by Mark Tufo
This brought a few more snickers as Marshal lowered his eyes and simply nodded. He heard a few affirmatives come from the men, but they didn’t seem quite as excited as he would have liked. “Trust me, gentlemen. Once you get the feel for these weapons, you’ll wonder why you ever questioned them. Many federal agencies have made the switch to this platform including the United States Secret Service, the FBI, the Air Marshal’s Service and a whole slew of sheriffs and police departments. And they aren’t even using my ammunition.”
Chapter 240
Senator Franklin’s car pulled into the parking garage, circled its way up to the roof, and parked in the far corner away from any of the other cars and as deep in the shadows as it could be placed. The honorable senator from Illinois sat in the back and waited to meet a man he had never met before and knew only as a voice on the phone. Put together by a mutual friend who needed some sensitive work done, the senator had hired the man to do some investigating for him. “Dirt digging,” the private investigator said. “Fact finding,” the senator corrected him. The subject, Colonel Matt Mitchell.
Leslie Franklin knew that if he couldn’t get the other men who sat on the oversight committee to shut down or defund the black operation, then they had to be destroyed from within. The only way he could think to do that was to destroy the leader. Laura Youngblood was an untouchable. She was CIA and her records were sealed. Her past destroyed, her new existence written so perfectly that the truth couldn’t be found, and if anybody was found sniffing around her, he or she would simply disappear never to be seen again. But Mitchell was another story. Career military men always leave a trail of destruction. Ex-wives, drunk & disorderly charges, brawls, something. Anything. It just had to be found. Nobody was clean and anybody who climbed to the top usually did it by stepping on someone else. He knew that from experience.
As the senator sat nervously, he would glance at the watch on his wrist, then out the window of the car. Then at his driver, then back to his watch. From the shadows a hand appeared and knocked on his window and the good Senator nearly wet himself. He had no idea why he was so nervous, but he literally jumped when the knock came at his window. Hitting the button to roll the window down, he was about to go into a tirade about how the man was late, but a large manila envelope was suddenly shoved in the window and the shadowy figure was gone as suddenly as he appeared.
Franklin had dropped the envelope in the floor of the car, but picked it up and set it in the seat beside him. He stepped out of the car to speak to the investigator only to find himself standing alone in the parking garage. However the man had gotten into the corner of the garage where the car was, he was gone now. Spooky sonofabitch, he thought as he stepped back into the car.
Ordering his driver to take him back to his office, he opened the envelope and perused the contents. Not much here that he couldn’t have found on his own. Birth certificate. Copy of college transcripts. Highlights of his service jacket. Operational records. Locations of service. Dammit. Nothing of use as far as he could tell. As he was about to put the contents back into the envelope, he happened to notice the last page: a summary and conclusion sheet. Although on paper Matt Mitchell appeared to be an exemplary officer and had done nothing wrong worth reporting, the man had never had so much as a speeding ticket. No credit rating other than a single Visa with a $5,000 limit and had never been married. Conclusion, he was manufactured. Unknown by whom, but manufactured, nonetheless. Anybody who lives long enough to attain the rank of colonel in the United Sates military leaves a longer paper trail than Matt Mitchell had. Most college-age kids left a longer paper trail than Mitchell had.
Well, this left more questions than answers. But at least the investigator appeared to be on to something, even if that something was actually a whole lot of nothing. Or, rather, less than enough.
Franklin sat back in the soft leather of the Lincoln and pondered the ramifications of a manufactured officer running a clandestine group of black op SOCCOM soldiers in the middle of America’s heartland. “At least it’s a first step,” he said.
“Sir?” the driver asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking aloud,” Franklin answered absent-mindedly. Either way, bringing down Mitchell alone still might not be enough to destroy the entire project. I’m going to need more than this. A lot more.
After ensuring that Jack Thompson was comfortable and had some solid food in front of him, Rufus took his seat next to the bed again and settled in for a chat. “It would seem to me that you and your comrades may well have been misinformed on quite a bit concerning we vampires,” he started. Jack simply hiked a skeptical eyebrow. “I can tell by that look that you aren’t sure of what I’m about to tell you, and while I can’t very well prove everything I’m about to disclose to you, I can assure you that it is all the truth.”
Jack swallowed the bite he had been chewing and asked, “And why am I supposed to care?”
“Ah. Therein lies the true question, doesn’t it?” Rufus sat forward and pulled the chair slightly closer to the bed allowing the candle light to highlight his face more. “You see, it is my sincere hope that once you are fully healed and are capable of leaving here, that you will return to your people and explain what it is really going on out here.”
Jack stopped eating for a moment and allowed himself the slim hope that he not only would survive being a prisoner of the monsters, but that he would actually be allowed to leave. “You mean to tell me that I’m not a prisoner here?”
Rufus sat back with a look of shock, and Jack honestly couldn’t tell if it was feigned or real. “Good heavens, man! Why would we have saved your life and risked our own only to keep you a prisoner here? To what end? I’ve told you that we’re vegetarians. We don’t feed on humans. We certainly don’t imprison them. What’s next? You expect me to torture you as well? Perhaps place you on the rack as they did in the medieval days?”
“Well forgive the shit out of me for thinking that a bloodsucker might want to actually suck my blood…” Jack replied, instantly regretting it.
Rufus laughed; a deep, hearty laugh that actually brought a careful smile to Jack’s own mouth. “My dear boy, you have a lot to learn. A very lot,” he said, still chuckling, as if there was an inside joke that Jack was unaware of. “Firstly, we are vegetarians. We may be old, but we still remember what it was like to be human. And we cherish life. All life. But human life above all else.” Rufus paused to allow his statement to hit home with Jack. “We have taken a solemn oath to take no human lives in order to sustain our own.” Jack raised his brow again on that one, obviously not believing him.
Rufus stood up and slowly began pacing the room as he began his tale, “Many, many years ago, I was very close to death. I was born with weak lungs and had many problems as a child. My parents moved me from Britannia to France and from France to many other areas, all in the hopes of either finding a cure or an environ that was more suitable for my breathing. When I was but twenty-three years and approaching my twenty-fourth birthday, I had a series of attacks that left me bedridden. I really wasn’t sure where we were at this time. You see, I had been very ill the previous year and my parents had moved us again. My father owned a large estate in Britain and my mother was a Duchess, so money wasn’t a problem for them. As a last ditch effort, they tried a Romanian doctor, who, I believe, infected me with vampirism.
“I was never actually bitten by a vampire, nor was I drained, or seduced, or…well, whatever it is that you are taught. No, I was actually purposely injected by a so-called physician selling my parents on the hope of life.” Rufus paused in his pacing and turned to face Jack, his head bowed, and Jack saw the pain in his eyes. “The first nights were horrible. The nightmares, the pain, the thirst…more than I could bear. By the time it had taken hold fully, I was stronger and completely out of my mind with hunger. I tore through my restraints and murdered my parents,” he stated softly.
Rufus sat back down and cleared his throat. “For many years afterward, I ran from
what and who I was. Eventually, I learned to control many things. My hunger, though, always tore at me. Then I encountered a much older vampire who took me under his wing, so to speak. He taught me that we didn’t need to hunt humans for food, although it took a while to develop the taste. Cattle and other livestock could be substituted, and the vampirism doesn’t transfer to them.
“With time, we developed ways to bleed a little from the livestock and keep them alive. Much the same as you might ‘milk’ your livestock. Keep the stock alive and simply take what was needed to survive. It sustains us, but we are weaker than our brethren who still feed on humans for sustenance.”
Jack set his tray aside and tried to get a bit more comfortable. “So why don’t more vampires do this whole ‘vegetarian’ thing like you do?”
“To them, it is a sign of weakness. It makes you weaker and slower to feed on anything other than humans and to other vampires, it is not only offensive, it is practically heresy,” Rufus replied. “It is the cause of our own civil war.”
“Civil war?” Jack asked, in disbelief.
“Yes. You see, there are more and more of us converting to what we call ‘The New Way’ and fewer and fewer of the those who absolutely refute it and demand we convert back to the ‘Old Ways’…the way it was meant to be. It has become the main political point in what has become the Great Vampire Civil War.”
“Okay. And where exactly do we fit in to this scenario?” Jack asked, not sure he was going to like the answer.
“That is what I was hoping to speak to you about,” Rufus said as he sat on the edge of the chair. He paused as if gathering his thoughts, choosing his words wisely. “Many of the vampires you and your team have hunted down over the past few years have been ‘Lamia Beastia’ that were set up to appear as Hunters.” Rufus peered into Jack’s eyes to see if he was catching on. “The Hunters are ‘Lamia Humanus’ and they are those who feed on humans. They are cunning, ruthless and vicious in their attacks against both humans and us.”
“Wait a minute!” Jack interjected. “You mean to tell me that of the two sides of vampires, we’ve only been killing the so-called ‘good guys’? And that you and your goat-suckers are the good guys and we should just leave you alone?”
“Well,” Rufus replied, “yes, and no.”
“What the hell? I’m supposed to just believe that—”
“No, please, you must understand something, first,” Rufus stated, putting his hands up to stop Jack’s outburst. “Firstly, yes, you are correct that there are two sides in our civil war. Secondly, you haven’t only been killing our side, but you have been mostly killing only our side because the other side has been laying the proverbial bread crumbs to our doorsteps. And thirdly, there was no way for any of you to know or realize that there were any vampires out there who weren’t a threat to humanity.”
Jack stared at Rufus for quite some time before simply saying, “Right.”
“I realize that this is a lot for you to try to take in. And I do understand that you are not yet prepared to believe what I say. I can only hope that as you heal and become more mobile, that I can show you more proof and perhaps convince you that what I say is true.”
“And if you can’t?” Jack asked.
Rufus shook his head as he stood and replaced the chair in its original position. “Then, I’m afraid you will leave here and tell your friends that you were saved and given medical treatment by a bunch of crazed vampires who tried like mad to convince you to assist them in their cause. Either way, you will leave here unharmed…as promised.
“I mean it when I tell you that we mean you no harm, Mr. Thompson. I only wish for you to understand the situation that we are in and the situation that you and your team are making worse for us by killing our kind when the real threat is still out there trying to destroy us and using you as their weapon.” With that Rufus turned and left Jack alone in his candlelit room to ponder the possibilities.
Senator Franklin put away the summaries of the 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. Opening 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? What if it appeared to be a leak in theirown 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?”
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 checked the hallway again and then pulled four expired IV bags of human blood from under her shirt and slid them across the floor toward the creature. It didn’t stir. Laura had expected it to attack the bags of blood and devour them, yet when it didn’t move or make any attempts at the blood, she almost started to panic. She knew the blood was to be destroyed and couldn’
t stand the thought of Evan suffering because some idiot on the oversight committee wanted to know if the creatures could be starved to death. That thought process made no sense. In order for them to be starved, humans would have to be extinct. Or a vampire sealed up for who knew how long? She truly thought that Franklin was behind the torture, but the rule came down and Evan was placed behind silver-plated bars to be tortured for whatever was left of his natural (or unnatural) life. She hadn’t slept right since.
“Kill me please,” the voice was soft and dry, almost raspy.
“Evan!” Laura exclaimed, not sure she even heard him. She stepped closer to the cell. “Please, tell me you’re still in there. Tell me you have control over whatever this is that has you!” she practically sobbed.
The eyes simply lowered and the creature lowered its head back to its resting position, ignoring her.
“Evan, wait. I brought you blood. I know it’s not fresh, but it’s human. Not animal blood. The clinic was about to throw it out and I salvaged it for you.” She sounded desperate. “Please, drink it. Regain some of your strength,” she pressed herself against the bars and pleaded with him.
“To what end?” came the soft still voice again, the head not moving.
“I don’t know,” she cried. “Just please. At least it’s something. Perhaps I can convince Mitchell to release you and you can carry on your work. Maybe I can get more and at least you won’t have to starve any longer.” Tears were flowing freely down her face now. She lowered her eyes and cried; her body began to rock with the sobbing. She never even sensed him move, but she felt his leathery hand stroke her hair through the silver bars, careful not to touch the metal lest the flesh burn.