worried about disobeying orders.”
“
“He
“Makes
“Let’s head up along the river,” Blair suggested. “If we keep the water within hearing distance we shouldn’t get lost.”
“If we head upriver, we might run into that Terminator,” Barnes warned.
“If there’s something out here Skynet’s hiding, we’ll probably run into more than just one.”
Barnes hefted his assault rifle.
“Bring it on,” he invited darkly.
A minute later they were making their way through the trees, the rushing water a constant muffled roar off to their right. As they walked, it occurred to Blair that if Skynet’s actual plan was to lure her and Barnes away so that it could hit the town without any serious resistance, they were playing right into its hands.
Still, if Skynet wanted the town destroyed, it could have sent in the T-700s last night. Or this morning, while she and Barnes were walking in from the Blackhawk.
No, there was something going on that she was missing. Some piece to the puzzle she didn’t yet have. Maybe they were about to find that piece.
Maybe all they were about to find was more Terminators.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
From Kyle’s vantage point, the Terminators’ midnight attack had been short but incredibly noisy, with an awesome display of firepower from both sides.
It was therefore something of a surprise to discover how much ammo the Terminators
Callahan put it into words first.
“Good God, we’ve hit the jackpot,” he breathed as they stood together by the broken machines, gazing at all the extra magazines still strapped to the Terminators’ upper arms and thighs.
“That we have,” Yarrow agreed. “Callahan, you and Reese take left; Steiner and I will take right. Get the magazines off the T-700s themselves first, then hunt around for anything that might have fallen or been shot off them. Remember that a magazine blown off by a high-speed round can fly and bounce quite a distance.”
“Vincennes said to check the guns, too,” Kyle said as they fanned out across the thirty or forty meters of last night’s field of destruction. “Some of them might be worth tagging for salvage.”
“I’m not optimistic,” Yarrow said. “T-700s are usually fast enough to wreck their guns before they shut down completely. But sure, go ahead and check—we might get lucky. And don’t forget to pull the magazines out of the wrecked guns. If we can’t get the weapons, we can at least salvage their ammo.”
Yarrow’s prediction turned out to be correct. The T-600’s minigun was still in decent shape, though two of the six barrels were badly dented. But all of the T-700s’ submachineguns either had warped barrels or broken firing mechanisms.
“You suppose that’s why they’re using this caseless ammo, too?” Kyle called across to Yarrow as he picked up an intact magazine and slipped it into his pack. “Skynet figuring that it can wreck all the guns that can fire the stuff and we won’t get any extra brass to reload?”
“Could be,” Yarrow called back. “The G11s were still in the prototype stage when Judgment Day happened, so there were damn few guns around that could take their ammo. Skynet must have either severely modified an existing assembly line to build the things, or else created its own from scratch.”
“Lucky for us, Chief Armorer Dockery can build anything,” Callahan added as he dropped another handful of ammo into his bag.
“You’re right there,” Yarrow agreed. “I hear he’s already got three machine guns up and running that can use this stuff, with six more on the way. Probably why Vincennes wants us to sweep the whole Skynet Central area as fast as we can, so that we can build up a decent stockpile before Skynet catches on to what we’re doing and switches weapons and ammo again.”
“Ah,” Kyle said, a funny feeling in his stomach as he looked down at one of the broken guns. Back when he, Callahan, and Zac had been living at Moldering Lost Ashes, as they had nicknamed The Moldavia Building in L.A., Kyle had known everything that was going on.
Now, suddenly, he was the new kid in town again. Not the person other people came to with questions, but the person everyone else had to explain things to.
It was embarrassing. More than that, it was dangerous. How could he protect himself when he didn’t know how things worked?
How could he protect Star?
“Which could be any time now,” Yarrow continued. “Skynet’s already fitting the latest H-Ks with those new plasma guns. Dockery says it’s only a matter of time before it comes up with a smaller version for the T-700s.”
“Or whatever Terminators it’s got going by then,” Callahan said. “But for now, we can still collect their brass and their caseless rounds and send some fresh lead back at them.”
“In the old days we called that recycling,” Yarrow said with a touch of humor. “Callahan, you and Reese finished with that side yet?”
“I think so,” Callahan said. “Should we start on the brass now?”
“Go ahead,” Yarrow said. “Same sweep pattern as you did on the ammo.”
The unspent ammunition had been well consolidated, either strapped to the Terminators or else in magazines lying in plain sight. The spent brass, in contrast, was anything but. The casings were all over the place, some of it scattered as far as ten meters away from where the Terminators had fallen, much of it half buried in tangles of wire or under exposed rebar or mixed into the piles of concrete dust that the restless breezes had funneled into nooks and crannies around the exposed concrete blocks.
It was long, boring, backbreaking work. Small wonder, Kyle thought more than once, that the team that had confirmed the Terminator kills had passed off the duty to someone else.
The sun had crossed over into the western sky when Kyle heard a shout over the distant sounds of sporadic gunfire coming from the hunting teams.
“Hey! Everyone!” Zac called. “Come here a minute.”
Kyle turned, wiping sweat and dust off his forehead. Zac was crouched beside what was left of the rubber- skinned T-600 that had led the midnight charge. Hefting his half-full backpack onto one shoulder, Kyle slung his shotgun over the other and headed across.
Yarrow was squatting beside Zac when Kyle and Callahan reached them.
“Down here,” Zac said, gesturing.
Frowning, Kyle lowered himself down beside the others. As far as he could tell, the shot-up T-600 looked pretty much like any other shot-up T-600.
“What are we looking at?” Yarrow asked.
“Underneath it, all the way down,” Zac said, pointing at the spot where the Terminator’s back was resting against the cracked masonry. “I was going for a casing that was pressed against its back, and it slipped down here and fell.”
Trying not to flinch, Kyle pressed his palm against the T-600’s side and pushed back the ragged clothing and rubbery skin as far as he could, about a quarter-inch worth. There was a gap down there, all right.
“Must have hit pretty hard when it fell,” he commented.
“There’s more,” Zac said, and this time Kyle could hear the cautious excitement in the younger teen’s voice. “When that casing fell, I’m pretty sure it took almost a second to hit anything.”
“Really,” Yarrow said thoughtfully as he stood up and walked around to the other side of the Terminator. “That would mean a drop of four or five meters.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Zac agreed. “It was a little hard to tell with all the shooting going on over
