The Kabul Incident(16)

*****

Grace Talborg slid her hand up and rubbed her newest companion: the thin line that formed in the middle of her forehead, between her eyes and just over the bridge of her pert nose. The wrinkle had begun to make itself known four hours earlier when the eight surviving members of the covert team sent out into the deserts surrounding Kabul had returned to the safety of Camp Eggers. It started to threaten to split her face open three hours earlier when Talborg and her bosses back at Project Hardwired headquarters in Los Angeles had watched the POV footage taken from the on-board computer located deep within the brain of Designate Cestus.

That was thirty-two viewings ago and it was beginning to look like there would be another thirty-two before they were done.

Computer technicians, cybernetic engineers, military analysts, and even the heads of the Project had all been brought into the spacious boardroom eight-thousand miles away from where Talborg had confined herself and her computer to review the footage and to assess exactly what had gone wrong. Or, to be more accurate, to review the footage and assess exactly who was to blame for what had gone wrong.

Somehow, approximately three minutes into the mission, all communications to and from the team in the area—all satellites, all land-lines, all radio waves—had been disrupted. The group had been cut off. Even more disturbing was a loss of contact with the cyborg soldier, Designate Cestus, who had been sent into an active insurgent base to recover stolen chemical weapons. Never before had anything like that happened. There were back-ups and redundancies built into every system, and it was statistically impossible for them all to go down at once.

And, in regards to what precisely happened to him during that time—or what happened to the engineer monitoring the cyborg—Designate Cestus was being absolutely no help.

All the cybernetically enhanced super-soldier would say was that he went off-line for six minutes and that Agent Brazier had been killed by an enemy ambush during that time. Not that Talborg really cared one way or the other for the loss of Brazier. The man had been an idiot and it was only a matter of time before he made a mistake that was going to cost the project in some way. All Talborg really cared about was the black mark she was sure was being left on her otherwise spotless record.

“Was there any trace of the sarin gas containers or the rocket launch vehicles, Agent Talborg?” The face leaning in to ask the question was one very familiar to the woman: the head of the weapons division at Project Hardwired, Jason May. “Did any of the terrorists make it out of the compound alive?”

“All the chemical weapons were recovered by the clean-up crew, along with the BM-21s and approximately seven tons of small arms and explosives. Twenty-nine corpses belonging to known members of the Jabhat al-Nusrah were recovered on scene.”

“And Agent Brazier?”

“According to Designate Cestus, Brazier was killed in crossfire with the enemy,” signed Talborg. She’d already gone over this bit of information at least six times with six different people. “Although Brazier’s blood was confirmed on the scene, we were unable to locate a body.”

She knew what was coming next.

“Can you bring up that footage, Agent Talborg?”

“You damn well know I can’t, Jason,” snapped the mentally frayed woman. “Cestus claimed it happened while he was incommunicado.”

“‘Claimed?’”

“I don’t trust him…something happened during the blackout and it’s affected his systems.”

“Come on, Grace. The techs here are saying Designate Cestus is still operating at over ninety-five percent efficiency. That’s well over the level of any of the other cyborgs…even your unit, Gauss,” chided May.

Defeat wasn’t an easy thing for Talborg to accept.

“So what now?”

“Bring him back to the barn,” came Jason May’s voice over the satellite communications array connecting the woman in Camp Eggers with Project Hardwired operations back in Los Angeles. “Word from upstairs is that our boy is going to get upgraded with Doctor Ryan’s new nanotech. Director Kiesling and the Hardwired executive board are thrilled with Designate Cestus’s performance.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Talborg was stunned at the announcement from her superior. Had the man not heard what happened? A six minute loss of communication and the death of his handler. As good as the cyborg’s performance rating had been, there was no way Kiesling and the others could ignore what had happened.

The disembodied voice of the head of weapons development for Project Hardwired snapped back, annoyed. “You heard me, Engineer Talborg. Clean ‘em up and get the entire team—Cestus, Gauss and your pretty little ass—packed up and ready to head home. Wheels up within the hour. No arguments.”