Rising Storm

"You, too," he said. "Good luck."

"Thanks," she said. Then she turned and disappeared into the crowd.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MONTANA

The grave heaved, the loose soil humping and rolling. Finally the pale shape of a human hand, rotting skin ripped away from fingertips and knucklebones, emerged from the dark, damp earth. Another hand followed, flattened itself on the firm ground at the edge of the grave, and pulled. Immediately the soil seemed to boil faster as a head rose, followed by shoulders encased in a dark suit. With a last heave the Terminator pulled itself free of the confinement of its grave, rising from its knees to shake off the loose dirt like a dog spraying water.

It evaluated its condition. Mechanical functions were fully operative; its CPU

and energy cell were also optimal. Unfortunately its downtime in a low-oxygen environment had caused the slow death of its flesh sheath. Many portions of its skin were sloughing off and it smelled quite bad.

This eventuality had been foreseen, however, and preparations had been made.

At the cabin where it had worked, a car with blacked-out windows had been left.

The vehicle held medical supplies so that it could remove the dead flesh from its skeleton and a supply of the protein foodstuff that would rescue at least some of its skin, as well as clothes and money for the journey to the new base in Utah.

Its only problem now was getting to the cabin without being seen. It plucked at the decaying tissue that used to resemble human eyes, revealing the glowing red lights that were its visual receptors. Leaning forward, it poked the discarded flesh into the loose dirt, then carefully patted the earth on its grave into a less disrupted shape.

When it was satisfied it began to jog toward the cabin. *Checking in,* it reported to the new base in Utah. *All essential systems functional.*

*Affirmative,* the Terminator on watch confirmed. It provided an info dump of events up to the present moment for its off-line comrade, then closed contact.

From this point on it would be kept up-to-date daily.

The Terminator ran through the cemetery, remarkably quiet for such a large and heavy machine. A pair of teenagers smoking dope and making out saw it go past; the boy gasped, the girl shrieked. The Terminator glanced at them, narrowing its eyes, the translucence of its eyelids diffusing the red light from its receptors into a pair of glowing crimson orbs.

The shrieking rose to the level of a steam whistle, the boy joining in with an even more piercing scream. The two humans fled in the opposite direction, stumbling and howling.

The Terminator decided that it didn't need to do anything about what they'd seen.

Given its present location, the scent of marijuana, and human superstition, no one rational would believe them. At most, a rumor of zombies would run through the neighborhood.

NEW YORK

Clea lay on her hotel bed, quite tired but unable to sleep. She had differentiated herself from her progenitor as much as possible with hair coloring and makeup; she'd even acquired a pair of eyeglasses, made with plain glass, to break up the shape of her face. So Roger Colvin shouldn't immediately think of his former security chief when he met her. Besides, the dress she'd chosen for the gala was designed to focus male eyes below her neck. Clea hoped it wouldn't put Mrs.

Colvin off.

Skynet help her, she hadn't thought of that until now! Should she get another dress?

What would Serena do? Enjoy herself thoroughly, in all likelihood.

Clea felt herself veering toward frustration and despair, an emotional response that should be outside of her experience. Her computer was working overtime to keep her fight/flight indexes under control. This lack of social skills was yet another indicator that she was inferior. It would be good when Alissa was able to take over for her.

*Clea?* Alissa's voice came from Clea's communications matrix.

Clea smiled; it was as though her thought had brought her sister to her. *Yes?*

*I regret to report that the Watcher/Terminator has lost track of Sarah Connor.*

Alissa's voice was emotionless.

Fury and alarm raced through Clea's system, almost instantly suppressed by her computer regulators. Rage was followed by the thought, Are even my Terminator CPUs faulty?

*The fault is not yours,* Alissa went on, seeming, eerily, to respond to her thought. *The CPU was one of those brought through by Serena, and, as you saw, the Watcher's features and body had been greatly altered. It is unlikely that Connor recognized it as a Terminator.* The younger I-950 paused. *The fault was probably mine,* she confessed. *I instructed the Watcher to terminate the janitor of the halfway house in order to infiltrate the premises by taking the human's place. It was observing Connor in a restaurant when two men, apparently police officers, attempted to arrest it for the killing. The Watcher escaped and there's an eighty percent probability that the scuffle was observed by Connor and that it spooked her into flight.*

Clea lay still and permitted herself a sigh as she felt herself seeming to sink deeper into the bed. She thought, Despair seems a completely appropriate response to this circumstance. And yet, even if the response was appropriate, it was still not useful. Concentrate! she ordered her chaotic mind.

*I'm sure we have only lost track of her temporarily,* Clea said. *She will probably return to Paraguay. What about John Connor and von Rossbach? You were keeping track of them, weren't you?*

*Yes!* Alissa's response was triumphant. *I have no word for you on John Connor, but von Rossbach has been seen in several places in California over the last two weeks. He is being pursued by his former colleagues.*

*Excellent work,* Clea congratulated her. *Why are they hunting him?*

*They know about his association with Sarah Connor and want to question him.

There has been no information about whether they intend to charge him or not

with aiding and abetting. But he seems determined to stay out of their hands.

They've come close several times to capturing him, but he's slipped through their fingers.*

I know how they feel, Clea thought. *No mention of John Connor?* she asked.

*None,* Alissa instantly confirmed.

*Call the number of von Rossbach's estate in Paraguay, ask for Connor. If they tell you he isn't there, then it's likely he is in the United States. There's been no report of him with von Rossbach?*

*None,* Alissa answered. * And von Rossbach is traveling by motorcycle. He would have been observed.*

*If they're not together, they're certain to join up at some point. Keep alert for any report of von Rossbach's being sighted. I want you to assemble a team of Terminators and have them ready to go at a moment's notice. It is essential that you immediately acquire a helicopter—a Blackhawk utility. It's the fastest, most convenient method of transport. Empty the Cayman account if necessary, but get it by tomorrow. The next day at the very latest. Pay them a bonus if you have to.

* The Cayman account had grown very fat indeed; they should be able to acquire what they needed with relative ease. *Is there anything else?* Clea asked.

*No. I will keep you informed.*

*Excellent. Thank you. Good night.*

*Good night, older sister.*

Clea smiled at that. Their affection should rightly gu to Skynut, but as it didn't exist yet, they had only each other. She had been right to praise her sister for what she'd done right and to curb her anger over what had gone wrong. Clea might not be the I-950 that Serena Burns had been, but she was raising her little sister right.

PHOENIX INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,

ARIZONA

John exited the plane feeling like he'd only gotten halfway back to reality. The Brocks of Minnesota, a family of survivalists with whom he'd spent the last few days, were very nice people for the most part, but on a few subjects it was like they'd come from another dimension. Just say the word government to them and they were off and running. Running in a direction he really did not want to go.

But—and it was an important but—they knew their stuff. Their survival skills were second to none. They were like a family of Green Berets or navy SEALs.

Even Suzette, the youngest, a blue-eyed little girl of seven, could handle light firearms with efficiency and survive in the woods on small game she brought down with a throwing stick, plus gathered material. He'd drawn the line at her maggot stew, but he supposed if he had to…

He'd raced her one day at field stripping a FN Minimi and she'd come within an ace of beating him. They'd really gotten on well; John could relate to Susie on a level that he couldn't with most people. Of course, how many people have been raised by ordnance-collecting parents convinced the world is going to end? The fact that my mother was right and her parents really are crazy is irrelevant.

He stepped out of the line of disembarking passengers and looked around the usual glass-crowds-and-monitors ambience seasoned with the smell of burnt jet fuel. There was Dieter, leaning against a pillar. He was dressed in full motorcycle leathers and wearing wraparound sunglasses, his arms crossed over his massive chest. Jeez Louise, Dieter, could you be a little more obvious?

As he walked over to the big Austrian he struggled to slip his arm through the hanging strap of his backpack. By the time he'd hoisted it onto his shoulders and settled the weight, he was standing in front of him.

"A wet bird only flies at night," he intoned.

"You bet your bippy," von Rossbach answered grimly. Then he smiled. You got some old television programs in Paraguay. "Good to see you, John."

"And you," Connor said. He looked his friend over. "You're looking dangerous."

"I don't feel dangerous," Dieter said. "I feel tired, and dirty."

John glanced at him. He did look grubby; three days of stubble, at least, decorated his strong jaw.

"I would have changed to meet you, but I was held up," von Rossbach went on.

John raised a questioning eyebrow, but said nothing.

"We'll talk in the car," Dieter said.

MONTANA

The cabin had been trashed, windows broken, furniture ripped apart, some of it partially burned. Needless to say, the car, with the keys left in it, had been taken.

The vandals hadn't found the hidden basement lab, however, where a few emergency supplies, including a Beretta 9mm and some money, had been stashed. The Terminator reported the loss.

*Steal a car,* Alissa instructed. *Acquire some meat paste; baby food is ideal; liver, if there is such a thing, would be best at preserving your remaining flesh.*

*Understood,* it sent.

If the Terminator fed, the surviving patches of skin would eventually recover and spread through the matrix that underlay its protein sheath. That would save considerable downtime in a vat. The command made excellent sense. It nodded to itself, a mannerism cultivated during its contacts with humans.

Then it went hunting.

NEW YORK

Because of the unveiling gala, Lincoln Center Plaza had been blocked off with temporary walls of red velvet curtains attached at top and bottom to metal frames. Not an ideal solution since it was a windy place and the velvet tended to billow like sails, dragging the heavy frames forward or back with an ear-rending screech.

The glittering throng on the plaza gave every appearance of being deaf to the racket, and the string quintet might have been playing in an enclosed theater before a respectful audience instead of a noisy open space, being ignored by one

and all.

Clea stood at the gate, slightly nervous, which gave her some idea of the work her regulators were doing, and wondered at the ability of humans to compartmentalize their attention like that. It should be impossible for such inferior beings to do something so difficult so easily. On the other hand they provided themselves with endless opportunities to perfect this particular ability.

The line moved up and an usher took her invitation, leaving her tree to enter. It seemed to her as she paused on the edge of the party that everyone wearing a tie was looking at her, waiters included. Well, she thought, it seems the dress is having the promised effect. The saleswoman had assured her that she would be

"eye-catching."

She looked different tonight. After spending the afternoon at a spa having every conceivable treatment, she looked dark and glamorous. The makeup artist had almost wept when Clea pulled out the glasses and put them on, and had insisted on making adjustments. The woman's efforts had paid off; Clea looked very little like her progenitor and the knowledge gave her a confidence that she was often sadly lacking.

Clea looked around; it was time to seek her prey.

Ron Labane sipped his champagne and looked around at the important, well-dressed people surrounding him. These days he was invited to every noteworthy event in the city. Usually he went, because it was an opportunity to speak with money; such opportunities were not to be overlooked. Occasionally he worried that he was in danger of losing his idealistic purity. Money was dirty, after all, and the filth could smear your soul if you weren't careful. Lie down with dogs,

get up with fleas. Ron was about to make some remark to the crowd around him when his eye was caught by a beautiful woman in a painted-on red dress moving across the plaza with the grace of a stalking panther. He thought she might be looking for someone. I'd like it to be me, he thought.

Clea finally spotted Vladimir Hill, surrounded by an admiring cluster of committeewomen. There was Mrs. Colvin, and by her side was her husband, the CEO of Cyberdyne. She approached the little knot of people with a slight smile that hid her nervousness.

Vladimir looked up; his eyes widened slightly at the sight of her and he smiled his welcome. He began walking toward Clea with a confident gait, almost a swagger. Clea's smile widened; he would be her entree to the group.

Vladimir introduced her to each of the committeewomen, every one of whom

"noticed" her dress. Their husbands did, too, but they approved. After the introductions Hill reclaimed everyone's attention for himself.

Clea leaned toward Mrs. Colvin and spoke out of the side of her mouth. "I don't know how I let myself get talked into buying this dress." she said. "But I'm just a Montana country girl and that saleslady was a big-city shark if you ever saw one.

She said it was what everyone would be wearing and I'd look a fool if I didn't buy it." Clea gave a little huff and looked around nervously. "I think I look like a hussy!" she whispered.

Mrs. Colvin smiled at her, really smiled for the first time, and leaned close. "You look fine. I've met a saleswoman like that a time or two," she said. Then she gave Clea's arm a little pat. "Trust me, you're coming out of it better than I did."

MONTANA

Crack.

The Terminator raised its head, scanning in the visual and infrared. The sound had been a medium-caliber rifle with a 98 percent probability a of being a hunting weapon; it had been fired approximately 1.2 kilometers to the northeast.

It turned and walked in that direction, wading through a knee-high stream of glacially cold water, then through open pine forest. Animals fell silent as they scented its approach; that might alert the humans, and so might the unavoidable crackling of fallen branches under its five-hundred-pound weight. Otherwise it made little disturbance in the environment as it passed, dipping and bending with eerie grace to avoid the standing vegetation.

The two hunters—poachers, given that this was out of season, at night, and on private property—were stringing the deer up to a branch and preparing to butcher it. They turned with startled speed as the Terminator approached over the last ten yards. One wrinkled his nose.

"Hell, what's that smell, man?" the shorter one said.

The Terminator's machine mind drew a wire diagram over them both. The larger human's clothes would be suitable; its own were saturated with decay products.

If they did not see him clearly, there would be no need to arouse potential attention by terminating them. At present, both orders and its own estimation of the proper maximization of mission goals indicated stealth tactics.

"You," it said. "Fat man. Lay down your weapons, give me your clothes and

boots, and then go away. This is private property."

The flat gravel of his voice seemed to paralyze both men for an instant. Then the bigger of the two spoke. " What did you say?"

"I said: You. Fat man. Lay down your weapons, give me your clothes and boots, and then go away. This is private property."

"The hell you say!"

The bigger man's accent held a good deal of Western twang, over-laying somethingelse—the Terminator's speech-recognition software estimated his birthplace as within twenty kilometers of Newark, New Jersey.

"He didn't even say 'please,' " the smaller man put in.

"Please," the Terminator added.

"Mister, your ideas stink worse than you do," the bigger man said, and reached for the angle-headed flashlight at his belt.

"Don't turn on that light."

"The hell you say!"

The light speared out and shone full on the Terminator's face, glittering in the reflective lenses no longer hidden by False flesh, highlighting the shreds of rotten skin hanging from his lips and the white teeth behind.

A sharp smell of urine and feces reached the Terminator's chemoreceptors from

the smaller man. The bigger snatched in his rifle— Arms Tech Ltd. TTR-700

sniper-weapon system, the Terminator's data bank listed—and fired. The hollow-point 7.62mm round flattened against one of the pseudo-ribs of the Terminator's thorax and peened off into the darkness. The T-101 stepped forward three paces as the poacher struggled to work the bolt of his rifle and snatched it out of his hand, tearing off one finger as it came. A blow with his fist between the eyes disposed of the big hunter, and it stooped to pick up a rock for the second, who was fleeing in a blundering rush through the night. The rock left the Terminator's hand at over a hundred meters per second, and transformed the back of the smaller man's head to bone fragments and mush.

The Terminator appropriated the big man's hunting jacket and hat as well as his boots. Then it dragged the two corpses deep into the woods for the wild animals to finish off; after a thoughtful pause it carved a short slogan into their chests with a hunting knife: PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF

ANIMALS.

Their truck's windows were only partially darkened, so that the driver could still be seen, but dimly. It found a pair of sunglasses on the dash and put them on, trimmed away the strips dangling from its lips, started the engine, and began to drive. Except for the smell and the Band-Aid on its nose that hid exposed steel, it could pass for human again, in a dim light and as long as the human didn't get too close.

BIG BEE DINER, ROUTE 85, NEW

MEXICO

Waylon Bridges and Luke Hardy sat sipping their Cokes and watching the TV

mounted over the counter. Conversation was over for the time being and they were just waiting for their customer. One of their favorite "reality" programs was on. a show called Crimefighters. They re-enacted actual crimes and then showed pictures of the suspects in hopes that people would call in with the whereabouts of these people.

Tonight they were showing exclusive footage of a murderous raid on a police station in California. The host grimly warned that this sequence was not suitable for children or very sensitive viewers. Then the blurry tape began to roll and a huge man in sunglasses, carrying guns in both hands, began murdering cops by the dozen.

Waylon and Luke sat with their mouths open and watched the carnage. "My God," Luke murmured.

"Damn!" Waylon agreed.

The camera froze on the man's face. "If you have any information on this man,"

the host intoned, "call this number, or contact this Web address."

Waylon quickly wrote the numbers down on a napkin. "Love to git my hands on that sucker," he said.

Luke lit up a cigarette, blew a speck of tobacco off his lip, and shook his head.

"You 'n me both, brother," he said. "Wonder what they're offerin' for 'im."

"E-nough," Waylon said, slapping the pen on the table. He lit a cigarette of his own and leaned back to watch the show.

A kid of about seventeen came into the diner and paused inside the doorway, looking around. He spotted the two men and walked over to them. Waylon and Luke pretended not to notice.

"Excuse me," John said.

They looked him over thoroughly before one of them condescended to answer.

"Ye-ah," Waylon drawled.

"I'm looking to buy a used car," John said.

John assumed these were the men he was supposed to speak to. They were the only two customers in here. The Jeep with the "For Sale" sign in the window was supposed to be the signal that the gun dealers were in. He waited politely for them to make the next move.

Waylon and Luke exchanged glances… at length.

I'd forgotten what dealing with good ol' boys could be like, John thought impatiently. / guess if's kinda like forgetting pain once it's gone. If you didn't, you'd never go back to the dentist and there would be no second children, as Mom puts it.

"Not from us you're not," Luke said, his blue eyes cold. "I ain't gonna sell nothin'

to no kid. I don't wanna be responsible for no high-school shootin' spree."

"Maybe you'd like to speak to my dad," John suggested. "He's out in the car."

And he could whup both of y'all with one hand tied behind his big ol' back. My

God, he thought. I can't believe I thought that. It must be contagious.

Luke and Waylon exchanged another meaningful look. Luke turned his eyes to stare at John while Waylon examined his thumbnail closely, then he looked up at Connor from under his eyebrows.

"How come yore daddy dint come in hisself?" he asked.

Aw, c'mon, John thought. Nobody talks like this. This guy's probably from San Diego! He looked from one man to the other. "My daddy is lookin' at yore car, mister," he drawled. Then he spread his hands at hip level. "You want to do business or what?"

They dragged themselves up like they'd been bustin' broncos all day and adjusted their hats carefully, then sauntered out of the diner. Behind them John rolled his eyes.

They all walked through the reddish dust to the white Ford Dieter had rented. He was leaning over, putting something back into the glove compartment. Von Rossbach straightened up and looked at them, and Luke and Waylon froze. It only lasted an instant, but to men as experienced as John and Dieter, it was the equivalent of a shout.

"Do I know you?" Waylon asked.

John gave him a sharp look; he could have sworn there was a slight tremor in the man's voice.

"No," Dieter said crisply. He got out of the car and the two men stepped back.

Von Rossbach leaned against the door and casually crossed his arms over his chest. "But we have mutual friends."

"These friends got names?" Luke asked.

Dieter mentioned one; the two dealers glanced at each other and Waylon raised one shoulder in a half shrug.

"So what you want?" Luke asked.

"I want Barrett fifty-caliber sniper rifles or their equivalent. I want Browning heavy machine guns. I want Carl Gustav or LAW or other light anti-armor weapons; plus any military-grade small arms you have on hand, preferably battle-rifle caliber. I'll need them shipped all over the U.S.," he added.

Waylon tugged down the corners of his mouth and frowned.

"Gonna be expensive," he cautioned. "That there is some heavy shit."

"For top-quality goods, I can live with expensive," von Rossbach said easily. He pushed himself off the car door and managed to loom over the two men, even though their heights were almost equal. "Not getting what I'm paying for, that I couldn't live with." He stared hard at Waylon until the other man broke eye contact, grinning as he looked at his companion.

"With us y'always get what ya pay for." He flicked a hand at Dieter. "Ya think our friend'd steer ya to a bum deal?"

Dieter stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. "I'll want to see some

samples," he told them. "So that there are no misunderstandings about what I want."

Waylon bit his lip and the two men looked at each other for a long moment.

Then Waylon nodded. "No problem," he said cheerfully. "But we don't carry the stuff with us, nat'cherly." He pulled a map out of his pocket and spread it on the hood of von Rossbach's Ford. "We got us a little out-of-the-way spot where we do our private business." He pointed at a spot marked on the map. "Meet us here tomorrow night at seven o'clock. You got any questions?"

"Can I keep this?" Dieter asked.

"Sure thing," Waylon said generously. "I know my way already." He grinned.

"Till tomorrow," he said, touching the brim of his hat.

"Yes," Dieter said. He folded the map and put it in his breast pocket.

"Tomorrow."

John got in the passenger side of the car and sat watching the two gun dealers as Dieter started up and drove away in a cloud of dust, the plume vanishing into the dry crackling grass and occasional dark green scrub cedar.

"Is it my imagination, or was there something wrong about them?" he asked.

Dieter grimaced. "Hard to say," he answered. "There's often something off about these people. Maybe to them I still smell like cop. Holmes wouldn't steer me wrong," he added. "Of that I'm confident."

John nodded, then looked out into the desert, frowning. Something still didn't

feel right. "Not deliberately," he said. "But Holmes might be wrong. Or something might have spooked those two."

"My God! "Luke said.

"Da-amn!" Waylon agreed, having trouble controlling his gleeful laughter. "That is fuckin' unbelievable! It was really him!"

Luke punched his fist in the air. "Yes!" The he looked at his friend. "How are we gonna handle this?"

"First we call that number," Waylon said, heading toward their table. "Oh shit!

Hey! Who cleaned off my table?" he shouted.

The waitress turned to stare, her mouth wide open.

"I wrote something important down on a napkin, Maria! Where is it?"

She pursed her lips and pulled the wastebasket from under the counter. "This it?"

she asked, pulling up a dirty napkin with a number written on it.

"Yeah," Waylon said, snatching it from her fingertips. "Whad' ja do, barf on it?"

Luke pulled his lips back from his teeth in disgust. "Sure looks like it," he muttered.

"Hey, bring me some coffee," Waylon shouted as he went back to his table.

"Yeah," Luke agreed.

Pulling out his cell phone, Waylon dialed the Crimefighters show, started to speak, and then stopped with an exasperated expression.

"Lines are busy," he said to Luke. Then, "Yeah. That guy who shot up all them cops, what's the reward for findin' him?" His mouth and eyes opened wide. "Five hundred thousand dollars?"

Luke punched the air again and again, stamping his feet beneath the table.

Waylon cocked his head, listening. "Aw, bless your heart, honey. Don't you worry 'bout me! I'm considered pretty dangerous myself." He listened. "No, ma'am, I won't tell you where I'm callin' from. But I will tell you that by tomorrow night that sucker's gonna be on his way to jail! I gah-run-tee it!" He disconnected and grinned at Luke. "Five, hundred, thousand dollars, buddy!

Whoo!"

Luke shook his head in wonder, then slowly sobered. "Think we should have help?"

Waylon made a face. "Bringin" somebody else in means less money fer you 'n me," he pointed out. Then he looked thoughtful. "Yeah," he finally said. "Good idea actually. We'll get Luis, have 'im wait out in the desert; then if anythin' goes wrong we're covered. He's one mean li'l greaser." He nodded. "Yeah." Then he grinned again and high-fived his buddy. "Yeeee-HAWWW!"

U.S. SECTOR HEADQUARTERS

"Sir." The young woman turned from her console toward her superior. "I think I've got something here."

The man hurried over; surveillance was in what Sector operatives called "the pit," below the slanted glass of the office from which operations oversaw HQ.

"Whatcha got?"

" Crimefighters has received an anonymous phone call from New Mexico inquiring about the reward. He told the operator that he'd have the suspect in custody by tomorrow night."

The supervisor frowned and leaned toward her, looking over her head at the screen. "What's his location?"

The agent turned to her computer and tapped a few keys.

"Route 85… he's at a diner named the Big Bee," she said.

"We have an agent nearby?"

She queried the database. "The nearest is in Los Alamos," she said. After a few more taps she said, "He can be there in an hour."

"Good." The supervisor nodded once. "Send him or her now. Even if this guy has left, someone there might know something."

UTAH

Alissa smiled, looking positively angelic as she dangled her short legs and feet in their little red shoes off the edge of the too-tall chair; her hands flew over the computer keyboard in a blur of machine-accurate movement, and the crackle of the keys sounded like distant machine-gun fire. The moment she'd heard about

this TV program she'd hacked into their computer and phone system. Then she'd thought better of it and checked out the various government agencies and antiterrorist groups. Only the Sector was also listening in.

While Crimefighters had received the call, the Sector had zeroed in on the location of the caller. The tiny I-950 was delighted by her own cleverness.

*Sister!* she sent to Clea.

Clea, who was having a quiet but, she sensed, important conversation with Roger Colvin, barely skipped a beat as she answered her little sister.

*Bad timing, Alissa,* she warned. Aloud she said to Cyberdyne's CEO, "There are all sorts of ways this material can be used. I've thought of several weapons, for example. They'd require some additional research to bring them to manufacture, but they'd be very useful."

Alissa paused, reluctant to interfere with her sister's progress. Her success with Cyberdyne was vital. Still, this would be a very brief report. *We have a lead on von Rossbach,* she said. *It's possible he's in New Mexico.*

*The Blackhawk, did you acquire it?* Clea sent.

"Where did you take your degree?" Colvin asked.

*It will be delivered tomorrow,* Alissa said. *I can have a team in New Mexico well before tomorrow evening.*

"I had an unusual upbringing," Clea said to Colvin. "My uncle was a genius and

educated me himself, more or less in isolation, in Montana." She shrugged, which did interesting things to her dress. "Consequently I lack a degree, I'm afraid. But perhaps because of that, I feel I'm more creative than a lot of scientists and engineers who have a hard-and-fast 'field,' or 'discipline.' " To Alissa she said, *Excellent. Keep me informed. But I want you to stay in Utah.

Send no more than four Terminators. We need to keep some for backup.*

"Understood,* Alissa responded. *I'll keep you informed. Out.*

Alissa hopped down from the chair, folded her hands under her chin with her shoulders high, and spun in sheer delight, her golden locks floating in the still-cool air of the new Utah headquarters—underground, of course. The area had many abandoned mines.

The regulators worked overtime to deprive her of this natural high, and unlike Serena, she resented the interference. She had reason to feel good and wished she could enjoy it.

Then she dropped her hands to her sides. It was gone; her brief celebration was over.

Well, it is more efficient, she thought, and began to plan what weapons the Terminators should take.

BIG BEE DINER, NEW MEXICO

An hour and fifteen minutes later a plump, middle-aged man ambled into the diner and took a seat at the counter. He took a menu out of the holder and smiled politely at the waitress, who smiled back.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"You bet," he said.

He'd checked the place out when he walked in. It was deserted except for the help and him. The only cars in the lot probably belonged to the waitress and the cook; the surroundings were bare cow-salad-bar for miles in every direction. She came back and poured a rich-smelling brew into a white mug. He took a sip and his brows went up. She grinned.

"Better'n you expected, right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She leaned her arms on the counter and got comfortable. "We drink it ourselves, so we figger we might as well get the good stuff. Would you like somethin' else?

We close in a half an hour," she said apologetically.

"How's your apple pie?"

"Good," she said, straightening. "Ice cream?"

"Please." He turned to look around the deserted restaurant. "Y'know what," he said as she placed the pie before him, "I was asked to come in and talk to some guy who called to report seeing somebody on Crimefighters." He shook his head.

"He would have been here about an hour ago."

She placed an elbow on a napkin holder, rested her head on her fist, and looked at him like she was the tiredest woman in the world. A silent moment passed

while the agent took a forkful of pie and ice cream, making a pleased "mmph!"

sound. Then a little frown crinkled her forehead.

"Yeah," she said, making up her mind. "That'd be Waylon Bridges." Her lips drew back in a sneer. "He made a big deal about this number he'd written down, got real snarky about it."

Lifting another forkful of pie, the agent looked at her and asked, "Know where I can find him?"

She looked away and shook her head slightly. "No. I dunno where he lives." She chewed her lower lip, then looked at him. "But tomorrow, I think I know where he'll be."

She told the agent that Bridges thought of himself as a wheeler-dealer who liked to have meetings with shady characters in an out-of-the-way spot down the road.

"I saw him talking to somebody in the parking lot earlier and then they drove off, so that probably means they'll be meeting him there tomorrow night." She shrugged. "I think he thinks it's this big mystery nobody knows about, but everybody does. He always does the same thing."

"How come the cops don't pick him up?" the agent asked.

She shrugged. "No law against talkin' to people in a parking lot or meeting up with 'em in the desert. Anyway, whatever he's up to, I don't think it's very important or they would do something."

"Could you draw me a map?" the agent asked.

"Sure." She shrugged again, but looked a bit unhappy. "You won't tell him I told you?"

He grinned. "It won't even come up," he assured her. "But even if he asks, I won't say."

She grinned, too, and began to draw. Serve Bridges right for being such a cheap, snarky bastard. Dud tippers never had any luck. Not if she had anything to say about it.

NEW YORK

"… an organic whole," the sculptor proclaimed. "And so I've named it Venus Dancing. Because with every passing day it will change, never remaining the same from sunrise to sunset."

The audience applauded politely as Hill tugged on a cord and the silky covering slid aside to reveal a gleaming silver object over fifteen feet tall on its contrasting pedestal of bronze. The pedestal was also a circular bench, molded in such a way that it seemed to flow into the different color of the sculpture itself.

Venus Dancing was triangular in shape and pierced here and there on its surface with round holes of various sizes. Loops of the silvery substance flowed away from the sides of the sculpture in a way that suggested vibrations. As the members of the audience watched, the material—now freed from its protective shroud—reacted to the cooler air, changing shape, changing texture to become sharper-edged, the loops more angular.

The crowd "oooh'd" its approval and moved closer. The heat of their bodies

softened the outlines of the lower half of Venus Dancing, bringing forth spontaneous applause.

Clea, looking on and applauding with the rest, suddenly found a business card in front of her face. Startled, she turned to find Roger Colvin giving her a very serious look.

"Call me," he said. "I think we've got a lot to discuss."

She took the card and smiled. "I'll do that," she promised.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MONTANA

"So that's all that was taken?" Sergeant Purdee asked suspiciously, looking around the little store and sniffing. A smell like bad meat lingered in the air, faint but definite enough to someone who'd been raised on a farm. Purdee shrugged mentally; he wasn't the health department.

"That's it," the manager of the Quickmart said.

He was a middle-aged man wearing his pajama top as a shirt. Not unreasonable after being dragged out of his bed at three A.M. in response to a police call informing him that his store had been the target of a break-in.

"Here we go," the manager said. He pressed a button and the cloudy, jerky security tape began to play. The store's glass door burst open and a big man in a gimmee cap, hunting jacket, and sunglasses entered. He paused in the doorway, looking around, then he headed down one of the aisles.

Purdee noticed that the man's head never stopped moving, like a searchlight, almost mechanical. Something about him tickled the sergeant's memory. "Why would somebody break in and just take baby food?" he asked.

The man had walked right by a display of beer without even looking. And he hadn't stolen any diapers. You'd think if he was gonna take baby food he'd need something to deal with the results. Weird.

"What kind did he take?"

"A case of chicken, a case of beef, and a case of liver," the manager answered, rubbing his face.

"Liver? I didn't know they even made liver for babies." Poor kids. Whoever this guy was, he had a screwed-up value system. Then light dawned. "Hey!" Purdee said. "Play the tape again from the beginning!"

Obligingly, the manager rewound the tape and started it running. The door burst open, the man entered, started down the aisle toward the camera.

"Can you freeze it there?" the sergeant asked urgently.

"Sure," the manager said.

The burglar's face was turned toward the camera, sunglasses reflecting an image of the aisles before him.

This was him, Purdee was certain, the guy on TV, the man who'd shot up a

police station in Los Angeles and killed, like, sixteen, seventeen cops. Then he'd gone on to blow up a computer company and shoot fifty or more police. And he was here, right in this sleepy little Montana town! Or, at least, he had been as of two-thirty this morning.

"Stealing baby food…" Purdee murmured. He shook his head. He'd find out what it meant when they caught the bastard. The sergeant pulled out his radio and called it in.

UTAH

Alissa anxiously awaited the arrival of the representative of Turbine Transport with the Blackhawk. It was taking longer than she'd expected, and as the day grew later she became more concerned.

Just after noon she decided it would be wise to employ the damaged Terminator on its way down from Montana. It could easily be diverted to New Mexico, thus ensuring that at least one of them could be on hand when von Rossbach, and possibly John Connor himself, was taken into custody.

*How soon can you be there?* she asked.

The Terminator checked its position via satellite and cross-checked with a commercial mapping program. It quickly estimated that it would be at the Big Bee Diner by 5:30 P.M., if it kept to the speed limit.

Alissa was not pleased. She'd hoped to have someone there in the early afternoon. But it wasn't advisable to speed and risk attracting police attention.

*Very well,* she sent. *Keep a low profile, do not terminate anyone without my

express permission. But at all costs, be there.*

She resumed her pacing across the flat stretch of scrubland outside the mine entrance. A few buildings still stood, the remains of the ore dump, mine office, and workshops; her Terminators had been replacing windows and doors and changing long-dead lightbulbs so that the place would look inhabited but not suspiciously so. They had their own diesel generator for power, and there was abundant water from a deep well. A perfect location, all in all.

If only the helicopter would arrive…

Alissa's augmented ears picked up a sound, and her small chubby six-year-old face turned with the precision of a tracking radar.

Twin turbines, her database prompted. Specifications match civilianized Blackhawk transport.

NEW MEXICO DESERT

"Luis! God dammit, get back behind those rocks, for crissakes!" Waylon pointed at a tumble of rocks beside and slightly above the gully where he liked to meet his customers. He checked his watch. "He'll be here any second."

Luis calmly continued his descent from his hiding place, carefully holding the rifle to the side. "Waylon," he said wearily, "I've got cactus spines in my ass and things are rattling their tails at me up here." He stopped and looked at his sometime employer, then he waved a hand. "He's not coming, amigo."

"I said seven," Bridges said. "It's only seven-fifteen."

"I think you said seven-thirty," Luke interrupted.

Waylon glanced at his partner distractedly and went on, "It's only quarter past.

He'll be here!" He pointed desperately up the slope. "Get back in place, okay?"

"I been here for an hour, man," Luis pointed out. "I don't like it out here. There's scorpions and centipedes and snakes, and I'm afraid I'm gonna put my hand down on a Gila monster."

"Gila monsters are extinct in New Mexico, Luis," Waylon said with exaggerated patience. "And you could make up to fifty grand for putting up with Mother Nature for a couple of hours. Now get back behind those rocks!"

Luis looked at him, working a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

"You told me fifty grand if—and you said if— this is the guy." He shrugged. "So if this isn't the guy then I'm just wasting my time out here for nothin'."

Waylon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "O-kay," he said, the strain of holding his temper obvious in his voice. "If he doesn't come we'll take you out to that strip club you like, steak and drinks, anything you want. How's that?"

Luis's eyes widened. " Anything?" he asked. " 'Cause there's this girl there…"

Waylon raised a finger. "But only if you get your ass back up behind those rocks. Because he is coming and you're gonna be a lot richer for stickin' around."

Luis sighed, dropping his head. "Okay," he said, trudging back up the slope. "For booze and babes and some good red meat I'll stay until dark."

"For fifty grand!" Waylon shouted. "That's what you're staying for, then you can buy your own damn meat."

Luke Hardy leaned close to his partner and hissed, "Fifty Gs?"

Waylon spread his hands. "He wouldn't do it for less and I couldn't get in touch with anybody else." He shrugged, looking sullen. "You saw that guy, we're gonna need backup. Luis might be a pain in the ass, but he's solid."

Luke nodded reluctant agreement, checked his watch, and muttered, "Fuck."

BIG BEE DINER, NEW MEXICO

The Terminator pulled up at the diner at six-thirty, having been delayed by an accident fifty miles back. If not for the police presence, it would have gone around the mess of ruined metal and the ambulances on the verge; the truck had four-wheel drive. Regrettably caution had been necessary.

It checked the parking lot and found it empty but for two cars. An acceptable risk, it decided.

When it came inside, a plump, dark-haired woman was leaning on the counter reading a magazine. She looked up, half smiling, and said a friendly, "Hey." She straightened, looking him over, and seemed to recognize him.

"If you're looking for Waylon or Luke," she said, "they're probably already at the gully. Couldn't you find it?"

"I couldn't find it," it agreed, not moving from the doorway. It shrugged, a gesture meant to be reassuring.

The woman chuckled. "Let me draw you a map, honey." She picked up a pad of paper and, tearing off a piece, began scribbling. "Just before you turn off," she said, "there's a highway sign and a whole bunch of yucca plants all together."

Maria drew a picture of a yucca plant, just in case the stranger didn't know what one looked like. He had a slight foreign accent, so that seemed likely. Finishing, she held it out to him. "There ya go," she said aloud.

He came forward to take it and with him came a wave of stench, like rotting meat, making her gag. Maria fell back, her hand over her mouth. She hadn't been wearing her glasses as she read, so she got her first good look at the man's face at his approach.

His skin was waxy looking and it was shredding in places to show the raw flesh beneath. Here and there was the glint of what had to be bone.

"Mike!" she shrieked, scuttling behind the counter toward the kitchen door.

The T-101's orders were to keep a low profile, but this was now impossible. It had also been ordered not to terminate humans without permission. It would probably be best to remove this human from this location. "Perhaps you'd better show me this place," the Terminator said, starting forward.

The kitchen door burst open and a middle-aged Hispanic man came through holding an enormous knife. "Hey!" he shouted as Maria cowered behind him.

"You leave her alone!" Then he, too, saw/smelled the stranger and his jaw dropped.

The Terminator reacted as it always did to a threat. Grasping the man's knife arm, it threw him across the diner. Mike went through the windows and landed in the parking lot with bone-jarring thud.

"Don't hurt him!" Maria cried as the Terminator turned to follow his victim through the window. "I'll show you where it is!"

The Terminator looked at the man lying in the parking lot and estimated his probable condition. Several large bones were broken; from the position of the body, the pelvis and the right thighbone at the very least. The man wouldn't be calling for help anytime soon, possibly never. It had no intention of hurting the human any further; it had, after all, been ordered not to terminate anyone. Its intention had been to move the body inside, out of sight. But if leaving him alone would gain the female's cooperation, it decided it would do so.

"Let's go," it said.

"Just the one guy up behind the rocks," John said at last, taking another scan around the stretch of arroyo bottom beneath them. There was no danger of a flash flood at this season, and the hardy weeds that colonized the sand of the seasonal riverbed were dead and brown.

Dieter didn't look very concerned. "I'd expect at least one," he said.

Moving with surprising grace for a man so large, he pushed himself backward to where he wouldn't stand out on the horizon, then stood and walked down the steep side of the hill. John looked over his shoulder at von Rossbach with a slightly annoyed glance, took one last look through the binoculars at the gunrunners, then followed him.

"Well, I don't like it," he said.

"I'm not crazy about it myself," Dieter said. "But it's not unreasonable. They don't know us, and I might have gotten their name and my friend's name from a dozen different places and just put them together in a lucky guess."

John shoved the binoculars back in their case. "So we're just gonna walk in there knowing there's a guy with a gun on us?"

Dieter lowered his sunglasses and looked at him over the top. "I thought maybe you could get into a good position yourself and hold a gun on their guy."

"Now you're talkin'," John said with a grin, visibly relieved.

The Terminator pulled behind a stand of shrubby growth and stopped the pickup.

Maria, her eyes streaming from the stench as much as from fear, pulled her hands away from her face and looked around.

"This isn't it," she said. "It's about a mile that way." Her voice was high-pitched and shaking. The man beside her turned his head to look at her and nodded once.

Deep inside the black of his sunglasses she thought she saw a glint of red light and she sobbed convulsively.

It glanced at the crude map the woman had drawn, then briefly accessed a military satellite and confirmed its accuracy. The gully was considerably less than a mile away, but humans were notoriously inaccurate.

The Terminator got out of the truck.

Maria whimpered and cowered in her seat. She wanted to throw open the door and run, but feared that he might shoot her, and that fear paralyzed her. In her mind she saw Mike lying on the cracked tarmac of the parking lot. She thought he was dead, but she couldn't be sure, and her impulse had been to give him a chance by luring this man away. But now she was here, alone. Oh God, what am I going to do?

She jumped with a gasp and turned toward the sound when he opened the toolbox in the back of the truck. "Oh, no," she whispered, her mouth dry and her throat tight with tears.

This was it, the end. He was going to kill her. Maria fully expected him to slam the lid on the toolbox and stand there with a rifle in his hands. Instead, the truck rocked as he jumped down and footsteps crunched around to her side of the car.

She didn't turn, but sat panting and light-headed, her mind filling with headlines about innocent middle-aged women murdered for no reason and left in the desert for the coyotes to eat.

It opened the door and grasped the woman's clothing, pulling her stumbling from her seat. Then it shoved her toward the back of the truck. "Get up," it said.

Maria scrambled to obey, lifting her leg as high as she could and grabbing the frame with clumsy fingers. She was simply too short and too frightened to manage it and began to sob frantically. "I can't," she said at last, hanging her head. "I just can't."

The Terminator confirmed her analysis. It picked her up under the arms, lifting her as if she were a five-year-old, and deposited her, kneeling, on the truck bed.

Then it followed her up. It moved to the toolbox. "Get in," it said.

Marie froze, staring up at him, then glancing at the large silver box he wanted her to enter. "No," she whispered. "Please, no. If you let me go I promise not to tell anyone, I swear! Please let me go, please."

It relayed a quick report to Alissa, then asked tor permission to terminate this human.

Alissa relayed his position and the position of the gully to the team in the Blackhawk, then considered its request.

*No,* she said at last. *Perhaps afterward, but not now. She might prove useful.

Lock her up and get into position, the others are on their way.*

"Get in," it said to Maria.

Maria saw the long silver box as a coffin, but decided that being alive in a coffin was better than being dead in a ditch, so she reluctantly put her foot over the edge, then knelt, looking appealingly up at the strange and horrible man. As she leaned forward he slammed the lid, whacking her painfully on her head and back.

At her cry of pain he said, "Keep quiet and live."

She knelt silently for a few minutes, panting in terror. He didn't move and she pictured him standing there, waiting for her to give him an excuse to kill her. It seemed as though the air was already almost gone; she wanted to beat on the lid and beg to be let out. But then he'd kill her.

Biting her lip, she told herself that she was imagining that she was smothering.

Then she heard him thread a lock through the staple and snap it shut.

Maria couldn't help it; she began to weep in earnest, pleading with him, even as she felt him leap down from the truck, making the bed shake, and heard his footsteps move away.

"Don't leave me!" she screamed.

Instantly the truck rocked as the Terminator climbed back onto it. It struck the lid with something and she felt the metal give, the sudden inward bump digging into her back.

"Be quiet!" it said.

Maria held her breath and after a moment the man went away. She squirmed around so as to be as comfortable as possible. She didn't think she was ever going to see her family again.

Letting out her breath in a sob, she began to pray.

The two Sector agents looked at each other. There was absolutely nothing in von Rossbach's files to indicate that he would do this sort of thing. Why he would kidnap and brutalize a fat, middle-aged woman, they couldn't imagine, yet they'd seen it with their own eyes. Agent McGill checked in with the project pilot, asking how to proceed.

"When you're certain no one else is nearby or watching, let the poor woman out.

Then bring her here for debriefing."

"Roger that," McGill said. He went back to scanning the area.

Dieter pulled into the gully just before seven-thirty, parking next to the gunrunner's pickup. He almost laughed at the relieved expressions on the faces of Bridges and Hardy. Then, instinctively, he wondered why they were so relieved.

Maybe they were just desperate for cash, but then again, maybe John was correct and they were planning something dirty. Though why they would before the money came into it was beyond him.

"Where ya'll been, buddy," Waylon asked with a grin. "Thought you was gonna be here at seven."

Dieter took off his sunglasses and looked at him in surprise. "You said seven-thirty." He lifted his hands and shrugged. "It's seven-thirty."

"Told ja," Luke said, and nudged his partner.

Waylon glared at him, then turned to Dieter with a smile. "Anyways, you're here.

C'mon see what we've got." He led von Rossbach over to the trunk of his car, lifted up a false bottom, and unzipped a protective covering. "Dust gets into everything here if you're not careful," Waylon said with a smile. "You're welcome to try out any of these you like."

Dieter was impressed at the change in Waylon, from good ol' boy to professional salesman, as well as relieved. That folksy charm got old fast. He was also impressed by the variety and quality of the goods offered, even though he'd known that Doc wouldn't steer him wrong. Still, some of this stuff was brand-

new and barely available to legitimate buyers.

Reaching into the trunk, he picked up a Barrett and worked the action; putting it to his shoulder, he checked the sight. Not light, but easy enough to use, and with enough punch to put down a Terminator. He noted several pieces that he wanted to purchase and started to ask about prices.

"I believe I've found von Rossbach's backup," the Sector agent reported. "A skinny guy with a CAR-15 aimed at the meeting place. Bridges and Hardy's backup is still in hiding."

"Roger that," the project pilot said. "Hold your position. We'll just stand by and wait for Mr. Bridges to make his move. When he does, make certain von Rossbach's friend doesn't interfere."

"Roger that," the agent said. "Out."

The project pilot felt a spurt of excitement at the report. It had to be John Connor out there. At least he hoped it was—the reward for bringing him in would be immediate and very tangible. He smiled. Life was good.

He and his team had been in the area since noon. They'd checked out the gully and planted microphones in several spots as well as a couple of video cameras.

There'd be ample documentation of this bust. And since there were seven agents to manage it, the recordings should make good theater.

Idly he wondered why von Rossbach had changed clothes and vehicles. The woman's report of his terrible smell might explain the former, if not why he smelled so bad. But the change of vehicles? Admittedly, having a panic-stricken

woman hidden in the toolbox might explain that, even if it didn't explain why she was there in the first place.

The waitress had told them that von Rossbach claimed he couldn't find the meeting place and she offered to draw him a map, then the way he looked and smelled caused her to panic. The cook had come rushing to her aid and von Rossbach had thrown him through the window.

The project pilot could believe that; the former agent was both huge and muscular as well as specially trained. They'd sent paramedics to the diner and the cook was in pretty bad shape.

Scary.

The strange thing was he'd kidnapped the woman because he needed her to show him to the meeting place. But if that was true, then how had he managed to conceal a car and a change of clothes nearby? And why?

Maybe von Rossbach had just plain gone nuts; his behavior this evening was certainly crazy. Suddenly the Austrian's abrupt departure from the Sector seemed to put him under a cloud. Maybe he hadn't left so much as been asked to leave.

The project pilot shook his head. They'd find out when they had the man in custody.

If the problem was a mental breakdown, well, the Sector took care of their own.

But if von Rossbach had gone rogue, well… again, the Sector took care of their own.

The T-101 watched the humans milling around in the gully, chattering and

fondling weapons. Unfortunately John Connor wasn't among them. But when they captured von Rossbach they would find out where he was hiding quickly enough.

It checked on the rest of its team. The other Terminators had landed five miles away in another, wider gully and were now running toward this place at approximately twenty miles an hour. By the time they arrived it should be dark enough to hide their presence.

For now it marked time and watched the humans it would kill.

"Now this one here's my favorite," Waylon said, picking up an Austrian Steyr assault rifle, a futuristic-looking bull-pup design with the magazine behind the pistol grip and a built-in optical sight.

Dieter glanced at the light weapon and dismissed it.

"I prefer something with a little more stopping power," he said. Knowing that Bridges would, too, if the gunrunner had seen what the weapons would be used against. He leaned over and reached for a Carl Gustav recoilless rifle.

"Something more like this." He hefted the weapon; it went over your shoulder, with grip and stock beneath the launching tube, and the shell would take out a light tank or armored car quite easily. Not bad on Terminators, either.

"Oh, I find this one has enough stopping power," Waylon said cheerfully as he chambered a bullet. He pressed the gun to the back of the Austrian's head.

"Especially from this distance."

Dieter froze, then slowly turned his head to give the gunrunner a narrow-eyed stare. "What is this?" he asked, his voice deadly quiet.

"This is a bust, asshole!" Luke said. Laughing, he pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

"Just put your hands behind your back real smooth like," Waylon said, "so's my buddy can lock you up. Don't try no funny stuff. Hey, Luis!" he shouted.

Above them Luis stood, his rifle to his shoulder, his teeth glinting white in the gathering gloom as he grinned. "Shit, Waylon!" he said gleefully. "You got the bastard!"

"Told ya," Waylon said smugly.

Luke approached von Rossbach cautiously and snapped a cuff on one of the big wrists; the band was almost too small and Hardy had to squeeze it shut.

Dieter winced as the metal pinched his flesh. His mind was working frantically.

John wouldn't shoot while the gun was to his head—at least he hoped not—or Bridges would probably squeeze the trigger reflexively and blow his head off.

On the other hand, John had never shot a man before. He might not be able to do it.

My God! he suddenly thought. Did Doc set me up:' It was possible, perhaps even likely. Dieter felt a profound sense of betrayal. "Why are you doing this?" he asked, his voice calm.

"Because you are worth a ton of money, buddy," Luke said, clipping on the other cuff.

"We saw you on TV last night and we just had to hava you." Waylon laughed, lowering the gun. Then he looked at von Rossbach more seriously. "Besides, I don't hold with cop killin'. Figured it'd be worth more to me to turn you in than to sell you guns. Man in my Business never knows when he's gonna need a favor, and arrestin' you is gonna buy me a hell of a lot of favors." He grinned and suddenly shouted, "Yeee-haw!"

Shoot him, John! Dieter thought viciously. Holmes hadn't betrayed him; he'd just been snookered by bad luck and hillbilly greed. Shoot him!

I knew it! John thought, he cradled the rifle into his shoulder and waited for the right moment.

"Don't move," a voice said from behind him.

John stiffened, then slowly began to turn his head.

"Don't turn around," the voice said, sounding bored. "Turning around is moving.

Don't move until I tell you to move. Don't do anything unless I tell you to. We don't want to make any mistakes here."

Somehow John didn't think the voice went with good 'ol boys incorporated down in the gully, so he obediently froze. Behind him he heard furtive movement.

More than one person.

"We have taken the remote shooter prisoner," the voice said.

Maybe. John thought.

"Okay, slowly now, put the rifle down at arm's length in front of you, then push yourself away from it."

Moving slowly, John complied, gently laying the rifle down; then putting his palms against the ground, he shoved himself backward.

"Again," the voice demanded.

John complied, then waited.

"Okay, stand up slowly, hands up, then turn around."

He rose and turned to find himself confronting two men dressed in black, their faces darkened; they wore night-vision goggles with the works turned up on their foreheads until it was dark enough for them to be useful, which should be any moment now. Both held FN-90 submachine guns on him and watched him warily. Commandos of some type, obviously, and just as obviously not connected with Bridges and Hardy, hick gunrunners. Maybe they were some kind of special police unit; the FN-90 was new, with a hot armor-piercing round.

"Hello," John said. "Who are you?"

"We're the guys who ask the questions, kid. You're the guy who answers them and does what he's told. Now that we know who everybody is, put your hands on your head, fingers locked."

The man paused and for the first time John noticed the earpiece and microphone, though he'd surmised they must have them. You didn't announce to the guy standing next to you that you'd taken a prisoner.

"Yes, sir," the man said to the air. "C'mon," he said to John, "we're moving in."

John glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing had changed down in the gully.

Dieter was still in handcuffs, the gunrunners were still slapping each other on the back.

"Just keep your hands on top of your head and walk," the talker said. "On our way," he said into the microphone.

"Put your hands up, gentlemen," a calm male voice said from out of the growing darkness.

Luis instinctively brought his rifle up and stared toward the place from which the warning had come.

"No, no, no, you don't want to do that," the voice said. "Look down."

Luis cautiously looked at his chest and saw a red dot centered over his heart.

Luke and Waylon immediately raised their hands and Luis dropped the gun as if it was suddenly red-hot.

"Thank you very much," the voice said.

Footsteps sounded, coming in from every direction, and the gunrunners and von Rossbach looked around to spot the spokesman.

"Don't look so worried, Dieter," the voice said. "We know you're in restraints."

"Sully!" von Rossbach said in tones of disbelief.

A compact individual with graying dark hair walked down into the gully. "Yep,"

he agreed, wearing a tiny smile.

"Last time I saw you, you were with—"

Sully interrupted him. "I was undercover."

They looked at each other for a moment and Dieter shook his head slightly, trying not to grin. "Then I guess it's a good thing I let you go."

"Yeah," Sully said sarcastically. "Straight down. Thanks." Looking around as his team disarmed the prisoners. "You can put your hands down now, gentlemen."

"Who the hell are you?" Waylon demanded. He glanced from von Rossbach to the black-clad man. "This guy is my prisoner. You have no right to take him from me. Those are my handcuffs on him and the reward is mine!"

"It certainly is, Mr. Bridges," Sully agreed. "You might say we're just saving you a few steps so that you can start celebrating that much sooner."

"Oh, yeah," Luke said, his eyes moving nervously over the silent men holding guns on him. "I don't see no money around here. How do we know we can trust you?"

Sully looked at Dieter, a cynical smile curving one corner of his mouth. "You'd think he had a choice, wouldn't you?"

Then he turned back toward the gunrunners; he slipped his hand under his vest, reached into his breast pocket, and extracted a check, which he held out to them.

Waylon and Luke glanced uncertainly at each other. Sully tilted his head and shook the check at them teasingly.

"You don't want it?" he asked. "Hey, I'll be glad to put it back in the kitty.

There's never enough money around for fighting crime, y'know."

Waylon reached out and grabbed the check. Unfolded it as Luke glanced from Sully to the check and back again. Amused, Sully reached out as though he was going to snatch it back. Bridges clutched it to his chest and as one the two gunrunners took a step back, wearing identically offended expressions.

Sully laughed and then turned serious. "Y'know, boys, there are some who'd say I didn't need to give you anything at all since you're out here committing a crime."

"What crime?" Waylon demanded indignantly. "We're apprehending a felon.

We're licensed."

Sully went to the open trunk of Waylon's car and picked up an Israeli-made antitank launcher. "Why… what's this?" he asked in mock surprise. "Is this even on the market yet?," He looked into the trunk. "And all of these other weapons…

I may be wrong, but I don't believe it's legal for a private citizen to own a number of these." He looked at the gunrunner. "Could I be mistaken?"

Luke nudged his partner and widened his eyes at him. Waylon frowned and nudged him back, hard enough to almost knock him off his feet. "They're props,"

he said. "We needed something to lure him out here where he couldn't hurt anybody."

Von Rossbach and all the men in black looked at him for a moment, then Sully turned to the big Austrian and they both grinned.

"That's not bad," Sully said, turning back to Bridges. "But you didn't let me finish. See, this money isn't just a reward. It's a bribe to keep your mouth shut.

You talk to anybody about what's happened here tonight, and you and your buddies are going to be spending a very long time in a very high-security prison." He looked each of the three men in the eyes. "Am I understood?"

The gunrunners nodded and shuffled, muttering unhappy agreement.

"Good!" Sully said happily. "Then you can go!"

The three men looked at him uncertainly for a moment, not moving.

"GO!" Sully bellowed, and slammed the trunk.

Suddenly he spun around and fell to the ground.

"Hit the dirt!" Dieter yelled, throwing himself down.

He rolled toward the car and hugged the side, looking into the darkness. Around him men in black leapt aside, disappearing as if by magic. Waylon, Luke, and Luis huddled at the back of the car as Bridges dug out his keys and unlocked the trunk.

"Let me out of these!" Dieter demanded.

Luke looked at Waylon, who hesitated, then nodded. Luke slipped forward, digging in his pocket for his key ring. He unlocked the cuffs and Dieter chaffed

his wrists, giving the other man a hostile glance.

"Friends of yours?" he asked, gesturing toward the darkness.

Luke shook his head, then said "no" softly. "We didn't tell anybody about this.

Didn't want to give anybody else a cut."

Von Rossbach grunted. "You'd better give me a gun, then," he said, and began to work his way to the back of the car.

The Infiltrator's permission to kill had been acted upon instantly, much to Alissa's dismay. Only one of the Terminators was in position; the others were still on the way. Her own fault, she realized, she should have phrased the order differently. More firepower would have made all the difference.

Only one human was down and Alissa, looking on remotely, was appalled.

Everything in her own experience and even in Serena's—up until the end, that is

—had led her to believe that humans were easy prey. It was only when the Connors were involved that things became difficult.

Therefore, the Connors, one or both, were present. In which case there was no need to capture von Rossbach. Which should make things easier.

Even so the humans had reacted much more quickly than expected. The fault, of course, was that never in their brief existence had these Terminators faced humans who had been trained to kill and to respond to threat. Nor had she for that matter, a fact that suddenly frightened her. *Terminate all humans present,*

she ordered. *Let none escape.*

John led the two commandos over the gentle rise just in time to see another black-clad man below them spin and fall. Instinctively he fell to the ground; his captors followed suit.

"Roger that," one of them said softly. "I can't see anyone."

Neither could John, but he was betting that the shooter had been in front of the man shot and he watched that side of the landscape, frustrated by the almost total darkness. He glanced back at the gully; only the civilians, if you could count Dieter as such, were huddled around the car, looking around anxiously. John assumed that meant there'd been no more shooting.

Heck, John thought, this is the great Southwest. It might have been some fool out shooting bottles and cans a mile away.

He turned toward his escorts and instinctively signed Quiet! Someone's coming!

—indicating the direction by pointing with two fingers. The men lowered their nightscopes and looked. One man! one of them signaled.

John could barely make him out; then off in the distance he saw another hint of movement. Hardly even movement; shadows among shadows, a clatter of a small rocks, shapes trotting forward. Somewhere a coyote howled, distant and as cold as the stars winking into sight in the darkening sky.

They're not exactly sneaking around out there, he thought. Then the hair stood up on the back of his neck. My God. It's them. Terminators. There was no mistaking that straight-forward walk that disregarded terrain and bullets equally.

How many of them are there? Three at least, he answered himself, counting the shooter. He alerted the commandos, pointing off toward the one he'd spotted. He

could no longer see it; the desert was becoming as black as pitch.

Clearly these Terminators weren't in position yet and John wondered why the attack had gone forward without them.

Time seemed to crawl by as the four Terminators closed in on the gully. Alissa had read of this phenomenon, but this was the first time she'd experienced it. She pouted unhappily even as she felt her emotions becoming more and more muted due to the rebalancing of her brain chemistry that her computer was arranging.

Knowing there were armed humans lurking in the dark, she'd ordered the Terminators to approach stealthily. To them that seemed to mean slow down.

For this she was not to blame. Their programming was designed to deal with a different war. Clearly this was something that she and her sister would have to look into.

She frowned impatiently, switching her viewpoint back to the first Terminator on the scene. The humans in the gully had taken refuge behind the car. The man who'd been shot was no longer in evidence. When queried, the Terminator confirmed that he'd been dragged behind the car by von Rossbach and one of the others.

Alissa regretted that the Terminator didn't have a rocket launcher; one shell and problem solved. One of those approaching did have one. But they'd slowed yet again in the interests of silence, so she'd have to wait for the satisfaction of seeing her enemy blown to pieces. She wanted to tell them to get it over with, but held back. She'd already been too impulsive tonight; there was no sense in giving herself more cause for dissatisfaction.

And on the other hand, despite her suspicions, there had been no sign of the Connors. Perhaps she should amend her orders. Well, she'd consider it.

The Sector commandos had counted four men approaching and reported their positions to their fellows. All remained silent in the gully and John surmised that someone had jumped the gun and now was holding back, waiting for reinforcements. That wasn't like a Terminator. Their method was to go for their target. Undirected, the shooter would have been down in that gully exchanging fire ten minutes ago.

Which means, he thought, that we've got another… Serena Burns on our hands, for want of a better name. Another of Skynet's little surprises. Maybe she's less experienced. Then he thought irreverently, There are always two, a master and an apprentice…

He watched the gully for movement, trusting the commandos to watch the approaching Terminators. He wanted badly to warn them what to expect, but knew better; he'd been here before. They'd find out soon enough; let them keep their innocence awhile longer. Perhaps, though…

"These guys are going to be very hard to stop," John said. "Real hard. Sort of like armored-car hard. You won't believe me now, but keep it in mind."

The black-clad gunmen gave skeptical grunts; John shrugged and looked back to the gully. He wondered why the five men huddled behind the dubious protection of the car didn't retreat to the rocks? At least rocks didn't explode when a rocket hit them.

Dieter van Rossbach had seen a lot of wounds. Sully didn't have a sucking chest

puncture, but it was bad, bleeding freely, and might be worse inside. He packed it with bandages from the pouches on the Sector agent's harness, tightened the straps to hold pressure on it, and stabbed a hypo of painkiller from the field medical kit through the cloth of his uniform and into his arm.

All that I can do, he thought, and looked at the two arms dealers. "You're going to contribute some equipment to this, ratfuck," he said, keeping the explanation on a level he estimated their shock-numbed brains could handle. "Do you have any night-sight gear?"

Waylon swallowed as Dieter slipped the trunk open. "Yeah," he said. "In the red plastic box by the spare."

Dieter grunted satisfaction as he slipped the goggles over his head and switched them on. The world sprang back into clear vision, in shades of green and silver; not as good as full light, but fighting Terminators when they could see and you couldn't wasn't his idea of fun. The two arms dealers watched with awe as he loaded up from the rest of their samples; four LAWs across his back—those were collapsible one-shot rockets—a heavy Barrett .50 rifle in his arms, and a slung grenade launcher with a bandolier of 40mm shells. He picked out a few extras—thermite grenades, explosives…

"I suggest you arm yourselves," he said to the two gaping would-be merchants of death. "Things are going to get a bit excessive."

"Use your shotgun, use your shotgun!" John yelled, fighting back a surge of panic.

One of the Sector agents was staring incredulously as a Terminator sat up, its

belly chewed to fragments of flesh held together by blood-sodden cloth. The pistol in its hand came around again, and John winced as the back of the agent's head blew out in a shower of bone fragments and brains. The other black-clad man obeyed, unlimbering the longer weapon from his back and firing as fast as he could rack the slide of the battle shotgun. The dull massive thudump-thudump-thudump split a night full of screams and shots, a huge bottle-shaped flare of gases lancing out with every round. The gun was loaded with rifled slugs—

heavy grooved cylinders of lead, meant for smashing open locks or other demolition work. The massive frame of the Terminator lurched back as each round struck its torso; with the last it toppled backward like a cut-down tree, striking the ground hard enough that John could feel the earth shake beneath him.

"Grenade!" he yelled.

The Sector agent reacted with automatic obedience to something in John's voice, something that struck too deep to remember that he was a teenager or had been a prisoner less than a minute before. John leapt to his feet with a scrambling gracefulness, snatched the smooth egg-shaped mass out of the man's hand.

"Illuminating!" the agent warned.

"All the better," John called back, pulling the pin as he ran and letting the spoon clatter off into the night.

Ought to take him at least fifteen seconds to reboot, he thought— he'd listened carefully as "Uncle Bob" explained the weaknesses of the T-101 class. Sure enough, the massive limbs were just starting to stir as John reached the recumbent form, jammed the grenade into a hole blasted by one of the rifled slugs, jumped, and slammed his heel down on it to drive it deep into the

Terminator's bulky form.

That gave him footing for a backward leap. He blessed the endless hours of practice Sarah had put him through, practice in every form of martial art she could find and gymnastics as well. That let him back-flip back to where the surviving Sector agent waited, staring incredulously as his hands automatically reloaded the shotgun.

"You stuffed a grenade into his—"

Several things happened simultaneously then. The Terminator came to one knee, arm extended to aim its pistol. The thermite grenade exploded in the same instant, a brilliant flash of fire and white light; John squinted as he forced himself to feel across the head of the dead man an arm's length away. The head shot hadn't wrecked the man's goggles, and John slipped them over his head after wiping off the worst of the clotted matter on a clump of grass.

"Thank God," he muttered—there was part of the enemy's advantage gone.

He scooped up his rifle; it was an ordinary hunting model, bolt action, but the rounds inside were hard-points with much more penetrating power.

"You stuffed a grenade right into that guy's chest," the Sector agent said.

"Yeah, except it isn't a guy. You know any guys who can take fifty rounds of 5.45 and then six rifled slugs and get up again?" John asked.

He was impressed at the speed with which the Sector agent rallied. "No," he said, shaking his head. "Either I'm crazy—

"Or I'm right," John said. "C'mon."

The night-sight goggles didn't show contrast very well; when they leopard-crawled to where the Terminator lay smoking, the vision was more than enough to show the warped metal "bones" protruding through the false flesh. The Sector agent gave a grunt of horrified nausea as the head turned and a face half stripped of skin snapped at him. John pulled another grenade—one of the dead agent's—

and judged his time carefully. The next snap closed on the butt of his rifle, and he jammed the grenade in after it. Terminators didn't spit very well…

"Fire in the hole!" he barked, and rolled away.

This time the Terminator didn't get up. The problem was that it was only one of them, and—

John threw himself convulsively backward. A hand like an ax slashed into the hard clay where he'd just been lying, burying itself wrist-deep. That gave him just enough time to bring his rifle up and fire as the T-101 wrenched itself free and turned toward him. The round struck with unintentional precision in the right knee joint, and the machine fell. When it tried to rise again the limb was locked; it lurched forward more slowly, eyes riveted on the priority target.

Terminators were like that; one-track metal minds. The Sector agent rose to his knees behind it and fired his shotgun again and again, a rippling blast of fire that outlined the hulking figure of the murder machine against the night like a strobing flashbulb. It toppled forward again, landing with an earthquake clamor.

John scooted backward on his rear, firing as fast as he could work the bolt of his rifle. Rounds punched into the thing's arms and shoulders, but its eyes flickered

and began to focus again…

The Sector agent was a man of resources. He came running up behind the prone machine and imitated John's tactic, buried the grenade with a stamping kick and then hurtled across the reviving killer. He grabbed the younger man by the collar of his jacket, half dragging them back to the lip of the gully.

"Down!" he shouted. "Whatever it is, it's got a thermite grenade up its—"

Badoom!

Another sheet of white flame, and the forward half of the Terminator's torso shot by them, tumbling down into the gully and grabbing at loose rocks and shallow-rooted bushes in an attempt to stop the slide. A huge slab of rock came free under its impact, followed it down, bounced, and landed atop it with a precision no intelligence could have produced. Sparks sizzled out from beneath it, and the outstretched hands clenched, quivered, went limp.

"This isn't happening," the Sector agent repeated to himself as he reloaded. "This isn't happening."

"Unfortunately it is," John whispered—and then cursed himself. Terminators had very sensitive auditory pickups, and they'd be looking for his voiceprint.

Dieter laid Sully down behind a boulder, one of many dotting the sandy floor of the arroyo, then continued crawling. The Sector agents seemed to be fully engaged now; there were firefights going on around half the rim of the gully, the muzzle flashes giving the hole cut in the desert floor a weird flickering illumination, like an old-time silent movie. And if his hunch was right…

The distance was a good twenty yards, but he could see the resemblance between the hulking figure that strode down the slope toward the arms dealers' car. It even moved a little like him, if you imagined Dieter von Rossbach as one of Romero's living dead. He got a whiff as it passed; if Romero had had scent sprays for one of his brain-eater flics, that was the perfume they'd have used.

Uncertain voices cried out from behind the car, then screams of terror and the flicker of two assault rifles being fired on full rock-and-roll auto. That made Waylon and Luke worse shots than they'd have been naturally, and only half a dozen rounds struck the machine. It lurched, staggered, came on inexorably, pistol extended and cracking out one shot after another. Someone else—Luis, probably—was firing more steadily, and making better practice, until he stopped a round.

Definitely Luis, Dieter thought; the voice screaming for its mother was in Spanish. The Terminator walked slowly forward, and its gun cracked three more times—making sure of the targets and making sure of its identification.

That gave Dieter time enough to extend the fiberglass casing of a LAW and flip up the simple post-and-ring sight. "Big mistake," he muttered, and squeezed the trigger.

There was little recoil. The blare of the rocket motor lancing out behind him was a different matter, igniting weeds and sagebrush and pointing to him with a finger of fire. He threw the empty launcher aside and dove for cover, with rounds chewing up the dirt at his feet.

Another finger of fire drove toward the Terminator. It had just enough time to turn and meet the 66mm shaped-charge warhead with its face. The cone-shaped

tube of explosive within detonated, turning its copper liner into a pencil of white-hot metal traveling at thousands of feet per second. The finger of incandescence was designed to punch through a tank's armor; the tungsten-titanium-steel alloy of the Terminator's skull was tough, but not that tough. The flame lance pierced it the long way, scrambling the delicate components of its CPU and memory systems into molten silicon as it went. The machine fell backward across the bodies of its victims.

Dieter broke open the action of his grenade launcher, slipping in one of the fat shells and scanning around the edges of the gully. John should be—

He blinked behind the night-sight goggles as the front half of a Terminator shot over the lip of the arroyo, trailing fire. It tumbled down the steep slope, bringing down a minor avalanche of stones with it— including a boulder the size of a small car that fell free of the clay and landed on the machine's torso and skull with a clang audible even through the sounds of combat.

"That's my boy," he muttered, and went up the near-vertical slope with a scrambling ease that belied the hundred-odd pounds of munitions draped about his body.

Behind him a streak of flame reached down toward the car. Someone else had a rocket launcher, and when it struck the car the explosion was movie-violent.

Billy-Bob and Good Ol' Boy must have had some serious explosives in that vehicle, Dieter thought as a huge pillow of hot air slapped him against the wall of the gully. When he looked back, only a crater remained of car, Terminator, and human bodies…

With the destruction of the third Terminator, Alissa panicked and contacted Clea.

*What is it?* Clea asked. She'd been working on a prospectus for Roger Colvin, the CEO of Cyberdyne, and wasn't happy to be interrupted.

Alissa paused before answering, put off by the impatient tone of her older sister's answer. But things at the gully had reached a point where she knew she was out of her depth. *Please access the team I've sent after von Rossbach,* she said.

Clea did so and was horrified by what she saw. *You sent four?* she asked, trying to keep the message emotionally flat.

Alissa bit her lip in consternation. *No she said. I also sent the uncle we buried.*

Clea didn't respond to her sister but ordered the remaining Terminators to disengage. She watched through their eyes as they fought their way clear and ran. It seemed to her that the humans didn't try too hard to stop them. Both bore considerable damage; their skin hung in ribbons and shattered electronics sparked as they ran, causing one to limp occasionally.

Computer-controlled emotions notwithstanding, it was extremely vexing. She was very vexed.

*We'll discuss this later, once I've had an opportunity to study the recordings of this incident,* she said to Alissa.

The younger I-950 frowned. Withdrawal hadn't been on her mind. The Terminators were definitely making progress in their attack; she'd only wanted advice on how to press their advantage without losing any more of them. She now regretted contacting her elder about this. If they'd kept up the attack they'd

be walking away from it with something to show for it besides the loss of valuable resources.

*Alissa?* Clea said.

*Of course,* her sister answered. *At your convenience,* she said coldly.

Sully was alive and conscious; conscious enough to watch as the living half of his team rolled the boulder off the remains of the… machine, he decided.

It had definitely been a machine; the fall and the rock had stripped most of the flesh off, leaving the gleaming metal bones bare. Enigmatic shapes lurked within the "rib cage," and a few sparks still sputtered around the severed spine. A man came half falling down the slope of the arroyo wall and gasped.

"Other one's gone," he said. "His buddies must have taken it. Bottom half of this one, too."

"And not enough of this one to prove anything to anyone who wasn't here,"

Dieter von Rossbach said, after bending close. "It landed with its head on a rock, and then this boulder came right down on top. Nothing inside the skull except what was pounded back into sand."

Sully could tell the big man was upset; his Tyrolean accent was a little more noticeable. He almost laughed, but with the hole in him that wasn't advisable.

" Now I believe you," he said. "But who's going to believe me?"

Well, my men, he thought. Although Rogers was lying on the ground with his face in his hands, crying like a kid.

"Doc Holmes," Dieter said. "Contact him. Blame everything on me when you debrief. We'll be in contact through him."

Sully nodded slowly. "And I suppose for the details, I can look up Sarah Connor's transcripts?" he said weakly.

"Ja," Dieter said. "Speaking of which, do you know where she is?"

"Flew the coop," Sully replied. "Vanished from the halfway house with Dr.

Silberman, after some weird shit with a janitor. Last seen crossing the border to Mexico—the all-points just missed 'em."

He noticed Dieter exchanging a glance with John Connor… who is now my ally, Sully thought despairingly. It was so tempting to imagine he was in a hospital having delusions, but he knew better.

"In that case," Dieter said, "We could use some transportation."

"Hey, it's my nickel," Sully said. "Now I get a chance to let you go."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PORTO VELHO, RONDONIA. BRAZIL,

DECEMBER

I don't see why we can't just sail down the river to Paraguay," John complained, looking out over the slow, green expanse of what would eventually become the Rio Paraguay.

"We took the river down from Colombia," Dieter replied, "and we still ended up walking half the way."

"The falls and rapids were not my idea, buddy. Anyway, your friend Sully gave us a plane," John pointed out. "We could have flown all the way to Sao Paulo, or even Asuncion if we wanted to. But noooo, that wasn't covert enough."

"Well, it wasn't," Dieter replied with strained patience. "Leaving the plane in Colombia was more convenient for them and now they won't know which direction we've gone in. I'm surprised that after all these years you don't think that's a worthwhile objective."

Von Rossbach manifested his annoyance by stomping down the street. Locals moved out of his way, giving him uneasy glances.

John frowned thoughtfully as he sped up to keep pace. "Well, yeah, it is," he conceded. "But I really don't think being here is a good idea. And I'd like to go on record as saying that seeing Garmendia is a stupid one."

Dieter stopped in his tracks and turned slowly to stare at the youngster. "John, I hate it when you beat around the bush like that. Don't hold back, tell me how you really feel," he said.

Chewing on his lip, John put his hands on his hips and glared up at the big man.

"I'm not taking that back," he said after a long pause. "Because I'm right. Every instinct I have tells me that he'll go for us if we show our faces again, never mind if we come asking for a favor. Do you know anything about this guy? Have you heard some of the stories going around about him?"

Dieter waved Connor's concerns away. "Every gangster who ever lived has stories going around about them. Half of them are made up by the gangster himself."

"No, they're not!" John insisted. "I wish to God they were, but they're not, and you've got to know it. The guy's a whack job; you walk in there again, he's going to go off like a bomb." He pointed a finger at him. "You know I'm right. You've been in law enforcement how long?"

Holding out both hands, palms up, von Kussbach said, "If you haven't convinced me by now, you should know you're not going to. You've been whining about this all the way from Bogota!"

" Whining? Not wanting to get myself killed is whining? You know what? I've been around paramilitary, terrorist, and just plain scumbag types all my life, and if there's one thing I've learned it's that sure as God made little green apples, that's the kind of thing you old guys—

"Old guys?"

"—say when you want us young guys to go take that hill. Which means I'm onto the joke, Dieter. You want to go have a tete-a-tete with Garmendia, you go ahead. I'll send flowers." He moved past von Rossbach. "I'll also find my own way home."

Dieter frowned, still a little ticked over that crack about "old guys." But when John moved past him and marched down the street, he knew his obligation to Sarah wouldn't allow him to let the boy go. Much as he might want to at the moment.

"John," he said, hurrying down the street after him. "Wait up." He put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Look, we're both dirty and tired and hungry. Let's find a place to clean up and get some rest, then we'll eat. After that, we'll see what we feel like doing. Okay?"

Connor stopped walking and sighed, then turned to Dieter. "Yes to the bath and rest and food," he said. "But don't expect me to change my mind about Garmendia." He looked at his friend's face and shook his head. "I don't know why you think you have to do it this way. It just doesn't make sense to me. You, of all people, know better."

Dieter held up his hand. "Don't. You're just going to start up all over again. So, like I said, let's get clean and fed."

Standing back, John said tersely, "Sure. Whatever."

Von Rossbach moved through the early-morning crowd easily. He was simply dressed in a white, short-sleeved shirt, tan slacks, a light-colored straw hat, and sunglasses. As far as possible his clothing matched that of the local men, with the exception of his well-worn jungle boots. He never wore sandals; they were cooler, granted, but much less stable when the occasion called for action.

Despite his bland clothing, the Austrian would never blend in here; he was a head taller than most of the people around him, and his build just didn't fit the local type. They seemed to automatically step aside, as though his blond height was somehow dangerous.

Dieter thought about his last conversation with John, frowning as he walked. The

boy had refused to accompany him, excusing himself this morning by saying that he wanted to visit old friends. This was the first von Rossbach had heard about them, making him wonder if these old friends were, in fact, mythical. Well, at least they hadn't had another go-round at breakfast about his calling on Garmendia.

The boy didn't seem to understand that the smuggler was a resource, and if one had a resource one used it. Yes, there were other ways of getting home, but all of them were much more trouble than leaning on the local crime lord. In his days with the Sector, Dieter had extracted greater favors from people infinitely more dangerous than Lazaro Garmendia.

Of course, at the time he'd had the backup of the Sector's kill squads, should anything happen to him. But even retired, he still had friends in the Sector.

True, many of them were looking for him at the moment with the intention of interrogating him to within an inch of his life. At least he didn't think they'd go beyond that last inch. But the protection should still be there. After all, if the Sector allowed their retired agents to get killed by the bad guys, morale would suffer.

The Sector was big on boosting morale.

Another thing that John didn't understand was that Garmendia was a type. Push the right buttons and you'd get the same reactions every time. Dieter was confident that he could play the smuggler like a piano. The kid was just being stubborn.

Or maybe it was something about his age. Perhaps he was trying to assert

himself. Teenagers did that. It could also have something to do with his mother's absence. Dieter considered that for a moment, then mentally swept it aside.

Whatever was going on with the boy was ill timed and damned annoying.

John watched von Rossbach go with a disagreeable sense of apprehension. It felt like that excellent Brazilian coffee he'd drunk for breakfast was still perking.

Maybe the anxiety was because he didn't know what it was his mother held over the smuggler's head and he hated not having vital information like that. Or maybe he was just being opinionated. But deep down inside, something was telling him that Dieter was walking into a hornet's nest, head up, shoulders back, brain in neutral.

What was up with the big guy these days? They'd gotten through the jungle the first time without a single flare-up. This time they'd struck sparks off each other from day one. He thought about the last weeks. Had he been more irritable lately, or was it that Dieter was suddenly more irritating, and if so, to either question, why?

A sudden picture of Wendy smiling at him and the heady memory of her kisses came to him on a wave of endorphins, and he shook his head, smiling. Yeah, well, there was that. Maybe Dieter was missing Mom, too.

He looked up and down the street, then started off for Garmendia's palacete by a different route than Dieter had taken. If he hurried he should get there before von Rossbach walked into trouble.

John figured the secret door he'd used a few months ago was either blocked or watched, or both. Fortunately there was another way in that he'd discovered and

his mom had perfected. He thought he might still be narrow enough to fit.

It only provided a place from which to observe. There was no way into the house from the tunnel, but at least he'd know what was happening to his big friend.

Then, maybe, with luck, he'd be able to help. At least that was the plan du jour.

It would have been nice if it was dark. To enter the palacete's grounds he'd take a short jaunt through the sewer, then come up out of a storm drain. But he'd be exposed in the bright morning light for a few minutes as he worked his way to the house itself.

No help for it. That Dieter was an eager beaver and a morning person to boot.

Which Garmendia probably wasn't; another reason to not expect a hospitable reception.

John also hoped that no security of any type was patrolling the alleys, looking for someone trying to break into the surrounding mansions. The local upper class, those just below the level who could afford their own personal security guards, clubbed together to hire men to scope out the whole neighborhood. The really rich loved it, because they benefited without having to spend a cent.

Using a crowbar he'd "borrowed" from the pension, he hoisted the drain cover, slipped under it, and dropped down, allowing the cover to slam down above him.

It always cost him a little skin to do it this way, but aside from the sound of the slam, it left no evidence of his passing. He hunkered down to straddle the slimy green trickle down the center of the sewer—it was mostly a storm drain, in fact—

and duckwalked in the direction of Garmendia's palacete, wrinkling his nose a little.

The drain cover was just inside the wall of the smuggler's estate, deep in the greenery that made up the garden, and it was a damned tight fit.

John had to take oil his shirt and rub Vaseline onto the rim to squirm through.

Even then he was bleeding by the time he dragged himself out, grateful for the first time that he was the rangy type and not a mound-o'-muscle like Dieter. He was still getting bigger through the chest and shoulders, though, no doubt about that.

He had studied the area as closely as he could through the grille of the cover and seen nothing. Upon crawling out of the drain, he'd lain quiet on the moist soil beneath the bougainvillea and frangipani and assorted tropical bushes, looking for booby traps or cameras. He'd found neither.

A crook who isn't paranoid, he thought in wonder. He didn't think he'd ever met one before.

He shrugged into his shirt and looked around, listening for any sound of human activity. John was amazed that Garmendia allowed so much cover so close to such an undeniable weak spot in his perimeter. Unless it was a trap of some kind.

There was a comforting thought.

The garden was weed-free and tidy, but the plants were all old ones, indicating that this was no one's special care. So he could look forward to remaining unobserved by gardeners, at least. He still couldn't get over the absence of any electronic surveillance. That meant the smuggler was relying on his muscle to watch over him.

Given that even working together, they didn't seem bright enough to change a lightbulb. this must mean they're unbelievably vicious. He groaned internally, cursing Dieter's hubris; goons like these might be dumb as a box of rocks but they could be incredibly inventive within their own limited sphere of interest.

Deliberately he pushed his attention to finding a way across the open ground between the green belt around the wall and the green belt around the house. He set off to explore.

After about fifteen minutes he found a peninsula of shrubbery that reached toward the house, cutting the empty space between him and it to about twenty feet.

John pulled out the ocular he'd brought with him and studied the house. He caught no hint of movement through the broad windows that overlooked his hiding place. Not that that meant anything. If someone was sitting or standing still ten feet from the windows, he'd be unable to see them.

He waited five minutes, wishing it could be more, but knowing he had to get into place or Dieter might be on his way to the river before he ever left cover. John stood and moved quickly to the protection of the shrubs around the house. He didn't run; that would have attracted attention, even if only from the corner of someone's eye. Once he'd burrowed into the thick growth of the bushes, he moved toward the tunnel entrance.

It wasn't really a tunnel; it was more of a ventilation shaft running from the crawl space beneath the building. This area was still on the alluvial plain of the river, and the builders had wanted insurance against floods as well as some air.

At least that's what his mother had thought. Apparently it had become a highway

for rats and other vermin, as a former owner of the place had sealed the shafts at their point of origin on the foundation of the house. The workmen hadn't done a very good job and Mom had cleared the bricks from one place, replacing them with a disguised false door.

Nothing lethal bit him as he crawled along in utter darkness; which wasn't something you could count on, especially on the borders of Amazonia. A bit of dirt had built up along the bottom edge; he pulled out his pocketknife and cleared it away, then stuck the blade into the crack between the false mortar and the real and pried on the door. At first the blade bent perilously and he didn't think it was going to open: he was about to pull it out when the door began to move. He got his fingernails around the edge and pried until he could get a hand in and drag the little door open.

John bent and looked into the dark hole. There was a faint light in the distance and the shaft was draped with spiderwebs. He shuddered. It wasn't just that he disliked spiders; hereabouts a lot of them were poisonous, and he didn't look forward to the prospect of being bitten again.

Biting his lips, he pushed himself forward. At least he would fit. After about twenty feet, though, he began to doubt that.

Maybe it's time I put aside childish things, like avoiding dogs and crawling through air ducts. He did fit, but it was a damned tight fit. Getting out of here is gonna be a bitch!

Garmendia had taken the time to shave and dress before coming down to see his uninvited, and most unwelcome, guest. The grooming was not to honor the man

but to allow time for his outrage to subside from murderous to merely insulted.

Which most of the smuggler's acquaintances, whether rivals or employees, would recognize as more than dangerous enough.

He'd soothed his anger not in fear of the Sector or its agent but because he wanted to know just how much von Rossbach knew about his secret and who, if anyone, he had told. Once he had his answers, well, the Sector agent might just become fatally accident-prone. He might fall into a river, for example, at a place where caimans gathered.

Garmendia smiled at the image of the crocodilelike reptiles tearing into the foreigner's flesh. It almost put him in a good mood.

He found von Rossbach in the morning room, sipping coffee and smoking a huge cigar. Irritation rose in him to find that his servants had provided refreshment without his permission. He'd deal with that later.

Dieter looked up to find Garmendia standing in the doorway, his eyes still puffy from sleep but bright with rage and hatred. Deep inside him a sense of warning woke and he admitted to himself that, just perhaps, John might have had a point.

The smuggler moved into the room and took a stance before him. "Are you comfortable, Senhor von Rossbach?"

"Very comfortable, thank you," Dieter said, then took a sip from his cup. "Your cook makes excellent cafe com leite."

"I am so glad that you approve," Garmendia growled. He moved closer and clasped his hands behind him, glaring down at the former Sector agent.

"It was also good of you to see me on such short notice," von Rossbach added, smiling falsely.

"Oh," said Lazaro in mock surprise, "I actually had a choice, then?"

Dieter took another sip and smiled. "Not really."

The smuggler looked around. "And where is your young friend? I would have expected him to be with you."

Shaking his head, Dieter said, "Not this time." He put the cup and saucer down on the table beside him. "I find that, once again, I must call upon you for assistance."

"What kind of assistance?"

Dieter began to feel annoyed at the smuggler's persistence in looming over him.

"Travel assistance. Why don't you sit down and we can discuss it?"

"Because," Garmendia said quietly, stepping forward until their legs almost touched, "I do not want to sit down, any more than I want to give you assistance, or wanted to see you in the first place." Suddenly he grinned and there was pure evil in his eyes. "But since you have come, I shall do my very best to entertain you."

Uh-oh, von Rossbach thought.

John had checked the room where he and Dieter had forced Garmendia's

cooperation the last time they were here and had found it empty. He didn't check the kitchen, easily found by the scent of coffee and cooking, since he was certain von Rossbach wouldn't be there. He wished he had a floor plan of the place.

They're probably in a parlor or maybe some sort of breakfast room, he thought.

The place, a former rubber baron's mansion, was big enough to have both—"red rubber" had been very profitable back around the turn of the last century, what with thousands of Indio debt slaves who could be worked to death collecting latex in the jungle. He headed back toward the kitchen, figuring that if he had a breakfast room he'd put it where the coffee and toast wouldn't get cold on the way to the table.

As he moved slowly and carefully along he thought he caught the rumble of Dieter's voice. Good call, Connor!

He pulled himself through the duct until he was under the room from which von Rossbach's voice had come. John found himself at a bad angle for observation and had to content himself with listening. The conversation was not going Dieter's way.

"You force yourself into my house," Garmendia was saying, walking around his unwanted guest, "you give orders to my servants, you make yourself very comfortable, and then"—he came back to face von Rossbach, holding up one finger—"you tell me I must do you a favor."

He smiled and tilted his head. "You are a very pushy man, senhor."

Dieter took a puff of his cigar and narrowed his eyes, savoring the rich Havana smoke that went so well with good mountain coffee. He'd feel even better if he

were armed, but that would have been stupid— Garmendia's men were professionals, if not what you'd call top drawer.

"You will not be sorry to do me a favor, old friend," he said. "You would only be sorry not to."

The smuggler lost it then; he grabbed the silver coffeepot and swung it at Dieter.

The big man's hand slashed up and knocked it out of his hand, splashing the smuggler with the hot liquid. Garmendia shrieked, more rage than pain. Doors flew open along the wall that faced the veranda; they were made of slatted louvers anyway, no barrier to sound.

Shit, Dieter thought.

Garmendia tried to grab him around the shoulders; Dieter shoved the cigar over his shoulder, and the smuggler toppled backward with a yell of fear as it nearly touched his eye. That gave Dieter time enough to grab two of the first wave of Garmendia's men and smash their heads together with a ringing knock that made every man in the room wince.

Every man but the one behind him. Dieter's eyes widened slightly as he threw a punch into the man's stomach with all his huge strength behind it. The fist sank through a layer of blubber and rebounded off muscle like…

No, not rubber. Like a rubber tree.

The thug was a good six inches taller than Dieter, with a shelf-browed, huge-nosed face—a hormone-disease giant. He was built like a pear, but most of the bulk was anything but fat. A hand like the Jolly Green Giant's flyswatter came

around and hit the Austrian over one ear. The room dimmed and Dieter felt his knees begin to buckle. He had them back in working order in an instant, just in time for the next six of Garmendia's goons to pile on.

Garmendia spat into Dieter's battered face, then swung at him with all his strength. His fist hit squarely on the big man's jaw and von Rossbach's eyes rolled back, his head lolling. The bodyguards let go of his arms and the Austrian fell unconscious to the floor.

Swearing mightily, Garmendia rubbed his fist, then shook it. He turned to Dieter and gave him a vicious kick in the stomach.

" Bastardo!" he shouted, and kicked him again, almost knocking himself off balance. "You are going to die!"

A guard took out his pistol and pulled back the slide.

"NO!" Garmendia said, slapping the gun aside. " Idiota! Too easy, too quick.

And not here!" He glared at the unconscious man, chewing his lip thoughtfully.

"We'll take him to the river." He chuckled. "Something there is probably hungry.

No?"

His men smiled. "Piranha?" one asked.

"No, no," Garmendia said, waving the suggestion away. "Too hard to find.

Caiman will do." His eyes glittered at the thought of the big lizards. "And they take bigger bites!"

They all laughed.

"But first I shall have my breakfast like a civilized man. Lock him in the trunk of the car." The smuggler turned away, then back again. "And park the car in the sun."

His men laughed again and began dragging Dieter away.

Whoops, John thought. Looks like we're going on a boat trip.

He began to back out and found himself having to work very hard at it. The going had been tight heading in, but pushing himself backward seemed to make him fatter somehow. In less than a minute he had himself plugged in the duct.

His shirt had rolled up around his shoulders and he couldn't push it down or pull it off; the excess bulk had him jammed in like a stopper in a bottle.

Great! he thought. Just great. Then he forced himself to calm down and consider the problem as though it was outside himself. He pulled himself forward again and eventually the shirt began to roll back down. When he'd loosened it sufficiently he pulled it up over his head, the sort of exercise that made him wish he was double-jointed. Then he resumed his backward journey, dragging the shirt with him. Thank God my pants aren't a problem.

After about thirty minutes of sweaty, claustrophobic effort John finally crawled backward out of the hole in the palacete's wall. For a moment he just lay there, indulging a sense of release as the hot, humid, muggy, wonderful outside air cooled him. Then he forced himself to his feet and began looking for a limo left in the sun.