Infiltrator t2-1

by S. M. Stirling

  Sarah flashed to her feet, spilling the cup and saucer onto the floor, and looked around her as though there were a fire but she didn’t know where. “Oh no,” she said, pressing her hands to her head. “No! Dammit!” She dropped her hands,

  clenched them into fists. “How? How could they start up again? We destroyed everything, everything! Even Miles’s personal papers. He said that everything was there—his work, his team’s work, all of it.” She dropped into her chair again and stared at Dieter. “How?” she asked.

  “They secretly backed up everything they had,” Dieter told her. “It’s common procedure. They just didn’t tell their employees that they were doing it. That way the backup records would be safe. You can’t even torture someone into telling you things they don’t know.”

  Sarah got up and began to pace slowly. She felt as though he’d just told her a loved one had died. Tears pricked at her eyelids and her throat grew tight. Get over it, she told herself fiercely. You have to move on. What are you going to do?

  Think!

  John sat in shock. He felt as though someone had punched him in the stomach, knocking all the air out of him. He watched his mother pace as though she were in another dimension, smaller somehow and far away.

  Then, as one, they turned to Dieter, the same expression on their faces. Dieter had felt it on his own face more than once and seen it on colleagues’ when they were faced with a job they loathed. But a job they would do with a determination even greater than their hatred for it.

  BETWEEN ASUNCION AND VILLA HAYES, PARAGUAY: THE

  PRESENT

  Marco kept glancing at the Terminator until it asked him, “Why are you staring at me?”

  “It’s just… you look… do you know von Rossbach?” he asked.

  “Yes. He’s my cousin.” It continued to look straight forward, its sunglasses remaining in place even as the sun set.

  “Because you look just like him,” Marco said.

  “Like twins,” the Terminator agreed. “Except for our eyes. Those are different.”

  Certainly its eyes were. They were glass, the very best available, but still noticeable eventually to even the most unobservant human. Hence the dark glasses.

  “Oh,” Cassetti said. Well, that explains a lot. This must be some family matter, he supposed. Dieter was probably getting into things they were afraid might disgrace the family. If he was freely consorting with gunrunners and terrorists they had reason to be fearful.

  “How much longer?” the Terminator asked.

  “About thirty minutes,” Marco said. “It will be dark when we get there.” There was no answer from his passenger, so Cassetti mentally supplied one.

  Good.

  About twenty silent minutes later Marco pulled the car off the main road and onto a narrow, but drivable track.

  “If we go any further on the road,” he explained, “they’ll see us coming. There’s a bit of a walk to the house, but I didn’t think you wanted to be seen.”

  “No.” The Terminator sat unmoving, the case in its lap.

  That stillness was working on Cassetti, making him very uneasy. So were the bugs and the sounds and the indecipherable rustles and clicks. This wasn’t how the world was supposed to smell, or feel, or sound.

  If the guy didn’t speak occasionally and breathe, he’d have begun to fear he was dead. He’d read that ninjitsu taught its adherents how to be still, but this, this was something he imagined would make even them look fidgety by comparison.

  “So what’s in the case?” he asked casually.

  “Surveillance equipment,” it lied. “So I’m going up alone. It’s very sensitive and I don’t have much time, so I don’t want any more interference than necessary. It’s rented,” the Terminator continued. “So you’ll have to return it for me. We won’t have time to go back to Griego before my flight. My employer will pay you extra for your inconvenience.”

  “Oh, hey, that won’t be necessary,” Marco protested, pleased.

  “She will insist.”

  Cassetti nodded absently as he worked out a new scenario. So this guy was von Rossbach’s cousin, but apparently no relation to the beautiful blonde who had hired him because he kept referring to her as “my employer.”

  Maybe what happened was that von Rossbach had stolen something that he was offering for sale to all these underworld types and the blonde, who maybe ran an

  old family company that manufactured weapons or something, was trying to get it back before von Rossbach could sell it and put innocent people in jeopardy.

  And the cousin here was trying to recover his own family’s lost honor by helping to bring his cousin to justice. Yeah, that worked. That sounded plausible. It had plot.

  He turned off the headlights and cut the engine, coasting to a stop. “The house is a quarter of a mile that way,” he said, opening his door.

  “I’ll find it,” the Terminator said. “You stay here.”

  It would kill Cassetti at the airport, it decided. Unless there was noise during the termination of Connor and her son and the human panicked. Yes, it would keep this resource alive unless and until it became inconvenient.

  “There’s a ravine over that way.” Cassetti pointed. “It goes right by their house and makes a good place to observe from.”

  The Terminator looked in the direction the human was pointing and saw it immediately. “Yes,” it said. “Stay here.” And it moved off. On-site, it sent to Serena. Approaching target.

  Serena, at dinner with Jordan Dyson, was distracted for a fraction of a second.

  Understood. Continue. Out. She felt a little shiver of pleasure pass over her skin as she contemplated finally, finally, seeing the end of that miserable pair.

  As she looked at Dieter Sarah could feel Suzanne Krieger falling away like an old coat. In a way it was a relief. Even as she regretted the loss of her life here in Villa Hayes, she had to admit that Suzanne and her concerns were, well…

  Suzanne was a hausfrau. Suzanne was content to vegetate in a small town.

  Suzanne is boring. She had opened her mouth to speak when a noise interrupted her.

  Growling.

  The puppy had jumped up onto all fours and its nose was pointed to the picture window toward the slatted vents above it. It growled again, a shocking sound from an animal so soppy-friendly and so young, and its slightly shaggy brown-gray coat was bristling as if it had been plunged into a giant electrostatic generator. Then it barked, hard and hostile.

  Mother and son looked at each other, with a dawning horror in each pair of eyes.

  “John!” Dieter exclaimed, pointing. “Down!” And he threw himself forward off the couch.

  In the split second before the big man’s hands dragged him to the floor, John looked down and saw centered over his heart the telltale red dot of a laser sighting mechanism. A nanosecond before he moved, there came a sharp

  “klack!” from the window, as though a pebble had been flung, hard, against it. A fuzzy-edged star appeared on the glass.

  Sarah hit the floor and crawled over to the wall switch. In the moment before darkness fell she saw that Dieter had drawn a gun from somewhere. She hadn’t even realized he was carrying.

  My God, I’ve slowed down, she thought bitterly.

  “Friends of yours?” she hissed, hoping against hope.

  A glance at the cowering terror and teeth-baring rage of the puppy as it backed toward the kitchen killed… the hope that I’m being targeted by a ruthless covert-ops antiterrorist agency.

  “No,” he snapped. “Sector doesn’t operate this way. It would be easier to simply arrest you, Sarah. And we definitely wouldn’t deliberately target a sixteen-year-old boy!”

  She didn’t bother to answer.

  The window was suddenly peppered with bullets, like a flurry of giant hailstones hitting the glass. It didn’t break, but crazed into an opaque wall. Bulletproof glass, he realized. Clever. And, as it turned out, necessary.

  John tipped over Sarah’s chair
, ignoring the hidden pistol, to rip out the fabric covering the bottom. Then he yanked the 12.7mm heavy Barrett sniper rifle out of the cradle that ran up its high fan-shaped back and crawled toward the kitchen, pushing the six-foot mass of steel and synthetics before him.

  “Get ready,” Sarah told him. “On three—one, two… three!”

  She flung a switch and the outside yard was flooded with light.

  Dieter opened his mouth and then closed it again with a snap. These weren’t civilians, and he wasn’t in command of the defense against whoever it was that was trying to kill them.

  The feeling was reinforced as Sarah—he reminded himself to call her that—

  came leopard-crawling back from the kitchen and ripped an M-16 rifle with a scope sight out from under the cushions of the sofa. Even her body language had changed as she slapped back the weapon’s bolt, still graceful but with all softness gone from it.

  “What have you got in the way of fixed defenses?” he said, for want of something better.

  “Floods,” she replied briskly. “Israeli surplus personal surveillance radar.

  Reinforced doors and windows, with breeching alarms.” Her eyes crinkled slightly. “Poor Dieter—I think you’re going to get that proof you wanted. If we survive this.” Then she shook her head. “No if about it. We have to survive.”

  “I was planning on it,” he said, and smiled. “In a way, I am relieved.”

  “How do you spell relief…” Sarah said. Then: ” Down!”

  Before the word, the hollow choonk of a grenade launcher had already sent Dieter diving for the cover of one of the heavy leather armchairs. As he pulled it over on himself he saw Sarah burrowing under the couch. Here was a woman after his own heart…

  BAADUMP.

  Flame and splinters of tempered armor glass and a wave of heat washed over him; something stung his left hand. He sucked on the cut as he came up behind the thick chair, aiming his Glock out the empty space where the big window had been. A figure stirred beyond the lawn and flower beds, moving. He squeezed

  off two rounds from his pistol—long-range, but he’d always been a good instinctive shot. Sarah’s assault rifle gave a spiteful crack-crack-crack, firing on semiauto, but rapidly. He saw the figure lurch and spin, something flying from its hand.

  “I knocked it down!” Sarah called—loud enough to sound like a shout, even to his battered ears. So John can hear, Dieter thought. “It lost the grenade launcher!”

  “Knocked it down?” Dieter said. “Did you hit him?”

  “It,” Sarah said coolly. “Five rounds into the center of mass.”

  Even body armor won’t stop rifle rounds at less than a hundred yards, Dieter thought: 5.56 rounds were high velocity; and they tumbled in a wound. That many would cut a man in half, spill his guts over the ground.

  “That’ll put it out for a minute or so,” Sarah said. “It’ll have to reboot. C’mon.”

  She’d fallen into English, unnoticed. Dieter reacted automatically, helping her push the heavy furniture into an improvised barricade against the ruin of the window; she stooped and threw the rug to one side as well.

  “Heads up!” came John’s voice, faint down the stairs.

  “Won’t he try another entrance?” Dieter said.

  “No, he knows John and I are here,” Sarah said, with a bleakness that added years to the age her voice sounded. “And he… it… will figure that the highest

  probability is to head straight for us. They’re hard to stop.”

  They must be, if they can take half a dozen assault-rifle slugs in the belly, Dieter thought. Cautiously he peered over the top of the couch into the glare of the lights outside.

  An arm came over the edge of the retaining wall at the lower end of the lawn, holding the pistol grip of a rifle in one hand — Galil or Kalishnikov, he couldn’t tell which. No problem, nobody could control —

  The rifle’s muzzle began strobing red in the night, precise three-round bursts.

  One by one the floodlights died, and darkness settled over the estancia buildings… darkness, and more silence than usual. Many of the creatures of the night had prudently shut up, when humans were hunting.

  Or things that look human, Dieter thought, feeling the eeriness of that impossibly precise shooting clutch at his stomach. No time. Think about it later.

  Sarah slipped goggles down over her eyes, handed him a pair; he donned them, adjusting the strap for his larger head. Israeli manufacture; not the latest model but solid electronics. The night turned a bright silvery green, and he could see the man —

  The Terminator, he thought.

  — climbing over the edge of the wall, coming forward with the assault rifle in one hand and an Uzi in the other, using both as if they were light pistols. Just as the figure in the tape from the police station had done, the one that killed seventeen armed men. The clothing across its middle was shredded, the fabric

  wet with blood. Beneath the gore he thought he saw something shining.

  “How are we going to stop it?” he shouted.

  “Draw its fire!” Sarah snapped back.

  I defer to your knowledge, he thought, and emptied the Glock at the looming figure marching toward them at a brisk walk.

  The bullets struck; he could see them hit, punching holes in the leather coat. The face was his own, but it didn’t even twitch — just turned toward him like a turret swiveling, weapons coming up. A nightmare, in which he tried to kill himself and couldn’t. ,

  He ducked, and automatic fire chewed at the thick stone of the window ledge; ricochets whined and howled into the house. Sarah thumbed the selector switch of her M-16 to full auto, popped up, and hosed the clip into the approaching thing. It fell back, staggered, flopped onto its back… and began to move again.

  Dieter’s mind gibbered as his hands went through the automatic motions of reloading — sixteen rounds in a Clock, and he had only the one spare magazine.

  Perhaps if we pump enough lead into it, it will be too heavy to stand?

  Then a sound came from the floor above them. BRACK! The Barrett rifle firing; firing a heavy machine-gun round with a slug the size of a man’s thumb, designed for use against armored cars and military helicopters.

  Dieter had turned to fire again, feeling like he was using a child’s slingshot; he saw the massive form of the Terminator fly backward six feet and flop down.

  BRACK. Another of the heavy bullets slammed into the thing’s body; the Austrian felt his eyes going wide. He’d seen armored fighting vehicles blow up from less damage. BRACK. BRACK.

  The body lay sprawled fifteen yards from the window, spread-eagled, weapons gone. Dieter suppressed an impulse to empty his pistol into it and then go for a bulldozer and a load of concrete. He forced himself to take deep slow breaths, the scent of cordite paradoxically soothing, an element of normality in this nightmare. There was blood welling from the ripped leather and flesh of the dead… machine, he decided. But not nearly enough blood, and no bone fragments or coils of red-purple intestine. Instead, once again, he could see a gleam of metal, and now a spark, as if something electronic were shorting out.

  “Well…” he began, turning to Sarah. Her face relaxed as well. Then she looked over his shoulder, and her teeth showed in a snarl.

  ” Fuck this!” she shouted as he turned and saw the outstretched arms lift, the fingers flex, the face like a death-mask wax of his own rising to look at them again. One eye glowed red in the bloodied, shredded visage.

  ” Fuck this dicking around. I’m gonna terminate that fucker!”

  Sarah was scrabbling at the floor where the rug had lain. Dieter watched incredulously as a section of floor came up; Sarah reached within, and the ripped cloth of her blouse showed a swell of flat female muscle as she lifted out the long tube within. It was fat—88mm—and flared at the end, with two handgrips.

  And an optical sight along the left side; the woman heaved it onto her shoulder and snuggled the rest home as she aimed. The Terminato
r was on its feet again, coming toward them with the stolid unstoppable grace of an avalanche.

  Dieter slid down with his back against the wall, flinging his gun arm over his eyes and opening his mouth so that the overpressure of the back-blast wouldn’t—

  THUD-WSSSSH!

  —shred his eardrums. Heat scorched him again, and a feeling as if he’d been hit very hard with a kapok-filled sack all over his body. Firing a recoilless rifle inside a confined space, even a big confined space, wasn’t a very good idea.

  There wasn’t any recoil because the projectile was balanced by a backward blast of hot, high-velocity gas. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Sarah tumbling over on her back, with the Carl Gustav launcher clattering away, and everything left standing in the big living room that hadn’t already been overset flying as if a hurricane had struck. From the sound of it, the same thing was happening out in the kitchen, and there was a piteous whining from the puppy cowering under the cast-iron stove.

  And out on the lawn… well, a Carl Gustav was supposed to destroy main battle tanks. The Terminator had taken the shaped-charge warhead right on its breastbone, and a huge globe of magenta fire flared in the night. When Dieter blinked away the afterimages, the torso and legs were lying in a shallow crater, juddering with a horrible semblance of life.

  The skull, shoulder, and one arm of the Terminator were a little closer to the house. Most of the lower half of the face had been burned away, leaving a sooty residue on what looked like chromium steel alloy that had been burned bare and shiny in spots. There was enough that the eerie resemblance to his own face—

  the one he saw shaving every morning—was still there, and it made him want to

  scrub the flesh away with acid.

  Then the eyes opened, and looked into his. They were dead, starred like broken marbles, but they saw him; the head moved, saw Sarah Connor. A jerk, and the arm moved, too, reaching out, clawing fingers where flesh shredded away from steel into the ground, pulling itself closer.