Sam was in no mood to bandy words with this jerk. He thought about how he had said to Optimus that no human would be privy to what they were saying to each other. It had been his way of trying to warn him that he, Sam, was a direct pipeline to the Decepticons, but technically he had been lying since Dylan was listening in. Then he decided that, no, he’d been truthful. As far as he was concerned, Dylan had voluntarily burned his human race membership card ages ago. “You wanted an answer, you got one. There was no strategy. They’re gone.”
“We thank you, Sam. We just needed to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“That they’d go without a fight,” Dylan said, as if it should have been the most obvious thing in the world. “An Autobot tight … clean … package.”
Sam knew that Dylan, in his smug, superior way, was conveying something to him, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was.
And then, above the distant thunder of the ascending rocket, Sam heard a new sound, closer and more urgent. It went from distant rumble to thundering roar in a matter of seconds.
Clicking shut his phone, he ran to the observation window, scanning the horizon. Simmons and Mearing were looking at him questioningly, both seeing the urgency that had seized the previously despondent Witwicky. Sam kept looking for the source of the noise, and then suddenly he saw it.
So did they.
“What the hell is that F-22 Raptor doing out there!” Mearing demanded, and sure enough, the sleek black plane was hurtling at high speed across the field before suddenly taking off in a nearly vertical manner. It streaked after the hurtling rocket ship, slowly but steadily closing the distance between the two.
Sam realized it before Mearing did, and Simmons realized it before either of them, because he said it as the horrifying thought was still coming together in Sam’s mind. “That’s not a Raptor,” Simmons said, as if speaking from beyond the grave.
Sam watched its rapid ascent with horrified eyes. “Starscream! No!”
Naturally Starscream did not, could not have heard him, nor would it have made the slightest difference if he had.
Starscream couldn’t quite overtake his target, but he didn’t need to. All he had to do was get within range, and having achieved that, he let loose with his cannons.
His targeting was precise.
Seconds later, in a massive explosion, the stage two booster erupted, and a fireball ripped through the sky that twisted back upon itself and enveloped the Xantium. It took a few seconds for the sound to reach the launch facility, but when it did, windows shook and coffee cups shuddered and in some cases skidded off the countertops and crashed to the floor.
No one paid attention to any of that. Instead, all horrified stares were upon the rolling conflagration high in the air. It was an explosion that nothing could possibly have survived.
The Raptor descended quickly and overflew the air base. As it did so, its wings waggled at them mockingly, as if to say, Well? Did you enjoy the show? I sure hope so. Then it angled up once more and hurtled off into the sky, leaving the stunned observers behind.
Mearing was one of them, standing there with her jaw agape. Then, slowly, she turned and looked at Simmons.
He was the only one in the room who didn’t look the least bit surprised.
“And now you know what happens when you do what the Decepticons want,” he said.
ILLINOIS
Carly had never been much of a fan of helicopters. She’d ridden in them any number of times, particularly when she’d been with the British embassy. It was just part of the job. But she wasn’t wild about them. They were often cramped, they were noisy as hell, the ride wasn’t always especially smooth, and she wasn’t ecstatic about the fact that a single rotor was keeping them in the air. At least jets had more than one engine. If a helicopter engine crapped out on you, that was game over.
Now she had one more thing to dislike about them: Henceforth, presuming she managed to survive all of this, they were always going to remind her of Dylan Gould.
He was seated opposite her in the tight quarters of the Gould corporate helicopter. She tried to twist her lower body around in the seat so that her knees wouldn’t bump up against his. She would just as soon have thrown herself out the door and taken her chances with gravity, but that didn’t seem to be a viable option.
“Y’ know, I just read this great book,” Dylan said cheerfully. “The Power of Now. Know how you live for that moment? ’Cause this is like that moment.” He sounded eager, as if he had just had some sort of major personal revelation that he was anxious to share. “I love New Age shit.”
She looked at him with all the disdain she could muster. “You could have stood up to them. You’re a smart, resourceful guy. You could have outthought them. Hell, you could have just told them that you’re not going to betray your entire race. But either you couldn’t be bothered or you just didn’t want to. You’re a coward.”
“No. Just business, Duchess.” He smiled and sat back in his seat. “Welcome to the New World.”
Out the front window of the chopper, the skyscrapers of Chicago loomed on the shores of Lake Michigan.
FLORIDA
i
In the launch facility, people were moving like zombies. Mearing had a phone pressed to her ear, looking grim, nodding. Simmons just sat there, saying not a word, waiting for her to finish her phone call. Epps was gazing out the window at the sky, where there was still a thick smudge of black smoke that probably would be there for some hours yet, until the winds finally dissipated the last visual reminder of the Autobots.
Finally she clicked the cell shut and said, without looking at him, “President’s ordered us back to D.C.”
“You happy now, Charlotte Cuddlebear?” Simmons said bitterly. “What if the Autobots weren’t just the target? What if they were the trigger?”
“The—?” She stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“The starting gun. The opening whistle.”
“Seymour, you’re not making any sense. I think you’re too hopped up on painkillers to know what you’re talking about.”
“Then you should take some of what I’m taking, sweetheart, because it might help you see things the way they are. You think the Decepticons don’t have some kind of endgame beyond ‘Oh, we just want some materials and we’ll go on our way’? If so, you’re delusional. They’re Decepticons, for God’s sake. They got ‘deceive’ right in their name! They got something cooking, and the Autobots were the only thing stopping them from setting it into motion. One countdown may be over, but another’s started, and it’s a countdown toward the end of the world as we know it.”
“I hope you’re wrong, Agent Simmons,” she said, and walked away. But he could tell by the sag of her shoulders that she knew he was right.
He was about to go in pursuit of her when Sam Witwicky ran up and interrupted him, holding up a cellphone. Simmons was immediately irritated; he was a busy guy, and he wasn’t thrilled with the notion of having to stop and pose for Sam snapping a picture of the moment with his cellphone camera.
But then Sam immediately grabbed Simmons’s full attention. “I need your help to track a phone call. There’s another man out there. He runs their whole human operation. His name’s Dylan Gould, and he took my girlfriend hostage!”
“What? And you’re just sharing this information now?”
“Like I told you: hostage! I couldn’t say anything before! Now I can. So are you gonna help or not?”
Simmons’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Dutchie!” he shouted, and Dutch promptly materialized by his side in that bizarre way he had. “Let’s play! As in”—he dropped his voice to a chortle—“dirty.”
ii
Sam watched, fascinated, as Dutch jacked the cellphone into his laptop computer and started typing. His fingers were moving so quickly that Sam could scarcely follow them.
“What are you doing?” he finally said.
Without gl
ancing at him, Dutch said, “I’m calling back the last number in your call history.”
“The number was blocked.”
“Not to me.”
“But … look,” he said with growing concern. “If he knows you’re calling him back, it could tip him.”
Dutch did not look or sound the least bit worried. “He won’t know. I’m simply sending a pulse through. Undetectable.”
“Is that possible?”
“Not with any software that you know of, no.” Dutch smiled grimly. “But there are things in heaven and on earth beyond your philosophy, Horatio.”
“My name’s Sam.”
Dutch stopped smiling and gave him a pitying look. “Sorry. My mistake,” he said, sounding sarcastic, although Sam wasn’t quite sure why.
Simmons, in the meantime, was working on his own flat-screen pad. “So your girlfriend works for Dylan Gould, huh? Let’s just call up all his assets so we can start kicking his assets, if ya know what I mean.”
“Triangulating now,” Dutch informed them. “He’s in Chicago, moving horizontally and at some elevation. Way it’s tracking, probably a helicopter … wait. It’s slowing down.”
“Chicago, huh?” said Simmons, consulting the list of assets he’d pulled up. “Okay … his company owns a building on Wacker Drive. Overlooks the Riverwalk. Also, he rents a penthouse in Trump Tower …”
Epps was listening with interest. “Trump Tower have a helipad?”
“It does indeed,” Simmons said.
“Chopper is stationary. I assume it’s landed,” Dutch said. “Got the coordinates. Let me run it through an address matrix … I’ve got it at … 401 North Wabash.”
“That’s the Trump Tower, all right,” Simmons said triumphantly. “Our bird’s gone home to roost.”
“This is a kidnapping,” Dutch said immediately. “That makes it an FBI matter. You could inform Mearing and—”
“And she’ll what, Dutchie?” Simmons said. “You got any idea just how full the FBI’s plate is right now?”
“That’s not the big problem,” Sam said. “The problem is that Dylan’s got Decepticons backing him up. I saw at least two while I was there; there might be more.”
“Exactly,” said Simmons. “Just how much experience has the Chicago field office had with handling Decepticons? I’ll tell ya: Nada. Zip. Zilch-o. They’ll go in there and they’ll be dead in seconds. Not to mention poor Kaley—”
“Carly,” Sam said.
“Whatever. Dylan knows that we know where he is, one of two things happens: He kills her outright and dumps the body, or he takes off again. Maybe even ditches the cellphone ’cause he’s figured out that that’s how we found him. Hell, he might have snuffed her already.”
“No. Not him.” Sam’s face twisted in disgust. “I saw the way he was looking at her. He’s gonna keep her around for as long as possible.” Steeling his resolve, he said, “I’m going. All she’s ever done is try to help me. And this is what I’ve done for her? I can be there in …” He glanced to Dutch.
“Eighteen hours, twenty minutes,” Dutch said briskly. “If you regard speed limits as only guidelines instead of the law, then probably fifteen hours.”
Sam started to head out. He had no idea where he was going to find a car, but one thing at a time. Before he went even a few feet, however, Epps was in his way. He expected Epps to try to stop him, to talk him out of it. Instead, Epps said firmly, “You’re not going alone.”
“What?”
“NEST is out there, preparing for war. They’ll never sign off on going after one guy even if there’s a kidnapped girl involved. Lemme make some calls, round up whoever I can to help.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because,” Epps said, “those assholes just killed my friends, too. And if Gould is connected to them, then I’m making sure he’s going down in the same kinda flames the Autobots did.”
iii
Mearing had spent the last few minutes getting in touch with various NEST forces and briefing key individuals on the tragedy that had just transpired. Now she was heading to her airplane, never more anxious to leave someplace than she was right then.
And then she heard a by now all too familiar whizzing of wheels and knew who was coming in fast behind her.
“I want in the mix!” Simmons called out. She stopped with one foot on the stairway leading up to her plane. But she didn’t board the plane, and he sped around her so that he could face her. “Two outs, bottom of the ninth, you send your DH to the plate and you go down swinging.”
“Do you have any idea how much I detest sports metaphors?” she said. There was no energy to her voice, however, no real snap in her protest.
He rolled closer. “I have dedicated my life to beating these … bastards. Not you. Not your yes men. Me.”
It would have been so easy for her to climb the rest of the way into her plane and get the hell out of there. It wasn’t as if he could follow her up the stairs.
Instead she remained where she was, looking deeply into herself. Every instinct she possessed told her to leave this lunatic behind. But lately her instincts had been pretty lousy. Maybe it would be smarter for her to start acting in a manner contrary to what her instincts were telling her. She might be able to save some lives that way.
And then Simmons said, “Plus I’m good for all kinds of stuff. If you don’t want me riding up there with you, strap me to the plane’s belly. I double as landing gear.”
She laughed. Despite everything that had happened, despite all the uncertainty, she actually laughed. Not long and not loud, but enough.
Simmons grinned lopsidedly. “Admit it: I’m still the only guy in the world that can get a chuckle out of you.”
“Shut up and have your bodyguard”—she pointed to Dutch, who was standing behind him—“get your ass into the plane.”
“Yes, ma’am. By the way, does it still turn you on when I call you ma’am?”
“You realize I can just shoot you, fill out some paperwork to explain why it was necessary, and no one will question it, right?”
“Dutch! I need a lift!” Simmons called.
CHICAGO
In an underground loading dock at the Hotchkiss Gould Building in Chicago, Illinois, Carly watched in silence as Dylan supervised the strange, ornate six-foot-long metal pillar being off-loaded from an armored car.
Off-loaded by a Decepticon.
It was the one Sam had referred to as Soundwave, the one who had nearly crushed her to death. As it carried the pillar on its shoulder, it cast a glance toward her and slowly closed its fist, apparently to remind her just what it had done to her—and could still do if she tried something cute like running away.
She shuddered. Dylan seemed to notice and naturally grinned upon seeing her discomfort. He gestured for her to follow him, which she did reluctantly, trying to decide whether, if she had the opportunity, she’d have the nerve to strangle Dylan with her bare hands. She decided that the longer this went on, the more likely it was.
Moments later the Decepticon, Dylan, and Carly were in a freight elevator, heading upward. Deciding that silence would serve nothing where information might actually be of use, she said, “What does that mean? Their planet needs our ‘resources’?”
“You haven’t figured it out yet? You’re a smart girl. Work on it.” He waited a few moments and then prodded her. “Got it yet, Duchess?”
“No.”
“Whaddaya think those resources really are?” he said. “Iron? Metal? Steel? They could mine all that from the you-name-it galaxy. Not to mention Mars. Why here? What’s here and nowhere else?” The dime dropped. “Us …”
He nodded. “Can’t rebuild without a slave labor force,” he said cheerfully. “How many rocks out there in the universe offer six billion workers? I asked. It’s a short list.”
“But … you can’t transport people. We wouldn’t survive … would we?”
“Probably not,” he said reasonably. “I hear that
the energies unleashed … for a human, it would be like sticking your head into a blast furnace. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. They’re not gonna be shipping people. They’re shipping their planet here.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “That can’t possibly …”
The freight elevator opened, and Dylan stepped out onto the roof of the building, locking the car as he did so so that she’d have no means of heading back down. The sun was setting, night creeping over the horizon. Far below was the Chicago River, with a series of drawbridges stretching across it. The one closest to them was the one on North Wabash Avenue, although she could also see the ones at North Michigan Avenue and North State Street from where she was standing. Under other circumstances, it might have seemed beautiful. With Sam at her side, it would even have been romantic. There was one day in particular, in spring, when the tall boats would come sailing up the Chicago River from their winter boathouse homes on Lake Michigan. As they passed through, the drawbridges would go up in waves to let them through and then close in their wake. Months later, in autumn, the process would reverse itself. It was as if the city were saluting the passing of the seasons.
But there was nothing romantic in what immediately drew her attention.
Tall, even majestic, two gargantuan robots stood on the far end of the rooftop, waiting. If they hadn’t been living symbols of the end of everything, she would have been awed instead of struck with fear.
The Decepticon proceeded to erect the pillar in the middle of the roof, and now Dylan saw where she was looking. He came to her side as if they were sharing some mutually wonderful and inspiring sight, such as the Grand Canyon. “Sentinel,” he said, “and Megatron. Look at those two. Takes your breath away, doesn’t it? Their war destabilized their galaxy ages ago. Destroyed their planet and half its stars. Whole thing is doomed. So these two worked out a secret deal.”