Project Apollo

Chapter 6

Interstate 395

Approaching Washington, DC – 10PM

A light skinned man named Harak Khan adjusted his kufi on his shaved scalp as he turned onto H Street. Khan was former US military, back then his name was Tim Splitter, until he was captured as a POW and converted to the ways of Mohammad. A survivor of the July Fourth terror plot, he had evaded capture, making preparations for this day of reckoning.

Khan's eyes combed the streets, until he found the bar he was looking for – "Rock and Roll Hotel" – a concert venue and bar. He pulled the truck into a parking spot alongside the street where he was able to monitor the scene. Khan buried his face into his hands, giving himself only a moment to indulge the exhaustion.

Stay focused... Allah will be proud.

His hand smacked his face awake and then consulted a folder in the passenger seat next to him. He opened the file and examined the headshot of the pretty, young blonde girl. The name on the profile was Stacey Chapman. Her profile was paper clipped to the headshot. He read over it a few times, until she came out of the bar. He was hoping she would walk toward him so that he wouldn't have to turn the large freezer truck around.

She was.

And she was alone.

He banged twice on the back of the cabin to send a signal into the back of the truck. She approached, slightly tipsy, but still had her wits about her. Khan got out of the truck and circled to the back of the truck. The street was empty, an ominous silence hung over the avenue. Khan brandished a syringe with a sedative out of his coat. He flicked the end of the needle and it dripped a response. He held out a small compact mirror to chart her approach. Stacey was 20 feet away. She swayed toward the truck and began running her index finger along the truck's wall. She was close enough for him to hear her humming a song.

She stepped closer and closer.

Khan's heart pounded.

She cleared the truck and Khan's hands came over. She felt a pinch in the back of her neck and fell limp. Khan held her up as he opened the back of the truck. Cold steam billowed out of the truck as its airtight hinges opened. The cargo hold of the truck looked like a make-shift laboratory. There were desks lining the back wall with different biological instruments on them. One blue vile stood secured by a plastic container. A man wearing a respirator appeared in the truck's cargo hold. He grabbed Stacey from his partner and pulled her up and into the dark, cold depths of the Hyman Seafood freezer truck.

The man's weak eyes met Khan's.

There was a torture brewing under the mask - Khan could see it. His skin stiff, his bones shivering. Khan for a moment considered what the man in the back had endured over the last ten hours, but before he could sympathize, the man fought a fit of coughing and closed the back of the truck.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Tobias Greene lived and worked in a shabby, inconspicuous warehouse in the ghetto of Northeast Washington. The exterior of the structure was faded, stained and tagged by various graffiti artists of the neighborhood. Xander arrived in a taxi a few blocks down and walked the remainder of the way. After looping twice he knew he wasn't followed.

Xander's fist rose to the sliding metal door. The pounding knock echoed through the laboratory. After a brief moment the door screeched to life like a banshee as it slid open. The door stopped cracked enough for Xander to squeeze. Xander's eyes first met the usual unkempt space Tobias's inhabited. A make-shift, dusty lab lay sprawled out in every direction before him. Many homemade devices littered the corners of the warehouse. A coffee pot steamed under a pile of leftover boxes against the wall. Chemicals brewed in the other room, the aromatics wafted over the assembly of Spartans before Xander.

Tobias met him with a smile, never consumed by the gravity of a mission. The matter of his appearance remained a source of levity for Xander. His hair was an explosion of different strands, as scattered as his overall demeanor. His glasses continually fell down his long nose, but his constant twitching inched them back up. Mac was there too, typing away on his laptop.

Xander met Ashton, a tall beautiful blonde who had a calming presence about her – calculated and focused. Although Ashton's expertise was the sniper rifle, she remained as direct and pointed with her loyalty – a quality Xander tried to keep close to him. She greeted him with a simple nod, ready for the impending briefing. Seamus was a more jolly presence; he corralled Xander for a greeting hug. His red hair, faint freckles and Irish brogue of an accent never faded over the years. Despite his bombastic personality he could always find a calm when dealing with explosives.

"Nice to see ya, Lad. Been since July 4th, I guess. Packing on some holiday weight?" Seamus patted Xander's stomach. The others flashed a grin, but Seamus was cracking up over himself.

"Good to see ya, Seamus." Xander always enjoyed Seamus, especially when tension needed to be cut.

The last man in the room was Captain Axle, one of the Spartan's instructors during their training in the Compound. He wore a graying goatee and his bulging muscles had kept their mass but lost their shape over the years. He was thick as a tree trunk and as hard as a hammer. The Spartans had assembled and were awaiting their leader's word. The stage was Xander's and so with a nod to Mac, the surveillance feed populated on the high wall monitor that he had commandeered from his laptop.

"We have a serious problem..." Xander began.

"This happened yesterday... a terrorist broke into the NIH and somehow gained access to a level 4 security bio-lab. He stole a sample of a deadly bacteria recently received from West Africa. No one knows what biological properties this bacteria has, we do not know what it is capable of, but we do know that it is in the wrong hands."

The feed showed Dr. Woslowski dropping dead with a thrown knife lodged into his eye.

"Two pathologists were working in the laboratory, only one survived. The FBI is keeping a lid on the incident for now. We don't know much, but this is why we are all here."

Mac clarified the image of the intruder. As the man's profile came into view, Xander surveyed the eyes in the room. A few gasps sounded amongst the Spartans. The image was fresh in their head from the research and debriefing of a recent terrorist plot.

One that they had stopped together.

One they had lost their friend Jooles during.

One that had made them question their trust in others, for it was a fellow Spartan recruit behind the attack.

"The intruder's name is Mohammed Azir and his only known associate is Agent Zero, or as we know him, Ezra Gonet."   

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