Letting his gaze trail up from the bright computer screen in his hand, the engineer watched Sergeant Height’s men struggle with their equipment. The large fifty-caliber machine guns the group had lugged across the desert flatland from their initial rallying point gave them the most trouble.
And yet…inside things were going so well.
It was all so easy.
It was all too easy…
“Something’s wrong here,” murmured Brazier, eyes scanning the area at maximum zoom. “This isn’t right.” Even with the sort of efficiency Designate Cestus had become legendary for demonstrating, things shouldn’t have been playing out as easily as they were. Guards fell, one after another, like dominoes placed in Cestus’s path. It was almost as if someone knew the exact route the super-soldier would be taking and had stationed men in the most likely, most obvious positions. Like a video game…
“Oh, fuck…”
It was a set-up! Someone must have tipped off the Afghanis and warned them of the mission. They were sacrificing men like pawns to lead Designate Cestus into a trap. All moisture evaporated from Brazier’s mouth as he watched his assignment disappear into the only building left unexplored so far, a warehouse made of thin corrugated metal in the compound’s center.
“Say again, Agent Brazier,” said Talborg over the tiny mechanical bud jammed into Brazier’s ear.
Brazier popped up out of the pool of darkness hiding him and the band of marines sent to protect him. The wiry muscles of his legs pumped up and down even as he dropped as much of the sixty pounds of gear strapped to his back as he could. The movement, quick and sudden as it was, caught Sergeant Height and his men flat-footed.
“Stand down, Cestus, it’s a trap!” Brazier screamed over the opened comm-unit connecting him to the cyborg soldier he’d been sent to oversee. “Pull out!”
Without warning, fire, heat, and the hammer of thunder accentuated Brazier’s scream. The force of the unexpected blast took the feet out from under the running engineer…his decision to bolt from the position chosen by the marines was the only thing that saved him from their fate.
“We’re under fire!” screamed Height, moving up behind Brazier with his massive fifty-caliber machine gun unslung and ready to be brought to bear on whatever had attacked them.
The scream of a rocket announced the threat of a second eruption a split second before the world went white for Brazier. Shattered stone and a tsunami of dirt slammed into the slight body of the engineer, launching him head first into the ground. Dirt caked his eyes and every crease of his body as Brazier tried to reoriented himself enough to get out of the way of the third attack he knew had to be coming but the cold grip of fear closed over his heart, making any real movement impossible. Only the firm hand of the giant Sergeant Height finding him in the midst of the chaos kept the rattled man from collapsing into a worthless heap of shuddering, boneless flesh.
Moans of dying men cut through the oily smoke surrounding Brazier and Height. The explosion had taken everyone by surprise.
“What…what happened?” The words Brazier produced were barely coherent.
“Situation’s gone FUBAR, son,” said the large Gunnery Sergeant as he laid down cover fire for what was left of his unit. “I don’t know who is firing on us!”
“Where is it coming from?” asked Brazier, confused. He ducked down as low as possible and began to belly crawl at top speed toward the large aluminum-sided building Cestus had disappeared into moments before pandemonium had erupted.
“Get down!’” growled Height. The bulky marine pushed his way through the dense fog, trying to locate any member of his unit who had survived the bombardment. His heavy automatic weapon swung left to right finding only burned and blistered corpses. “Pull back to rally point one! We need to call in a dust-off!”
Height hefted the gargantuan fifty-kilogram M2A1 machine gun and let loose with a hail of rounds that were belt-fed from a case strapped to his side. A normal man wouldn’t have been able to hold the gun upright without help, let alone fire it on full auto. The sound was like a train slamming into Brazier’s head.
“Screw that,” murmured Brazier under his breath.
Ignoring Height’s commanding bellows, tunnel-vision took over Brazier’s mind. He didn’t have time to get back to the rally point. No. He had to get inside to help Cestus. They were a team…a unit. The engineer needed to get inside and warn the cyborg before whoever had lured them in sprung the rest of their trap. The explosions had torn a six-foot gash in the concrete barricade, a more reasonable entry point for the slight human than climbing over the way Cestus had.