Free Terminator Salvation: Cold War by Greg Cox Page B

would surely not be the last man to crack beneath the awful weight of Armageddon. Unless Losenko maintained a tight grip over the crew, he might soon be faced with a wave of suicides and desertions, maybe even a mutiny.
    But how could he keep the men in line when the country they had sworn to serve had been decimated? They were without orders, without purpose. If Murmansk was any indication, the Kremlin was just a smoking crater now, and Mother Russian a gigantic graveyard.
    Maybe Ivanov is right, the captain thought bleakly. Perhaps we still need an enemy.
    He stared out over the water. Yudin’s blood had already been dispersed by the relentless current. The young sailor’s body had gone to join the broken ships at the bottom of the harbor. One more victim of... what? A computer malfunction?
    Nikolai Yudin was gone, but Losenko knew he would see the boy again.
    In his dreams.
    “Set a course for Ponoy.”
    Perhaps there was still something left to fight for.

CHAPTER SIX
2018
    The old copper mill had been abandoned back in the 1930s, long before Judgment Day. Perched on the craggy slopes of the Wrangell Mountains, overlooking an icy blue glacier, weather-beaten wooden buildings clung to the snowy hillside like bird’s nests. The remote location of the ghost town—as well as the immensity of the Alaskan wilderness—had hidden the mill’s current occupants from Skynet’s surveillance, at least so far. Molly wondered how much longer the Resistance outpost would remain undetected. They had been living at the mill for six months now, ever since abandoning their previous camp outside Fairbanks. A new record.
    “Derailing the train is just the first step,” Doc Rathbone insisted. “Once you get inside, the uranium is still going to be locked up tight.”
    The old man was hunched over a drafting table in what had once been the office of the mine’s general manager. It was housed in a two-story log cabin a short hike away from the massive mill and crusher. Maps of the train’s route and surveillance photos of the Skynet Express were spread out on top of the table, along with cobbled-together diagrams and blueprints of the train itself.
    Much of the intel had been downloaded from the central processing unit of a factory robot the Resistance had captured several months earlier. That had been quite a coup, albeit one that had cost the life of the cell’s previous commander. Doc Rathbone had been instrumental in cracking the CPU’s encryption in order to access the information stored in the machine’s computerized “brain.”
    He was useful that way, which was why Molly put up with his eccentricities.
    “Locked up how?” she asked.
    The bloodbath at the pipeline had only heightened her resolve to hit Skynet where it hurt. Over Geir’s objections, she had gone straight to work the minute they’d made it back to the camp, barely stopping to change into dry clothes. A moth-eaten black turtleneck sweater, buckskin trousers, and fur-lined moccasins kept her warm enough inside the office. Her parka hung from a set of antlers mounted by the door, above her soggy boots.
    A wood-burning stove fought back the cold winter night. A pair of Siberian huskies were curled up in front of the stove, with Sitka plopped down between them. Molly didn’t usually let them sleep inside, but she figured her lead dogs had earned it after outracing the killer snow plow. Kerosene lanterns gave the humans enough light to work by. Closed wooden blinds trapped the light inside, maintaining the blackout regulations she had put into effect. A loaded assault rifle was propped up against the table, always within easy reach.
    “The ore is likely sealed inside heavily guarded storage compartments to prevent theft or loss in the event of a crash,” Doc continued. “Each individual railcar will be one big rolling safe, with automated locks programmed to open only upon their arrival at Valdez. Since there are no conductors or technicians aboard, the