Infiltrator

Dieter slid down with his back against the wall, flinging his gun arm over his eyes and opening his mouth so that the overpressure of the back-blast wouldn't—

THUD-WSSSSH!

—shred his eardrums. Heat scorched him again, and a feeling as if he'd been hit very hard with a kapok-filled sack all over his body. Firing a recoilless rifle inside a confined space, even a big confined space, wasn't a very good idea.

There wasn't any recoil because the projectile was balanced by a backward blast of hot, high-velocity gas. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Sarah tumbling over on her back, with the Carl Gustav launcher clattering away, and everything left standing in the big living room that hadn't already been overset flying as if a hurricane had struck. From the sound of it, the same thing was happening out in the kitchen, and there was a piteous whining from the puppy cowering under the cast-iron stove.

And out on the lawn… well, a Carl Gustav was supposed to destroy main battle tanks. The Terminator had taken the shaped-charge warhead right on its breastbone, and a huge globe of magenta fire flared in the night. When Dieter blinked away the afterimages, the torso and legs were lying in a shallow crater, juddering with a horrible semblance of life.

The skull, shoulder, and one arm of the Terminator were a little closer to the house. Most of the lower half of the face had been burned away, leaving a sooty residue on what looked like chromium steel alloy that had been burned bare and shiny in spots. There was enough that the eerie resemblance to his own face—

the one he saw shaving every morning—was still there, and it made him want to

scrub the flesh away with acid.

Then the eyes opened, and looked into his. They were dead, starred like broken marbles, but they saw him; the head moved, saw Sarah Connor. A jerk, and the arm moved, too, reaching out, clawing fingers where flesh shredded away from steel into the ground, pulling itself closer.

Dieter gave a cry of loathing and shot again and again, but the mutilated thing didn't so much as glance back at him.

BRACK!

He hadn't even noticed Sarah's son coming up behind him; some detached part of his mind told him that was a sign he was going into shock, a mental fugue state.

The heavy slug slammed the Terminator over on what was left of its back. John's slight teenage form swayed back with the recoil of the massive weapon; even then, Dieter could admire the boy's marksmanship, firing from the hip like that.

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