling, weather, everything is fake! I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid anymore, Xander.

The words echoed through his head, followed by flashes of Ezra’s burning house and the silhouette standing at the window looking out over the Compound. He was unable to stay focused on the task and was soon caught by Rearden, well before Duke.

If the day was about Duke and Xander’s rivalry, Duke was winning. Though they had pulled away from the other Spartans in the standings with one more exam to go, Duke was twenty points ahead. The winner would most likely come down to the final battle of the season.

«————————»

The Spartans had settled in their seats for their last exam.

“The last battle of the year is worth double points and is designed to enlist all the skills you have developed over the course of the year,” Hardy announced to the class. “As you know, your final will be five essays. I will give you five random battles that we have studied this year, and you should be able to recall for me the specific strategies used and the events that lead to the end result. You will also have to include a lesson for each, explaining what principle of warfare you have learned from it.” A collective groan sounded through the classroom.

Seated at their desks, Hardy handed out their exam, a lone piece of paper with five battles listed. Xander received the Battles of Midway, Thermopylae, Bunker Hill, Hastings, and Yorktown. He was glad to see three American battles, one being modern, for they were more intriguing and action-packed—and easier to remember. Hastings would be difficult and Thermopylae would be hard to relate to today’s battlefield, but he felt at first sight that he had a decent handle on them. And so, the Spartans began scribbling their essays.

After pages of essays, the Spartans flexed their palms, as their fingers cramped from writing. Nearing the end of the allotted two hours, the room got fidgety and a little anxious as the recruits rushed through their concluding paragraphs.

Fiona’s pencil hit her desk first and she started flipping the papers of her essay. Xander’s eyes were drawn from his paper to Fiona’s. He noticed a quick sleight of hand. The average Spartan wouldn’t have noticed it, but Xander had grown accustomed to every detail of her normal movements. She appeared to have slipped something between the pages of her essay, as the first two pages were slightly raised off the rest of the stack. Xander watched closely out of the corner of his eye.

What is she doing?
And then it dawned on him.
The logs she’s been keeping on me…

She stood up and approached the front of the room. Hardy reached out for the essay; Fiona steadied her gaze on him for a moment of communication. Hardy picked up on the exchange quickly and narrowed his eyes at her with a suppressed fury. Nothing was said, but a cold stare settled on Fiona. Xander’s gut turned as he suppressed the impulse to react.

She’s reporting to Hardy? Why would Hardy want a rundown of all my movements? Using the spy closest to me to keep tabs on me? He was not happy that she passed him those notes here. The only question is why?

Xander felt like he had been punched in the gut. His head throbbed as the web of mystery and deceit grew thicker.

They recruited a whole bunch of teenagers to live underground and spy on each other.

After Fiona left the classroom, Xander jotted a weak concluding sentence and approached Hardy to turn in his essays. Hardy reached out, but Xander didn’t let go of them. He held them firm, forcing Hardy to meet his eyes. A fire ignited behind them. Hardy remained calm, though, and raised his eyebrows a bit as if to say,
Are you going to let go of this test?
Xander knew he had gotten the message, so he released the essays and left the room.