Return of the Phoenix - 01 by Heath Stallcup Page B

upcoming bills that would require his vote and pulled his keys from his trouser pocket. Unlocking the lower drawer of his desk, he pulled an old cigar box out and sat it gingerly on his desk. Ope ning the box, he sifted the contents and ran his fingertips gently across each item, studying them, his heart breaking all over again with loss. He pulled from the box a cell phone and dialed it. Placing the phone to his ear, he listened again to the message that he had long ago memorized, only to hear the voice that he had not heard in years. A lonely tear ran from his eye along the base of his nose to the edge of his lip and he choked back a painful smile. When the message finished playing, he turned the phone off and placed it and the other contents of the cigar box back and locked it away in his drawer.
    The senator sat quietly in his office, staring at the framed picture on his desk, gently rocking in his overstuffed leather chair. His heart slowly hardening once again. His face slowly turning bitter again. Mitchell had to be stopped before it was too late. He had no idea what he was doing and Franklin couldn’t do it without the support of the rest of the oversight committee.
    An assassination was out of the question. They’d simply replace him. The best PI in DC couldn’t find enough information to hang him. His contacts in the FBI and the CIA were trying to dig up more as quietly as they could, but he wasn’t hopeful. He had no contacts in the Defense Intelligence Agency, or he’d have called in that marker as well.
    The man would have to be ruined. The Monster Squad would have to be ruined as well. This latest fiasco wasn’t enough to do it and half of the entire team was decimated. What more would it take? The entire base in Oklahoma City leveled to the ground? That wasn’t exactly likely.
    Although Franklin was considered a very powerful man in Washington, in matters like this, his hands were pretty much tied. He was beating his head against a well-liked wall. Well-liked by the people who knew about it and who made things happen.
    Then a creepy smile slowly spread across Senator Franklin’s thin face. What if the Monster Squad and all of their actions were to somehow become public knowledge? he pondered. What if it appeared to be a leak in their own organization, as well?’ He was beginning to like the sounds of this idea. The more he contemplated the idea, the more the idea began to take shape, and the easier it seemed it would be to place all the blame on MS4, use the public pandemonium to his full advantage, and with the blame and responsibility resting fully on Mitchell’s shoulders, use the full force of the senator’s power to shut the squad down for good.
    The problem will be ensuring that whatever is leaked can never be traced back to this office, he thought. Franklin knew he was hardly literate in computers. He could barely check his own e-mail. It was time to hire the best hackers that his barely earned money could buy.
     
    *****
     
    Laura had double checked to make sure that Mitchell and Wolf were well occupied studying the new team as they ran through their drills. Wolf oversaw the men’s check-out on the weaponry, and when he felt the men were adequately familiar with the hardware, Mitchell let them loose on live-fire drills. Once the shooting started, Laura slipped out the back and through the dark, unguarded hallways to the holding cell holding the facilities lone prisoner.
    There, in the darkest corner, huddled as though protecting itself from the cold, was the vampire Mitchell had shown the men. Laura squatted next to the cell bars and called to the being that once was a biologist assisting the team. “Evan? Are you still in there?” she asked softly.
    The creature stirred, raising its head. Sunken eyes peered over its arm that was crossed over the legs that it had drawn close to its body. They watched her intently, but she couldn’t tell if there was any recognition behind them.
    She