Terminator Salvation - From the Ashes

Unless Skynet wanted them there for a reason.

She swung the A-10 around again, ostensibly for another look at the battle, in fact for a second look at the four T-600s that had just Left the warehouse.

That second look was all she needed. She’d been right: the three Terminators in the crossfire weren’t just standing around waiting to be demolished. They were standing around waiting for the four newcomers to sneak up behind Connor and catch him in a crossfire of their own.

“Hole four: crab,” she called urgently into her mike.

“Hole four: crab,” Blair’s voice came through Connor’s earphone.

He frowned even as he lined up another shot on the T-600s he and McFarland were currently keeping off balance. Crab was the code for one to four Terminators moving in on a pincer.

But only four? Surely his attack on this six-machine group was serious enough to warrant a bigger force than that.

Unless it was the biggest force Skynet was still able to send.

“Timing?” he called into the mike curving around his cheek.

“Two minutes,” Blair reported. “Maybe less.”

“Check,” Connor acknowledged. “David: go. Tunney: stand ready. Barnes: boil lobster.”

“Check,” Barnes’ voice came, and there was a sudden intensification of fire from the other end of their shooting gallery as he and his squad settled down to the serious task of destroying the remnants of the six- Terminator force.

Leaving Connor and the others free to handle the four T-600s currently trying to sneak up behind them.

“All right, people, we have a crab coming,” he called. “McFarland, you’re ghost. The rest of you, follow me.”

Connor had already picked out a good rear-guard position across the street. He headed off toward it with Bishop and the Tantillo brothers on his heels. McFarland stayed behind, trying to lay down enough fire by himself to keep Skynet from realizing that the rest of the group had just disappeared.

The position turned out to be not quite as good as it had looked. But it was good enough.

“Grenades,” he ordered Joey Tantillo as the others deployed for cover fire. Connor hadn’t wanted to risk using the squad’s two C4 grenades so close to Barnes and the Moldavia defenders, but lofting them into a group of Terminators coming in from the opposite direction shouldn’t be a problem.

He peered in the direction of the cross street where the four T-600s should soon be appearing.

The staging area warehouse was hopefully emptied of Terminators and minutes away from a breach, while the machines here on the streets were pinned down or ripe for destruction. Skynet’s only remaining HK was in no position to observe and report on any of it until it was too late. The operation was going very well.

It was going too well.

He looked around, half expecting to see a group of Terminators they hadn’t yet tagged bearing down on them from the rear. But there was nothing. All the evidence pointed to a quick and complete victory.

He didn’t believe it for a minute.

“Everyone keep a sharp eye,” he called into his mike. “Skynet’s up to something.” He grimaced.

“I just don’t know yet what it is.”

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

Orozco’s first warning was the sound of a distant double blast coming from somewhere behind him, a pair of hammerfalls loud enough to penetrate even the heavy gunfire he and his teams were pouring into the two Terminators still fighting to reach the archway.

“Grimaldi!” he shouted.

“I heard it,” Grimaldi shouted back, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “I’ll go check.”

He rose up into a crouch, paused for a moment, then took off in a broken run that got him safely across the lobby and into the main corridor heading back through the building.

Orozco turned back to the archway, a fresh wave of tightness knotting his stomach as he continued to pour fire against the attacking machines. Grimaldi and his men had sealed off the rear of the building years ago, and several teams had worked for hours earlier that day to inspect and reinforce those barriers. The building was as secure as they could make it, and Orozco himself had added a few booby traps to help keep out any unwelcome visitors.

But those explosions a minute ago had sounded a lot like two of his home-made pipe bombs.

The question was, had one of the guards back there accidentally set them off, probably killing him or herself in the process?

Or had Skynet created a way inside?

The Terminators in the street were starting to pull back, their rubber flesh tattered, their appearance now more akin to mummies than human beings. Orozco watched warily as they backed out of view and out of range, then shifted his attention to the street leading past the sniper’s nest.

There were two or three more Terminators down there, slowly disintegrating under an outpouring of fire from the rear of the nest. Barnes and Kate and their team, protecting all of them from what had obviously been Skynet’s idea of a flanking maneuver.

Meanwhile, the fire coming from the Ashes’ own defenders had stopped now that their primary targets had retreated.

“Right flank: new target,” Orozco called, pointing down the street at the other Terminators.

Rather than just sitting around, he and his people might as well give Barnes’ squad a hand. “All marksmen move to this side of the barricade.”

It was amazing, he reflected, what an hour and a couple of small victories could accomplish. The same men and women who’d been quaking in their shoes earlier now nearly fell over each other getting to the right-hand side of the barrier just for the chance to target a few more of their attackers.

They were firing away when Grimaldi skidded to Orozco’s side, his face white.

“They’re coming in!” he gasped, panting for breath.

“Where?” Orozco snapped, shooting a look over the other’s shoulder. The hallways, at least as far down as he could see, were still clear.

“Ventilation shaft beside the loading dock,” Grimaldi said. “They breached the wall back there and are working their way in.”

Orozco cursed. The two explosions he’d heard must have been the two pipe bombs he’d set inside that shaft, the first designed to blow up the intruder, the second to blow up the wall over the shaft and hopefully seal the gap.

“Did the bombs stop them?” he asked.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Grimaldi demanded. “I said they’re working their way in. I could see their eyes in the ducts. And not just the ducts—they’re hammering at the whole wall back there.”

“Damn.” Orozco spun around. With a ductwork breach, at least the machines would have to come in one at a time. But if they managed to take down the wall, the whole back of the building would be open to them. “Cease fire!” he shouted. “All teams, cease fire! We have a breach.”

The guns instantly stopped.

“Where?” Wadleigh demanded.

“Loading dock vent shaft and duct, and they’re working on the wall,” Grimaldi said. “Everyone, back there, on the double.”

He broke off, looking with sudden uncertainty at Orozco. “Everyone?” he repeated, making it a question.

“Yes, everyone,” Orozco confirmed, looking up at the fire teams on the balcony and gesturing them down to the lobby.