unloaded.”
“Ah…you may have slightly misunderstood our intentions,” Nguyen said carefully. “We’re not necessarily planning to sell
“I understand that,” Orozco said. “But given the late hour, and given that the Ashes is the safest place around, I’d hoped you would accept our hospitality for the night.”
For a moment Nguyen studied Orozco’s face. Then, he again inclined his head.
“Thank you. We would be honored.”
“Good.”
Orozco turned to Kyle as he and Star came up beside him.
“Mr. Nguyen and his party will be our guests for the night,” he told the boy. “They and their animals will be in the Lower Conference Room. Take them there, and on your way tell Pierre I want him to stay at his post, but that the rest of his team can stand down and give you a hand getting our guests settled in.”
“Got it.” Kyle gestured to Nguyen. “This way.”
They boy headed off toward the conference room, walking sideways so that he could watch the traders’ progress as they picked their way across the lobby. He hadn’t stuck the Beretta into his belt, Orozco noticed, but still had it ready in his hand. Like Nguyen, like Orozco himself, the boy knew better than to take anything for granted.
Orozco waited until the last of Nguyen’s group was inside. Then, stepping beneath the archway, he signaled the man in the sniper’s nest across the street to come in. Once he was back in the building, Orozco would have him take over the post here at the entrance.
And then Orozco would have the unpleasant task of admitting to Wadleigh and the others that, yes, the party Kyle had spotted
As Kyle had already noted, Wadleigh was an idiot. What was worse, he took things for granted, and this incident would simply reinforce the man’s mental laziness.
Baker appeared from the sniper’s nest and headed briskly across the street. Orozco gestured to him, then pointed to the floor beside the archway to indicate his new post. Then, cradling his M16
under his arm, he headed across the lobby to close down all the rest of the fire teams.
Including Wadleigh’s.
No, there was no justice left in the world. Not anymore. Justice had died on Judgment Day.
CHAPTER
SIX
The storm drainage tunnel was dank, fungus-infested, shin-high in fetid water, and tight enough that Connor and David couldn’t walk without stooping over.
But it was underground and out of sight of HKs and T-600s. That alone elevated the experience to the level of a walk in the park.
They were nearly to their target when Connor spotted a narrow slit of pale light angling in from the tunnel’s roof. David, in the lead, noticed it about the same time and signaled for a halt.
“Does that look suspicious to you, too?” he whispered to Connor.
Connor studied the dim light. They’d passed beneath similar openings at various points along their journey, most of them a result of warped or broken manhole covers that had once protected access points into the tunnels.
But none of those other covers had been inside a Skynet staging area. This one was, and it demanded a higher degree of caution.
“We’ve come this far,” Connor whispered back. “Let’s take a look.”
David nodded, taking a moment to fold up the strip map he’d made of the tunnel and tucking it away inside his jacket. Then, getting a grip on his shoulder-slung MP5 submachine gun, he started forward.
They reached the ray of light without anything jumping out of the darkness or, worse, opening fire. The manhole cover was at the top of a five-meter concrete cylinder, accessible via a set of rusty rungs set into the cylinder’s side.
Connor peered up at it. This particular cover wasn’t cracked, but had merely been angled slightly up out of its proper position, either by movement of the ground around it or by a small warping of the cover’s seating. The gap itself was very small, no more than half a centimeter across at its widest.
More significant than the gap’s origin was the fact that it had clearly been there a long time. A single tenacious vine had taken root in the tunnel wall where the light shone, its roots poking through cracks in the concrete, its leaves positioned to drink in the meager bit of sunlight.
Of even greater significance was the thick layer of rust and grime visible on the cover itself, which meant it had lain undisturbed since long before Skynet had set up its staging area in the warehouse above. Possibly since Judgment Day itself.
David had apparently come to the same set of conclusions.
“Looks clean,” he whispered. “Be careful not to move it.”
Connor nodded, rotated his own MP5 downward on its shoulder sling, and started up the rungs.
Caution was definitely the order of the day—if there was a similar layer of rust on the upper side of the cover, moving the plate would probably disturb it. Skynet’s Terminators were experts at ferreting out such subtle clues of Resistance presence.
The rungs, fortunately, were sturdier than their coating of rust suggested, and Connor reached the top without incident. Hooking his right arm through the top rung, he pulled out the snoop kit with his left and unrolled its length of bendable but slightly stiff fiber optic cable. He slipped the elastic band around his head, adjusted the eyepiece over his right eye, then bent the tip of the cable into a right angle and eased it up through the opening.
The good news was that David’s map and navigation had been right on the mark. They had indeed reached the warehouse Blair had spotted the previous night. Turning the optic cable in a slow circle, Connor could see two of the HKs she’d described, still maintaining their silent guard at the parking lot’s corners.
The bad news was that the tunnel wasn’t going to take them beneath the warehouse itself, as David had suggested might be the case. It was close, certainly—the tunnel ran nearly parallel to the building, angling slightly away at the far end. Unfortunately, the entire passageway was very definitely
He looked down at David, still waiting at the bottom of the shaft, and shook his head. The other grimaced and nodded acknowledgment.
Connor raised his head and once again focused on the view through the eyepiece. The wall the tunnel was paralleling didn’t look all that healthy, he noted. In fact, it looked way too fragile to still be holding up that much roof. Some trick of the warehouse’s internal structure, perhaps, that made the wall look weaker than it actually was?
Or had Skynet actually taken the time and trouble to reinforce the building?
There was no way to tell without actually getting inside. But whatever the situation, it probably wasn’t anything they couldn’t fix with a few chunks of C4 along the bottom edge of the wall.
He was figuring out the best places to set the charges when a T-600 appeared around the far corner, striding alongside the south warehouse wall like a sentry on patrol.
Coming directly toward the manhole cover.
Connor’s first impulse was to yank the optical fiber down out of sight. But movement attracted the eye, especially a Terminator’s eye, and the machine was already close enough to notice even a movement that small.
