Trial By Fire

“I can make it,” Halverson said. He looked at Barnes. “What about your partner? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Barnes said, a small part of his mind wondering how he felt about Williams being called his partner. “She’s headed back to the chopper to get us some extra firepower.”

“Hope’s taking her via the snaky,” Preston added. “With luck that’ll get them past Lajard and Valentine.”

“Yeah, what’s with Lajard?” Halverson asked. “You didn’t mention him before.”

“We think he’s pure human,” Preston said. “Possibly the Thetas’ controller and observer. But that still leaves Valentine on the loose.”

“And Jik,” Barnes said, frowning at the river. “Where the hell is he, anyway?”

Halverson shook his head. “Last I saw, he was collecting all the T-700 pieces we were supposed to dump in the ravine.”

“Collecting the pieces?” Preston asked, frowning. “What for?”

“How the hell should I know?” Halverson snarled. “All I know is that he was picking them up and laying them out like a jigsaw puzzle. I only got the one glimpse.”

“Maybe he’s trying to scavenge enough parts to put together a working machine,” Barnes said. “How badly damaged were they?”

“They looked pretty bad,” Preston said. “But now that we know it was all for show, maybe they weren’t as bad off as we thought.”

“What do you mean, it was all for show?” Halverson asked. “We nailed those damn machines.”

“Are you blind, or just stupid?” Preston said sourly. “The only reason Skynet let us take them down was to prove Jik’s credentials as the great John Connor. How better to do that than let him help the brave little locals wreck a couple of fearsome Terminators?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Halverson protested. “Why even bother if the damn Thetas were just going to shoot up the town anyway?”

An unpleasant sensation ran up Barnes’s back. Suddenly, the pieces were starting to fall into place.

“Because that wasn’t the plan,” he said. “What did Oxley say back there, Preston? That they would have been perfectly happy to keep things going the way they were?”

“Something like that,” Preston said, frowning at him. “You saying the plan was for them to stay in Baker’s Hollow?”

“I think so,” Barnes said, his mind racing furiously. “Only they’d be here with Jik joining them as John Connor. Did he ever say whether he had a radio or not? Or access to one?”

“He said that he had a small one,” Preston said. “I never saw it, but from the size of his backpack it couldn’t have been very big.”

“Perhaps he left a bigger one out in the woods,” Halverson suggested.

“Or maybe it’s both,” Barnes said. “He’s got a small transmitter with him, but it’s only sending as far as a bigger version out there in some hidden Skynet base.”

“Somewhere out in the mountains?” Preston asked, frowning.

“Somewhere right here in this area,” Barnes growled. “Probably where Jik came from, in fact, Jik and those four T-700s. Maybe even the H-K that attacked us outside the wrecked Skynet base last night.”

“We heard an H-K last night, too,” Preston said. “It could have been the same one.”

“Where did it come from?” Barnes asked.

Preston pointed across the river.

“Somewhere to the west of here, heading southeast.”

“If this base had an H-K, it would have to be in a clearing,” Halverson offered. “You can’t land those things just anywhere.”

Barnes fingered the minigun thoughtfully. Only Williams had said there weren’t any clearings near town on that side of the river. Which meant—

“It’s been camouflaged,” he told the others. “Probably with camo netting strung between treetops. You two know the area. Where could it be?”

Preston and Halverson eyed each other.

“Has to be somewhere with mostly flat ground,” Preston said. “That leaves out the two on Beelee Ridge.”

“Also has to be some place where we haven’t been hunting lately,” Halverson added.

“Maybe someplace you have a good reason to avoid?” Barnes suggested.

Halverson cursed viciously.

“Klein.”

“Damn it,” Preston said, just as viciously. “Bear Commons.”

“Bear Commons?” Barnes asked.

“A big clearing where one of our hunters, Billy Klein, got mauled to death by a bear about six months ago,” Preston told him. “Or rather, mauled to death by something we assumed was a bear.”

“We haven’t let any hunting parties go near that area since,” Halverson added.

Barnes nodded. Six months ago would put it three months before Lajard and the others arrived in Baker’s Hollow. Plenty of time for Skynet to throw something small together out here and run a data cable to it.

“Sounds like the place,” he said. “How do I get there?”

“By following me,” Preston said. “You’ll never find it on your own.” He peered back toward town. “Do we go now or wait for Williams to get here with the chopper?”

“We go now,” Barnes said. “A Terminator support base is usually stocked with extra guns and ammo. We need to get there before Jik finishes putting that T-700 back together and heads back to rearm.”

“You’ll never get past him,” Halverson warned. “There’s not enough room between the river and the ravine for you to sneak by without him hearing you. You’ll have to go around the southern end of the ravine.”

“Or we go up the east side of the river and take the rope bridge,” Preston said.

“The forty-year-old bridge?” Barnes said, doubtfully. “The one put together by a couple of kids?”

“That’s it,” Preston said. “Unless you’d rather go toe-to-toe with another Theta.”

For a moment, Barnes was tempted. Thirty minigun rounds ought to be enough to make quick work of the damn Theta.

But only if he got a clear, clean shot. Given the mass of tangled undergrowth he’d already seen clogging that side of the river, it was a dangerously big if.

“No, we’ll try the bridge.” He turned to Halverson. “You wait here. When Williams gets here with the chopper, tell her where we’ve gone.”

“Like hell I’m staying here,” Halverson growled. “With Terminators on the loose and my wife out there with a bunch of useless shirt-makers? Forget it. She needs me.”

“She needs our Blackhawk and its M240 machineguns a hell of a lot more,” Barnes retorted. “And she needs them in the air, not sitting here with Williams wondering where the hell we went.”

“Can’t you call and tell her?” Halverson asked. “Even Jik’s got a radio. Don’t you?”

“Usually, yes,” Barnes said. “But in the last week—” He broke off. “Hell.”

“What?” Preston asked sharply.

“Nothing,” Barnes said, cursing his thick-headedness. So that was why Skynet had been jamming all the radios in San Francisco. “No, we don’t have radios. That means you’re staying here. Even if I have to nail you to a tree.”

Halverson’s face darkened.

“Look—”

“What if we told her we aren’t here anymore?” Preston cut in. “Would she be smart enough to come find us?”

Barnes hesitated. Williams was smart, all right. And she knew the cable ran up that side of the river.

“How do we do that?”

“With this,” Preston said, reaching into his shirt and pulling out a whistle. “You might want to cover your ears—it’s pretty piercing.”

It was piercing, all right. But with the proliferation of whistles in the San Francisco camp these days, it was hardly something Barnes hadn’t heard before. Preston blew a quick succession of short and long bursts, paused,