The Kabul Incident: A Weir Codex Novella

by Mat Nastos

  First, gain control of the chemical weapons by any means necessary.

  Second, liquidate any and all terrorist forces on site. There were to be no survivors, no witnesses, and no mercy. Scorched Earth was the order of the day.

  Finally, gain any intel on who was selling the deadly nerve agents to the Syrians.

  In order to guarantee all points of the mission were carried out to the letter and without fail, Executive Director Kiesling himself had chosen the unit assigned. Designates Gauss and Cestus were pulled from their respective missions in Sŏngch’ŏn Kun and Shiraz. Although their mutual dislike ran deep, the two Prime units were the most effective pairing Project Hardwired had developed. Gauss was to be the hammer and Cestus the scalpel. With the two cyborgs riding shotgun, no enemy of freedom of the United States had any hope.

  Engineers Talborg and Brazier had been given their assignments, along with triple hazard pay, by the current heads of Project Hardwired’s weapon division, TJ and Jason May. For all intents and purposes, it was a dream assignment. The sort of high pay, high profile gig that resulted in promotions and more.

  Dust, the rumble of tanks, and the smell of unprocessed diesel fuel battered Brazier’s senses to the point of numbness, forcing the man to reevaluate his choice in career for the umpteenth time.

  “Over here, Scotty boy,” called Talborg, summoning her colleague over to a burgeoning crowd of soldiers with a backwards flick of her wrist.

  Brazier wasn’t sure how she did it, but the woman could pile enough snideness in the words ‘Scotty boy’ to choke a horse. Being in tight quarters to Talborg for an extended period had quelled any attraction to her the engineer had built up in his mind. She was as much of an asshole as Height had proclaimed Designate Gauss to be.

  Lieutenant Arias stood tall in the middle of the troupe of fourteen marines, two civilians, and quartet of cybernetic humans, looking as impatient as he was imposing. It was easy for anyone halfway paying attention to see that the soldier was not an even-tempered man.

  “Our bunks are in the buildings there.” Arias nodded in the direction of a cluster of small, hastily constructed buildings covered in the digital desert camouflage paint that seemed to coat every inch of visible equipment in the camp—vehicles, buildings, tents…even the men were covered in camo dress. “Stow your gear and pull all pertinent data for a confab at seventeen-hundred.”

  Grabbing a pair of tan and gray duffel bags massive enough to hold a man’s body, Sergeant Height barked out to the crowd of marines and their civilian guests, “You heard the El-Tee. Hit your CHUs and make yourselves pretty like. It’s all asses and elbows from here on out, boys.”

  Falling in line with the rest of his team, Brazier chuckled to himself.

  Turning to Designate Cestus, he quipped, “You feel like we’re on the set of ‘Heartbreak Ridge?’”

  The cyborg stared at the small engineer blankly and pushed passed him, making a beeline for the containerized housing unit set aside for the four cyborg soldiers. None of the regular humans, not even those assigned by the powers-that-be of Project Hardwired, bunked with the cybernetic men. The policy of separate housing for the Designates and GMRs had been implemented early on in the project’s formation. It was unsettling enough to be around a bunch of testosterone-filled marines, but that was nothing compared to being forced to sleep next to a quartet of half-robotic killers with little connection to humanity left in them.

  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.

  “Don’t worry about it, Davis…with the Pinos on board, it’ll be another Groundhog Day mission like all the rest,” joked another solider, one whose name Brazier failed to catch.

  “Watch the ‘Pino’ shit, jarhead,” snapped Talborg from the position just off Arias’s left shoulder she’d claimed at the start of the mission briefing. The woman was a master at insuring her position in the center of things…a trait Brazier new he’d have to perfect if he wanted to move up in the Project Hardwired hierarchy.

  “What’s our opposition?” The smooth, slow Southern drawl of Cestus calling out from the rear of the group startled everyone present. He’d said no more than ten words during the entire trip down from Berlin…most of the team had forgotten he was a living, breathing thing.

  Arias, having dealt with the cyborg super soldier on a number of occasions, seemed to be the only one not thrown off by the man’s question. “Rum-int has no more than thirty hostiles on site. The Syrians are set to arrive with the stolen ordnance just before dawn with another dozen or so men.”

  Gauss laughed, winking at his monitor. “We’ll go in hard and fast…I’ll walk right in the front gates and bring the whole place down on their heads. They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

  “No,” refuted Cestus in a calm voice that still commanded the attention of those crowded around the briefing. “Designate Gauss will provide support and insertion for me into the enemy camp.”

  A glare that could have killed blasted out from Gauss. The cyborg’s fists clenched tightly, his chrome eye lighting up like a star, as Gauss started to snap back at his rival.

  “‘Support?’ Are you fucking kidding me?” Every piece of metal in the room responded to the chrome-armed cybernetic warrior’s agitation, twitching and jerking into his direction. “Where do you get off trying to take lead, Cestus? This is as much my op as it is yours!”

  The power Gauss contained in his arms and the fusion generator housed in his spine were enough to cause Brazier to take a few rather deep, worried breaths. No telling what a loose cannon like Gauss could do in a military base filled with a nearly unlimited supply of ferrous metals to cause havoc with.

  Spittle sprayed out from the mouth of Gauss, showering Cestus with liquid as the two super soldiers faced off. Explosions between the two top members of the Project Hardwired team had become more and more frequent as Cestus’s star began to rise and eclipse that of the more veteran Gauss. Only the omnipresent control of the Abraxas Array hot linked into the computerized brains of both men had kept their skirmishes from resulting in catastrophic violence…something Scott Brazier thanked God for even as he instinctively backed away from the blustering robot-men.

  “Data shows an increase of friendly casualties by a factor of three with a frontal assault. The chances of hostiles retaliating with the chemical weapons on local citizens also increase by nearly forty-seven point three-one percent,” countered Cestus calmly. “Covert entry reduces collateral damage down to zero. Of the two of Prime Designates assigned, I am far more qualified to take point.”

  Lieutenant Arias seemed to share Gauss’s incredulity. “Best guesses put the number of hostiles at thirty armed men or more. How do you propose to stop them on your own, Designate Cestus?”

  “Kill them.”

  “You arrogant little prick!” A vein throbbing on the forehead of Gauss seemed on the verge of rupture.

  Fifteen pairs of battle-hardened US Marine hands gripped the weapons slung over their shoulders. They all had seen first-hand the sort of devastation both cyborgs were capable of creating and none of the soldiers were ready for a display.

  “Lieutenant?” Sergeant Height’s voice seem to raise two octaves in concern. He wasn’t sure there was enough firepower on the entire base to take down one of the pissed-off cyborgs let alone two.

  “Agent Talborg, get your man under control ay-sap,” ordered the mission’s military officer, sweat beading up across his brow. Lieutenant Arias’s hand hovered just over the dark gray grip of the Beretta nine-millimeter pistol holstered high on his right hip.

  Before the thirty-something woman could respond, a voice squeaked out from the rear of the gathering.

  “Abraxas agrees with Cestus’s recommendation.” The lilt and twang intruding upon Brazier’s voice did little to reinforce the air of authority he’d hoped to throw out. Nothing killed a man’s self-confidence more than twenty pairs of eyes all aimed at him.

  Gauss visibly deflated. Although every fiber of the cyborg’s being wanted to protest, both he and Agent Talborg had received notification from the artificial intelligence system back at Project Hardwired in the United State at the same instant Brazier did. They were all linked to the same information in real time and it was useless for the mechanical-eyed soldier to argue—impossible considering the override instructions coded into his brain. There was no way for one of the Prime Designates to rebel against his programming. At the merest hint of trouble, one of the on-site monitors, or even Abraxas-1 itself, could initiate a shutdown protocol to stop the cyborgs in their tracks. Having seen what kind of damage creatures like Gauss and Cestus could do terrified Brazier down deep and knowing shutdown was a couple of keystrokes away let him sleep better at night.

  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 t
o 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.