As the plane taxied toward the velocity that would allow it to lift from the ground, Third caught up to it. It leapt onto the wing and hung on just as the plane rose.
The plane dipped and they all brought their heads up and looked out the window.
“What the hell was that?” the pilot asked.
“Oh, my God,” Sarah murmured. It felt as though every organ in her body was trying to squeeze into the same place in her middle.
“Mom,” John said, his voice sounding like a warning. He felt like he’d been smacked in the center of the forehead with a tennis ball. The moment of shock before the pain hits, when you’re so disoriented you’re almost uncertain what’s happened.
Outside, a man in sunglasses was clinging to the wing of the plane. His face in profile looked remarkably like Dieter’s.
“What is it?” von Rossbach asked. He undid his seat belt and rose to cross over to their side of the aircraft.
“Sit down, please!” the pilot said.
Sarah looked out and down; they were already over the ocean. When she looked
up she was staring into the Terminator’s face.
“Shit!” she said, real terror in her voice.
It clung to the wing until they were airborne, then it moved, hand over hand, toward the body of the plane. Once it was close to the fuselage, Three raked its nails down the jet’s metal skin. One of the T-950’s improvements had been to give the Terminator titanium steel claws, hidden beneath the human-looking fingernails. Its blow to the side of the plane broke away the fragile keratin covering that disguised this asset; the bloody bits fluttered away as steel ripped beneath Three’s hands.
It looked up to confront Sarah Connor’s white face and considered tearing away the window plastic to get at her. Three rejected the idea. The opening was too small; it could not reach her this way. She would escape, and it would be too vulnerable. Causing a crash at this low altitude and speed also lacked sufficient probability of mission success. It began to work its way down the fuselage, one careful blow at a time.
“What the hell is going on out there?” the pilot asked, his voice sounding desperate.
He was still too close to the heavily trafficked airport to put the plane on autopilot so he could go back and look. The instruments didn’t show any reason for those vicious thumping sounds, or that wild dip of the wing while they were taking off.
“This is Owen Roberts Control,” the headphones spoke. “There is… there is a man clinging to the exterior of your aircraft.”
“Oh, very funny,” he snapped. This wasn’t a frigging biplane, for God’s sake. He was doing better than three hundred mph already.
Then he thought about that dip on the wing, those weird pounding sounds. “Give me clearance for an emergency landing,” he said. “I’m turning back,” he called to his passengers.
“NO!” his passengers shouted as one.
“John, stop him,” Sarah said.
John tightened his lips, but nodded and headed forward. Sarah and Dieter looked out the window, watching the Terminator’s progress.
Three clung to the side of the door frame and began to tear away the metal around the handle, careless of its flesh sheath. It would self-destruct soon anyway.
John slipped into the copilot’s seat.
“Please return to the passenger cabin,” the pilot said sharply. He didn’t need this distraction, not with the tower giving him instructions and some maniac outside the plane. How was that even possible?
“You can’t turn the plane around,” John said.
The pilot looked at him. “Hey, kid, there’s somebody in trouble out there. We can’t just ignore him!”
“I can fly a plane,” John said quietly. He held one hand up, and there was a sudden click. The blade of the knife looked short, but extremely sharp. “If you attempt to turn back we will kill you and I will take over. My advice is to keep to your route and let us take care of this situation. Do you understand?” he asked.
The pilot snapped a look at the kid, ready to face him down. Then something in John’s eyes registered. He wasn’t looking at some dumb, punk kid who didn’t understand the situation. He was looking a man who meant what he said.
“Sure,” he said wonderingly. “You got it.”
“Good.” John said. He smiled and squeezed the pilot’s shoulder, then turned back to the passenger compartment.
Somehow the pilot felt better for that brief contact. Damned if he could figure out why. He licked his lips and toggled the com to talk to air traffic control.
“Seems we don’t need to turn back after all, Owen Roberts. My passengers have the situation under control.”
Which, from the continued pounding, they did not. But he wasn’t prepared to die on behalf of someone stupid enough to hitch a ride this way no matter what Owen Roberts had to say.
Three peeled back the metal skin and bared the locking mechanism. Reaching into the hole, he worked it, pushing hard against the pressure of air escaping the cabin with its free hand. Simultaneously it tried to bring its foot forward, ready to step into the hatchway when it slammed open.
Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and dangled ignored as Dieter flung himself at the door, catching it just as the lock disengaged. He hauled it closed by main strength, bracing one foot against the frame to give himself leverage, and looked around for something to jam the mechanism.
Sarah dragged her bag close and pulled out the lid over the hidden compartment.
Outside, Three patiently worked the mechanism again.
Dieter grabbed it as he saw it begin to move and tried to hold it closed. He held the handles and twisted until lights swam before his eyes, his breath coming in sharp controlled gasps. But they turned inexorably, as though his was the strength of a child. Von Rossbach began to know real terror. This had never happened to him before.
Sarah handed something to John and he came up behind Dieter. “Let it in,” John said.
“Let it!” Dieter grunted. “I can’t stop it!”
“Don’t let it all the way in,” Sarah said quickly.
“John, this isn’t a good idea,” Dieter said from the corner of his mouth. “We don’t have any guns.”
John gave his head a little shake, frowning. “Guns wouldn’t work anyway. We’ll use this.” He held up the lump of plastique that his mother had given him. In his other hand was the detonator.
“Oh, joy,” Dieter said weakly, closing his eyes.
Taking a deep breath and a firmer grip on the hatch’s handles, he allowed them to turn. Then held on with all his might as the airstream sought to tear the door from his grip.
Three grasped the inside edge of the door frame with its left hand, pushed its right arm through the opening, and began to pull up its leg.
Dieter pulled the door to, catching the Terminator’s forearm in the opening.
Three wasn’t worried. It had tested its strength against the humans and it had won. It angled its arm outward and the door began to open again as it pulled its leg up.
John moved forward and wrapped the plastique around the Terminator’s arm just below the elbow. He didn’t want to permanently damage the door. Then he inserted the detonator and gave the cap a sharp twist.
“Fire in hole!” he shouted, and they dived for their seats and huddled behind them.
The door was flung open, crashing against the fuselage as the airstream took it.
The charge went off with a flash and a sharp bang, filling the thin air of the cabin with the smell of burnt explosive.
“What the hell are you people doing!” the pilot yelled frantically. “What the hell was that?”
“SHUT UP!” Sarah yelled back, her hands working the soft puttylike explosive into a long snake between her palms.
When they looked up over the chair backs the Terminator was still holding on to the door frame despite its shattered upper arm. Slowly it fitted its left leg into the opening and began hoisting itself in, fighting the wind that thre
atened to rip it from the plane’s side.
Sarah handed John another rope of plastique and a detonator and he and Dieter dived toward the door. John distracted the Terminator while von Rossbach slid in behind it and tried to pull the door to. With one big hand grasping the door frame, he reached for the handle.
The Terminator flailed its stub of an arm at John, then suddenly slammed its shoulder into Dieter. Von Rossbach’s feet slid out from under him on the carpeted deck; he went down on his hip and looked up at the machine. It reached for him with its broken arm, looked at the ruined stub, then turned once again to John.
Dieter pushed himself to his knees and once again reached for the door, staying low to avoid another body blow. He grasped the door handle just as John got close enough to the Terminator to make Sarah gasp. Bracing his leg against the door frame, Dieter reached out and caught the door with his other hand and heaved, pulling with all his strength against the force of the air, every muscle screaming.
The Terminator gained purchase and began to pull its body forward. It was slower than it should have been, as though the small explosion had thrown it
partially off-line somehow. But it was still stronger than a human.
With a full-throated roar, von Rossbach pulled the door to, slamming it against the body of the Terminator. It turned its head toward the Austrian and continued to thrust its body forward as hard as it could.
John moved forward and wrapped the explosive just above the Terminator’s knee and planted the detonator. He looked up at von Rossbach.
“Go!” von Rossbach told him.
Dieter could hardly let go. This monster would burst into the cabin like a shot.
Von Rossbach’s mind supplied an unwanted vision of the Terminator coming through the door ripping the plastique off of its leg and planting it on his chest.
He pulled harder, gritting his teeth, until they grated, and stopped the thing’s forward motion.
The charge went off after what seemed an eternity and Dieter was flung backward into the bulkhead, hard enough to knock him unconscious for a few seconds. When his blurred vision cleared he was greeted by the sight of the Terminator dangling in the open doorway, trying to angle its big body close enough to the plane to swing in through the door. Dieter found he couldn’t move and all he could say was, “Unhnnn!”
“John!” Sarah said, leaping forward. She ignored the pilot’s shouts as she worked the last piece of plastique between her hands.
John grabbed the door and tried to drag it away from the fuselage. The hinges grated and moved reluctantly, but it was the massive push of the air that defeated
him. Sarah stopped what she was doing and leant her strength to his, pulling the door toward her with all her might.
Three watched the humans try to close the door. It saw both of its primary targets within its reach, if only it could get to them. Its left arm and leg dangled uselessly and several circuits had been fried. For the moment it had to watch them helplessly as it clung on by one hand and rapidly rerouted power.
At last it could once again move its right leg. It brought it up and hooked the door frame with its remaining foot. Then it thrust its head through the door.
Sarah and John gave a mighty heave and the door slammed onto the Terminator’s head. It worked its way forward, scraping its ears off against the unyielding steel of the door and the frame. With the crisp sound of rending metal, it thrust the stump of its left arm into the gap and pulled itself farther in by pressing its chin against the door frame. Its shoulder inched forward.
Dieter staggered erect and swiped at the blood dripping from his nose, then joined them at the door, lending his weight and strength to theirs. The Terminator was stopped. For the moment.
“I want the head,” John said.
The head? the pilot thought. He couldn’t have heard that right.
Sarah nodded, and leaving her son and Dieter to hold the Terminator, she began to spin a rope of plastique between her hands.
“I never saw anybody work it in quite that way,” Dieter said dreamily.
John looked at him, trying to see both his eyes, wondering if their friend was contused.
“It’s how she works pastry,” he said. “She does that to make these cinnamon thingies for Christmas.”
“Cinnamon bows,” Sarah said, distractedly.
She moved forward and attempted to wrap the plastique around the Terminator’s neck. Three thrust its head forward and bit, its teeth flashing. Sarah jerked back with a gasp and looked into the mutilated face, with its glaring eyes.
You never get used to this, she thought, fighting back tears of frustration, her heart pounding. No one could ever get used to this.
She brought her hands forward and jerked back again while John and Dieter watched her. After a few more attempts Dieter reached forward and pushed up on the Terminator’s forehead, lifting it back with some untapped resource of muscle power that vaguely surprised him. He almost let go when the thing’s blue eyes shifted to glare at him and something within clenched and closed off his breath in sheer atavistic terror.
Sarah took advantage of the Terminator’s momentary distraction to flip the rope of explosive around its throat like a neckerchief. It redoubled its efforts to sink its teeth into her as she tried to push the detonator into the soft substance.
With her lips tightly closed, Sarah took a deep breath, set the timer, and tried again. This time John lifted his hand to aid Dieter and the Terminator snapped its head up, attempting to grab him. Sarah pushed the detonator into place and then
grabbed John, yanking him away.
Startled by her sudden move, Dieter pulled as hard as he could against the door, using his body as a weight. Once again he went flying as though smacked by God’s pillow when the plastique blew. This time, in answer to the explosion, the Terminator’s head flew into the cabin and bounced off the far wall. Bits of flesh and spatters of blood sprayed out into the cabin; not nearly as much as from a real body, but enough. Its massive body went pinwheeling through space, exploding in a magenta ball of flame just before it hit the azure blue of the water.
Dieter was slumped, once again unconscious, against the bulkhead. The door hung open.
Sarah raised her head and found herself looking into the Terminator’s blue eyes.
It snapped its teeth at her and wobbled on the floor, helpless to make itself move toward her.
“John?” she said, not taking her eyes off of it.
“Here, Mom,” he said from beside her. He was watching the Terminator, too.
“We’d better get that door,” she said.
Taking in her breath in a gasp that was too close to a sob for her liking, Sarah staggered to her feet and grabbed the door. John moved in beside her and pulled.
They found that it moved better this time; at least the hinges weren’t fighting them. It just wouldn’t stay closed. Sarah tried to work the lock and got nowhere.
Apparently something was jammed inside.
“Shit,” she muttered. “I can’t shut the door!” she shouted to the pilot.
“Right there,” he said, a quaver in his voice. “Okay, got her on autopilot.”
He came into the passenger cabin white-faced, a sort of crowbar in his hand.
There was a slot in the floor into which he inserted one end, then pushed the other end into a similar slot on the door. “That’s never happened before,” he said weakly. “But it’s good to be prepared.”
He turned around to see John pick up the head. My God, he thought, the kid really did want the head!
“I’ll need to make a Faraday cage for this,” John said to him. “To cut it off from communicating with any of its friends. Assuming it has any. So I’m going to need some wires. Where can I take them from so I don’t do serious damage to the plane?”
The pilot watched the head dangling by its hair from John’s bloody hand with fascination. Then the head swung out, face forward, and clicked its teeth at him, its eyes rolling wil
dly.
From some place deep within, possibly the soles of his feet, the pilot felt a scream building, rushing upward until it blared out of his mouth. He leaped toward the pilot’s cabin and slammed the door behind him, locking it and cowering in his seat, screaming.
Sarah tsk’ed and looked around her, then went over to Dieter, kneeling beside him to feel his pulse. She looked up at John and smiled, giving him a reassuring nod. Peeling back one of Dieter’s eyelids and then the other, she breathed a sigh
of relief. The pupils were the same size. Pretty much. He should be all right.
“First the Faraday cage,” she said briskly to John. “And then the pilot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FAMAULIPAS. MEXICO, NEAR THE
TEXAS BORDER: THE PRESENT
Sarah tossed another stick of mesquite onto the fire and glanced over at John, at work on the Terminator’s head in the uncertain light of a pair of Coleman lanterns. She watched him pull something out of the thing’s skull with a pair of long-nosed electrician’s pliers, holding it up in triumph under the brilliant desert stars.
Somewhere a coyote announced its presence to the night.
“This is a Terminator all right!” he said. “But it’s primitive. Heck.” He held up another bit he’d excavated. “This thing here is from a cell phone! It’s nothing like Uncle Bob. Y’know? But the chip seems right.”
At least it resembled the stuff he remembered seeing on Miles Dyson’s computer printouts. This weird little-connected-boxes design had been all over everything.
He turned it, studying it by the light of the lantern.
He’d been trying to get this thing out for the last forty-five minutes. The CPU
was the first thing he’d wanted to take out. The damned Terminator seemed disinclined to stop trying to bite them all to death until he did so. Unfortunately the CPU had been buried deep underneath a solid steel cage and getting to it had
been a long and nasty process.
Even knowing that the Terminator wasn’t a living being, cutting into its head as it snapped its teeth and rolled its eyes at him had been pure nightmare fodder.
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