they did.”
“We don’t
“If we don’t destroy them, we’re all dead anyway,” Hope said, fear and anger and determination swirling together in her voice and face. “We need Blair and her helicopter, and she needs me to get to it.”
Preston muttered something. “Williams?”
“She’s right,” Blair said. “For whatever it’s worth, she’ll be as safe with me as she’d be with Jessie. Or with you.”
“And we don’t have time to argue about it,” Barnes put in, digging around in his backpack.
Preston sighed, then nodded. “Be careful,” he said, giving his daughter a quick hug. “Both of you,” he added, looking at Blair.
“We will,” Blair promised.
“Here,” Barnes said, holding out his hand.
Blair blinked in surprise. Clutched in the man’s hand were two spare magazines for her Desert Eagle.
“Where’s you get those?” she asked.
“I always bring extra ammo for all the guns on a mission,” he said, an almost embarrassed gruffness in his voice.
“Good idea.” Taking the magazines, Blair slipped them into her pockets. “Thanks.”
“Watch yourselves, and good luck,” Preston said. “Come on, Barnes. Let’s go get your minigun.” The T-700 convoys had made four more round trips to the tunnel face before Callahan finally decided it was safe enough to risk a quick recon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As usual with tasks that included climbing, this one fell to Callahan. Much of the debris slope he’d used earlier had been collapsed and scattered by the falling concrete slab, but together the three of them were able to build it up enough for him to clamber up to the opening.
The hole itself was smaller than Kyle had estimated earlier, too small for any of them to squeeze through. But Callahan managed to get his head through. Gripping an exposed piece of rebar with one hand and the metal door with the other, he eased up for a look.
He stayed there for a good ten seconds, and in the light seeping down from above Kyle could see his neck moving as he turned his head back and forth. Finally, he pulled his head back through the opening and made the precarious climb back down.
“No watchdog,” he whispered as they all huddled again. “But it looks like they’re almost ready to go with the next blast. They’ve got two of the satchel charges at the base of the tunnel face, and they’ve moved the others way back down the tunnel.”
“Like they’re going to do a second blast further back, too?” Zac asked, frowning.
“No, like they don’t want a second blast at all,” Kyle told him. “Sympathetic detonation—Orozco told me about that once. If you put a bunch of explosives—”
“If you put explosives within four or five feet of each other, triggering one of them triggers the rest along with it,” Callahan finished for him.
“So if everything’s ready, what’s Skynet waiting for?” Zac asked.
“Nightfall, probably,” Callahan said. “The light coming through the roof is pretty weak, so it’s probably getting close to sundown. Maybe Skynet’s planning another attack like last night to cover the noise.”
“Leaving more debris for the Terminators to haul away tomorrow,” Kyle said. “So if we don’t want to spend tonight and most of tomorrow down here, we need to make our move now.”
“The problem is that there aren’t any openings up there, at least none I could see,” Callahan said. “If we want a hole, we’ll have to make our own.”
“You mean with the explosives?” Zac asked.
“Exactly,” Callahan said. “We’ll take the charges, plant them down the tunnel a ways, and blow all of them at once.”
“Wait a minute,” Kyle cautioned. “You know anything about how to place charges for that sort of thing?”
“Zac and I have both had training,” Callahan told him. “And you worked pretty closely with Orozco on some of his demolition stuff. Between us, we should be able to bring down the roof to give us a way out. With a little luck, we might also knock down enough of the roof to seal the Terminators in the other part of the tunnel.”
Kyle winced. And if they had no luck at all, the blast might collapse their end of the tunnel and kill all three of them.
But Callahan was right. Skynet knew someone was down here, and they couldn’t stay hidden from the Terminators forever.
“Okay, but maybe we should wait a little longer,” he said. “If it’s still light outside, most of the fighters and all of the big guns will still be working out by the daytime perimeter. If the blast lets any of the T-700s get out, they could kill a lot of people.”
“It’s a risk, I know,” Callahan said heavily. “But if we push things too far, we may be trapped down here by Terminators making last-minute checks and adjustments.”
“And if we let Skynet blow the tunnel on its schedule, we
“He’s right,” Callahan said. “This is the best window we’re going to get. I think we need to go for it.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I’m in,” Zac said.
Kyle took a deep breath. “Me too.”
Callahan nodded. “Let’s do it.”
The first job, getting up into the tunnel, was easier said than done. The metal door the Terminators had laid over the broken concrete was too heavy for Callahan to push it clear by himself.
In retrospect, Kyle realized as he and Zac made the precarious climb up the debris alongside their companion, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Not only did the door have to handle the weight of T-700s walking over it, but also the extra burden of whatever chunks of metal or concrete those T-700s were carrying.
Fortunately, with all three of them pushing, the door finally moved, and without any of the teeth-jarring screeching that metal on concrete often made.
A minute later, for the first time in hours, they were back in the tunnel.
“We’ll start with those,” Callahan whispered, pointing to the two charges sitting against the tunnel face. “You two get them—I’ll head down the tunnel and look for a place to set them up.”
“You want this?” Kyle asked, pulling his shotgun from his belt and offering it to Callahan.
The other shook his head. “Maybe later.” Checking his footing, he headed down the tunnel.
Kyle turned back to the explosives, a hard lump forming in his throat. He’d dealt with the stuff several times back when the three of them were living in Los Angeles. But those had all been pipe bombs or something similar, with flammable fuses. Canvas-wrapped packages with a fist-sized box wired into both bombs were way outside his area of experience.
“You know anything about these things?” he asked Zac as the two of them crouched down beside them.
“A little,” Zac said, gingerly picking up the small box and turning it over in his hand. “This is the detonator. Not sure what type—I’ll have to pull off some of this outer wrapping to see what’s inside.”
“Is that safe?” Kyle asked, forcing himself not to edge away as Zac started carefully peeling away the plastic.
“Should be,” Zac said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
He angled the partially open package toward the light coming in through the ceiling.
“Looks like a solenoid plunger system,” he said. “We use this type, too. It’s pretty simple...”
He trailed off.
“What?” Kyle asked.
Zac visibly braced himself.
