Kyle grimaced. He’d been hoping the light meant another big crack in the tunnel ceiling. They might have used an opening like that to get out, or at least to signal the rest of the Resistance people up there.
“So that’s a dead end,” he said.
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure out something,” Callahan said. “At least we’ll have some light if we can get up there.”
“How are we going to do that?” Zac asked.
“Not sure,” Callahan conceded. “The wall beside the gap is a single slab of reinforced concrete—you can see the rebar sticking out. There’s no way we’re going to move it.”
“What about the tunnel floor?” Kyle asked.
“Well, it’s not too thick, and I didn’t see any rebar,” Callahan said. “Probably used to be a roof or a wall that didn’t need to hold up a lot of weight.”
“A non-load-bearing wall,” Kyle supplied, remembering Orozco talking about things like that while they poked around some of the ruined buildings back in Los Angeles.
“Right,” Callahan said. “On the other hand, it’s getting stomped on by T-700s all day, so it can’t be that flimsy. It’s also a little crumbly at the edge, so we might be able to make the hole bigger.”
“Sounds good,” Zac said. “I’ll take first shift.”
“That’s okay,” Callahan said, digging into his pocket. “We can start with my knife. When we wear it down we’ll shift to Reese’s, then we’ll just have to use whatever else we can find.”
“Wait a second,” Kyle said suddenly. “This won’t work.”
“Sure it will,” Callahan assured him. “It’ll take awhile, but—”
“No, I mean we can’t do it,” Kyle said. “The Terminators will see the hole get bigger each time they go by.”
There was a brief silence.
“You’re right,” Callahan muttered. “Damn.”
“So what do we do?” Zac asked anxiously. “It’ll take forever to go back to the other hole.”
“No point in doing that anyway,” Callahan said heavily. “The Terminators are bound to still be watching the conduit. I suppose we could try backtracking and see if there’s an opening we missed.”
“There wasn’t anything,” Kyle asked, peering up. The underside of the tunnel floor was hard to see in the reflected light coming from the opening. But even so—
“Probably not,” Callahan agreed heavily. “But it’s all we’ve got.”
“Maybe not,” Kyle said, pointing at the ceiling. “Is that a crack up there?”
The others looked up.
“You mean that line angling across there?” Zac asked, his pointing finger tracing out the path.
“Looks like a crack to me,” Callahan agreed. “But if you think the Terminators will notice the gap getting bigger, they’ll really notice if a quarter of the path they’re walking on disappears.”
“Right, but only if we’re the ones who bring it down,” Kyle said. “What if we just deepen the crack enough so that the next batch of T-700s breaks through? Maybe Skynet will assume it had too much stress and gave way by itself.”
“Of course, if it doesn’t assume that, we’ll have a whole mess of Terminators down here hunting us,” Callahan pointed out. “But it’s worth a try.”
He looked upward again.
“You’re not going to be able to reach the crack from the slope. I guess that means you’ll be standing on our shoulders.”
“Hang on a second,” Kyle said, looking behind them. “I think I saw a door frame back there.”
“Yeah,” Zac said. “It was... there it is, over there.”
The frame was partially buried in concrete chips, but it took only a little effort for the three of them to dig it out. A minute after that, they had it in place beneath the ceiling crack, lying on its long side.
“Perfect,” Callahan said, testing its balance. “Wide enough to stand on, and all you two have to do is brace it to keep it from falling over. Okay, hold it steady.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until the Terminators have made their next round?” Zac suggested. “We don’t want you making scraping noises while they’re on their way in.”
“Right,” Callahan said reluctantly, sitting down beside the frame. “I just hope we can get this done before they blast through into the camp.”
“We will,” Kyle said firmly. “We have to.”
It took an hour for the people of Baker’s Hollow to gather the equipment Jik had asked for, and to then make the necessary modifications for what he had in mind. During that time Halverson’s runners brought in three reports from the men tailing the T-700 on the east bank of the river, which seemed to be tracing out a sentry line half a mile north of town that ran from the river to a couple of miles east.
The obvious inference was that the Terminator was guarding something. But neither Preston nor Halverson could think of anything up there that Skynet might be hiding, unless it thought Jik was still out there and was searching for him.
Finally, with the equipment prepped and their ambush positions chosen, they were ready.
Jik had already decided to lean the main, riskier attack. With Halverson and several of the others, he headed north to intercept the Terminator on their side of the river. Preston and the rest went to reinforce the guard at the ford, and to prepare for the moment when the other T-700 returned and tried to cross the river.
And as Jik and Halverson headed toward the spot they had chosen for their ambush, Jik found himself thinking about Barnes and Williams. Thinking, and wondering.
Mercenaries or paramilitary gang members he could understand. They might have spotted Baker’s Hollow and come in to scope out its resources for theft or barter. Con artists he could similarly understand, though how a pair of scammers could have gotten hold of a working helicopter he couldn’t guess. Still, in either scenario it would make sense for them to come in masquerading as Resistance fighters.
But in neither scenario was there any reason why they would be so stupid as to claim Jik was a fraud.
It made no sense. Even if Jik had been a fraud, why would they open themselves up to suspicion and the risk of serious consequences, consequences that had now in fact rained down on them? Why not keep quiet, pretend to be from a distant Resistance unit which had never had any direct contact with Jik, and try to get through the rest of their agenda before anyone figured out who they really were?
There was more depth to this thing than Jik had yet been able to sort out. But he would sort it out.
In the meantime, there were Terminators to be dealt with.
They reached the ambush point to find a man and woman waiting for them, the woman crouched beside a tree, the man pacing nervously back and forth.
“About time,” the latter said as Jik and the others came up. “This is the path Singer says it’s been walking.” He gestured, indicating a roughly east-west direction.
“But it doesn’t trace out exactly the same path each time,” Jik said, eyeing the tall grass that covered most of the ground area between the trees. “Otherwise it would have worn a more well-defined furrow.”
“That’s right,” the woman confirmed. “Will that be a problem?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Jik said. “How soon before it comes back this way?”
“Probably ten minutes,” the man said. “At least ten. Maybe fifteen.”
“Ten should be plenty,” Jik said, gesturing to the men lugging the equipment. “Let’s get to work.”
Eight minutes later, they were ready. Three minutes after that, Jik felt the first subtle vibrations through the ground as the T-700 approached.
“Get ready,” he murmured to the others.
And then, there it was, pushing aside low-hanging branches and wading through knee-high grass as it walked its solitary sentry path. Its G11 submachinegun was held ready, its metallic skull and glowing eyes swept methodically back and forth.