Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes by Timothy Zahn Page B

again inclined his head.
    “Thank you. We would be honored.”
    “Good.”
    Orozco turned to Kyle as he and Star came up beside him.
    “Mr. Nguyen and his party will be our guests for the night,” he told the boy. “They and their animals will be in the Lower Conference Room. Take them there, and on your way tell Pierre I want him to stay at his post, but that the rest of his team can stand down and give you a hand getting our guests settled in.”
    “Got it.” Kyle gestured to Nguyen. “This way.”
    They boy headed off toward the conference room, walking sideways so that he could watch the traders’ progress as they picked their way across the lobby. He hadn’t stuck the Beretta into his belt, Orozco noticed, but still had it ready in his hand. Like Nguyen, like Orozco himself, the boy knew better than to take anything for granted.
    Orozco waited until the last of Nguyen’s group was inside. Then, stepping beneath the archway, he signaled the man in the sniper’s nest across the street to come in. Once he was back in the building, Orozco would have him take over the post here at the entrance.
    And then Orozco would have the unpleasant task of admitting to Wadleigh and the others that, yes, the party Kyle had spotted were just traders. The information would probably lead to more snide comments about Kyle’s paranoia, which thanks to the politics of life here, Orozco would have to endure in silence.
    As Kyle had already noted, Wadleigh was an idiot. What was worse, he took things for granted, and this incident would simply reinforce the man’s mental laziness.
    If there were any justice in the world, Orozco mused, Kyle would survive for a long time, while Wadleigh would suffer a quick and unpleasant death.
    Baker appeared from the sniper’s nest and headed briskly across the street. Orozco gestured to him, then pointed to the floor beside the archway to indicate his new post. Then, cradling his M16
    under his arm, he headed across the lobby to close down all the rest of the fire teams.
    Including Wadleigh’s.
    No, there was no justice left in the world. Not anymore. Justice had died on Judgment Day.
    39

CHAPTER
    SIX
    The storm drainage tunnel was dank, fungus-infested, shin-high in fetid water, and tight enough that Connor and David couldn’t walk without stooping over.
    But it was underground and out of sight of HKs and T-600s. That alone elevated the experience to the level of a walk in the park.
    They were nearly to their target when Connor spotted a narrow slit of pale light angling in from the tunnel’s roof. David, in the lead, noticed it about the same time and signaled for a halt.
    “Does that look suspicious to you, too?” he whispered to Connor.
    Connor studied the dim light. They’d passed beneath similar openings at various points along their journey, most of them a result of warped or broken manhole covers that had once protected access points into the tunnels.
    But none of those other covers had been inside a Skynet staging area. This one was, and it demanded a higher degree of caution.
    “We’ve come this far,” Connor whispered back. “Let’s take a look.”
    David nodded, taking a moment to fold up the strip map he’d made of the tunnel and tucking it away inside his jacket. Then, getting a grip on his shoulder-slung MP5 submachine gun, he started forward.
    They reached the ray of light without anything jumping out of the darkness or, worse, opening fire. The manhole cover was at the top of a five-meter concrete cylinder, accessible via a set of rusty rungs set into the cylinder’s side.
    Connor peered up at it. This particular cover wasn’t cracked, but had merely been angled slightly up out of its proper position, either by movement of the ground around it or by a small warping of the cover’s seating. The gap itself was very small, no more than half a centimeter across at its widest.
    More significant than the gap’s origin was the fact that it had clearly been there a long