Terminator Salvation_ The Official Movie Novelization - Alan Dean Foster [109]
And Kate would be one of the last of the group to leave, probably just a couple of steps ahead of Barnes. If the Terminators had cut through...
If they had, there was nothing Connor could do to help. He could only trust to hope, and to the destiny that linked him and Kate to humanity’s ultimate salvation.
He’d gone twenty meters more when a blast rolled through the tunnel, sending a wave of warm air across the back of his neck. The final booby trap had been triggered, bringing down the bunker’s ceiling and burying any Terminators that had made it inside as it sealed off the end of the tunnel. Connor and his people were committed now, with nowhere to go but forward.
Still no sign that Skynet had noticed them. Connor kept going, the drifting air currents from the overhead gaps slowly becoming a single steady breeze in his face. He rounded one final blind corner, and with a suddenness that for some reason never failed to surprise him, he was at the end.
Cautiously, he looked out between the carefully positioned rotting two-by-fours that blocked the exit. The street beyond was cleaner than some he’d seen, with much of the masonry and wood having been scavenged over the years by the handful of civilians who still scratched out a tenuous existence in the ruined city. More importantly, there was no sign of Terminators.
From the direction of the bunker came a short burst of gunfire from one of the remote-activated guns set up there and in nearby buildings. The burst was answered instantly by a longer, staccato roar from the T-600s’ miniguns. Connor gestured Tunney forward, and the two men set to work clearing the exit.
The wooden barrier looked sturdier and more impassible than it actually was, and it took less than half a minute for them to silently move the boards out of the way. Connor started to step out.
And ducked back as an HK swooped past, just half a block away, heading toward the bunker. Connor waited a few seconds, then tried again.
Nothing jumped or swooped out at him, either metal or human. As the sporadic gunfire continued from the vicinity of the bunker, he did a quick three-sixty, then gestured to Tunney and David. The two men slipped past him, moved ten meters in opposite directions down the street, and did three-sixties of their own. They hand-signaled the all-clear, then hunkered down in the rubble with weapons ready.
Connor stepped back into the tunnel, went back around that final blind corner, and gestured to the line of people waiting tensely in the dark.
Blair Williams, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, was the fifth one out. She spotted Connor and stepped out of line.
“I’m heading for the hangar,” she announced softly. “Any special orders?”
“Yes; that you wait a minute,” Connor told her, grabbing her arm and pulling her down into a crouch as another HK appeared to the west, weaving its way between the skeletal remains of two of the taller buildings.
“Why?” Blair countered.
“Just wait,” Connor repeated.
Blair huffed something under her breath, but obediently moved over to the stubby remains of a fire hydrant and squatted beside it, drawing her big .44 caliber Desert Eagle from its holster.
Two more HKs had swooped in to join the party at the bunker before everyone made it out of the tunnel. But none of the machines came close, and there was no indic-ation that they’d noticed anything amiss, especially with all the gunfire masking any sounds the group might make.
Kate, as Connor had expected, was the last one out before the rear guard. At the very end of the line, also as expected, was Barnes.
“You seen my brother?” he asked Connor, hefting his grenade launcher as he looked around.
“Yes, he’s already out,” Connor assured him. Along with his launcher, Connor noted, Barnes had also picked up a Galil assault rifle somewhere along the way and had the weapon