Rising Storm

cover, with rounds chewing up the dirt at his feet.

Another finger of fire drove toward the Terminator. It had just enough time to turn and meet the 66mm shaped-charge warhead with its face. The cone-shaped

tube of explosive within detonated, turning its copper liner into a pencil of white-hot metal traveling at thousands of feet per second. The finger of incandescence was designed to punch through a tank's armor; the tungsten-titanium-steel alloy of the Terminator's skull was tough, but not that tough. The flame lance pierced it the long way, scrambling the delicate components of its CPU and memory systems into molten silicon as it went. The machine fell backward across the bodies of its victims.

Dieter broke open the action of his grenade launcher, slipping in one of the fat shells and scanning around the edges of the gully. John should be—

He blinked behind the night-sight goggles as the front half of a Terminator shot over the lip of the arroyo, trailing fire. It tumbled down the steep slope, bringing down a minor avalanche of stones with it— including a boulder the size of a small car that fell free of the clay and landed on the machine's torso and skull with a clang audible even through the sounds of combat.

'That's my boy,' he muttered, and went up the near-vertical slope with a scrambling ease that belied the hundred-odd pounds of munitions draped about his body.

Behind him a streak of flame reached down toward the car. Someone else had a rocket launcher, and when it struck the car the explosion was movie-violent.

Billy-Bob and Good Ol' Boy must have had some serious explosives in that vehicle, Dieter thought as a huge pillow of hot air slapped him against the wall of the gully. When he looked back, only a crater remained of car, Terminator, and human bodies…

With the destruction of the third Terminator, Alissa panicked and contacted Clea.

*What is it?* Clea asked. She'd been working on a prospectus for Roger Colvin, the CEO of Cyberdyne, and wasn't happy to be interrupted.

Alissa paused before answering, put off by the impatient tone of her older sister's answer. But things at the gully had reached a point where she knew she was out of her depth. *Please access the team I've sent after von Rossbach,* she said.

Clea did so and was horrified by what she saw. *You sent four?* she asked, trying to keep the message emotionally flat.

Alissa bit her lip in consternation. *No she said. I also sent the uncle we buried.*

Clea didn't respond to her sister but ordered the remaining Terminators to disengage. She watched through their eyes as they fought their way clear and ran. It seemed to her that the humans didn't try too hard to stop them. Both bore considerable damage; their skin hung in ribbons and shattered electronics sparked as they ran, causing one to limp occasionally.

Computer-controlled emotions notwithstanding, it was extremely vexing. She was very vexed.

*We'll discuss this later, once I've had an opportunity to study the recordings of this incident,* she said to Alissa.

The younger I-950 frowned. Withdrawal hadn't been on her mind. The Terminators were definitely making progress in their attack; she'd only wanted advice on how to press their advantage without losing any more of them. She now regretted contacting her elder about this. If they'd kept up the attack they'd

be walking away from it with something to show for it besides the loss of valuable resources.

*Alissa?* Clea said.

*Of course,* her sister answered. *At your convenience,* she said coldly.

Sully was alive and conscious; conscious enough to watch as the living half of his team rolled the boulder off the remains of the… machine, he decided.

It had definitely been a machine; the fall and the rock had stripped most of the flesh off, leaving the gleaming metal bones bare. Enigmatic shapes lurked within the 'rib cage,' and a few sparks still sputtered around the severed spine. A man came half falling down the slope of the arroyo wall and gasped.

'Other one's gone,' he said. 'His buddies must have taken it. Bottom half of this one, too.'

'And not enough of this one to prove anything to anyone who wasn't here,'

Dieter von Rossbach said, after bending close. 'It landed with its head on a rock, and then this boulder came right down on top. Nothing inside the skull except what was pounded back into sand.'

Sully could tell the big man was upset; his Tyrolean accent was a little more noticeable. He almost laughed, but with the hole in him that wasn't advisable.

' Now I believe you,' he said. 'But who's going to believe me?'

Well, my men, he thought. Although Rogers was lying on the ground with his face in his hands, crying like a kid.

'Doc Holmes,' Dieter said. 'Contact him. Blame everything on me when you debrief. We'll be in contact through him.'

Sully nodded slowly. 'And I suppose for the details, I can look up Sarah Connor's transcripts?' he said weakly.

'Ja,' Dieter said. 'Speaking of which, do you know where she is?'

'Flew the coop,' Sully replied. 'Vanished from the halfway house with Dr.

Silberman, after some weird shit with a janitor. Last seen crossing the border to Mexico—the all-points just missed 'em.'

He noticed Dieter exchanging a glance with John Connor… who is now my ally, Sully thought despairingly. It was so tempting to imagine he was in a hospital having delusions, but he knew better.

'In that case,' Dieter said, 'We could use some transportation.'

'Hey, it's my nickel,' Sully said. 'Now I get a chance to let you go.'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PORTO VELHO, RONDONIA. BRAZIL,

DECEMBER

I don't see why we can't just sail down the river to Paraguay,' John complained, looking out over the slow, green expanse of what would eventually become the Rio Paraguay.

'We took the river down from Colombia,' Dieter replied, 'and we still ended up walking half the way.'

'The falls and rapids were not my idea, buddy. Anyway, your friend Sully gave us a plane,' John pointed out. 'We could have flown all the way to Sao Paulo, or even Asuncion if we wanted to. But noooo, that wasn't covert enough.'

'Well, it wasn't,' Dieter replied with strained patience. 'Leaving the plane in Colombia was more convenient for them and now they won't know which direction we've gone in. I'm surprised that after all these years you don't think that's a worthwhile objective.'

Von Rossbach manifested his annoyance by stomping down the street. Locals moved out of his way, giving him uneasy glances.

John frowned thoughtfully as he sped up to keep pace. 'Well, yeah, it is,' he conceded. 'But I really don't think being here is a good idea. And I'd like to go on record as saying that seeing Garmendia is a stupid one.'

Dieter stopped in his tracks and turned slowly to stare at the youngster. 'John, I hate it when you beat around the bush like that. Don't hold back, tell me how you really feel,' he said.

Chewing on his lip, John put his hands on his hips and glared up at the big man.

'I'm not taking that back,' he said after a long pause. 'Because I'm right. Every instinct I have tells me that he'll go for us if we show our faces again, never mind if we come asking for a favor. Do you know anything about this guy? Have you heard some of the stories going around about him?'

Dieter waved Connor's concerns away. 'Every gangster who ever lived has stories going around about them. Half of them are made up by the gangster himself.'