The Kabul Incident(7)
The thought of another Prime going rogue like Designate Siege was a horrifying thought.
“Fine,” spit Gauss, moving towards the plywood exit door, making sure to force his way past the unmoving form of Cestus along the way. “You just wait until a new hotness comes along, Weir…then I guarantee we’ll have words.”
If Brazier didn’t know better he would have sworn Cestus shot a quick grin out after the vanishing Gauss. But the reaction was gone as fast as it appeared, leaving the Engineer unsure it had existed at all.
With Gauss removed from the room, the tension quickly evaporated.
“All right, boys. Rack out. Birds head out at oh-four-hundred,” A wave of the lieutenant’s hand sent the rest of the group of tan camouflaged bodies scrambling out of the thin-walled building the company had been assigned by military command as their base of operations.
A sideways frown from Brazier silently asked Sergeant Height what about the civilians. The entire trip had been a whirlwind for both Brazier and Talborg, and neither one was exactly sure what to do next. Bouncing his eyes back and forth between the increased amount of work implied by helping the two government agents and the rather insulting smells wafting over from the DFAC, Height sighed and sauntered over to the pair of engineers.
Oh, well, he thought, the FOBs in Kabul didn’t have the greatest reputation when it came to the grub they served anyway.
Height spit a frog out of his throat to catch his commanding officer’s attention. The sound generated from within the bowels of his large form was loud, and crude, enough to tear Arias away from the stack of maps he’d turned to when he had assumed the make-shift HG had been vacated.
“What about our guests, El-Tee?”
Lieutenant Arias frowned as his eyes fell on Brazier and Talborg. Waving the burly gunnery sergeant over, Arias snapped, “Height, get the POGs some chow and prepped for deploy in the morning.” The gruff New Yorker followed up with, “They get blowed up tomorrow and it’s on your ass.”
Grumbling to himself, Height led the engineers out into the dry heat of the Afghan night thinking he should have taken his chances with whatever was being served at the dining hall on his own.
“So, how do you two like mystery meat?”
CHAPTER 3
Oh-Four-Hundred Hours: Camp Eggers, Day Two.
Four a.m. came a lot quicker and was far more painful than Brazier had expected. The heat; the uncomfortably thin army cot assigned to him; the itchy, dark-gray blanket wrapping the engineer’s lower half turned it into a sweat-soaked burrito; the machine-gun fire being produced by a gaggle of sleeping marines a few feet from his bunk; the early hour. On their own each of those things were terribly annoying and magnificent sleep disrupters, but none of them were as horrifying as the sound of Gunnery Sergeant Height’s voice booming in Brazier’s ear or the smell of unbrushed teeth filling his nostrils. Those things underlined the blond man’s hatred for the situation he’d been thrust into. Triple pay be damned.
“Up and at ‘em, campers,” bellowed the plus-sized marine. Height yanked the blankets off of Brazier’s bed, nearly taken the much smaller man with them. “Time to get to work!”
A higher pitched voice echoed Height’s baritone with a more than a slight hint of mockery lining its tone. “No time to get your nails done, Brazier. Get your panties on and let’s go!”
Talborg, full dressed and looking fresh as a daisy, grinned wickedly at Brazier from just inside the barracks door. Somehow the woman was prepped and ready to go. A curse escaped from between the engineer’s thin lips. He swore he’d show the woman up once they were out in the field.
Feet, still clad in the perspiration-soaked socks they’d been encased in for the past thirty-six plus hours, slammed down hard into the pair of steel-toed combat boots resting near the foot of Brazier’s cot. Luckily, Sergeant Height had been kind enough to give the civilian a run down of what to expect the night before—and how to be prepare for the unit’s need to go from sleep to combat-ready in less than a minute. Boots on hand, gear already prepped for travel, bulletproofed combat vest within reach. The only thing Brazier wished the battalion had on hand was a proper coffee maker. As it was, all he had time for was a few gulps of the tar-like black concoction the other soldiers had left brewing over night. Still, it was better than going off to battle without caffeine. Brazier was almost positive that was against at least one article of the Geneva Convention.
Six minutes later, accompanied by the four cybernetically-enhanced members of the Project Hardwired team, Brazier and Talborg were wedged tightly into seats mounted in the rear of a stealth-modified MH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, bound for the group’s target insertion point twenty-two kilometers away. Sergeant Height and his team followed closely behind in a pair of Blackhawks of their own.