Heck, John thought, this is the great Southwest. It might have been some fool out shooting bottles and cans a mile away.
He turned toward his escorts and instinctively signed Quiet! Someone's coming!
—indicating the direction by pointing with two fingers. The men lowered their nightscopes and looked. One man! one of them signaled.
John could barely make him out; then off in the distance he saw another hint of movement. Hardly even movement; shadows among shadows, a clatter of a small rocks, shapes trotting forward. Somewhere a coyote howled, distant and as cold as the stars winking into sight in the darkening sky.
They're not exactly sneaking around out there, he thought. Then the hair stood up on the back of his neck. My God. It's them. Terminators. There was no mistaking that straight-forward walk that disregarded terrain and bullets equally.
How many of them are there? Three at least, he answered himself, counting the shooter. He alerted the commandos, pointing off toward the one he'd spotted. He
could no longer see it; the desert was becoming as black as pitch.
Clearly these Terminators weren't in position yet and John wondered why the attack had gone forward without them.
Time seemed to crawl by as the four Terminators closed in on the gully. Alissa had read of this phenomenon, but this was the first time she'd experienced it. She pouted unhappily even as she felt her emotions becoming more and more muted due to the rebalancing of her brain chemistry that her computer was arranging.
Knowing there were armed humans lurking in the dark, she'd ordered the Terminators to approach stealthily. To them that seemed to mean slow down.
For this she was not to blame. Their programming was designed to deal with a different war. Clearly this was something that she and her sister would have to look into.
She frowned impatiently, switching her viewpoint back to the first Terminator on the scene. The humans in the gully had taken refuge behind the car. The man who'd been shot was no longer in evidence. When queried, the Terminator confirmed that he'd been dragged behind the car by von Rossbach and one of the others.
Alissa regretted that the Terminator didn't have a rocket launcher; one shell and problem solved. One of those approaching did have one. But they'd slowed yet again in the interests of silence, so she'd have to wait for the satisfaction of seeing her enemy blown to pieces. She wanted to tell them to get it over with, but held back. She'd already been too impulsive tonight; there was no sense in giving herself more cause for dissatisfaction.
And on the other hand, despite her suspicions, there had been no sign of the Connors. Perhaps she should amend her orders. Well, she'd consider it.
The Sector commandos had counted four men approaching and reported their positions to their fellows. All remained silent in the gully and John surmised that someone had jumped the gun and now was holding back, waiting for reinforcements. That wasn't like a Terminator. Their method was to go for their target. Undirected, the shooter would have been down in that gully exchanging fire ten minutes ago.
Which means, he thought, that we've got another… Serena Burns on our hands, for want of a better name. Another of Skynet's little surprises. Maybe she's less experienced. Then he thought irreverently, There are always two, a master and an apprentice…
He watched the gully for movement, trusting the commandos to watch the approaching Terminators. He wanted badly to warn them what to expect, but knew better; he'd been here before. They'd find out soon enough; let them keep their innocence awhile longer. Perhaps, though…
"These guys are going to be very hard to stop," John said. "Real hard. Sort of like armored-car hard. You won't believe me now, but keep it in mind."
The black-clad gunmen gave skeptical grunts; John shrugged and looked back to the gully. He wondered why the five men huddled behind the dubious protection of the car didn't retreat to the rocks? At least rocks didn't explode when a rocket hit them.
Dieter van Rossbach had seen a lot of wounds. Sully didn't have a sucking chest
puncture, but it was bad, bleeding freely, and might be worse inside. He packed it with bandages from the pouches on the Sector agent's harness, tightened the straps to hold pressure on it, and stabbed a hypo of painkiller from the field medical kit through the cloth of his uniform and into his arm.
All that I can do, he thought, and looked at the two arms dealers. "You're going to contribute some equipment to this, ratfuck," he said, keeping the explanation on a level he estimated their shock-numbed brains could handle. "Do you have any night-sight gear?"
Waylon swallowed as Dieter slipped the trunk open. "Yeah," he said. "In the red plastic box by the spare."
Dieter grunted satisfaction as he slipped the goggles over his head and switched them on. The world sprang back into clear vision, in shades of green and silver; not as good as full light, but fighting Terminators when they could see and you couldn't wasn't his idea of fun. The two arms dealers watched with awe as he loaded up from the rest of their samples; four LAWs across his back—those were collapsible one-shot rockets—a heavy Barrett .50 rifle in his arms, and a slung grenade launcher with a bandolier of 40mm shells. He picked out a few extras—thermite grenades, explosives…
"I suggest you arm yourselves," he said to the two gaping would-be merchants of death. "Things are going to get a bit excessive."
"Use your shotgun, use your shotgun!" John yelled, fighting back a surge of panic.
One of the Sector agents was staring incredulously as a Terminator sat up, its
belly chewed to fragments of flesh held together by blood-sodden cloth. The pistol in its hand came around again, and John winced as the back of the agent's head blew out in a shower of bone fragments and brains. The other black-clad man obeyed, unlimbering the longer weapon from his back and firing as fast as he could rack the slide of the battle shotgun. The dull massive thudump-thudump-thudump split a night full of screams and shots, a huge bottle-shaped flare of gases lancing out with every round. The gun was loaded with rifled slugs—
heavy grooved cylinders of lead, meant for smashing open locks or other demolition work. The massive frame of the Terminator lurched back as each round struck its torso; with the last it toppled backward like a cut-down tree, striking the ground hard enough that John could feel the earth shake beneath him.
"Grenade!" he yelled.
The Sector agent reacted with automatic obedience to something in John's voice, something that struck too deep to remember that he was a teenager or had been a prisoner less than a minute before. John leapt to his feet with a scrambling gracefulness, snatched the smooth egg-shaped mass out of the man's hand.
"Illuminating!" the agent warned.
"All the better," John called back, pulling the pin as he ran and letting the spoon clatter off into the night.
Ought to take him at least fifteen seconds to reboot, he thought— he'd listened carefully as "Uncle Bob" explained the weaknesses of the T-101 class. Sure enough, the massive limbs were just starting to stir as John reached the recumbent form, jammed the grenade into a hole blasted by one of the rifled slugs, jumped, and slammed his heel down on it to drive it deep into the
Terminator's bulky form.
That gave him footing for a backward leap. He blessed the endless hours of practice Sarah had put him through, practice in every form of martial art she could find and gymnastics as well. That let him back-flip back to where the surviving Sector agent waited, staring incredulously as his hands automatically reloaded the shotgun.