Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

“The man needs a lesson,” Barnes told him grimly. “It’s time he got one.”

CHAPTER

NINE

Orozco felt his heart seize up inside his chest. Suddenly, in a single instant, the whole thing had gone straight to hell.

“Put those down,” he said sharply, walking swiftly around the fountain toward Grimaldi. “Have you lost your minds?”

“Stay out of it, Sergeant,” Grimaldi ordered, raising his own shotgun now to point not quite at Orozco’s feet. “Our people need to see the hollow shell these men really are.”

Orozco looked through the stunned crowd toward the archway where Tunney’s other two men were guarding the group’s weapons. But they, too, were standing motionless, with Barney and Copeland now holding their rifles on them.

“This isn’t an object lesson,” Orozco ground out, shifting his glare back to Grimaldi, his body tingling with the adrenaline of impending combat. The man had drawn down on a Resistance group, for God’s sake. “This is mass suicide.”

“Is it?” Grimaldi countered. “Do you see anything to indicate that they aren’t helpless?”

“Chief, you’re playing with fire,” Orozco warned.

“Do you see anything to indicate that they aren’t helpless?” Grimaldi repeated.

Orozco clenched his hands into fists.

“Not at the moment,” he had to admit. “But—”

“But nothing,” Grimaldi said firmly. “As I said: these men—this John Connor they go on and on about—have the tactical skill of hamsters. They’ll be lucky to keep themselves alive, let alone anyone they con into going with them.”

And then, at Orozco’s left, the crowd abruptly parted and Barnes stepped into the circle.

“Maybe you need to run the odds again,” he said, his voice dark and menacing.

“No!” Orozco snapped as Grimaldi’s shotgun shifted to point at Barnes. “Grimaldi—”

“Relax, Sergeant,” he said, his voice dripping with contempt. “I’m not going to kill him. Not unless he insists on it.”

“You know, Grimaldi, you have a really big mouth,” Barnes said. He looked around the circle, his dark eyes touching each of the residents in turn as if he was memorizing their faces for future reference. “Is this the kind of leader you people want?” he went on. “A leader who uses guns to keep you here, instead of letting you make your own decisions?”

“I’m not keeping anyone here,” Grimaldi insisted.

“You’re the ones holding the guns,” Barnes countered. “You’re like a gang leader, Grimaldi. I hate gang leaders.”

“Hate me all you want,” Grimaldi said. “But the fact of the matter is that you and your group haven’t survived by any kind of skill. If you’ve really been together as long as you claim, it can only be because of sheer dumb luck. If my people want to go with you, that’s their business. But they have a right to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into.”

“Fair enough,” Barnes said. “But like I said, maybe you ought to recalculate. For starters—” He reached down to the hem of his jacket.

And suddenly there was a shining Bowie knife gripped in his hand.

“—maybe we didn’t leave all our weapons in that pile over there.”

“Stop it, both of you,” Orozco snapped. He absolutely, positively had to stop this before it got any more out of hand than it already was.

But down deep, he knew it was too late. Grimaldi would never back down, not when he had a gun against the other man’s knife. Pride alone would keep him from doing that.

And Barnes wasn’t going anywhere, either. His men were in harm’s way, and he would free them or die in the attempt. He had the glint of death in his eye, a look Orozco had seen all too many times before in the midst of combat.

Maybe Grimaldi recognized that look, too. He muttered something to the men beside him, and suddenly two of the three guns that had been pointed at Tunney were pointed at Barnes instead.

“I said stop it,” Orozco tried again. “Barnes—put the knife away. Skynet’s the enemy, remember?”

“Your chief needs a lesson, Orozco,” Barnes said loudly, his voice echoing across the lobby as if he was trying to intimidate Grimaldi by sheer lungpower.

Maybe it was working. Barnes still hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d pulled the knife, but Orozco could see that Grimaldi was starting to have some belated second thoughts. With Barnes’ challenge—even one so patently futile—the chief had suddenly gone from a position of absolute authority and strength to one of dangerous uncertainty.

Orozco had never seen Grimaldi backed into a corner this tight before. But he’d seen the man in lesser corners, and he knew that the road ahead could only lead to disaster. At Barnes’ first threatening move, or whatever Grimaldi considered a threatening move, the chief would order his men to open fire. Barnes would die, right there in front of everyone. After that, Tunney and the others would also have to die. Grimaldi could hardly leave witnesses to take back the news to the rest of their team.

And Moldering Lost Ashes would have the blood of four murders on its hands, and would have lost its soul.

There was only one chance, one move that might at least buy Orozco enough time to make them all see reason. Stepping directly in front of Barnes, he turned to face Grimaldi. “No,” he said firmly.

“Out of the way,” Grimaldi ordered.

“No,” Orozco said again. He could feel Barnes’ breath on the nape of his neck, and the skin of his back prickled with the awareness of the knife poised only inches away from it.

If Barnes had already crossed the line from calculating strategist to mindless berserker, Orozco had only seconds before he died with that blade buried in his back. If Barnes hadn’t crossed that line, giving him a human shield this way could still get Orozco shot, and by the very people he had been protecting for the past two years.

Not that most of those people were probably thinking very highly of him right now. He could feel the eyes of the whole crowd on him, but didn’t dare look away from Grimaldi long enough to see if they were looking on him as a peacemaker or as a traitor. Very likely the latter, he suspected.

It had been Orozco, after all, who had let these strangers in and had thus sparked this confrontation in the first place.

What was worse was the fact that Grimaldi had a point. From a strictly tactical point of view, for Barnes and the others to have voluntarily disarmed themselves was foolish, even if that had been the price of entry.

Orozco had considered their gesture to have been one of trust and goodwill. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps trust was a luxury people could no longer afford.

Certainly their trust in Orozco’s implied promise of safety had betrayed them. Barnes probably considered Orozco a traitor, too.

And then, from somewhere behind him, cutting through the thick silence like a knife through freshly churned butter, Orozco heard the distinctive chink-chink of a pump shotgun action.

Grimaldi’s eyes flicked upward.

Abruptly, the man froze.

Carefully, Orozco turned his head. Standing in a nicely spaced line on the mezzanine balcony were six men and women. All of them had heavy rifles or shotguns pointed downward at Grimaldi and his men.

All of them except one of the women in the middle. Her hands hung empty at her sides as she gazed coolly