He swore feelingly under his breath. The blasts could be nothing more ominous than Barnes setting off the last string of the bunker’s booby traps. But they could also be the rear guard fighting desperately against T-1s that had succeeded in crashing through the bunker roof.
And Kate would be one of the last of the group to leave, probably just a couple of steps ahead of Barnes. If the Terminators had cut through…
If they had, there was nothing Connor could do to help. He could only trust to hope, and to the destiny that linked him and Kate to humanity’s ultimate salvation.
He’d gone twenty meters more when a blast rolled through the tunnel, sending a wave of warm air across the back of his neck. The final booby trap had been triggered, bringing down the bunker’s ceiling and burying any Terminators that had made it inside as it sealed off the end of the tunnel.
Connor and his people were committed now, with nowhere to go but forward.
Still no sign that Skynet had noticed them. Connor kept going, the drifting air currents from the overhead gaps slowly becoming a single steady breeze in his face. He rounded one final blind corner, and with a suddenness that for some reason never failed to surprise him, he was at the end.
Cautiously, he looked out between the carefully positioned rotting two-by-fours that blocked the exit. The street beyond was cleaner than some he’d seen, with much of the masonry and wood having been scavenged over the years by the handful of civilians who still scratched out a tenuous existence in the ruined city. More importantly, there was no sign of Terminators.
From the direction of the bunker came a short burst of gunfire from one of the remote-activated guns set up there and in nearby buildings. The burst was answered instantly by a longer, staccato roar from the T-600s’ miniguns. Connor gestured Tunney forward, and the two men set to work clearing the exit.
The wooden barrier looked sturdier and more impassible than it actually was, and it took less than half a minute for them to silently move the boards out of the way. Connor started to step out.
And ducked back as an HK swooped past, just half a block away, heading toward the bunker.
Connor waited a few seconds, then tried again.
Nothing jumped or swooped out at him, either metal or human. As the sporadic gunfire continued from the vicinity of the bunker, he did a quick three-sixty, then gestured to Tunney and David. The two men slipped past him, moved ten meters in opposite directions down the street, and did three-sixties of their own. They hand-signaled the all-clear, then hunkered down in the rubble with weapons ready.
Connor stepped back into the tunnel, went back around that final blind corner, and gestured to the line of people waiting tensely in the dark.
Blair Williams, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, was the fifth one out. She spotted Connor and stepped out of line.
“I’m heading for the hangar,” she announced softly. “Any special orders?”
“Yes; that you wait a minute,” Connor told her, grabbing her arm and pulling her down into a crouch as another HK appeared to the west, weaving its way between the skeletal remains of two of the taller buildings.
“Why?” Blair countered.
“Just wait,” Connor repeated.
Blair huffed something under her breath, but obediently moved over to the stubby remains of a fire hydrant and squatted beside it, drawing her big .44 caliber Desert Eagle from its holster.
Two more HKs had swooped in to join the party at the bunker before everyone made it out of the tunnel. But none of the machines came close, and there was no indication that they’d noticed anything amiss, especially with all the gunfire masking any sounds the group might make.
Kate, as Connor had expected, was the last one out before the rear guard. At the very end of the line, also as expected, was Barnes.
“You seen my brother?” he asked Connor, hefting his grenade launcher as he looked around.
“Yes, he’s already out,” Connor assured him. Along with his launcher, Connor noted, Barnes had also picked up a Galil assault rifle somewhere along the way and had the weapon slung over his shoulder along with his gear bags. If all the extra weight was bothering him, it didn’t show.
“Good,” Barnes said. “We’re splitting up, right? I’ll get my squad and take point.”
“David will handle your squad,” Connor told him. “I want you to take Blair to the hangar.”
Blair rose from her crouch, a look of outraged disbelief on her face.
“Is that why you made me wait?” she demanded. “For him?”
“I don’t want you trying to get to the hangar alone,” Connor told her.
“I don’t need him,” Blair insisted.
“Right—she doesn’t need me,” Barnes seconded.
“More importantly, Wince and Inji are still in there,” Connor explained patiently. “Once the planes are out, someone has to get them to safety.”
Barnes bared his teeth, but reluctantly nodded.
“Fine. Come on, flygirl. Try to keep up.”
He set off down the street, his head moving back and forth as he watched for trouble. Blair paused long enough to roll her eyes, then followed.
“I’m sure they’re secretly very fond of each other,” Kate offered dryly.
“As long as they dislike Skynet more, I’m happy,” Connor said. “Come on, let’s get these people out of here.”
CHAPTER
TWO
The gunfire back at the abandoned bunker was starting to trail off as Blair flitted down the street like a ghost, her eyes automatically picking out the quietest route through the debris and rusting cars and occasional pieces of shattered human skeletons. She took advantage of every shadow, and since the main source of light was the HKs’ spotlights three blocks away, the shadows were both plentiful and deep. She’d done this sort of thing a thousand times, and was very good at it.
Certainly better at it than Barnes. He wasn’t bad at shadow-hopping, but the sheer bulk of the gear he habitually lugged around automatically made him noisier than she was. In addition, he had a habit of turning his whole upper body back and forth instead of just his head as he scanned the area, which tended to jingle his equipment belts and ammo bandoleer. Blair had pointed it out once or twice in the past, and had gotten a highly ungracious and extremely unoriginal expletive for her trouble.
She didn’t trust Barnes. Not because she thought that he would ever betray them to the Terminators, but because he was a loose cannon who tended to act without thinking. Sometimes in the heat of combat that was what you had to do, and Blair had certainly done her share of such flailing. But Barnes not only did way too much of it, in Blair’s opinion, but he also seemed perversely proud of his refusal to think things all the way through.
Besides that was the man himself. He was good to have on your side once the fighting began, but he had none of the idealistic courage that Blair could sense in both of the Connors, the commitment to the people whose lives had ended up in their hands. Barnes fought because he liked to fight, and because he hated Skynet.
Which wasn’t, for Blair, a particularly durable motivation for this kind of long-term war. As far as she could make out, Barnes didn’t particularly like people, had never gotten along with authority figures of any sort, and probably hadn’t been a particularly outstanding, citizen of the pre-judgment Day world. In fact, she could easily envision him running along these same streets, in this same darkness, carrying a flat-screen TV from a broken store window instead of the grenade launcher he was currently clutching to his chest.
But he was hound-dog loyal to John Connor, and Blair was one of Connor’s people, and for that reason alone she knew Barnes would get her to the hangar safely or die in the attempt. The big man might not be the best argument for saving humanity, but if humanity was to be saved, Barnes would probably be one of those who would make it happen.