“Let’s make it fifteen.”
Blair’s best-case scenario was that Lajard wouldn’t have been able to locate the Blackhawk at all. Her next-best hope was that he would locate it, but decide to set up an ambush along the trail from town that Hope’s route through the snaky would circumvent.
No such luck, on either count. They arrived at the edge of the clearing to find Valentine already in the Blackhawk, sitting straight and tall and motionless in the pilot’s seat.
The way a Terminator would sit.
“We’re too late,” Hope whispered, her whole body slumping.
“Easy,” Blair soothed, frowning. They’d come out on the helo’s portside bow, and between the portside door and the broken windshield she could see into most of the cockpit. Valentine was there, but where was Lajard?
And then, she heard a soft, metallic click.
“Try it now,” Lajard’s voice came faintly.
Valentine stirred, hands moving across the controls.
“Nothing.”
There was a muffled curse from the cockpit, and Blair smiled tightly. Lajard wasn’t off somewhere on some dangerous errand. Instead, he was lying on his back under the control panel.
Trying to figure out how Barnes’s kill switch worked.
Blair looked up at the sky, her smile fading. Unfortunately, the stalemate wasn’t going to last much longer. The minute the sun was fully down and long-range transmitters began to function, Skynet would probably download every scrap of data it had on Blackhawk piloting and tech into Valentine. At that point, it would be simple for the Theta to sort through Wince’s jury-rigs and patches and figure out where Barnes had diverted the starter circuit.
And when that happened, the game would be over. Lajard and Valentine would fly out of here, rendezvous with Jik somewhere, and they’d all be off to play the John Connor charade in front of some other trusting and doomed Resistance group.
There was only one way Blair could think of to stop them. One nasty, bloody way.
“We can’t let them leave here, Hope,” she murmured. “We have to take them out. Both of them. Do you understand?”
For a long moment the girl was silent.
“Yes,” she said at last. Even in a whisper her pain and grief were clearly audible. “What do you want me to do?”
“I need you to stay right here while I work my way around the tail to the other side,” Blair told her. “Once I’m there, I’ll find a way to get Susan to turn in my direction. Remember that shot you made across the river this afternoon, where you hit the T-700’s motor cortex?”
Hope’s breath came out in a strangled huff.
“Oh, no,” she breathed. “Please. I can’t do that.”
“I know it’ll be hard,” Blair said gently. “But we have no choice. You saw what Oxley did to those people in town. If Susan and Lajard get away, they’ll do the same to other people somewhere else. Maybe hundreds of other people. It has to stop here.”
Hope didn’t answer. Her face was lowered toward the ground, her eyes squeezed shut.
“That isn’t Susan Valentine,” Blair said. “Not anymore. It’s a Terminator. But if you can nail its control chip, about an inch above the spot where you shot the T-700, there’s a chance that Susan may be able to come back out.”
“And then die?”
Blair sighed. Unfortunately, she was probably right. Shooting the T-700 had disabled the cortex but done little additional damage to the metal skull and processor banks behind it. In Valentine, though, the space inside the metal skull was occupied by a human brain.
Marcus had managed to disable his chip without doing any further damage. But Hope’s arrow probably wouldn’t be that selective. If it hit a seam in the armor and slipped through, Valentine would almost certainly die.
But it had to be done.
Hope knew it, too. The girl took a deep breath and raised her head again.
“All right,” she said, opening her eyes. “But you should stay here. I’ll go around to the other side.”
“It’ll be dangerous to move around this close to the helo,” Blair warned.
“I know this forest,” Hope reminded her. “You don’t. I’ll go.”
Blair hesitated, then nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “But once you’re there, stay under cover until I get their attention to me. How long will it take you?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Hope said. “Maybe twenty. I’ll have to go straight out into the forest, out of sight, then do a big circle around the clearing.”
Blair looked up at the sky. Twenty minutes, with sundown less than an hour away. It was going to be tight.
“Take whatever time you need to keep from being seen,” she said. “And be careful.”
Hope nodded. Holding her bow vertically in front of her where it wouldn’t snag on anything, she slipped silently away into the forest.
The minutes ticked slowly by. Gazing at the helo, listening to Lajard’s cursing, Blair found herself staring at the motionless Valentine.
Wondering what was going on behind the Theta’s stolid expression.
Marcus hadn’t known he was a Theta until the magnetic mine at the Resistance base had blown his body open. Even then, he hadn’t realized he was operating under a secret directive until he reached Skynet Central and Skynet itself revealed the truth to him.
Did Valentine understand what had happened to her? Had the memory of her transformation been erased from her mind, the way Jik’s entire false John Connor memory had been put into him? Or had she always known who and what she was?
Marcus had hated the thought of what he’d become. Oxley, in contrast, had seemed to revel in his new power, strength, and supposed invulnerability.
What was Valentine thinking? The last five minutes, Blair knew, would be the most dangerous, as Hope made her approach back toward the Blackhawk’s starboard side. Blair gave the girl ten minutes, then lifted her Desert Eagle with both hands to point at the cockpit and took a deep breath.
“Lajard?” she called.
There was a moment of silence. Then, beside Valentine, Lajard cautiously raised his head above the control panel, just far enough to see through the broken windshield.
“Williams?” he called back.
“Having trouble starting my helo?”
“Just amusing myself while we wait for sundown,” Lajard said. “I prefer flying at night. You know, it’s really too bad Smith had to open his big fat mouth. It would have been so much better for you and Barnes to leave peacefully. That way, Susan could have intercepted you along the way and killed you more quietly. Or better, I suppose, after you’d gotten the helicopter started.”
“Well, she and I are both here now,” Blair pointed out. “You want to see how we do one-on-one, go ahead and send her out.”
Lajard chuckled. “What, so that Barnes or whoever’s lurking in the bushes can shoot me? Thanks, but I think I’ll keep her right here where she is. Speaking of killing, Susan tells me you killed Nathan.”
“Baker’s Hollow killed Nathan,” Blair corrected. “It takes a village, and all that.”
“That’s cute,” Lajard said with a snort. “You think that one up all by yourself?”
“We all have our moments,” Blair responded, searching the woods on the other side of the helo for signs of movement. So far, nothing.
“You know, your Thetas aren’t nearly as tough as you think. A T-600 or T-700 can take a lot more damage.”
“But Thetas are far better at infiltration,” Lajard pointed out. “I don’t think you’ve grasped the full implications of our time here in the backwater. My Thetas lived among these people for three months—three months—without anyone even suspecting they were anything other than what they seemed.”
“Sounds impressive, all right,” Blair agreed. “Until you realize that once they knew what to look for they picked them out in two hours.”