Connor shrugged.
“Given that my mother’s typical Christmas presents were new Browning semi-autos or C4
detonators, it didn’t pay to open packages too quickly.”
Kate’s eyes widened.
“You are joking, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Connor said with a straight face. “Christmas was survival gear; Fourth of July was munitions. Okay, here goes.” He reached into the bag.
And to his surprise, pulled out a badly cracked jewel case with a slightly battered compact disc inside.
“What’s this?” he asked, peering at it in the dim light.
“A little memory from your childhood,” Kate said. “Or at least from simpler days. An album called Use Your Illusion II.”
Connor felt his eyes open. A memory from his childhood, indeed. “Thank you,” he said. “Where on earth did you find it?”
“One of Olsen’s men had it with him last month when they came by to swap munitions,” Kate said. “I remembered you talking about listening to it when you were younger, so I traded him a couple of extra bandage packs for it. You know, those packs we dug out of the treatment room at the Orange County Zoo.”
“I just hope Tunney was able to get that CD player working,” Connor commented, cradling the disk carefully in his hands. “I miss music. That and Italian food, I think, are what I miss most.”
“For me, it’s definitely music,” Kate mused. “Vocals, especially—I used to love listening to a live choir in full four-part harmony.” She smiled faintly. “Just a bit different from your taste in music.”
“Differences are the spice of life,” Connor reminded her.
“And G’n’R is probably better music to kill machines by.”
“Probably.” Kate’s smile faded. “Besides, nowadays what reason does anyone have to sing?”
“There’s still life,” Connor said,, eyeing his wife closely. Kate didn’t get depressed very often, but when she did it could be a deep and terrible pit. “And love, and friends.”
“But mostly just life,” Kate agreed. “I know. Sometimes we forget what’s really important, don’t we?”
“A constant problem throughout history,” Connor said, breathing a quiet sigh of relief. So she wasn’t going there, after all. Good. “Thanks again, Kate. This really makes my day. Probably even my year.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Oh, and rock on. The man who gave me the disk told me to say that.” She took a deep breath, and Connor could see her chasing the memories back to where they belonged. “Meanwhile, it’s been a late night, and the world starts up again in about five hours.
Come on, let’s go to bed.”
“Right.” Standing up, Connor reached for his gunbelt.
And paused. “Did you hear something?” he asked in a low voice.
“I don’t know,” Kate said, her head tilted in concentration.
Connor frowned, straining his ears. A whispery wind was blowing gently across the bunker roof, setting cat-purr vibrations through the piles of loose debris up there. Everything seemed all right.
But something had caught his attention. And something was still screaming wordlessly across his combat senses.
“Stay here,” Connor told his wife, crossing back to the door. He listened at the panel for a moment, then cautiously opened it.
The earlier overcast sky had cleared somewhat, allowing a little starlight to filter in through the cracked shutters. Connor checked both directions down the empty corridor, then headed left toward the rear of the bunker and the sentry post situated between the living quarters and storage room.
Piccerno was on duty, seated on a tall stepladder with everything from his shoulders up snugged up inside the observation dome. Like everything else these days, the dome was a product of simplicity and ingenuity: an old plastic office wastebasket that had been fastened to the top of the bunker, equipped with a set of eye slits that permitted 360-degree surveillance, then covered from above with strategically placed rubble to disguise its true purpose.
“Report,” Connor murmured as he stepped to the foot of the ladder.
There was no answer.
“Piccerno?” Connor murmured, the hair on the back of his neck tingling. “Piccerno?”
Still no answer. Getting a one-handed grip on the ladder, Connor headed up. He reached the top and pushed aside Piccerno’s bunched-up parka collar.
One touch of the warm, sticky liquid that had soaked the upper surface of the collar was all he needed to know what had happened. He spent another precious second anyway, peering up into the narrow space between Piccerno’s face and the rim of the dome, just to make sure there was nothing he could do.
There wasn’t. Piccerno’s eyes were open but unseeing, his forehead leaning against the dome, the blood from the hole in his left temple still trickling down his face.
Skynet had found them.
Quickly, Connor climbed back down the ladder, a kaleidoscope of Piccerno’s life with the team flashing through his mind. Ruthlessly, he forced back the memories.
This was not the time.
Grabbing the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun that was propped against the wall, he hurried back to the living quarters.
Kate was already dressed, her gun belt in hand. “What is it?” she asked tensely.
“Piccerno’s dead,” Connor told her grimly. “Long-range sniper, or else one hell of a silencer.”
“Terminators?”
“I didn’t check,” Connor said. “Skynet’s obviously trying the sneaky approach, and I didn’t want to do anything that might alert it that we were onto the game. Get back to supply—I’ll go roust everyone and send them back there. Make a quick sort of the equipment and load them with as much as you think they can handle.”
“Right,” Kate said as she finished strapping on her gun belt.
“And keep everyone as quiet as you can,” Connor added. “The longer Skynet thinks we’re all still asleep, the longer we’ll have before the fireworks start.”
Kate nodded.
“Be careful.”
“You, too.”
He continued along the corridor, ducking into each room as he passed and nudging or whispering the occupants awake, giving them a set of terse instructions, then moving on as they grabbed their clothing and weapons.
Finally, he reached the bunker’s main entrance. There, to his complete lack of surprise, he found Barnes waiting, standing beside the bunker door with his eye pressed to one of the eyeslits, a 9mm Steyr in his holster and one of the group’s few remaining grenade launchers clutched to his chest. A few feet away stood the young man who was supposed to be on sentry duty tonight, his throat working as he nervously fingered his rifle.
“We got eight T-600s on the way,” Barnes reported as Connor came up beside him. “What’s goin’ on in back?”
“They took out Piccerno,” Connor told him. “Quietly, and at least several minutes ago. Probably means Skynet’s about to send in the heavy stuff—T-1s or maybe a tank or two—and was hoping to sneak up on us.”
Barnes grunted and straightened up from the peepholes. His bald head glistened with a week’s worth of sweat, his clenched teeth glinting through two weeks’ worth of beard stubble.
“So what’s the plan?”
“We run on our timetable, not Skynet’s,” Connor replied. “If we can buy a few minutes, I can—”
Barnes nodded.
“Got just the thing.”
With that he pulled open the door, and fired.
There was a soft chuffas the grenade shot skyward out of its tube. Biting down hard on his tongue— I can get more men here before you engage—Connor stepped quickly to the other side of the doorway and looked out.