Kyle winced. And if they had no luck at all, the blast might collapse their end of the tunnel and kill all three of them.
But Callahan was right. Skynet knew someone was down here, and they couldn’t stay hidden from the Terminators forever.
“Okay, but maybe we should wait a little longer,” he said. “If it’s still light outside, most of the fighters and all of the big guns will still be working out by the daytime perimeter. If the blast lets any of the T-700s get out, they could kill a lot of people.”
“It’s a risk, I know,” Callahan said heavily. “But if we push things too far, we may be trapped down here by Terminators making last-minute checks and adjustments.”
“And if we let Skynet blow the tunnel on its schedule, we know a lot of people will die,” Zac added.
“He’s right,” Callahan said. “This is the best window we’re going to get. I think we need to go for it.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I’m in,” Zac said.
Kyle took a deep breath. “Me too.”
Callahan nodded. “Let’s do it.”
The first job, getting up into the tunnel, was easier said than done. The metal door the Terminators had laid over the broken concrete was too heavy for Callahan to push it clear by himself.
In retrospect, Kyle realized as he and Zac made the precarious climb up the debris alongside their companion, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Not only did the door have to handle the weight of T-700s walking over it, but also the extra burden of whatever chunks of metal or concrete those T-700s were carrying.
Fortunately, with all three of them pushing, the door finally moved, and without any of the teeth-jarring screeching that metal on concrete often made.
A minute later, for the first time in hours, they were back in the tunnel.
“We’ll start with those,” Callahan whispered, pointing to the two charges sitting against the tunnel face. “You two get them—I’ll head down the tunnel and look for a place to set them up.”
“You want this?” Kyle asked, pulling his shotgun from his belt and offering it to Callahan.
The other shook his head. “Maybe later.” Checking his footing, he headed down the tunnel.
Kyle turned back to the explosives, a hard lump forming in his throat. He’d dealt with the stuff several times back when the three of them were living in Los Angeles. But those had all been pipe bombs or something similar, with flammable fuses. Canvas-wrapped packages with a fist-sized box wired into both bombs were way outside his area of experience.
“You know anything about these things?” he asked Zac as the two of them crouched down beside them.
“A little,” Zac said, gingerly picking up the small box and turning it over in his hand. “This is the detonator. Not sure what type—I’ll have to pull off some of this outer wrapping to see what’s inside.”
“Is that safe?” Kyle asked, forcing himself not to edge away as Zac started carefully peeling away the plastic.
“Should be,” Zac said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
He angled the partially open package toward the light coming in through the ceiling.
“Looks like a solenoid plunger system,” he said. “We use this type, too. It’s pretty simple...”
He trailed off.
“What?” Kyle asked.
Zac visibly braced himself.
“It’s a plunger,” he said. “That means it has to get physically pushed in to trigger the bomb. The solenoid coil around it is just there to do the pushing. Radio controlled, probably—this thing here looks like a receiver.”
“You mean Skynet could set it off right now?” Kyle asked, his skin crawling a little.
“You’re missing the point,” Zac said, his voice suddenly gone brittle. “It’s a plunger, and we don’t have a radio to set it off. That means one of us will have to stay behind and push it.”
Kyle looked down at the short wires running from the detonator to the charges.
“Could we make the wires longer?” he asked.
“If we had more wire, sure,” Zac said, looking around. “But I don’t see any.” He stood up, holding the detonator gingerly in one hand as he picked up one of the wrapped explosives with the other. “Let’s get these back to Callahan. Maybe he’ll have an idea.”
“Okay,” Callahan said after Zac had explained the situation. “Let’s focus on getting these things placed. Then we’ll figure out where to go from there.”
“Meaning what?” Kyle asked suspiciously.
“That we’ll figure out where to go from there,” Callahan repeated, an edge to his voice. The same edge, Kyle noted, that Yarrow had had when he’d pulled his gun and ordered the three of them to cover. “There are six more charges, right?”
“Meaning you’ll stay behind and trigger the detonator?” Kyle asked.
Callahan looked him straight in the eye.
“When Yarrow died, I became senior man here,” he said flatly. “If it comes to that... yes.”
Zac stirred. “We should probably draw straws or something,” he suggested hesitantly.
“Or maybe we should pretend we’re Resistance soldiers who follow military procedure and chain of command.” Callahan held up a hand as Kyle started to speak. “And if we stand around arguing until the Terminators get back, we lose by default. Now go get the rest of the charges like I told you while I get these positioned.”
Clenching his teeth, Kyle turned and headed back down the tunnel. Zac lingered another moment, then followed.
“What are we going to do?” the younger teen muttered as he caught up to Kyle.
“You heard him,” Kyle said grimly. “If it comes to that, he’s going to take the job.”
They got another three paces before Zac spoke again.
“So we just have to make sure it doesn’t come to that.”
“You got it,” Kyle said. “So get busy and think. Think hard.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Callahan’s shadowy figure as he knelt down by the explosives. “And think fast.”
There was no way to know how far the disposal group had gotten before Lajard’s activation code had turned Jik from a John Connor pretender into a killer Terminator. There was also no way to know how long it had taken the Theta to finish its bloody task. Probably, knowing Terminators, not very long.
Which meant Barnes and Preston should have run into the machine again somewhere between Baker’s Hollow and the river.
Only they hadn’t.
“What now?” Preston asked over the roar of the water as he and Barnes stood in the partial shelter of the trees near the river. “Go on, or go back?”
“You’re the expert,” Barnes said, frowning as he eyed the far bank. Was something moving behind the foliage over there? “Are there any paths he could have used to get past us?”
“Not unless he headed up to the bridge and crossed that way.”
“Yeah,” Barnes said, consciously letting his eyes move away from the area where he’d seen movement. Jik had already caught him and Williams that way once. “What’s with that bridge, anyway? He told us he helped you build it.”
“Someone helped me build it,” Preston said. “But that was forty years ago, and I don’t remember the kid’s face well enough to know whether that was Jik or not.” He grimaced. “But even if Jik isn’t him, Skynet must have had access to the real guy somewhere along the line. Otherwise how could Jik have known about the bridge?”
“All of his Connor memories were false,” Barnes pointed out. “Maybe the childhood ones are, too.”