“Go!” he shouted.
For a single, awful second nothing happened. The Terminator’s hands reached toward the noose, fumbling for a grip—
And then the trailing rope snapped upward toward the sturdy branch it was looped over as the men behind Preston hauled on the loose end. The noose twitched out of the Terminator’s groping fingers and closed solidly around its neck.
Preston looked behind him as the two big men hidden in the tree leaned backward, one of them above the other, and fell toward the ground.
And as they did so, the rope wrapped around their waists snapped taut, their combined weight pulling upward on the Terminator’s neck, stretching the deadly machine between the bear trap around its leg and the noose around its neck.
Instantly, the machine abandoned the noose now snugged too tightly around its neck to be gripped and shifted its attention to the rope itself. But its damaged right hand was unable to get enough grip for it to simply tear the rope apart.
It was still trying when Chris, Dowder, and Pappas came running up and opened fire with their shotguns and Barnes’s long sniper rifle. Twenty seconds later, its arms severed from its shoulders, the Terminator was helpless.
Five minutes after that, it was dead.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Not too close together,” Preston warned as Half-pint started to set one of the Terminator’s legs down beside the other. “Magnetic reattachment, remember?”
“Oh. Right.” Half-pint took a couple of long steps farther to the side and set down the leg.
Preston looked over the scattering of Terminator pieces spread out on the riverbank. It was an impressive array, all right. Rather like a live-action version of the exploded-machine diagrams from his auto mechanic days.
“So what do we do with all of it?” Half-pint asked.
A movement caught Preston’s eye, and he looked over to see Connor and Halverson coming through the trees, their team lugging pieces of their own wrecked Terminator.
“I think we’re about to find out,” he said.
“Excellent job, Mayor,” Connor said as he and the others arrived at the riverside and dumped their fragments of Terminator onto the grass. “Clean sweep. And the fact that Skynet sent in yours to try to rescue ours means it hasn’t got any other resources in the area. Good news all around.”
“Doesn’t mean it won’t put together another group and send them in,” Halverson warned.
“Life is uncertain,” Connor conceded. “But at the very least we’ve bought ourselves some time. And it’s still possible that Skynet will decide you’re not worth the effort of rooting out. That certainly seems to have been its assessment up until now.”
“Except that things have changed,” Halverson pointed out. “For one thing, we’ve just wrecked four of its Terminators. For another, you’re here.”
“Nothing we can do about the first,” Connor said. “As to the second, I won’t be here for long.”
“What about the base you said you wanted to set up?” Preston asked.
“That’s something I still want to explore,” Connor told him. “But later. When I return, it’ll be with a full Resistance force.”
“Why not just stay here and send for them?” Preston persisted. “Skynet’s probably expecting you to move on. In that case, staying here might be safer”
“We know you’ve got a radio you can call them with,” Hope added, coming up beside Preston. “You’ve been making broadcasts.”
“A small one, yes,” Connor said thoughtfully. “An interesting suggestion, and one I’ll have to think about.” He looked down at the scattered Terminator pieces. “But first we have a lot of junk we need to dispose of. I don’t suppose you have any thermite back in town?”
“We have a pretty decent forge,” Halverson offered.
Connor shook his head.
“I doubt it’ll melt T-700 alloy. Our best bet is probably to dump the pieces into that ravine west of the river.”
“You and Williams already did that,” Preston reminded him. “The machine got out just fine.”
“Only because it was more or less intact,” Connor said. “As long as we make sure to scatter the pieces far enough apart, we shouldn’t have a problem.”
“Well, whatever we’re going to do, let’s do it,” Halverson rumbled, looking up at the sky. “I want to be back in town before it gets dark.”
“Good point.” Connor raised his eyebrows. “Mayor?”
“I guess the ravine’s as good a spot as any,” Preston agreed reluctantly. “Fine. Everyone? We’re heading across the river. Grab something, and let’s go.”
“We don’t need everybody,” Halverson said as the men and women began picking up the dented and scarred pieces of metal. “Connor and I can handle this. You can take whoever we don’t need and head back.”
Preston was used to Halverson throwing his weight around, and he’d more or less become accustomed to it. But doing it in front of John Connor himself was proving far more embarrassing than it usually was.
But until and unless Connor actually brought in his Resistance group—his group, and the food supplies he’d mentioned—Halverson would continue to have all the weight that his expert hunter status gave him.
And in this case he also happened to be right. There was no point in everyone tromping off into the woods if they weren’t needed. There was plenty of other work to be done in town.
“All right,” he said. “But take a few guards along, too. In case you run into something you can’t handle with your arms full.”
“Fine,” Halverson said. He walked away, tagging a few of the armed men and women who weren’t currently hefting a piece of broken Terminator.
“Speaking of which, Mayor,” Connor said, “I wonder if I might borrow that sidearm of yours. The .45 you loaned me is empty.”
Preston looked down at his waist, where Williams’s Desert Eagle was riding snugly in its holster.
“I don’t see why not—”
“We should keep that one with us,” Hope interrupted suddenly. “You’ve still got their shotgun, right. Won’t that do?”
“Hope—” Preston began warningly.
“That’s all right,” Connor soothed. “Actually, she’s right—we have more than enough firepower already.” He smiled at Preston. “We’ll see you back in town. And once again, Mayor, you and the others did a superb job today. You should be very proud.”
“We are,” Preston said, his annoyance at Halverson fading. Whatever points Halverson thought he was scoring with Connor by ordering Preston around, it was clear that Connor was seeing right through it. “Watch yourselves out there.”
“We will,” Connor assured him.
Walking past the line of waiting townspeople, Connor waded into the rushing water.
“Any particular reason you didn’t want me to give him Blair’s gun?” Preston muttered to his daughter.
For a moment she was silent. Preston watched as Connor made it across, followed by Halverson and Half-pint.
“I don’t trust him,” Hope said at last. “Something about him doesn’t seem right.”
Preston looked sideways at her, his reflexive objection dying in his throat. The only person in town, he reminded himself, whose opinion he genuinely trusted.
“In what way?” he asked instead.
“John Connor’s supposed to be some kind of legend, right?” Hope said. “What in the world would someone like that be doing way out here? Especially alone and on foot?”
Preston pursed his lips as an unsettling thought suddenly occurred to him.