Infiltrator

civilians, and he wasn't in command of the defense against whoever it was that was trying to kill them.

The feeling was reinforced as Sarah—he reminded himself to call her that—

came leopard-crawling back from the kitchen and ripped an M-16 rifle with a scope sight out from under the cushions of the sofa. Even her body language had changed as she slapped back the weapon's bolt, still graceful but with all softness gone from it.

'What have you got in the way of fixed defenses?' he said, for want of something better.

'Floods,' she replied briskly. 'Israeli surplus personal surveillance radar.

Reinforced doors and windows, with breeching alarms.' Her eyes crinkled slightly. 'Poor Dieter—I think you're going to get that proof you wanted. If we survive this.' Then she shook her head. 'No if about it. We have to survive.'

'I was planning on it,' he said, and smiled. 'In a way, I am relieved.'

'How do you spell relief…' Sarah said. Then: ' Down!'

Before the word, the hollow choonk of a grenade launcher had already sent Dieter diving for the cover of one of the heavy leather armchairs. As he pulled it over on himself he saw Sarah burrowing under the couch. Here was a woman after his own heart…

BAADUMP.

Flame and splinters of tempered armor glass and a wave of heat washed over him; something stung his left hand. He sucked on the cut as he came up behind the thick chair, aiming his Glock out the empty space where the big window had been. A figure stirred beyond the lawn and flower beds, moving. He squeezed

off two rounds from his pistol—long-range, but he'd always been a good instinctive shot. Sarah's assault rifle gave a spiteful crack-crack-crack, firing on semiauto, but rapidly. He saw the figure lurch and spin, something flying from its hand.

'I knocked it down!' Sarah called—loud enough to sound like a shout, even to his battered ears. So John can hear, Dieter thought. 'It lost the grenade launcher!'

'Knocked it down?' Dieter said. 'Did you hit him?'

'It,' Sarah said coolly. 'Five rounds into the center of mass.'

Even body armor won't stop rifle rounds at less than a hundred yards, Dieter thought: 5.56 rounds were high velocity; and they tumbled in a wound. That many would cut a man in half, spill his guts over the ground.

'That'll put it out for a minute or so,' Sarah said. 'It'll have to reboot. C'mon.'

She'd fallen into English, unnoticed. Dieter reacted automatically, helping her push the heavy furniture into an improvised barricade against the ruin of the window; she stooped and threw the rug to one side as well.

'Heads up!' came John's voice, faint down the stairs.

'Won't he try another entrance?' Dieter said.

'No, he knows John and I are here,' Sarah said, with a bleakness that added years to the age her voice sounded. 'And he… it… will figure that the highest

probability is to head straight for us. They're hard to stop.'

They must be, if they can take half a dozen assault-rifle slugs in the belly, Dieter thought. Cautiously he peered over the top of the couch into the glare of the lights outside.

An arm came over the edge of the retaining wall at the lower end of the lawn, holding the pistol grip of a rifle in one hand — Galil or Kalishnikov, he couldn't tell which. No problem, nobody could control —

The rifle's muzzle began strobing red in the night, precise three-round bursts.

One by one the floodlights died, and darkness settled over the estancia buildings… darkness, and more silence than usual. Many of the creatures of the night had prudently shut up, when humans were hunting.

Or things that look human, Dieter thought, feeling the eeriness of that impossibly precise shooting clutch at his stomach. No time. Think about it later.

Sarah slipped goggles down over her eyes, handed him a pair; he donned them, adjusting the strap for his larger head. Israeli manufacture; not the latest model but solid electronics. The night turned a bright silvery green, and he could see the man —

The Terminator, he thought.

— climbing over the edge of the wall, coming forward with the assault rifle in one hand and an Uzi in the other, using both as if they were light pistols. Just as the figure in the tape from the police station had done, the one that killed seventeen armed men. The clothing across its middle was shredded, the fabric

wet with blood. Beneath the gore he thought he saw something shining.

'How are we going to stop it?' he shouted.

'Draw its fire!' Sarah snapped back.

I defer to your knowledge, he thought, and emptied the Glock at the looming figure marching toward them at a brisk walk.

The bullets struck; he could see them hit, punching holes in the leather coat. The face was his own, but it didn't even twitch — just turned toward him like a turret swiveling, weapons coming up. A nightmare, in which he tried to kill himself and couldn't. ,

He ducked, and automatic fire chewed at the thick stone of the window ledge; ricochets whined and howled into the house. Sarah thumbed the selector switch of her M-16 to full auto, popped up, and hosed the clip into the approaching thing. It fell back, staggered, flopped onto its back… and began to move again.

Dieter's mind gibbered as his hands went through the automatic motions of reloading — sixteen rounds in a Clock, and he had only the one spare magazine.

Perhaps if we pump enough lead into it, it will be too heavy to stand?

Then a sound came from the floor above them. BRACK! The Barrett rifle firing; firing a heavy machine-gun round with a slug the size of a man's thumb, designed for use against armored cars and military helicopters.

Dieter had turned to fire again, feeling like he was using a child's slingshot; he saw the massive form of the Terminator fly backward six feet and flop down.

BRACK. Another of the heavy bullets slammed into the thing's body; the Austrian felt his eyes going wide. He'd seen armored fighting vehicles blow up from less damage. BRACK. BRACK.

The body lay sprawled fifteen yards from the window, spread-eagled, weapons gone. Dieter suppressed an impulse to empty his pistol into it and then go for a bulldozer and a load of concrete. He forced himself to take deep slow breaths, the scent of cordite paradoxically soothing, an element of normality in this nightmare. There was blood welling from the ripped leather and flesh of the dead… machine, he decided. But not nearly enough blood, and no bone fragments or coils of red-purple intestine. Instead, once again, he could see a gleam of metal, and now a spark, as if something electronic were shorting out.

'Well…' he began, turning to Sarah. Her face relaxed as well. Then she looked over his shoulder, and her teeth showed in a snarl.

' Fuck this!' she shouted as he turned and saw the outstretched arms lift, the fingers flex, the face like a death-mask wax of his own rising to look at them again. One eye glowed red in the bloodied, shredded visage.

' Fuck this dicking around. I'm gonna terminate that fucker!'

Sarah was scrabbling at the floor where the rug had lain. Dieter watched incredulously as a section of floor came up; Sarah reached within, and the ripped cloth of her blouse showed a swell of flat female muscle as she lifted out the long tube within. It was fat—88mm—and flared at the end, with two handgrips.

And an optical sight along the left side; the woman heaved it onto her shoulder and snuggled the rest home as she aimed. The Terminator was on its feet again, coming toward them with the stolid unstoppable grace of an avalanche.