But that couldn’t be all of the T-600s that Skynet had in the area. Were the rest of them still on border patrol?
Blair hoped so. As long as Skynet held to the assumption that it could contain the area, Connor’s team would be able to take out the machines in twos and fours and sixes instead of having to face all of them at once in a single massed attack.
Of course, once Skynet realized its staging area had been breached, its strategy would undoubtedly change. And quickly.
Giving the area around the warehouse one final check, she swung back around the block, clearing the broken structures around the Moldavia and coming in along the service alley that ran behind the building.
And as she came within sight of the building’s rear, she felt her jaw drop in stunned disbelief.
Skynet’s reserve of Terminators weren’t standing idly by along the neighborhood’s borders, trying to keep everyone inside the kill zone. They were right here—twenty of them at least—single-mindedly pounding at the building’s back wall and ventilation structures, breaking their way inside.
“Hickabick,” she called tautly into her mike. “Double lobster at hole nine. Repeat: double lobster at hole nine.
“And they’re going in.”
“Oh, hell,” Tony Tantillo said.
“And then some,” Connor agreed grimly. A double lobster—ten to twenty T-600s—about to breach the Moldavia. And from the tone of Blair’s voice, he guessed the number was probably closer to twenty than ten. Skynet was throwing an incredible number of resources at the beleaguered building.
“Hickabick, are there any tee times still available?” he called into his mike.
There was a brief silence.
“Yes, but I was hoping to save the last one of the day for Curly,” she replied.
Connor’s eyes flicked toward the south. The last HK had fled several minutes ago and was nowhere in sight, but it would be back the minute Blair ran out of ammo. She couldn’t afford to be caught in that position. Neither could Connor and the breach teams, for that matter.
But the option was for them all to sit back and do nothing, and let Orozco and his people die.
“Tee time at hole nine,” he ordered. “Bring the whole set of clubs.”
“Check,” Blair said.
And with that, the die was cast.
“Barnes?” Connor called.
“I heard,” Barnes said. “Soon as we’re finished here, we’ll see about giving them some support.”
Connor frowned. Getting into the building from Barnes’ position would mean crossing a street that he’d thought Skynet was holding. Had the Terminators abandoned their positions there?
“What about Gulliver?”
“No change,” Kate’s voice put in.
“Yeah, but they gotta be running low on ammo,” Barnes said. “Don’t worry, we’ll make it.”
“Not until Gulliver’s neutralized,” Connor told him firmly. “There’s still that group at green eight, and I don’t want you running through a crossfire. As soon as we’re finished here, we’ll deal with it.”
Barnes muttered something.
“Make it snappy,” he said.
“Here they come,” Joey Tantillo murmured.
Connor peered down the street to the west. The first of the four T-600s had rounded the corner and were starting to move toward McFarland, who was still pelting the remnants of Barnes’ set of targets.
“Easy,” he warned Joey quietly. “Make sure they’re all in view, with nowhere to go.”
“Don’t worry,” Joey murmured back, his hand hovering over the grenade launcher’s trigger.
“The only place they’re going is hell.”
Blair hadn’t been in either of the groups who had scouted the neighborhood earlier that day. She’d never met any of the people of the Moldavia. She also knew that with an HK still armed and flying, spending the last of her ammo on that crowd of T-600s would probably be the last thing she accomplished before her own death.
But it would be worth it. It would very much be worth it.
She roared down the service alley at full speed, ignoring the clatter of minigun fire slamming suddenly into her A-10’s belly. At point-blank range she opened up with her GAU-8, spending her last eighty rounds in a single glorious burst that went through the T-600s like a mowing machine, shattering them into shards of twisted metal and scattering heads and limbs and torsos across the pavement. The roar of her fire abruptly cut off as the gun went dry, and she pulled up and out, circling back around for a visual assessment of the carnage.
She’d accomplished a lot with that strafing run. But not enough. Eight Terminators were still on their feet… and even as she watched, the first of them broke through the wall and disappeared into the building.
“Hickabick,” she said with a sigh. “Tee time over. Lobster going in at hole nine.”
“Check, Hickabick,” Connor’s voice came back, glacially calm as the man always was in combat. “We’ll deal with it. Get clear.”
“Check,” she said.
But she wouldn’t be clear for long, she knew. She’d blown the last of her ammo, and if the surviving Terminators had spotted that half second of dry shooting before she could let up on her trigger, Skynet knew she was empty.
Far to the south, she could see the last remaining HK rising from the refuge where it had gone to ground. No longer cowering from its attacker, it was coming now for vengeance.
Blair took a deep breath, the line of ghosts in the back of her mind shivering with anticipation.
She had cheated death far longer than she’d had any right to, and the bill had finally come due.
But if she was going out, she was going out with flair. One way or another, she was going to keep that HK off Connor’s back. She owed the man that much. The machine was going down.
Even if Blair went down with it.
The Terminator in the ventilation duct had stopped moving and was starting to disintegrate under the withering fire from Orozco’s team when the wall twenty meters away sudden exploded inward.
Orozco had just enough time to see a pair of glowing red eyes before the machine shoving its way through the remaining sheetrock opened fire.
Five men died in that first blast, men who with bitter irony had only been over there in the first place so that they would be out of the way while they reloaded their guns. The next salvo took out three more, mostly those who were quick enough to turn their guns against this new threat. More guns turned toward the Terminator and opened fire, rattling it with multiple impacts but not seeming to cause any serious damage.
And then, behind the Terminator, Orozco saw more red eyes moving in from behind.
“Fall back!” he shouted. “Teams one and two, regroup at the corridor fire stations. Mover The men and women scrambled to obey. But for many it was already too late. The minigun bursts became a roar as the Terminator held down the trigger, filling the area with flesh and blood and bodies. Beside Orozco, Wadleigh gave a sudden agonized cough and started to fall. Orozco grabbed his arm and hauled him bodily around the corner into a corridor filled with fleeing people.
Behind him, the fire ceased as the Terminators temporarily ran out of targets, and Orozco could hear the sound of more tearing sheetrock.
And with that, he knew it was over. With the Terminators still held at bay outside the Ashes, there had still been a chance. With them inside the building, there wasn’t a hope in hell of stopping them.
But that didn’t mean they should just give up. If he and the others were going to die, they were going to make Skynet pay as dearly for its victory as they could.
Only two of the men of Team One had made it to the fall-back positions when Orozco arrived, and only Bauman of Team Two was at the second. Orozco dropped beside the latter, swinging Wadleigh around behind the barrier and taking a moment to lower him as carefully as he could into a sitting position with his back to the wall.