Connor took the lead into the tunnel, Kate right on his heels, feeling their way around the parked jeeps and trucks when it got too dark to see.
He had no sense that the walls were narrowing, or that the ceiling was getting any lower as they penetrated farther into the mountain. But the air seemed danker, more stagnant. It smelled of rock dust, leaking motor oil, disintegrating rubber tires, and something else. Some distant odor that might have been electrical.
Maybe he was smelling electronic equipment that had been suddenly switched on after lying dormant for many years. It was not a comforting thought.
As best he could estimate they had gone at least one hundred yards into the tunnel when they came to a dead end. A wall made of steel with deep vertical grooves blocked their way.
Connor moved to the right, reaching the edge of the steel wall in five or ten feet, and feeling what he thought was a concrete lip, or edge.
'I think it's some kind of a blast door,' he told Kate. He dug in his jacket pocket and found a book of matches. He lit them all at once. .
In the sudden glow he could see that he was right. It was a steel blast door set into the concrete, and meant to
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be raised or lowered into place with powerful electrical motors.
Large air vents, covered by steel bars, opened in the tunnel walls beside the blast doors.
But the entry looked impregnable.
'No way we can blow this open,' Connor said, his spirits sinking.
'Maybe we don't have to,' Kate said. She'd found what looked like an old-fashioned security station and card reader.
The matches died as Kate slid open a panel that covered a small keypad. A dim light came on that provided just enough illumination for them to see what they were doing.
Connor looked over her shoulder. A small LED screen above the keypad flashed with the single word: standby. After a moment that word was replaced by the letters and numbers: blue 478.
'Now what?' Kate asked. She was just as conscious as he that they were running out of time.
'It's a code prompt,' Connor said. He pulled out the red envelope they'd taken from General Brewster's safe back at CRS, and hurriedly flipped through the code cards. He found one tinted in blue, which contained one word and three numbers. 'Here. Type in DAKOTA, seven-seven-five.'
Kate entered the code and the LED screen flashed: | power on.
Lights came to life above the door and in the tunnel ceiling.
The keypad beeped and the LED screen lit up with the next prompt.
'We're almost in,' Connor said excitedly.
They could see now that they were in front of a massive blast door. A notice posted to the right warned that this was a secure area. To the left the notice warned personnel to stand clear.
Connor was about to look for the proper code card when they both heard the distinctive thump of an approaching helicopter. But close. Behind them at the tunnel entrance.
They turned toward the sound. Now that the lights were on they could see all the way to the end.
A helicopter suddenly crashed through the hangar-type door with a tremendous racket, bursting into the tunnel on a trail of sparks and shooting flames. Pieces of the rotors and the tail section and landing skids flew off in all directions as the machine came to a halt, nose over, in front of a pickup truck.
The pilot's door opened and a woman dressed in a rust-colored outfit climbed out of the machine.
Kate took a step backward, her complexion turning instantly pale. 'It's her?'
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The T-X showing up here was the one thing Connor knew that he should have counted on, but had not.
Kate was losing it. The T-X had become her worst nightmare.
'Come on, come on, the next prompt,' Connor shouted at her.
She looked at him. Her mouth worked, but no sounds came out. She remained frozen, but then she blinked as if she were waking from a trance, and turned back to the security screen.
'RED, one-seven-six,' she replied.
Connor flipped through the cards, his hands shaking. He dropped them and had to scramble on his hands and knees to pick them up. He found the correct card. 'AV-ALON, four-one-two.'
Kate punched in the new code. The reader beeped twice, the prompt disappeared from the screen, and was replaced by a single word: authorized.
An alarm came to life, and red warning lights began d rotate as a powerful metallic bang reverberated in the
thick steel door. It began to rise on the hum of powerful motors.
But it was slow, ungreased metal on metal squealing in protest, a deep rumbling vibration spreading through the tunnel. Small rocks skittered down the walls and dust drifted down from the ceiling.
The T-X was halfway up the tunnel and moving fast. Too fast, Connor gauged. They would never make it through to the other side and get the blast doors closed and locked before she was on them.
They were so damned close.
Connor pushed Kate aside and reached into his knapsack for a brick of C-4 and a fuse. He might be able to buy them some time by setting off a charge as far down the tunnel as he could toss it. If the timing was right he might be able to bring down a section of roof on top of the T-X's head.
If he was off, he could bring the roof down on him and Kate.
A tremendous noise filled the tunnel. It was even louder than the rising blast door. It took Connor just a moment to identify what he was hearing. It was another helicopter, this one much larger than the one the T-X had crashed into the tunneL
He stepped back another pace.
T-X heard the same deep-throated thump of large rotor blades lifting a heavy machine, and she stopped and turned just as a large troop transport chopper crashed through the already breached tunnel entrance.
This one moved much faster than hers, its rotors
sheared off immediately on the tunnel walls and the fuselage dropped to the concrete floor.
Its weight and momentum carried it over and through the parked trucks, jeeps, and even the bulldozer, all of which exploded like firecrackers on a string.
Still it came, shearing past the Iroquois helicopter and careening down the tunnel like an express train on tracks of fire and sparks.
T-X spun on her heel and headed in a dead run down the tunnel toward where Connor and Kate stood momentarily stunned, rooted in place. The helicopter was right on her back.
Connor came alive first. He grabbed Kate by the arm and propelled her across the tunnel to a maintenance trench in the concrete floor. They leaped into it, and Connor shoved her below the edge, shielding her body with his.
The transport helicopter and vehicles it had picked up smashed into the T-X, engulfing the cyborg in twisted metal and flames. The chopper finally ground to a halt, pieces of burning wreckage flying down the tunnel and hammering off the blast door.
A different siren started to blare, and another set of red and yellow warning lights began to strobe.
Connor and Kate lifted up from the edge of the trench in time to see Terminator emerge from the twisted wreckage of the helicopter.
Half his skin and much of his clothing had been sheared away and burned off in the intense heat of the
aviation-gas-fed flames. His metallic endoskeleton was exposed, and even some of his hydraulics and electromechanical mechanisms were open to the air.
But he moved like his old self, with a smooth determination. And though much of his duraplast skin was gone or shredded they could recognize his usual sardonic expression.
Connor had never been so glad to see anyone in his life.
Terminator stopped in front of the trench and looked down at them. 'I'm back,' he said.
The blast door had only opened a couple feet, and then stopped.
