Skynet’s T-600s were slow and obvious, but they had to be physically destroyed before they could be stopped.
Skynet’s Thetas, the ultimate infiltration units, could simply bleed to death.
The barrage faltered, and as the noise faded away Blair could hear someone shouting for the remaining shooters to cease fire.
Eventually, they did.
“Williams?” Barnes called.
Blair looked back to see him and Preston hurrying toward her. Beside Preston, to Blair’s surprise and relief, was Preston’s daughter.
“I’m all right,” Blair called back as she got to her feet and went over to what was left of Oxley.
No movement of limbs or head. Blood still trickling from the wounds. No pulsing or even quivering from the carotid artery, partially visible behind the metal mesh shielding around the Theta’s neck.
“Well?” Barnes asked as the others came up beside her.
“It’s dead,” Blair confirmed, looking at Hope. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” the girl said, her voice shaking a little.
“Not from lack of trying on Valentine’s part,” Preston growled, looking apprehensively behind them. “Hope was able to get the drop on her and pin her to a tree with a couple of arrows.”
“Nice,” Barnes commented. “Not going to hold her long, though. You need to get these people out of here before she makes it back.”
“No argument there.” Preston beckoned to one of the women nearby. “Jessie, get everyone out of town, right now.”
“Where do we go?” Jessie asked.
“Head for the old Glaumann cabin,” Preston told her. “It’s as good a meeting place as any, and I don’t think Lajard or Valentine has ever been there.”
Jessie nodded. “What about you?”
Preston looked in the direction of the river. “Someone needs to go see what happened to the people who were with Jik,” he said. “That should probably be me.”
“I’ll go with you,” Barnes said. “Let me stop by Halverson’s first and get the minigun.”
“You still have ammo for it?” Preston asked.
Barnes nodded, patting the strap of his backpack.
“About thirty rounds. Should be enough to take down a Theta.”
Blair grimaced. That was true enough.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t just one Theta on the loose out there. There were two of them.
“You’ll need more than that,” she said. “I’ll get the Blackhawk. Where should I meet you?”
“How about the ford?” Preston suggested. “Jik has to come that way if he’s going to link up with Valentine.”
“Sounds good,” Barnes confirmed. “There should be room enough on the riverbank for you to put down to let me aboard.” He raised his eyebrows. “Unless you want me to go back to the chopper with you.”
Blair focused on Preston’s expression. He knew what he was going to find out there, all right. Not just a killer Terminator, but the bodies of his friends and neighbors.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
“What about Susan?” Hope asked. “You’ll need a route to your helicopter that she doesn’t know about.”
“No,” Preston said flatly. “You’re going with Jessie and the others.”
“She’ll never find the snaky on her own,” Hope said, just as bluntly.
“What’s the snaky?” Blair asked.
“It’s a route through some of the thickest undergrowth in the area,” Hope told her. “We sometimes go there to hunt rabbits and quail. Susan and Lajard don’t know about it, and they probably couldn’t get through it even if they did.”
“We don’t know that they don’t know about it,” Preston warned darkly. “And there’s nowhere for you to go once you’re inside. If they catch you in the middle, you’ll be sitting ducks.”
“If we don’t destroy them, we’re all dead anyway,” Hope said, fear and anger and determination swirling together in her voice and face. “We need Blair and her helicopter, and she needs me to get to it.”
Preston muttered something. “Williams?”
“She’s right,” Blair said. “For whatever it’s worth, she’ll be as safe with me as she’d be with Jessie. Or with you.”
“And we don’t have time to argue about it,” Barnes put in, digging around in his backpack.
Preston sighed, then nodded. “Be careful,” he said, giving his daughter a quick hug. “Both of you,” he added, looking at Blair.
“We will,” Blair promised.
“Here,” Barnes said, holding out his hand.
Blair blinked in surprise. Clutched in the man’s hand were two spare magazines for her Desert Eagle.
“Where’s you get those?” she asked.
“I always bring extra ammo for all the guns on a mission,” he said, an almost embarrassed gruffness in his voice.
“Good idea.” Taking the magazines, Blair slipped them into her pockets. “Thanks.”
“Watch yourselves, and good luck,” Preston said. “Come on, Barnes. Let’s go get your minigun.” The T-700 convoys had made four more round trips to the tunnel face before Callahan finally decided it was safe enough to risk a quick recon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As usual with tasks that included climbing, this one fell to Callahan. Much of the debris slope he’d used earlier had been collapsed and scattered by the falling concrete slab, but together the three of them were able to build it up enough for him to clamber up to the opening.
The hole itself was smaller than Kyle had estimated earlier, too small for any of them to squeeze through. But Callahan managed to get his head through. Gripping an exposed piece of rebar with one hand and the metal door with the other, he eased up for a look.
He stayed there for a good ten seconds, and in the light seeping down from above Kyle could see his neck moving as he turned his head back and forth. Finally, he pulled his head back through the opening and made the precarious climb back down.
“No watchdog,” he whispered as they all huddled again. “But it looks like they’re almost ready to go with the next blast. They’ve got two of the satchel charges at the base of the tunnel face, and they’ve moved the others way back down the tunnel.”
“Like they’re going to do a second blast further back, too?” Zac asked, frowning.
“No, like they don’t want a second blast at all,” Kyle told him. “Sympathetic detonation—Orozco told me about that once. If you put a bunch of explosives—”
“If you put explosives within four or five feet of each other, triggering one of them triggers the rest along with it,” Callahan finished for him.
“So if everything’s ready, what’s Skynet waiting for?” Zac asked.
“Nightfall, probably,” Callahan said. “The light coming through the roof is pretty weak, so it’s probably getting close to sundown. Maybe Skynet’s planning another attack like last night to cover the noise.”
“Leaving more debris for the Terminators to haul away tomorrow,” Kyle said. “So if we don’t want to spend tonight and most of tomorrow down here, we need to make our move now.”
“The problem is that there aren’t any openings up there, at least none I could see,” Callahan said. “If we want a hole, we’ll have to make our own.”
“You mean with the explosives?” Zac asked.
“Exactly,” Callahan said. “We’ll take the charges, plant them down the tunnel a ways, and blow all of them at once.”
“Wait a minute,” Kyle cautioned. “You know anything about how to place charges for that sort of thing?”
“Zac and I have both had training,” Callahan told him. “And you worked pretty closely with Orozco on some of his demolition stuff. Between us, we should be able to bring down the roof to give us a way out. With a little luck, we might also knock down enough of the roof to seal the Terminators in the other part of the tunnel.”