Of course, if he fired from the shoulder standing up, it would knock him over.
BRACK! The vicious blue sparks of a hardpoint on steel, and the "skull" dropped from its severed metal spine. BRACK. This time the muzzle was close enough to the face of the killer machine that the muzzle blast burned more flesh from the eye. The bullet went in through the orbit and punched out through the rear, sending the metal bouncing into the night.
"Well," John said. "So—that proof enough for you?"
Dieter looked at him, and at Sarah, climbing groggily to her feet, blood running from small cuts on her arms and skirt stripped away by the blasts. He looked
down at the… can't call it a corpse, he thought. It was never alive.
"That," he said, "is more proof than I wanted to have."
John laid the empty weapon down and made a grab. The puppy dodged past him, threw itself at the remains of the Terminator, and began to worry at its leg. The boy—young man—scooped it up.
"And now you see why I can't have a dog," he said, and buried his face for a moment in the animal's fur.
* * *
Marco sat in the car, whacking the occasional insect and waiting. His stomach felt like it was wrapped around a jagged rock. He wanted to pace, but didn't dare lest it interfere with his passenger's equipment. And for the first time in his life he actually wanted to smoke.
He checked his watch. It had only been about fifteen minutes. It just felt like it should be midnight. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.
Marco heard a sudden pop like a firecracker and he jumped. Then there was silence. He stared expectantly into the darkness as though he would be seeing fireworks any moment now. A flash and a hollow boom sound. Then there was another series of pops, and off to the side a bright light. It held steady, there were more pops and the light gradually began to diminish.
"Shots?" Marco said out loud, and instinctively knew he was right.
He got out of the car and moved toward the ravine, then stopped, uncertain what
to do. He was unarmed and now there seemed to be shots coming from all directions. Cassetti shifted from foot to foot anxiously.
Then he thought he should get the car started and be ready for a getaway. The big guy looked like he knew how to take care of himself. He'd come barreling down that ravine any second now, ready to jump in the car and make their escape.
Marco got into the car and carefully turned it around so that it faced the track. He sat in the driver's seat, but he was so wound up his butt barely touched the cushions. He stared into the darkness, waiting, listening.
"C'mon," Cassetti urged. "Let's go! Cut your losses and get out of there, man!"
Then there was a blast that blew a ball of flame over the low hill that hid the Krieger estancia from view. It was followed by complete silence.
Gradually insect noises returned and Marco let out his breath in a great gasp. It was time to go, he realized. If his passenger had survived that, he'd have arrived by now. Marco set the car into careful motion, the lights still out, finding his way down the track by the scant light of the moon.
He didn't turn the headlights on until he was a mile down the actual road and then he sped up to a downright dangerous forty. His mind ran around and around like a cricket in a jar. Should he stop in Villa Hayes and tell the police? Surely they would arrest him. What were you doing out there? they'd ask. And what could he say? Oh, I was just bringing Senor von Rossbach's cousin out there to spy on him. Really? And why did you do that?
It wouldn't do, he realized as he drove past the town. Someone had died out there tonight. There was nothing he could do to change that fact. The only thing he could change by telling the authorities would be his own future, and not for the better.
He would tell his client. And then that would be it. She'd have to get someone else from now on. He hadn't hired on for this. For all he knew the big man was supposed to blow him away, too.
Marco's mind went still at that. He remembered Griego's mysterious absence from his office—the intimidating man's too pat explanation for it. He gasped and stepped down on the accelerator, certain to his soul that he'd just escaped with his life.
Suddenly the restaurant business didn't look so bad.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SARAH CONNOR'S ESTANCIA,
PARAGUAY: THE PRESENT
Sarah stroked the puppy's velvet ears and laughed when he began to wag his tail and tried to lick her; a wiggling puppy amid the stink of burn propellant and scorched flesh.
"Actually this little guy is a good argument for why we always ought to have a dog," she said. "When it comes to Terminators, there's no early-warning system more effective."
"We can't take him with us, Mom," John said. He shifted the little dog's weight.
"Much as I'd like to. He's too young and he's completely untrained. He'd be a danger to us and to himself."
"I know." She leaned in and nuzzled the puppy, who redoubled his efforts to lick everything in sight. With a sigh she turned to Dieter. "You'll have to take him home with you. And, if you would be so kind, please take my horse, Linda, as well.
Looking over, she saw that he had a hitch attached to his car.
"Would you mind getting the trailer set up while John and I police the area here?" she asked.
"Police… ?" Dieter looked confused.
"We have to break that up into unrecognizable pieces," she explained, pointing to the defunct Terminator. "Then we'll burn the house down around it."
"You might want to hurry, then," Dieter said with a nod toward the house. "It looks like the fire in the living room is taking hold."
"Shit!" Sarah said. "John, get our stuff out of there. I'll take care of this."
" We'll take care of this," Dieter amended. He noticed that John put the dog down and jogged toward the house without a word. Good training, he thought, impressed by the young man's discipline. It was as if the faces of the people he'd first met were peeling away like masks, and beneath were… well, people pretty much like these, ready to fight or run for their lives at any moment.
Without asking, Sarah reached over, unbuckled, and pulled off Dieter's belt, yanking it from around his waist in one smooth move, startling him. Then she knelt and put it through Harold's collar, making a leash, which she then handed to Dieter.
Von Rossbach laughed. "I'll just put him in the car," he said, and led the puppy away. He looked over his shoulder. "I'll be back."
Sarah nodded absently. She went over to the woodpile and picked up the ax, then turned to the Terminator's severed legs, still jittering strangely on the ground.
"Damn," she said softly, and lofted the ax.
By the time Dieter returned she had the feet and lower legs separated and was working on the hips. He had brought a crowbar from the tool kit he kept in his trunk and a massive pair of bolt cutters. He placed his foot on one of the lower-leg pieces and began to work the crowbar, wrenching until it came apart.
The flesh and blood made it a gruesome task, despite the metal clearly visible beneath. He fought down his disgust and kept doggedly working the pieces apart. If Sarah could do it, so could he.
John came out in a few minutes and dropped a couple of cases. He was wearing a huge backpack; he swung it down to the ground with a grunt and then picked up the separated pieces of the Terminator, trotting back into the house with them.