Project Apollo

Chapter 8

The Compound - 11PM

Darkness.

That's all there ever was for Ezra Gonet who was sitting in his 5' by 5' cell. There was no warmth, only cold concrete and steel. He no longer knew if he was asleep or awake. But he remained focused on the plan at hand. He mentally reviewed the events that would soon unfold. The plan was perfect. Project Apollo would soon be underway.

And then, the door opened.

The crack of light coming from the door spread to envelope him whole. He was blinded by the light but his hand did not come up to his eyes. Rather he knew what it meant and unleashed a maniacal cackling. The dark figures approached the shrieking madman before them.

Then a bag went over his head.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Xander, Seamus, Ashton and Axle retrieved their prisoner and remained silent in the transport vehicle. Xander stared straight ahead calculating his strategy and the probabilities of Ezra's involvement in the events of the day. And then he considered the probabilities that Ezra's men were acting outside the scope of his scheming. Xander formulated each step of his impending interrogation.

Twenty silent minutes passed until they turned down a back road. As soon as the rumble erupted under their feet Xander knew they were close. They soon pulled up to a high security gate. The gate was shabby and had brush growing up and down it. There was no visible structure to it, merely a door that backed into a hill. Axle shifted the transport into park, approached an eye scanner and focused his eyes into the console. A high pitched ding followed by a green blinking light signaled the opening of the first gate.

As the high gate opened, a ramp surfaced to lead them to a subterreanean level. The transport entered the depths of the dimly lit tunnels. The tunnel system belonged to a decommissioned top secret airplane factory. They passed bay doors on either side, leading to different hangars that once had prototypes behind them. Few knew of this place and fewer were granted access to it. After a few turns, the transport leveled out and slowed to its stop deep underground.

They came to a garage door with the one word stamped on it as if it were a cargo crate. SPARTA. The stamp had faded over the ten years that had passed since they had trained there. Axle stopped the transport and approached a second panel on the wall that opened at the scanning of his access card. It revealed another eye scanner that Axle stared into until it opened the door. The eye scanner only accepted a Spartan's retinal print. There were no guards – secrecy was its greatest security.

The bay doors creaked open revealing a forgotten facility for the last ten years. A stale, dreary atmosphere hung under the dome. It was the blackest site in America. The one they trained in – the Compound.

A large bank of computer monitors and communication servers stood as a command post at the center of the Compound floor. Damien Cusick was the Compound's only tenant. He was an alternative computer hack who had a figidty and shy streak in him. He was a Spartan instructor who now ran general support for agents in the field. The Mainframe was the only structure in the Compound that continued its life. The Simu-climate no longer worked and the Thicket, a forestry section for wildlife, was overgrown and dead, casting an eerie aura through the Compound.

Three months prior, Ezra had attempted a terrorist attack on DC. After a cat and mouse game with Xander, he had a bomb strapped to his chest on the roof terrace of the Smithsonian American History Museum. He put a bullet in one of his fellow Spartans head, leaving himself exposed to Ashton's sniper rifle.

Xander, Seamus, Axle and Ashton led him into the facility he once called home. At the center of the Compound stood a large glass cube, which served as a holding cell. Damien Cusick's head popped up from his keyboard, his eyes meeting the prisoner. He shot up and tripped over his computer chair in disbelief. He stared silently as Ezra was positioned in his new cell.

Xander unlatched Ezra's constraints and took his stance before the glass. The two stared into each other's hard eyes – Xander's eyes bulged as Ezra's remained calm and steadied, adjusting to the light.

For the first time, Xander was able to really survey his opponent. The captive's skin was sallow and pale from the lack of food and sunlight. His brown hair was matted in natural grease from his lack of hygiene during his incarceration. His narrow nose contrasted his otherwise blunted features and his chin bunched up around a small dimple, barely visible beneath the scraggly beard lining his jaw. Moments passed as the standoff continued, Xander carefully plotted his approach – his temple pulsated.

Ezra had intentionally laid the breadcrumbs for Xander to discover the target on that July 4th night. But a suspicion had grown that Ezra intentionally discarded his human shield, wanting to be captured and that Ezra was still scheming a bigger plot. It had only become apparent that Ezra still had the upper hand this morning.

"What do you know about Apollo?" Xander asked forgetting the pleasantries. Then to Xander's dismay, a faint smile crossed Ezra's face, confirming all of his suspicions.

"And so it begins..."

"So what begins?" Xander stood square before the glass cell, staring at the smirk on Ezra's face.

"Don't you see, Xander? All of this... the Fourth of July... the box... everything... all has led to this moment, and the next and the next...." His smirk became a raving smile. Xander shook off the games and remained focused on the facts.

"Mohammed Azir... broke into the NIH and stole a biological contagion he referred to as Apollo... I'm going to ask you again, Ezra. What is Apollo?" Ezra closed his eyes and fell into himself for a moment. After breathing deeply in and out, his eyes reopened. His words came calculated, cryptic and stern.

"The assembly seated, rising o'er the rest, Achilles thus the king of men addressed..."

"What the bloody hell is that? Tell us what Apollo is or I'll get in there and beat it out of ya!" Seamus's raged as he stepped forward. An arm stopped him. It was Xander's. His head down, his mind racing as if running a query through the hard drive of his brain. Seamus paused and backed up, careful to give Xander his space. Ashton looked on with awe as Xander's mind raced to find the following words. After mentally scanning his library, Xander found the passage buried in the recesses of his memory. The page from Homer's The Iliad materialized in his visual mind. He spoke the following passage aloud as if reading a book in front of him.

"Why leave we not the fatal Trojan shore, And measure back the seas we crossed before? The plague destroying whom the sword would spare, 'Tis time to save the few remains of war. But let some prophet, or some sacred sage, explore the cause of great Apollo's rage..."

Xander's voice trailed.

"They are going to unleash a plague."