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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.
    Hot, jagged rocks cut into Brazier’s hands, causing him to stumble and fall, tearing the thick cloth covering his knees and the flesh covering his palms. None of it mattered to the stubborn little man. He was on a mission and no amount of blood or torn skin was going to stop him.
    Still, he thought, best to call that bitch Talborg for back-up. It was the least she and Gauss could do after throwing Brazier and the others to the wolves. The pair was probably sitting back and having a good laugh while they watched the fireworks.
    “Alpha team taking fire! We need assistance!”
    Touching the side of his headset resulted in an ear full of static.
    “Agent Talborg, are you there?” he asked, hopeful. “Grace?”
    More static.
    His helmet radio was down…damaged in the bomb-blast? A glance down at his computer screen answered his question. No. Even the satellite link back to the May brothers back at Project Hardwired refused to respond. Swearing to himself, Brazier allowed a baseball slide to take him down to the ground near the corner of the compound’s center-most building. Figuring he’d use the cover provided by the shadow of the tall structure, Brazier set about trying to get reconnected to the world beyond.
    There was no way he was going to die on his first field mission, especially not in some forsaken hell-hole like Kabul.
    “No way in hell!”
    Blood splattered and sprayed with each impact of shaking fingers on the virtual computer keyboard. The surface became slicker and slicker, covered in a translucent red glaze. Periodically, Brazier would send his forearm sliding across the front of the tablet, trying to wipe as much of the crimson liquid as he could. It should have been easy enough for the computer genius. Reroute every erg of computing power in the system to send out a single pulse to any one of the hundred comm-sats in low Earth orbit. Bounce the signal back to the Abraxas Array mainframe and get some help. Easy.
    Smearing a band of red war paint across his forehead in an effort to get rid of some of the sweat pooling at his brow, Brazier swore to himself.
    Nothing.
    No response.
    In spite of his best attempts to rectify the situation, all communications were down. Every frequency, every channel, every link Brazier attempted was a ‘no go.’ And it was as deliberate an attack as the explosives outside had been. Something or someone was disrupting the equipment. The only active connection the panicked engineer could maintain was the one he had to Designate Cestus. He could still see everything the cyborg did.
    Maybe he could still hear Brazier over the comm-link.
    “Brazier to Cestus…abort mission. Team under fire.”
    Static. Whatever was interfering with the signals seemed to be keeping his tether to the cyborg a non-interactive one. It made no logical sense to the engineer. As far as he knew, the encryption Project Hardwired used for its comm-signals was unbreakable. There was no way a group of terrorists hiding out in the middle of the desert in Afghanistan should be able to jam it. Nothing short of a concentrated electromagnetic pulse would impede the signal, and even then it would have to be a continual EM field—a single EMP would do nothing more than cause minor interference in the hardened electronics employed by the Brazier and his team. And Designate Gauss would have been aware of anything like that and able to counteract the effects.
    Wouldn’t he?
    What the hell had they stumbled into?
    Staccato bursts of automatic gunfire ripped Brazier from his contemplation. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Sergeant Height’s booming voice calling for assistance. Another explosion