Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

C.12

LAFD paramedic Logan Ballinger had expected to see more bodies when the call came in. The explosion was a big one, and the fire would probably burn for quite a while before it was brought under control. Propane-fed fires were always a bitch.

But so far the only body was the guy in black leathers who'd apparently been blown right through the window of a hardware store.

He crunched through the glass and debris and set his emergency response kit next to the victim who was unconscious and apparently not breathing.

His partner, Eric Kraus, was right behind him. Ballinger knelt down next to the man and touched a finger to the carotid artery in the side of his neck. There was no blood, or any obvious trauma, but the guy was as stiff as a board. "No pulse," he said.

Kraus moved to the victim's opposite side as he pulled on surgical gloves. He opened a plastic sterile wrap and pulled out the CPR mask. "Turn him over."

Ballinger took the guy's shoulder and tried to ease him gently over on his back, but the man wouldn't budge. He was stiff. Some kind of paralysis, or maybe even rigor mortis already. He could have been here before the explosion.

"I can't," Ballinger said. "This guy weighs a ton."

T-X closed the sharply sloping hood of the ambulance she'd reprogrammed, a blue haze in the engine compartment.

The animal clinic was fully engulfed in fire now. Paramedics were bringing out the body of the woman from the reception room on a gurney.

It was obvious that the police were agitated because of the gunshot wounds in the woman's chest.

Soon they would try to completely seal off the area and question anyone they could round up. T-X wasn't concerned that such an action would stop her, but they might just slow her down.

Time just now was precious. With every moment that passed finding and eliminating John Connor became more and more problematic.

T-X evaluated her chances of finding Connor based on the continuously expanding time frame that gave him choices, and the likely pursuit of herself by the authorities once she moved out.

She walked over to another unattended LAPD radio car, opened its hood, and reprogrammed its computers, including those for the fuel, ignition, power steering, and automatic braking systems.

Next, she reprogrammed one more of the half dozen ambulances that had arrived to rescue the expected victims of such a large fire.

Radio cars and ambulances could be stopped by any number of conventional means at the disposal of the various police units on-site.

She needed something larger. Something so large that she would not have the inconvenience of being stopped and having to change vehicles.

She scanned the ground transport units available in the immediate vicinity, her eyes lighting on the huge mobile crane parked behind the National Rentals security fence. The word champion was painted in blue on its yellow boom that was telescoped over the cab of its massive blue tractor.

T-X brought up a file on the machine. It was a hydraulic truck crane weighing more than fifty metric tons, capable of making eighty kilometers per hour, fast enough so that the police couldn't stop it.

She skirted the rows of emergency vehicles and briskly walked to a service gate in the security fence.

The police were busy with crowd control, and the

firemen were intent on battling the nasty blaze. No one noticed as T-X twisted the padlock off the gate and slipped inside. The shadows were deep in the storage yard, and it was not likely that she would be spotted and challenged.

She trailed her fingers along the truck's enormous

front bumper, her head-up display overlaid with the electronic and mechanical schematics for the truck as well as the crane's separate control. The truck was driven as a normal semi from the front cab. But the crane's functions were controlled from a computerized console at the rear.

She went around to the back, climbed up to the control platform, and for a few milliseconds studied the pedals, levers, and indicators, which she optically registered as a match with her head-up display.

She drilled a small hole directly into the control panel, and moments later transferred a stream of data from her system into the crane's computer.

When she withdrew her data transfer probe, a soft blue haze played in and around the crane's controls like a delicate fog backlit by a blue neon sign.

The sky was beginning to get light with the dawn as T-X climbed down from the crane, walked to the front of the cab, and climbed up behind the wheel of the tractor.

She studied the driving controls, which, except for the transmission levers, were not much different from those of a police vehicle.

She brought up twin overlays in her head-up display. To the left she studied a street map, and to the right were four rows of symbols. Two controlled the pair of ambulances she had reprogrammed, and two the pair of police cars. From this point she was in ultra-high frequency contact with each of the vehicles via a downlink with a military communications satellite 22,500 miles out in a geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean that already was coming under Skynet control.

She drilled into the truck's steering column next to the ignition switch, transferred a few hundred bytes of data, and the truck's engine roared to life.

Simultaneously, the engines in the two ambulances and two police cars revved up.

Terminator's eyes suddenly opened and he looked up at a very startled Logan Ballinger, who reared back as did his partner, Eric Kraus.

The man was dead. Now he was alive. They'd heard about stuff like this, but they'd never seen it.

"I must go," Terminator said. He sat up, straightened his sunglasses, got to his feet, and strode out of the hard-ware store, leaving the two paramedics with their mouths banging open.

On the street, Terminator picked up the shotgun from where he'd dropped it, and optically catalogued the cur-rent situation.

Police and fire units were busy at work, as were paramedics emerging from the clinic with sick and injured animals in their arms.

A crowd had gathered beyond the police barriers, but there was no sign of either John Connor and Kate Brew-ster, or of the T-X.

More sirens were converging on the scene as Terminator processed the available data overlaid with probable scenarios and suggested courses of action.

John Connor and Kate Brewster were gone. The T-X would pursue them. It was only a matter of finding one or the other.

Which suddenly happened.

Two police cars and two ambulances roared to life and peeled out in the same direction Connor had gone with the pet van. But no one was driving.

Cops and firemen scattered out of the way.

A police officer ran up to one of the squad cars, and made a desperate grab for the steering wheel, but he was thrown dear as the unit burned rubber accelerating.

Terminator's onboard electronic emissions detector immediately pinpointed downlink signals to the four emergency vehicles, but he was not capable of tracking the source to the specific transmitting satellite.

A powerful diesel engine roared to life, and Terminator turned in time to see the huge Champion crane leap forward, crashing through the chain-link fence.

It turned ponderously in the same direction as the police units and ambulances had gone, emergency personnel scrambling to get out of its way.

As it accelerated up the street, Terminator caught a brief glimpse of the T-X behind the wheel. He deduced from available information that she had sent the radio cars and ambulances out as scouts to track John Connor and Kate Brewster.

He would follow the T-X.

Terminator stepped out into the middle of the street as a motorcycle cop came around the corner, followed by another fire engine.

The cop tried to avoid a collision, but Terminator gabbed the bike's handlebars and swung it around like a toy.

"I'll drive," he said as the cop skidded across the street on his back.

The motorcycle was an Indian, with a windscreen and wind deflector. Capable of speeds in excess of 130 miles per hour, it would do the job.

In one smooth motion Terminator stashed his shot- gun in the saddle rack, hopped aboard, and hammered the throttle to its stop as he downshifted into second.

The motorcycle took off as if it were shot from a cannon as the mobile crane, still gathering speed, lumbered around the corner at the end of the block.