Shuddering at the thought of sharing a room with Cestus, Brazier strained to haul his rucksack up to his shoulders before double-timing it to catch up with the rapidly dispersing crowd he’d been assigned to.
Better to take his chances with the ice queen than the Pinos, Brazier mused to himself.
It was going to be a long day.
CHAPTER 2
Seventeen-Hundred Hours: Camp Eggers, Kabul, Afghanistan
The smell of sweat, dust, and socks gone one day too long without a wash filled the cramped twenty by twenty foot square modular building made of particle board and canvas. Twenty men and one woman were packed into the front of the single room structure, surrounding a small metal folding table covered with satellite maps and local intelligence reports of Kabul and the outlying territory. Spy drones had been swarming thicker than flies on shit in a fifty mile radius around their target zone since 10pm the night before, and there wasn’t an inch of the arid, unwelcoming landscape that hadn’t been photographed for analysis and over-analysis by everyone from the army to the CIA.
Staring at the four cyborgs accompanying the team from Project Hardwired, Brazier wasn’t completely sure he should be counting Cestus and the others as part of the ‘men.’ Outside of Gauss and his abrasive personality, the rest of the cybernetic soldiers acted like little more than robots focused on nothing but the mission ahead. Sure, that was expected of the two GMRs from Rho-Unit. They had very little going on upstairs at all. If the techs controlling them back at headquarters didn’t tell them what to do, the Gomers would just stand around collecting dust.
But Brazier had expected Cestus to be different…to be more human like Gauss and the other Prime Designates. After all, hadn’t he been programmed with a fully integrated personality construct by the Abraxas Array? The whole point of his existence was to pass for human on his missions. Instead, the cyborg was cold, distant, and completely unapproachable. Brazier could see why Cestus made the other Primes uncomfortable. He made Brazier uncomfortable.
It was something the engineer would have to bring up at debriefing.
The strong tenor voice of Lieutenant Arias popped Brazier out of his contemplation better than a bucket full of cold water dumped on his head.
“I hope we’re not boring you, Agent Brazier. I know how trivial things like apprehending international terrorists bent on taking the lives of American citizens can be a bit tedious for someone with your busy schedule. Perhaps you’d like us to reschedule until it’s more convenient for you?”
Nineteen pairs of eyes refocused on the young engineer, causing every ounce of blood in Brazier’s body to make a beeline for his face. What made things even worse was the look of triumph swimming in a half-grin that had found its way onto Agent Talborg’s face. Getting caught daydreaming by Arias was bad enough, but having it pointed out to his frenemy was far worse. Brazier was sure the bitch would find a way to bring it up in their post mission reports.
God, he hated her more and more.
“No, Lieutenant…” Brazier stuttered, trying to improvise his way out of the embarrassing situation. “Just running through the mission details in my head to make sure we aren’t missing something important.”
Eyes rolled inside the small meeting area in unison. Although no one really bought Brazier’s halfhearted excuse, it was a valid enough attempt at explanation to allow Arias to continue with his sit-rep.
“According to intel, this is our target,” Arias tapped a large, tanned and immaculately groomed finger nail in the upper left quadrant of the map spread out before them, nearly punching through the thin paper it was printed on. A circle of bright red marker ink surrounded the area he drew the team’s attention to. “Its heavily-fortified complex belongs to one Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Before the war it housed a small auto-manufacturing plant. Since then, we suspect it has been used as a base of operations for the Jabhat al-Nusrah.” Running his digit around in a tight circle just inside the line of red, Arias continued, “The compound’s main line of defense is a hardened wall of concrete and steel, standing four meters high. The only openings are twin hydraulic iron gates mounted in the northwest quadrant of the facility. Gunners operate four Soviet-made PKMSN machinegun placements, set up in pairs on each side. There was word of an ancient Shilka 4M2 on-site, but the boys in Intel say it shouldn’t be anything for our ground-op to worry about.”
One of the soldiers, a shaven-headed man Brazier had taken to thinking of as ‘Lex’ in spite of a name-tag that read ‘Davis’ on it, chortled. “Of course it’s easy for the Fobbits in intel not to worry about anything…they’re all sitting pretty, safe and sound back in the green zone sipping mint juleps,” he said. The remark, in addition to being nearly incoherent to Brazier and Talborg, drew a round of laughter from nearly every military man present. Only Arias remained untouched by the humor so readily accepted by his underlings.