Policy was to be absolutely noncooperative. "They didn't say anything about a fourth party," she said at last.
"I'm running late," it said. "They must have given up on me. How do I get to
them?"
"I'm sorry," she said carefully, "but theirs is a private charter. I can't stop the plane for you when you aren't on their list."
"I'm supposed to be with them," Third insisted. "It's important. Sell me a ticket and hold the flight."
"I can't do that," she insisted. "They've been cleared."
Charter a plane to follow them, Serena ordered. It might not be possible, but then again, it might.
"I will hire a plane to follow them," it said. "Here is my card."
"You won't be able to follow them immediately," the woman said, frowning.
"Where did you say it was that you wanted to go?"
"I have to follow the Connors and Dieter von Rossbach," it said.
The woman smirked. "I'm sorry, sir. There's been a mistake. That's not the name of the party that's leaving right now." She looked at him imperturbably and offered his card back to him.
Take off your sunglasses and look at her. Tell her you must follow the party that just left, whatever their names were. Tell her it's life-and-death. Allow her to fear it might be her life you're talking about.
It took off its glasses and stared, unblinking, at the woman. "I must follow them," it said. "It is a matter of life and death."
The woman found herself staring into a pair of blue eyes that didn't look human.
She sucked in her breath, feeling a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach, and the hair bristling on the back of her neck. If I were a dog, I'd howl, she thought; in all of her life she'd never met a gaze so terrible—terrible in its absolute lack of fury, or anger, or impatience, or anything human. With a dry tongue she licked her lips and felt her world narrow down to a tunnel with this terrifying man at the end of it.
"Yes, sir," she said, her voice trembling. She cut him a ticket. "You may wait in the lounge," she said. "But it will be at least an hour before your flight is cleared."
"Is there any way to hasten the process?" it asked, still staring.
"It… could be arranged," she said.
"Do it. Whatever it costs," Third told her.
In ten seconds she handed it a new ticket.
"Please take a seat, sir," she said. "Someone will come for you when your plane is ready."
Three took the ticket, picked up its bag, and walked over to the small but elaborate security setup. There was the usual metal-detector gate, and another, longer tunnel just beyond it. He put his bag on the belt and handed his health certificate to the guard. While the guard unfolded and read it he walked through the metal detector. It rang.
"You have metal joints?" the guard asked, looking up at the tall, apparently perfect specimen beside him.
"Yes."
The guard handed the paper to another uniformed man behind a console.
"All right," that one said. "Everything seems to be in order. If you would please continue through." The guard indicated the abbreviated white tunnel before him.
The Terminator looked at it suspiciously; there was nothing precisely like this in its files. There was no choice if it was to maintain its cover, though: it strode firmly forward. As soon as it did, Third knew it had made a mistake. The scanners were not simple X-rays; they included a highly sophisticated phased-ultrasound element.
The operator of the machine looked at his 3-D display in astonishment. He whistled, high and sharp. "Lord Jesus! That must have been one hell of a degenerative disease! Look at't'is guy, Arthur! It unbelievable, mon! Every one of his bones is metal! Even his jaw and teeth, for Christ's sake!"
Go! Serena commanded. Catch them, terminate them, self-destruct rather than allow yourself to be captured by humans.
From a standing start it took the Terminator ten seconds and twenty strides to reach forty miles an hour. It crashed into the glass wall at the back of the waiting room with enough force to shatter the high-impact safety glass and hit the ground on its feet, legs flexed, and started running after the plane that was
making its final approach. Men and women working on the ground began to yell at him; some gave chase but gave up after a few strides. They looked at each other in wonder and someone called the control tower.
As the plane taxied toward the velocity that would allow it to lift from the ground, Third caught up to it. It leapt onto the wing and hung on just as the plane rose.
The plane dipped and they all brought their heads up and looked out the window.
"What the hell was that?" the pilot asked.
"Oh, my God," Sarah murmured. It felt as though every organ in her body was trying to squeeze into the same place in her middle.
"Mom," John said, his voice sounding like a warning. He felt like he'd been smacked in the center of the forehead with a tennis ball. The moment of shock before the pain hits, when you're so disoriented you're almost uncertain what's happened.
Outside, a man in sunglasses was clinging to the wing of the plane. His face in profile looked remarkably like Dieter's.
"What is it?" von Rossbach asked. He undid his seat belt and rose to cross over to their side of the aircraft.
"Sit down, please!" the pilot said.
Sarah looked out and down; they were already over the ocean. When she looked
up she was staring into the Terminator's face.
"Shit!" she said, real terror in her voice.
It clung to the wing until they were airborne, then it moved, hand over hand, toward the body of the plane. Once it was close to the fuselage, Three raked its nails down the jet's metal skin. One of the T-950's improvements had been to give the Terminator titanium steel claws, hidden beneath the human-looking fingernails. Its blow to the side of the plane broke away the fragile keratin covering that disguised this asset; the bloody bits fluttered away as steel ripped beneath Three's hands.
It looked up to confront Sarah Connor's white face and considered tearing away the window plastic to get at her. Three rejected the idea. The opening was too small; it could not reach her this way. She would escape, and it would be too vulnerable. Causing a crash at this low altitude and speed also lacked sufficient probability of mission success. It began to work its way down the fuselage, one careful blow at a time.
"What the hell is going on out there?" the pilot asked, his voice sounding desperate.
He was still too close to the heavily trafficked airport to put the plane on autopilot so he could go back and look. The instruments didn't show any reason for those vicious thumping sounds, or that wild dip of the wing while they were taking off.
"This is Owen Roberts Control," the headphones spoke. "There is… there is a man clinging to the exterior of your aircraft."
"Oh, very funny," he snapped. This wasn't a frigging biplane, for God's sake. He was doing better than three hundred mph already.
Then he thought about that dip on the wing, those weird pounding sounds. "Give me clearance for an emergency landing," he said. "I'm turning back," he called to his passengers.
"NO!" his passengers shouted as one.
"John, stop him," Sarah said.
John tightened his lips, but nodded and headed forward. Sarah and Dieter looked out the window, watching the Terminator's progress.
Three clung to the side of the door frame and began to tear away the metal around the handle, careless of its flesh sheath. It would self-destruct soon anyway.