“Well, we have just solved a crossword puzzle in today’s Washington Post and it gives us nothing. Just a whole bunch of random trivia,” Seamus summarized the mission at hand and was a little looser now that he had two pints down.
Xander’s head dropped to the completed puzzle before him.
His mind raced with different possibilities, he looked for combinations of different letters and for hidden messages in the answers themselves.
A sharp sudden pain bolted through his head. It almost knocked him off of his barstool. Ashton noticed Xander wince with pain and bring his hand up to his temple, similarly to how he did when he blacked out at Tobias’s lab.
“Xander, what is going on?” she asked, wrapping her arm around him to steady his balance on the stool. Seamus turned to Xander, concerned and sobered.
“I’m… f…fine.” Xander couldn’t open his eyes. The pain ran from temple to temple as the tremor rattled through his skull.
“You don’t look it,” Seamus added.
“It’s going away…” The agony was passing like a cramp finally releasing its grip. His clenched face relaxed itself as the pain alleviated. When Xander opened his eyes, he saw two of his closest friends awaiting explanation.
“Are you sick, Xander?” Ashton asked, point blank.
“No… I’m not coughing… this happens from time to time. It’s my brain telling me to stop thinking,” he tried to explain.
“You have had those before?” Seamus asked. Xander nodded and stared down his friends until they stepped down from their concern.
“Okay then… what are we missing with this puzzle?” Ashton reluctantly moved on, hesitant and concerned.
“I have no idea.” Seamus had thrown in the towel already, knowing he was nowhere near to being the smartest of the team. “It is the oddest crossword puzzle I’ve ever seen… there are diagonal lines… what’s up with that?” Xander pursued the first idea it could, eager to get back to work.
Why would there be diagonal lines in a crossword? Not every word is conjoined in this puzzle. Therefore, the shape itself must mean something. This dimension of the puzzle takes a higher priority than the actual answers and words, for the connection of words have been compromised in favor of the puzzle’s shape… I need to stop reading this damn thing and start looking at it.
Xander cocked his head to the side and no longer focused on the letters littered throughout the puzzle, rather he focused on the extended arms of the puzzle – the internal squares and intersections. He saw the shape of the puzzle and searched the photo album of his memory for similar representations. His mind processed the image like a computer searching a database for a fingerprint match. His computation came to an abrupt halt when it had found a match.
“Six colored lines weaving…” Xander’s voice trailed off as the revelation came to him.
Xander snatched the paper off the bar and bolted out of the front door of Donegal’s. The fall air hit the Spartans as they came out in full commandos. Pedestrians all noticed and avoided them – some flat out ran from them. Xander marched to a bus stop booth alongside Massachusetts Ave. The civilians awaiting the bus became alarmed by the soldiers before them. Xander did not stop. He slapped the paper up against a map of the DC transit system. He compared the puzzle to the map and saw the shape was an exact match.
“Six colored lines weaving…” Ashton spoke over her awe, seeing the match over Xander’s shoulder.
“Next target is a metro station, but which one?” Xander scanned the map for any leads.
“We need to get there before it is released! Which one is it?” Ashton exhaled anxiously.
“Encircled therein is your next marker…” Xander recited the next line of the riddle. He scanned the scribbled answers on the crossword puzzle.
“But nothing is circled on here!” Ashton exclaimed in frustration.
Xander did not respond, but rather turned his head as if looking at it from a different angle had shed a new light on the puzzle. “Could it be?” he whispered to himself.
Then, a smile came over his face, feeling the solution coming quickly.
“What is it?” Seamus asked from over his shoulder. After finishing his check over the answers, he pulled up the paper for Seamus and Ashton’s view.
“Encircle therein…” He paused to see if they were catching on, but they remained perplexed.
“The letter ‘O’ appears one time in this crossword puzzle. Here, in the answer ‘Ohms’.” Xander pointed to the upper left quadrant of the crossword.
“The letter ‘O’ circles his next target.” He slapped it up on the wall next to the metro map again. His finger traced the red line on the map until it came to stop where the ‘O’ was located on his crossword. He turned to Ashton and Seamus and began walking past them back to the van.
“The next target is Van Ness – UDC station.”
“Oh shit!” Seamus exclaimed as something dawned on him. They realized it all together, but Seamus added the words. “The President just let everyone out of work… If the next target is a metro station, it’ll be as crowded as rush hour.”
“The disease could spread all over the place – it could be a full-scale outbreak.”
Chapter 35
Safe House #29
South DC
1:50 PM
Mac was in the middle of punching out a complex script into a command window when his phone vibrated next to him. He grabbed it quickly and continued typing, pinning the phone to his shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Mac, I need you to shut down all of the metro trains in DC, even within the perimeter. I don’t care where they are, just stop them,” Xander demanded. Mac stopped his typing and focused in on the call. A smile came over his face, like a child who just was told they could have any toy they wanted in the store.
“Why?”
“The next target is Van Ness station.” The smile fell as he realized the severity of the request. This would not be a see-if-you-can-do-this task, rather a you-better-do-this-or-a-plague-will-break-containment-and-infect-the-whole-city task.
“You got it.” Mac pulled his command window into a corner monitor and brought up the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or WMATA, website. He cracked his knuckles and a smile, ready to begin the hack.
“Cusick?” Damien came out of the back room of the apartment.
“Yeah, what we got?”
“The next target is Van Ness station. See if we can’t spot our freezer truck over there through a traffic cam or something. Might be able to track it from there, if they end up bringing the truck,” he explained, pointing to a quadrant of the grid map up on a monitor.
After only ten minutes of clever hacking stratagems and five minutes of incredible luck, Mac was able to bypass security and log into the site as Administrator. He accessed the trains and applied a command to all of them at once that activated their emergency brakes. The monitor showed a map of all the trains and their locations. The red arrow icons on the map slowed to a stop.
Mac exhaled the stress of the completed task.
“What?” Cusick asked, still searching the traffic cams.
“Oh… I just stopped every metro train in DC,” he said over his shoulder.
Cusick smirked at his protégé’s abilities and felt the friendly competition heat up between the two of them.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander’s camera was back online and a live feed populated the central monitors of the Presidential Bunker. Marty Jacobs conducted the affairs of the joint task force while the Secret Service had planned for medical treatment of the President. Jacobs leaned forward to the microphone to speak over the comm channel.
“Swat team is en route as well as an emergency quarantine team from AMRIID,” he updated into Xander’s ear.
“Good! Create a three-block perimeter around the station. No one in or out,” he shouted through the comm.
“We’re on it! We need to stop the trains,” Jacobs noted.
“We’
ve got that taken care of, it’s done,” he updated.
“What?... but how?” He looked across the room until he found Hardy, smiling at his Spartans’ abilities. Jacobs shook it off and moved on. “We have eyes and ears on you now, if you need anything just ask me.”
“There is something we need to talk about, Xander… the President has been… infected,” Many silent notes passed over the comm. A troubled voice responded.
“Well, we better find the cure…We’re three minutes out.”
“We’ll be watching,” Jacobs updated. His eyes darted down to his pants as his cell phone rang. He recognized the number.
“Tom,” he greeted the Vice President as he stepped away from the conference table.
“How’s the President?” the Vice President asked concerned.
“Not well… we are waiting for the doctors right now…” Jacobs looked over toward the side office door.
“I was thinking, and I think it’s wise if I get our most up-to-date NOC list in case we have any resources that we may not be aware of in the area.” Marty knew that the Non-Official Cover list specified all clandestine operatives that were off the books. The Spartans were all NOCs, but they did not exhaust the list. Any black ops agent whose identity didn’t exist in the world, existed only in one place – the NOC list.
“With all do respect, I don’t think that’s a good idea. We have plenty of resources and that list should never be mobilized, its intel is too sensitive.”
“Marty! I am not asking you I am telling you. Now, I understand that the President is sick. Do I need to call for the invocation of the twenty-fifth amendment?” This was as good as a threat. The twenty-fifth amendment passes authority of the presidency to the Vice President, when the President is no longer able to lead. Marty had enough on his plate and realized it was a losing battle.
“No sir… I’ll have Director Hunterson get it to you.” The Chief of Staff hung up the phone and motioned with a finger for Hunterson to come over to him away from the conference table. After a moment, he stepped down from the platform and approached Jacobs.
“What do you need?” the CIA Director asked.
“I need you to get Vice President Johnson the NOC list. It needs to be updated and complete. He thinks we may have resources in the area at our disposal,” Jacobs explained.
“You realize that list has all of our black op agents on it, their whereabouts and their identities? Bringing that list into play should always be a last resort,” Hunterson respectfully explained.
“Yes, I understand… but he wasn’t asking.” Jacobs arched his eyebrows and shook his head, as if it were out of his control.
“I understand.”
“Get it to him soon and be discrete, no one should know the list is moving, it’s safer that way.” Hunterson left his side with a reluctant nod.
Out of the corner of his eye, Marty saw Agent Callahan, standing guard at the side office door, bring a finger to his ear, as if receiving a message. Upon lowering his finger, he approached the red sliding entrance door to the PEOC and pressed his thumb against the control panel, typed in a code and pressed enter. The room had turned to the door to see their new guests. The door slid open, revealing six men in pressurized suits, carrying cases of medical supplies.
“I will direct you to the President, follow me.” Callahan remained all business, leading the doctors to the side office. A somber note struck through the bunker, as heads turned toward them. Jacobs followed them to the side office. Arriving at the door, the medical team turned to Callahan and Jacobs.
“You need to step back.” The Secret Service agent complied and when he was at a safe distance the doctor turned the doorknob and slowly cracked open the door. The creak echoed throughout the bunker and all was silent as the President came into view.
He sat – huddled over himself, coughing wildly, twitching uncontrollably. There was no leader to be found in the body – only a battered patient.
At the sight one thought became clear to Jacobs.
The Presidency has been compromised.
Chapter 36
Van Ness – UDC Metro Station
Washington, DC
2PM
Harak Khan pulled to a stoplight four blocks from the next target. Heading north, he stopped at the intersection of Cathedral and Connecticut. The cars adjacent to him in the intersection filtered through the light. He remained placid and inconspicuous, knowing that the stage was set, and the payload was primed. A low hum sounded in the distant that startled Khan. His ears tracked the sound to find it overhead. He leaned forward onto the steering wheel and gazed skyward to see a helicopter approaching.
Khan knew what it meant and searched wildly for his next move. His side view mirror caught his attention as a van shuffled quickly behind him, heading his way. Khan stomped on the gas pedal and plowed through the intersection. He pushed a car forward into the intersection. Crossing cars swerved and crashed into another. Shattered glass sounded in the distance at the point of impact. After creating enough room for the truck Khan spun the wheel and sped through the wreckage.
The chase was on.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“There’s the bastard!” Seamus yelled, seeing the truck evade their pursuit ahead.
“You have to stop him before he reaches the metro station!” Marty Jacobs barked over his comm unit. Seamus swerved into oncoming traffic, overtaking a couple compacts. Blaring car horns whizzed by, changing pitch as they passed.
“No shit!” Xander muttered back.
“There is no way we can catch him before he gets there. He’s two blocks ahead of us!” Seamus yelled back over his shoulder, but Xander had already formulated his plan. He snatched Ashton’s rifle and fastened the barrel on it. After cocking a round into the chamber, he flung the van door open. A current of wind filled the van as they accelerated down the avenue. He positioned himself against the opposite wall to gather a couple of steps. Xander launched himself out of the van, holding onto the door frame for grip. He kicked off a passing car and flung himself up and on top of the van’s roof.
The fall wind blasted against his face, as he steadied himself on a knee atop the speeding van. He pulled the scope up to his eye and aimed down Connecticut Avenue. The freezer truck swerved from side to side as it approached the metro station.
Two blocks to go.
Xander charted the truck’s progress as he settled the scope on the back-right tire. His finger slowly gripped the trigger, but just before he fired the van swerved beneath him. Xander stumbled in his stance, but quickly regained it as Seamus straightened out the van. There were no cars for 50 yards.
This is my chance.
Xander cocked the rifle into his shoulder and directed the scope with smooth, direct aiming adjustments. His scope settled on the back tire. His breathing grew steady and calm, his eye locked, Xander’s finger pulled the trigger. The bullet fired out of the barrel and shot up Connecticut Avenue over the cars at a downward angle. It soared through the air, biting at the freezer truck’s heels until it pierced the back-right tire.
The tire exploded upon impact, knocking the speeding truck off course.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Khan tried to maneuver the skidding truck into a straight direction, but the truck resisted, sliding out of control. The truck swerved from side to side like a slithering snake – its momentum pushed it down the final block. The axle skidded across the asphalt street, sending sparks flying underneath the truck’s chasse. Khan aimed for the entrance to the metro station and braced for impact.
Pedestrians dove out of the speeding truck’s way as it barreled down the sidewalk. Screams sounded throughout the street. With one more pull of the steering wheel, the side of the truck came to a crashing halt at the entrance of the Van Ness – UDC station. The truck had collided with the entry way to the metro station where two escalators ran – one up, one down. The carnage from the wreck sent a panic through the area, as a fire had ignited under the hood of the truck and the flami
ng contortion of metal blocked off the escalator’s exit and entrance. Commuters bolted back down into the depths of the metro station as they looked up at the wreckage, closing them in.
The driver door opened, and a badly injured man fell out, holding onto a black case. Harak Khan had only a few moments to act. He made his way through the debris of the crash to the back of the truck. With a number of forceful yanks, he was finally able to force the back door to the freezer truck ajar. There laying on the ground inside was Mohammed Azir, bloodied from the disease and twitching uncontrollably. His chest slowly inflated and deflated with what was left of his thinning breaths. Khan grabbed his hand and pulled the dying body out of the back of the truck and dragged him to the escalator steps that carried the infected body down into the depths of the metro station, toward the terrified commuters.
Khan saw the van pull up and ropes drop from the Swat helicopter. His fellow martyr had already begun his descent into the metro station – it was he who would have to escape, he reminded himself.
Get out of here… my job is not done.
Khan held the black case close to his chest and leapt up onto the metal divider of the two escalators and slid down the steep divider of the escalators, passing the commuters and Azir. Khan bolted through the crowds of people who had gathered at the commotion on the escalator. He plucked a teenager’s skull cap from his head and pulled it down over his. Khan unbuttoned his shirt and deposited it in a trash can, leaving only his white V-neck undershirt. As he passed the crowd, Khan jumped down into the metro tracks and hiked down into the darkness of the tunnels unseen.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Xander arrived to see the body of Mohammed Azir reach the station floor. He bounded down the escalator stairs barking orders to close off the exits. Ashton and Seamus swept past the body and immediately started backing up the crowd.
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