Weir Codex 1: The Cestus Concern Read Online Free PDF Page A

the reports were as easily dealt with as terrorist cells. At least those he could have shot.
    “Yes, Executive Director Kiesling,” Melissa’s voice flowed out of the tiny black speaker box that sat next to an over-sized phone with more buttons than had right to exist on one device. Her tone was even and relaxed, as it always was. Melissa Roslan was the result of a million years of executive assistant evolution—smart enough to never question things she shouldn’t, sexy enough to throw off the middle-aged politicians Kiesling was often forced to deal with, and just perky enough to not be annoying. She was always dressed impeccably, with her blond hair pulled back into a sharp pony tail, her skirts perfectly wrinkle free no matter the time of day, and the dull black Glock she kept in her top draw always well-oiled, loaded and ready to go.
    The perfect accessory for a man like Executive Director Gordon Kiesling of Project: Hardwired. No slouch himself, Kiesling was a tall, handsome, fit man in his mid-forties with just enough gray in his jet black hair to rank well with voters on either side of the political divide. He was a man who had been groomed with a great destiny in mind and leading Project: Hardwired to success was but the first step.
    “Melissa, what’s going on with the alarms? Did Dr. Ryan’s boys upstairs blow something up again?” Kiesling chuckled to himself at the comment. The last “mishap” caused by Doctor Jean Ryan’s team had resulted in mass flooding on ten floors of the building from something they had done to the sprinklers. He’d instructed his assistant to have them removed from his office the very next day, fire marshals be damned. There was no way he was going to have another custom-tailored suit ruined.
    The intercom popped and buzzed once more as Melissa’s voice came over it once again, “No, sir. There’s some sort of trouble in surgical suite and one of the Cestus team has requested GMR assistance.”
    “The ‘Cestus team?’ Wasn’t that unit just going through routine maintenance after Kabul?” It must be some sort of operator error, thought Kiesling to himself. After all, the program had been running like a well-oiled machine for more than eighteen months—once they had worked out the issues with the earlier “Rebirth” units. Sure, those had been a mess, but it had been cleaned up.
    “The unit Designate Cestus was undergoing reintegration with Abraxas-1. There had been…complications during its return from the assignment in Kabul.”
    “Complications?” That wasn’t a word the head of a multi-trillion dollar top-secret government project liked to hear in relation to his department. Words like that tended to be followed by ones like “reassignment” or “termination,” neither of which Gordon Kiesling wished to experience. Eyes narrowed in concentration and jaw set solidly, the governmental overseer launched into the one kind of action his kind was best at: delegation. “Dispatch a GMR team to the location and lock it down…have one of the Prime units tag along just in case. Give me a full project report on Designate Cestus and his “complications,” ay-sap.”
    The door to Kiesling’s office slid open as his assistant strode in on five-inch black heels that matched the charcoal pants suit she had worn that day, arms loaded with files. He had to do a double take from her back to the intercom unit—he hadn’t realized she was no longer at her desk.
    Dropping the stack of stark white folders onto the only clean spot on her boss’s desk, Melissa said curtly, “GMR team Theta is en route to surgical suite eight with Designate Gauss in command. They’ll report back to you as soon as the location has been secured. Here are the files you requested. You’ll find details of the operation in Kabul along with status reports for the Cestus unit from the past nine months.”
    Kiesling marveled for a moment at the woman’s uncanny efficiency and damn near psychic