“We were supposed to be a team.  All of us would take credit for the High Priest project, but Smith stood before the US Senate Appropriations Committee and told them it was all her work and research.”

“...and the High Priest of Holocaust was your one shot of getting into the military, wasn’t it?” she elaborates further.

“Yes,” Garcia confirms.  “Instead, she got the glory and we work for her.”

“Garcia, if I can promise you a ranked position with Venome, can you assure me, when the time comes, you can make these changes to my Cobra?”  Commander Schofield boldly proposes.

“I want nothing less than a commissioned rank,” he negotiates, “even if that means just a Lieutenant.”

“I’ll have to pull strings, but done.   By the way, who else in Smith’s team shares your... concern?”

“Caine,” Garcia closes, scrambling out of the cockpit.

As Brandi looks around, she notices the entire hangar has become alive with the movement of people towards the main room, off to the left side.  She takes this to mean the meeting is getting underway and climbs down the ladder leading from the cockpit, following the red-headed Garcia.  Crossing the hangar, Brandi walks head held high, as inside herself, she’s all but laughing.  It is refreshing to see even Debbi Smith has to claw and backstab her way to the top, just like everyone else.  However, if Debbi’s crew has half the Lt. Col.’s intelligence, that’s more than enough to make Venome indomitable.

Entering into the large boardroom filled with twenty people, Brandi finds Lieutenant Mike Sheerer standing against one of the walls, looking around, puzzled.

“Hey, thanks for meeting me here on such short notice,” she rushes over, tugging at his flight jacket.

“No problem, Brandi,” Mike assures her with a smile.

Both sit together at the far end of the table as the rest of the group, who were getting coffee and refreshments, begin to situate themselves.  Her eye catches Sixgun and Razor, sitting on her left side, arms folded.  The dark Italian had taken off his jacket and now sits in a muscle shirt, thick, dark hair covering his chest.  What catches Brandi’s eye is a silver chain with a bullet at the end of it.  From this distance she can’t tell what caliber weapon it came from, but still stares at it curiously until Sixgun catches her looks.

“Why are you wearing a bullet?” Schofield muses condescendingly.

“This is my guarantee that I’ll never die in battle.”  The arrogance in his voice is enough to make Brandi want to shoot him on the spot, just out of sheer spite.

“A bullet?” she emphasizes again.

“Not just any bullet, this is my bullet,” Sixgun continues being elusive in his answers.

To Schofield’s astonishment, Razor leans over and starts to speak, clearing up the confusion Sixgun cast.  Moreover, he smiles—maybe this guy is human after all.

“Sixgun and I are on a raid in South America,” Razor begins, with the slight hint of a grin.  “We got ambushed from the underbrush; Sixgun here takes a nine-millimeter round to the chest... point blank.”

“So the Medics come for me and this is what they pulled outta me... had it reconstructed from fragments,” Sixgun concludes.

“In Special Forces, we had a saying: There’s a bullet out there with your name on it.  Meaning, the one that finally kills you,” Razor adds.

“I’m familiar with the term,” Brandi intercedes.

Sixgun takes the bullet in his hands and leans over very close to Brandi, turning it several times for her to see all sides of it.  She notices that in tiny, but legible letters is engraved: Sergeant Michael “Sixgun” Fuscia.

Brandi cracks a smile at the sight of it.  “So you have the bullet with your name on it.”

“Exactly.”

Debbi Smith walks in authoritatively, setting a stack of papers down on the table in front of her.  With this motion, the twenty or more people in the boardroom become silent and look towards her attentively.  She first removes her thin overcoat and sunglasses, then she hands out the documents to everyone present.

“Well, you all know why we’re here and what we have to get accomplished,” Debbi wastes no time getting underway.   “My crew already knows each other, but you will need to know Commander Brandi Schofield and Lieutenant Mike Sheerer,” she points to them, “who will be our inside contacts.”

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