Molly gritted her teeth and hung on for dear life. Something smacked against the ramp a few inches above her head. She looked up to see the knotted end of a rope bouncing back and forth across the upper planks.
“Grab the rope!” a female voice hollered. “Whole thing’s coming apart!”
Tell me about it! The tramway was disintegrating beneath her. Loose planks plummeted to the ground even as the Terminator hacked away at the chute’s supports, like a robotic lumberjack. The huge wooden structure teetered on the brink of collapse. With no time to lose, Molly grabbed onto the rope with her right hand. A hard tug confirmed that the lifeline was secured to something higher up, so she took hold of the rope with both hands.
Bracing the soles of her boots against the quaking wood beneath her, she sprinted up the slope even as the floor fell apart behind her.
Where’s that old-time conveyor belt, she thought, now that I need it?
Unfortunately, the tramway’s moving parts hadn’t worked since the Great Depression. She raced against time—and the tramway’s imminent collapse—with the Terminator waiting to intercept her when she fell. Unsure if she was going to make it, Molly was only a few yards away from the top of the slope when, one by one, the planks gave way beneath her feet.
Gravity seized her and her legs plunged through the gap. Her stomach swung into the jagged edge of the upper slope, with only the rope holding her aloft as she dangled several hundred feet above a rocky fate below. The exhaust from the chainsaw rose to choke her. Looking down, she saw the Terminator’s single red “eye” peering up at her.
The rope began to slip through her gloved hands. She snapped at the coils, trying to snag it with her teeth, but it was just out of reach.
She was losing her grip.
“Got you!” Slender hands grabbed her by the wrist. Molly felt herself yanked upward, back onto what was left of the tramway. Looking up, she saw a hooded figure lying face-down on the ramp. Further up, leaning out from the roof of the breaker building, Vic Folger held onto her rescuer’s ankles. Veins bulged on his neck as he labored to pull the chain of bodies to safety.
“Hang on! Not letting you fall!”
Molly wasn’t sure how he did it, but within moments Folger had them all atop a small platform, looking out over the disintegrating chute. Cast-iron storm doors covered the top of the open shaft that had once received the raw ore. A wooden catwalk circled the pit. The big soccer coach was panting from exertion, sweat dripping down his face. An Uzi was slung over his shoulder.
The other figure, her face hidden by the hood of an ill-fitting parka, gave Molly a bear hug.
“See! Told you! Made it all the way up!”
No longer on the verge of sliding to her death, Molly finally placed the voice. She shoved back the hood to reveal a face full of freckles and an impish expression. Unkempt red bangs spilled over wide green eyes.
“Sitka!” Molly broke free from the girl’s embrace. “What the fuck are you doing here? You were supposed to hit the road with Doc!”
The teenager shrugged.
“Wanted to see the machine get squashed.”
“Guess we’re both out of luck then.” Molly was annoyed that the girl had skipped out on the evacuation, but now was no time for a lecture. The tramway trembled a few feet away, as if the rest of it was about to collapse at any second. A tremor threw Folger against a decrepit guardrail that cracked beneath his weight. Molly grabbed onto his arm to keep him from going overboard.
“Everybody back!” she shouted. “Pronto!”
The humans sprinted away from the crumbling tramway, just as the entire structure gave way entirely. With a tremendous roar, hundreds of feet of timber posts and planks exploded, raining down on the camp below like the fossilized skeleton of some enormous wooden dinosaur. An eruption of splinters and white powder was thrown into the air, reminding Molly of the avalanche she had set off less than a day ago.
Safe up on the catwalk—at least for the moment—she backed away from the thunderous crash. Probably too much to hope, she thought, that the Terminator got buried beneath all that.
“Skookum!” Sitka exclaimed, impressed by the sheer awesomeness of the destruction. The top of the mill offered a bird’s-eye view of the burning camp below. Billowing black smoke and sky-high flames made it hard to tell how the evacuation was going. The alarms had gone silent as the conflagration engulfed the abandoned buildings. Molly could feel the heat upon her face even from so far away.
She noted with alarm that the fire was moving steadily closer to them, almost as relentless in its own way as the T-600. The heaped remains of the tramway were like a bonfire waiting to be lit.
We don’t want to be here when that happens.
Then a powerful engine roared overhead, the sound piercing the smoke. Folger snatched his rifle from his shoulder and aimed for the sky, but Molly grabbed onto the barrel and pushed it down.
“Wait. That’s no HK.” The Hunter-Killers’ VTOL turbofans had a distinct reverberation that was impossible to mistake. Besides, Alaska was a big place; the nearest Skynet airbase was hundreds of miles away. “I think I know who that is.”
Sure enough, Thunderbird swooped out of the smoke, circling once above the camp before banking toward the north. Molly felt a lump in her throat as she watched her lover’s vintage fighter disappear into the distance. She doubted that he had seen her atop the mill, but at least she knew now that he had made it down to the glacier okay, and taken to the air in time to get away. He’d be waiting for her at the rendezvous point... if she ever got there.
“Geir!” Sitka waved goodbye to the plane. “Think he saw us?”
“Sure he did,” she lied. “You can ask him yourself later.” Then she shoved the girl toward Folger. “Get out of here,” she told the soccer coach, “and take this mangy stray with you.” A severe expression said that she brooked no disagreement. “She gives you any trouble at all, you have my full permission to knock her out cold!”
Sitka stuck out her tongue.
“Saved your life,” she reminded Molly. “You’re welcome.”
“What about you, chief?” Folger asked.
Molly leaned out over the railing. Fourteen stories below, a hulking steel figure stepped away from the ruins of the tramway. It crooked its neck, gazing up from the alley below. A single red dot locked eyes with Molly.
“I’ll catch up with you later,” she said grimly. “I’m not done here yet.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
2003
“Still no word from Moscow, sir?”
Losenko met with his senior officers in the wardroom. Weeks had passed since the massacre on the mainland and the Gorshkov was safely back beneath the sea. The sub had surfaced long enough to scan the airwaves on all frequencies, and Losenko had summoned Ivanov and the others to brief them on the results.
The captain shook his head at Trotsky. A bottle of red wine rested in the middle of the conference table; the ship’s doctor had prescribed a daily glass for all personnel. The strontium in the wine was supposed to provide some degree of protection against radiation poisoning. The wine had been found in an underground cellar back on the mainland. The doctor had judged it safe to consume.
“Moscow is gone. We need to accept that. Only static greets our requests for further instructions.” Losenko was starting to get used to being autonomous. He had been sorely tempted to lob one of their remaining ballistic missiles at that cursed factory south of Murmansk. Only the memory of the heroic civilians in the vicinity had deterred him. “But Pushkin intercepted something I want you all to hear,” he continued.