But how could he keep the men in line when the country they had sworn to serve had been decimated? They were without orders, without purpose. If Murmansk was any indication, the Kremlin was just a smoking crater now, and Mother Russian a gigantic graveyard.
Maybe Ivanov is right, the captain thought bleakly. Perhaps we still need an enemy.
He stared out over the water. Yudin’s blood had already been dispersed by the relentless current. The young sailor’s body had gone to join the broken ships at the bottom of the harbor. One more victim of... what? A computer malfunction?
Nikolai Yudin was gone, but Losenko knew he would see the boy again.
In his dreams.
“Set a course for Ponoy.”
Perhaps there was still something left to fight for.
CHAPTER SIX
2018
The old copper mill had been abandoned back in the 1930s, long before Judgment Day. Perched on the craggy slopes of the Wrangell Mountains, overlooking an icy blue glacier, weather-beaten wooden buildings clung to the snowy hillside like bird’s nests. The remote location of the ghost town—as well as the immensity of the Alaskan wilderness—had hidden the mill’s current occupants from Skynet’s surveillance, at least so far. Molly wondered how much longer the Resistance outpost would remain undetected. They had been living at the mill for six months now, ever since abandoning their previous camp outside Fairbanks. A new record.
“Derailing the train is just the first step,” Doc Rathbone insisted. “Once you get inside, the uranium is still going to be locked up tight.”
The old man was hunched over a drafting table in what had once been the office of the mine’s general manager. It was housed in a two-story log cabin a short hike away from the massive mill and crusher. Maps of the train’s route and surveillance photos of the Skynet Express were spread out on top of the table, along with cobbled-together diagrams and blueprints of the train itself.
Much of the intel had been downloaded from the central processing unit of a factory robot the Resistance had captured several months earlier. That had been quite a coup, albeit one that had cost the life of the cell’s previous commander. Doc Rathbone had been instrumental in cracking the CPU’s encryption in order to access the information stored in the machine’s computerized “brain.”
He was useful that way, which was why Molly put up with his eccentricities.
“Locked up how?” she asked.
The bloodbath at the pipeline had only heightened her resolve to hit Skynet where it hurt. Over Geir’s objections, she had gone straight to work the minute they’d made it back to the camp, barely stopping to change into dry clothes. A moth-eaten black turtleneck sweater, buckskin trousers, and fur-lined moccasins kept her warm enough inside the office. Her parka hung from a set of antlers mounted by the door, above her soggy boots.
A wood-burning stove fought back the cold winter night. A pair of Siberian huskies were curled up in front of the stove, with Sitka plopped down between them. Molly didn’t usually let them sleep inside, but she figured her lead dogs had earned it after outracing the killer snow plow. Kerosene lanterns gave the humans enough light to work by. Closed wooden blinds trapped the light inside, maintaining the blackout regulations she had put into effect. A loaded assault rifle was propped up against the table, always within easy reach.
“The ore is likely sealed inside heavily guarded storage compartments to prevent theft or loss in the event of a crash,” Doc continued. “Each individual railcar will be one big rolling safe, with automated locks programmed to open only upon their arrival at Valdez. Since there are no conductors or technicians aboard, the locks will be under the direct control of the train’s own artificial intelligence, but it may be possible to override the locking mechanisms at the site.”
He pointed a bony finger at a schematic. Mussed white hair met in a widow’s peak above his bushy black eyebrows. A pair of scratched wire-frame bifocals rested on his nose. His face was worn and haggard. Swollen veins and a ruddy complexion hinted at a drinking problem that persisted despite Sitka’s best attempts to keep the old coot away from the camp’s homemade moonshine. A fraying tan cardigan hung on his withered frame; he looked like he’d been forgetting to eat again. A pocket calculator weighed down one side of the sweater. His shoelaces were untied.
“The processed ore will be in the form of a coarse, lightweight powder popularly known as ‘yellowcake.’” His gaze drifted off as his mind started wandering again. Then he came back. “The Navajo Indians of Colorado, on the other hand, used to call uranium ‘the Yellow Monster’ after careless mining practices contaminated their land and bodies. A shameful episode, really. The incidences of lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, and birth defects were truly appalling....
Fascinating, Molly thought sarcastically. She wasn’t sure what that had to do with Skynet.
“Can you hack into the locks?” she asked. Henry Rathbone had once been the chief engineer for a Pacific Northwest company that designed high-tech security systems for upscale homes and businesses. He’d been on a fishing vacation in Alaska when the bombs fell. A lucky break for the Resistance, if not for Rathbone. He might have been happier going up in flames with the rest of Seattle. Story was, he’d lost his entire family.
“Probably,” he said. “Maybe.” A sigh escaped his quivering lips as he contemplated the blueprints. He tapped a schematic of the train’s storage compartment. “Reminds me of the panic room I installed for a paranoid Microsoft millionaire in Tacoma. You should have seen that guy’s mansion. Had a special vault just for his comic book collection.” His rheumy gaze turned inward as his voice took on a wistful tone. “You remember comic books? They used to come out every week, like clockwork. Me and the other tech guys always used to take a long lunch on Wednesday.
“There was this diner down by Pike Place Market where we’d get together to read the new issues. I usually ordered a turkey sandwich and a Diet Pepsi. Or was it a Dr. Pepper? You remember Dr. Pepper? ‘I’m a Pepper, you’re a Pepper....’”
“Off we go again,” Sitka groaned. The teen rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ever get tired of going on about way back when?”
Molly knew what she meant. Everybody who remembered life before Judgment Day longed for the past sometimes, but Doc had it worse than most. He just couldn’t seem to let go of the world he had once known. A melancholy aura hung over him like a cloud.
“Kids like you!” Rathbone turned, towered over Sitka, and shook his finger. “You don’t know what you’re missing, what life used to be like before everything went to hell. There were restaurants and museums and golf courses and Christmas and champagne.” A quaver entered his voice. His eyes grew wet. “We didn’t have to live like animals, being hunted by machines. We had lives then... real lives with plenty to look forward to. Not this. Nothing like this.”
He gestured at the rustic walls that surrounded them.
“You don’t know what it was like....”
Sitka yawned theatrically.
“Waste of breath. Heard it all before.”
Protesting a bit too much, maybe? Molly suspected that the teen was secretly fascinated by the old man’s frequent evocations of life before Skynet. Not that she’d ever admit it. Must sound like fairy tales to her, Molly thought. Like Oz or Wonderland.
She made a mental note to have Sitka quietly search Doc’s bunk and workshop for illicit hooch. She needed to keep the traumatized genius on the top of his game, such as it was. Rathbone was teaching the girl what he knew about electronics and computers, but she was nowhere near ready to take his place.