PROJECT SPARTA

CHAPTER 27

"How can you guarantee that?" Abadi asked back. The Inside Man began laughing through its distorted condescension.

"Really? Do you know who I am? Well let me tell you, 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," the distorted voice almost yelled – the sound waves spiked on the screen. Then 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 9 AM local time on June 20th." Abadi's voice was clear and calm, despite the lashing he had just received.

The distorted voice did not respond. The Inside Man to whom it belonged 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, hence 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 of that?" Mac asked.

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

Now 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 thought 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 a while 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 answered almost as if it were a challenge.

"Get working on it." Mac nodded and immediately narrowed his focus on one sentence, and how to rearrange the components of the sound wave. It was a trial and error process that neither Mac nor Xander knew how long would take.

Xander was left to his thoughts. He stared at the large blank wall of the apartment, dimly lit by the translucent window bay facing it. He folded his arms, cocked his head to his shoulder looking 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 out a drawer where a hodgepodge of writing utensils were stashed. He grabbed the black sharpie in the bunch, decapped it and brought it to the dry wall. He began mapping out the events of the last forty-eight hours. With both Mac and Xander fully consumed in their work, the only sounds throughout the apartment were the clicking of the keyboard and the squeek of the Sharpie marker. The large blank wall had become etched with over a hundred notations, including the players in the game, identified or unidentified.

The Inside Man - The Financier

Identity: Unknown

Position: US Government Official/Financier for Agent Zero

Notes: Shares a common cause with Agent Zero but remains his or her superior within the cell. Samir Vashad (deceased) was courier, delivered money 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)

Notes: Appears to be right hand man to Agent Zero, organizes affairs. Escaped meet in Afghanistan.

There was also a timeline of events listed 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?

It had been a couple of hour when Xander heard Mac's typing stop. He then turned to Xander.

"I think I cracked it." 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 manipulate back to its original state. And I don't think it is an Inside Man, either." He pushed 'play' on the unscrambled sentence.

The scrambled voice was that of a woman's. "And let's get something straight. Your employer works for me."

Xander's eyes widened as his ears perked. He 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 saw the intense realization written on his face.

"Who is that?"

"Mac, we need to bring the team in, all hands on deck. Send the signal out to the Spartans."

"You got it. It'll be in tomorrow morning's paper, but won't you be effectively inviting Agent Zero into your house?"

"I could be, but we are running out of time and we are going to need the help." Xander walked over to the table, grabbed a sharpie and approached the wall of notes.

"What's going on? Whose voice was that?" Xander bit the cap off and spit it out on the floor. He crossed out the words Inside Man on the wall and wrote the name.

Senator Helen Bashfield

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