Terminator Salvation: Cold War

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Molly finished rigging the explosives. Blocks of C-4, mined from her own backpack, were placed and wired all around the cramped service vestibule. She wasn’t the demolitions ace Tammi was, but she knew how to blow things up. Once triggered, the plastic explosives would tear the train apart from the inside out, scattering the precious uranium all over the Alaskan countryside. It would be lost to Skynet forever.

Works for me.

She connected the last wire and took a second to inspect her handiwork. Everything appeared in order. She tucked the detonator into her pocket. Turning to check on Sitka, she found the girl staring mournfully at Doc Rathbone’s body.

“Don’t look at it,” Molly advised her. “Don’t think about it now.”

Sitka wiped a tear from her eye. A backpack full of yellowcake rested on her shoulders.

“Should have paid more attention to his stories.”

“You listened to them. You know you did.”

Taking Sitka’s hand, she guided the girl away from the body toward the breach in the outer wall. Molly didn’t hear any snowmachines nearby. Now might be their only chance to get away.

She crept up to the gap, and raised a finger to her lips.

“Fast but quiet, you got that?”

Sitka nodded.

Before they could sneak out of the car, however, a harsh white light flooded the chamber from above. The light invaded the railcar through the cleft in the ceiling. The roar of powerful engines rattled the wreckage. Molly recognized the distinctive thrum of an HK’s turbofans.

Fuck! It’s back!

She tried not to think about what this meant for Geir. Chances were, the Hunter-Killer was responding to a distress signal from the train or the Aerostats. It had probably just given up on the fighter plane. That had to be it.

Sitka wasn’t so sure.

“Geir?”

“He’s fine,” Molly insisted. She forced herself to focus on their own predicament instead. How the hell were they supposed to get away, with that Hunter-Killer hovering right over their heads? She doubted that it would blast the uranium stores, for fear of destroying the valuable ore, but she and Sitka would be sitting ducks the moment they stepped outside the train.

They were trapped... again.

Molly fingered the detonator in her pocket. If she had to, she’d set off the charges with both of them inside.

If we have to die, we’ll go out with a bang.

Her biggest regret was that Sitka would never live to see a world free of the machines.

“This it?” the girl asked. She looked back at the C-4 rigged all around the railcar. She knew what their options were. “Game over?”

“Maybe,” Molly admitted.

They needed a miracle.

The A-10 Thunderbolt, with boxy, ungainly contours that had gained it the affectionate nickname “Warthog,” controlled like a dream. The single-seat jet fighter zoomed above the sprawling Alaskan wilderness. In the cockpit, Alexei Ivanov was impressed by the aircraft’s abilities.

There was something to be said, he mused, for soaring high above the Earth instead of being stuck in a smelly underwater tube hundreds of feet beneath the sea. Despite the urgency of his mission, he savored the privacy of the cockpit. After spending so much of his adult life crammed aboard boats with more than a hundred other sweaty bodies, it was good to be flying solo at last. Who could have suspected that—late in life—he would discover that he was a pilot at heart?

The A-10 had departed Canada the moment he got Losenko’s signal. The jet’s colorful decor attested to the defiant spirit of the Resistance. Painted flames and lightning-bolts adorned its wings and fins. A porcine snout and tusks embellished its nose. Stenciled silver Terminators, lined up along the plane’s side, recorded its kill count. Ivanov hoped to rack up a few more kills before the night was over. His trigger finger was itchy.

To hell with the Americans, he thought. Just give me a chance to trash some more machines.

He had been destroying Terminators for fifteen years now. It never seemed to be enough.

Pushing the Warthog to nearly 400 kilometers per hour, he reached the battlefield in less than forty-five minutes. His eyes quickly took in the scene. The shattered bridge. The derailed train at the bottom of the gorge. Dead bodies strewn across the snowy hills and riverbank. A Hunter-Killer hovering above the carnage, searching for fresh targets. From the look of things, the Resistance cell had already been slaughtered.

He caught brief glimpses of motion as unmanned snowmachines chased the survivors through the surrounding woodlands. He wondered if Dmitri’s new friend, the Eskimo woman, was still alive. Ivanov had never dealt with Kookesh directly, but he knew Losenko thought highly of her. Admiring the destruction of the bridge, and the crumpled Terminator train lying in ruins, he could see why.

Not bad... for an American. Then again, she was a native of this land, so she likely held a few grudges of her own.

He didn’t wait for the HK to come after him. Swooping down from the sky, he fired the Warthog’s formidable Avenger anti-tank cannon. The aircraft was literally built around the Gatling-style rotary cannon, making it a flying gun. A burst of depleted uranium slugs strafed the enemy aircraft, scoring its armored carapace. For the moment, Ivanov avoided hitting any vital systems. He didn’t want to bring down the massive HK on top of any survivors who might be sheltering in the wreckage below.

A wry smile lifted his lips. He snorted derisively at his own restraint.

Since when did he worry about Yankee casualties?

The HK didn’t take his assault lying down. Abandoning its search for Earthbound saboteurs, the Terminator shot skyward on its impellers. It fired back with its plasma cannons, narrowly missing the swiftly moving fighter. A small flock of Aerostats joined the dogfight, trailing after the HK like baby birds. Ivanov paid them little heed. The unarmed surveillance drones were hardly worth killing.

The HK was another story....

He pulled back on his stick. The Warthog climbed to get out of range of the machine’s weapons, then circled back to confront the enemy. Besides its central gun, the A-10 was also armed with two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. He locked the HK in his sights and unleashed the first one. The missile rocketed toward its target.

Just like firing a torpedo, he thought.

Maybe this would be a short battle after all.

Such hopes were dashed when the HK blasted the oncoming missile with its plasma cannon. The Sidewinder exploded in midair, halfway between the two aircraft, too far away to do any damage.

Ivanov cursed under his breath. The shock wave jolted his plane. He dodged flying debris. Acrid black smoke obscured his view of the aurora overhead.

One missile... wasted!

Aerostats swarmed the Warthog, getting in his way. They threw themselves against his windscreen, bouncing harmlessly off the bulletproof plexiglass. He blew them apart with his gun, expending precious ammo. He scowled at the loss. The A-10 carried nearly 1200 rounds of ammo, but at seventy rounds a second that went pretty fast. At this rate, his gun would be empty in no time.

All the more reason to finish things quickly.

He closed on the Hunter-Killer, firing his remaining missile.

Eat this, you bloodthirsty machine.

The Sidewinder zoomed toward the HK, but was intercepted by a suicidal Aerostat instead. Ivanov seethed in frustration. The explosion went off only a few meters away from him, sending the Warthog into a spin. The out-of-control jet dove toward the bottom of the canyon. The rugged landscape whirled vertiginously before his eyes. A field of corpses waited for him to join them.

“No!” he blurted. Straining against killer g-forces, he pulled out of the spin only seconds before he would have crashed into the wreckage below. He gasped, but his relief was short-lived. Catching him by surprise, the demolished train opened fire on him as well. Gunports opened up along the top of the piled railcars. Ground fire slammed into the underside of the Warthog, perforating its thick armor plating. Ivanov was suddenly very grateful for the titanium “bathtub” protecting the cockpit area. The plane shuddered around him.

He fired back at the train with his own cannon. The barrage tore into the exposed gunports.

Meanwhile, the HK circled menacingly above the canyon. Ivanov wondered briefly what it was waiting for, then realized it didn’t want to risk blowing apart the train full of uranium. It intended to resume their duel when and if the Warthog climbed back up to meet it. It could afford to be patient.

It wasn’t running low on ammo.

A warning light on his instrument panel flashed, informing him that he was losing fuel.

“Hell!”

He glared angrily at the gauge. The Warthog’s fuel lines and tanks were supposed to reseal themselves if hit, but apparently the back-up systems had malfunctioned. That was the trouble with twenty-year-old warplanes and equipment. Nothing worked quite the way it used to.

Shoddy American craftsmanship!

Ivanov conducted a quick inventory. He had no more missiles, only a few more rounds of ammunition, and he was leaking fuel by the bucketload. The HK was still waiting for him. Retreat was the only sensible option. If he was lucky—and managed to evade his pursuer—he might make it back to Canada alive.

I’ve done my part, he reasoned. The Alaskans would have to fend for themselves. If any of them are still alive.

Before departing, he swooped over the battlefield one last time, just so he could give Losenko an accurate report. His eyes widened at the sight of two small humans darting out from one of the wrecked railcars. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a pair of women, one slightly smaller than the other.

Just like his long-lost wife and daughter.

Yelena. Nadia. An ancient scab tore off his heart, leaving it bleeding afresh. The women below were nothing to him. Americans, no less. But they were still mortal, still flesh-and-blood.

Like his own family.

He could not leave them to the HK’s tender mercies.

Climbing upward, he spied the Hunter-Killer circling above him, ready to pick up where they had left off. His eyes narrowed. A long-simmering anger boiled over. A muscle twitched beneath his cheek. Let this greedy vulture kill those women?

Not on his life.

He aimed the Warthog’s snout directly at the HK’s impellers. He unleashed the last of his ammo to keep its own guns at bay. Opening up the throttle, he zoomed toward the unsuspecting HK at top speed, turning the forty-ton aircraft into one enormous missile. White knuckles held the control stick steady. Yelena and Nadia had been waiting for him for fifteen years. It was past time he joined them.

For the Motherland!

Without hesitation, the kamikaze fighter collided with the Hunter-Killer at 400 kilometers an hour. Alexei Ivanov’s world ended for the second time, in a storm of fire and thunder.

He had no regrets.