Transformers, page 18
The secretary of defense was staring at the big screen contemplating a limited and unpleasant number of options when the brigadier came up alongside him. Over the previous several days both men had had far too little sleep, and it was starting to take its toll.
“Blue Force tracker has Chinese and U.S. naval task forces approaching within one hundred nautical miles of each other’s cruise missile range,” the general murmured tersely. Though he had spent decades anticipating this kind of situation, it was one he had hoped he would never actually have to deal with.
Keller kept his eyes on the screen. So many inscrutable dots representing so many men and women. So much unavoidable, seemingly inescapable import. So many lives on both sides, all riding on a very few decisions that he and a handful of others would have to make.
“Tell the battle group commander to wait for orders from Washington. He is not to engage under any conditions unless they are fired on first.”
The general nodded and vanished back into the hurricane of activity. He was replaced by Admiral Bingham and a Suit whom Keller did not recognize. Cuffed to the Suit’s left wrist was a titanium briefcase. The secretary took no particular notice of it: he had seen its like many times before.
“Sir,” the admiral began, “this is Tom Banachek, from the White House.”
With his free hand, Banachek reached inside his jacket to flash his identification. “Mr. Secretary. I’m with Sector Seven—Advanced Research Division.”
Keller glanced at the man, frowned. “Never heard of it. If you don’t mind, Tom, whatever brought you here can be referred to me through the usual channels. I’m a little busy right now.”
Banachek was not put out by the secretary’s response because he had encountered its like many times before. “We are a highly independent extra-governmental entity, sir. I’m here under direct order from the president.” He indicated the vast, busy room. “Verbal only in here, I’m afraid. A lot of Sector Seven activity takes place in the absence of written records. The president has instructed me to brief you.”
Annoyed at the interruption, Keller turned to face the newcomer. “Brief me? Now?” He gestured toward the big screen. “When all this is going on? Brief me on what?”
Before Banachek could respond, the statistics being posted on one screen were replaced by a beeping noise and an accompanying visual FAILURE notification. The screen alongside it went dead next. And then the one beside it, and then three more, and then …
In less than a minute every screen in the room had locked up with a FAILURE warning. Conversation and general discussion were replaced by complete pandemonium.
Unable to do little more than stare as the disaster unfolded in front of him, a horrified Keller spoke into his headphone mike. “What’s happening?” Almost always under complete control, his voice began to rise. “Somebody talk to me. I need a sit rep—stat!”
The general who had earlier reported task force movements appeared at his side. He looked on the verge of utter panic—not a good sign in a general. “Communications are out—the virus, or whatever it is, was coded to shut us down. Our firewall people thought they had a handle on it but—”
Keller interrupted him. “What d’you mean, ‘shut us down’?”
The general swallowed. “It corrupted the entire operating system while hiding itself from view. We thought it had been quarantined, but it was in the background all the time. It’s used our own network to both spread right through the secure government web and jump to the public. It’s a global blackout—anything involved with advanced communications is dead. Satellite and landlines are dead. Internet is shut down. At the moment, we have zero communication, both internationally and domestic.”
Keller knew he should say something, should at least comment—but what could he say? What was there to say? And even if he said something, according to the general the only people who would hear it were standing within earshot in this one room. His disbelief didn’t vanish until he tried his own cell phone. No matter what number he tried, no matter how private or restricted, all he got in return for his several attempts was the same cold, hollow static.
Banachek, however, still had something to say. He hefted his briefcase, his tone urgent. “Sir, you need to see what I have in here—now.”
Dazed, feeling more helpless than at any time since he was seven years old and his father had removed the training wheels from his bike, the secretary of defense followed the man from the White House away from the turmoil that had inundated the intelligence room.
Accelerating, the black SUVs swept through night-cloaked Tranquility. In the rear seat of the lead vehicle, Sam and Mikaela were trying not to freak out—and failing. Up in the front passenger seat, Simmons ignored his young charges as he pulled out and flicked open his cell phone.
“Simmons here. We’re Code Black, we got the boy. I need …”
Pausing, he looked down at the phone and frowned. “You copy? Hello?” On the tiny screen were the words NO SIGNAL. “Must be a bad patch.” He shrugged. “Call it in in a few minutes.” Hanging up, he turned in the seat to face Sam.
“So tell me, ‘Ladiesman Two-seventeen’—that is your username, right?”
The seriousness of their present situation notwithstanding, Mikaela couldn’t repress a grin as she looked across at Sam. “It is?” she inquired teasingly.
In addition to being terrified, Sam was now also decidedly embarrassed. “It was, uh, a typo.”
Simmons didn’t pursue it. Instead he pulled out a tiny recorder and clicked it to life. Slightly garbled snatches of the recording Sam had phoned in when he had thought he was going to die filled the interior of the SUV.
“M-my name’s Sam Witwicky. My car—it’s alive. I don’t know how, but it’s alive …”
On the last “alive,” the agent halted the playback. “Inexplicable but most interesting. Please enlighten me further.” His expression, his posture, his tone: everything combined to indicate that he was dead serious. “I need every word. Everything and anything you can tell me.” His eyes all but burned into Sam’s. “Don’t leave anything out.”
The SUV stopped at a red light. Other vehicles in the convoy made it and continued on. Sam’s right hand was in his pocket, clutching the old glasses case as tightly as any talisman. How much should he say? What did he really know about these people and their ultimate intentions? Simmons was staring over the back of the front seat, waiting on him. Sam had the feeling the agent wouldn’t wait forever. The next time he ventured an inquiry, he might not do so quite as politely.
“Listen, this is like the mother of all misunderstandings. You know kids like me—we’ve all spent too much time staring at the game console. Makes your brain go all fuzzy.” He spread his hands. “Someone stole my car, that’s all. Maybe I embellished the report a little, but at the time it was, like, the middle of the night and I was kind of panicking. But it’s fine, everything’s fine now. It came back.”
Mikaela jumped in. “Not by itself, obviously. Cars don’t do that, that’d be crazy.”
Simmons said nothing. Instead he removed a peculiar lens from the dashboard glovebox. “What d’you kids know about aliens?” he asked unexpectedly.
“Aliens?” Sam’s shocked response was maybe just a bit over-the-top. “Like, Martians? Don’t believe in ’em.”
“Total crap,” Mikaela concurred, nodding agreement just a bit too vigorously. “That kind of thing is for fanboys—guys who can tell you what color nail polish some half-naked chick was wearing in the last act of episode twenty-eight of the original Star Trek.”
Leaning over the backseat, Simmons jammed the monocle against Sam’s face, using it to cover one eye. On the side of the lens facing the agent, the teen’s pupil dilated.
“Whoa.” Sam drew back into the seat, but he couldn’t get away from the lens or from Simmons. “What is this?”
“Breathe normally and answer the questions. So: no aliens, huh?”
“Nope,” Sam replied brusquely.
“Interesting.” Simmons’s attention was focused on the tiny round screen. “Very interesting. Tell you what else I find deliciously interesting, kid: pupil dilation, body language, flushness of your skin. Because taken together they’re showing me you’re both ly-ing.” With his free hand he pulled back the front of his jacket to reveal the same badge that had so puzzled Ron Witwicky. “See this? This is like a ‘Do-whatever-I-want-and-get-away-with-it’ badge. I’m gonna lock you away for-ev-er, erase you like you never ex-is-ted. And that’ll be like a fluffy ball of cotton candy compared with what I do to your parents.”
Sam stayed quiet, but not Mikaela. She did not quite spit in the senior agent’s face. “And our little dog Toto, too?” she shot back derisively. “Don’t listen to him, Sam. He’s just trying to intimidate you.” She met Simmons’s gaze without blinking. “He’s just pissy ’cause he’s gotta get back to guarding the Mall.”
Simmons’s tone shifted from threatening to venomous as he glared over at her. “Hey. You in the training bra. Do not test me. Not now, not tonight. Especially with your daddy’s parole coming up.”
Her face paled. All the defiance seeped out of her like air from a balloon. Gaping at her, Sam once again failed to engage his brain before opening his mouth.
“Parole? But you said he lef …”
Sunk back in the SUV’s seat, she folded her arms and stared straight ahead. “It’s nothing.”
Having started the nail, Simmons had no trouble driving it home. “Grand theft auto, that ain’t nothing.”
The light changed and the SUV surged forward again. Hating him for exposing her so callously, Mikaela looked daggers at the agent. Having in the course of his career been confronted with far worse, Simmons simply gazed back quietly. Beaten, she turned to Sam. It took her a moment to find the right words to express what she wanted to say.
“Those cars my dad taught me to fix?” She gave the tiniest of shrugs. “They weren’t always his.”
“Your dad taught you to fix stolen cars?” He stared back at her, unable to think of anything else to say.
Simmons was not similarly afflicted. “Yes sir. And she’s got her own juvie record to prove it.”
This time Mikaela’s response was defiant. “I wouldn’t sell him out in court, so they charged me, too.” She barely glanced in Sam’s direction. “I’m just an accessory.”
Simmons shook his head in mock sympathy. “Yeah, anyone can see from your record that you’re a paragon of youthful virtue. As for your old man, be a shame if he had to rot in jail for the rest of his natural life.” Having delivered himself of that threat, he turned back to Sam.
“And you. Wouldn’t be the first time we threw a Wickity in an asylum. See, my great-great-grandfather locked up your great-great-grandfather. And history’s about a walrus snort away from repeating itself.”
Doubtless Simmons hoped his words of warning would reduce the younger man in the backseat to a state of cowering submission. Sam’s reaction was somewhat different from what the agent had expected. He sat up straight and stared him directly in the face.
“You son of a bitch.”
“Not very imaginative,” the unruffled agent responded nonchalantly. “Been called lots worse, sometimes in languages you never heard of.” His gaze intensified. “No more games. Time to talk. Now.”
“Okay,” Sam shot back defiantly. “You want the truth, I’ll tell you. But you’re not gonna believe it.”
Simmons shifted expectantly against the front seat. “Give it a whirl, kiddo. I’m all ears.”
Sam opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Not because he was holding back, but because his incipient confession was interrupted by the sound, sight, and shudder of an enormous metal foot slamming down on the hood of the SUV, crumpling it like tinfoil.
The government vehicle spun to a sudden and violent stop. Repeated pounding indicated the presence of something huge and heavy walking around it. Within the SUV an assortment of sensitive instruments went berserk as blinding illumination filled the interior of the car with light. Simmons threw up his hands. Frantically, the driver tried to accelerate forward. He failed because the vehicle had been lifted into the air and off the road. Shorn of anything to grip, tires spun loudly and uselessly.
There was a metallic ripping sound as the roof of the big 4 × 4 was pulled upward and peeled back like the top of a sardine can. Roughly remade into an instant convertible, the SUV bounced wildly on its shocks as it was dropped back to Earth. Revealed in their own light, several gigantic figures could be seen peering downward at it.
Optimus Prime and his cohorts.
“Oh wow,” a juiced Sam burbled in the direction of the car’s front seat, “now you a-holes are in serious tuh-ru-ble.”
Simmons and the driver drew their weapons. These promptly flew out of their hands into Jazz’s palm, accompanied by every other device on their persons that contained any ferrous alloy. The driver embarked on a futile attempt to hide behind the wheel.
With every passing second, Sam was feeling better and better. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to my friend—Optimus Prime.”
“OUT OF THE CAR, PLEASE,” the leader of the mechanoids announced politely but thunderously. Simmons and the driver complied with alacrity. Crouched together on the ground, they recoiled as the massive mechanical head lowered to within a foot of their faces. Enormous lenses focused on Simmons, who would greatly have preferred to avoid the attention. A light from the robot’s eyes played briefly over the cringing agent.
“Your nervous system does not register significant shock,” the giant observed thoughtfully. “You are not surprised by our existence.”
“Look, uh,” Simmons stammered, “there are Sector Seven protocols that need to be observed here. Okay? I’m not authorized to communicate with you. Except to tell you I can’t communicate with you.”
A second mechanoid approached. It was bright yellow and black-striped. From an opening on Bumblebee’s body a jet of hot lubricant shot out to spray all over the agents.
“Get that thing to stop!” Simmons pleaded as he flailed uselessly with both hands at the dark, soaking stream.
Sam paused long enough in his enjoyment of the scene to query the unhappy agent. “What’s Sector Seven? How’d you know about the robots? And where’d you take my parents?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Simmons managed to mumble before a squirt of dark liquid filled his open mouth and he had to retreat, gagging.
Sam had to give the increasingly miserable agent his props. He was still a son of a bitch, but at least he was a dedicated son of a bitch.
Stepping forward, Jazz dropped two sets of steel handcuffs he had taken from the agents in front of Mikaela. “Secure them.”
Still a bit stunned by the abrupt turn of events, she picked up the restraints. She flashed a wicked grin as she addressed the two wretched, sodden men. “Take off your pants.”
Drenched with alien lubricant, Simmons flicked viscous goo from his fingers. “And for what?”
She sniffed. “Threatening my dad.”
“And if we refuse?” he replied, still defiant.
Mikaela glanced up at the car-crushing mechanoid standing alongside her. “Want me to have him do it?”
Glaring through the liquid, the agent and the driver obediently dropped their trousers. Both wore boxers that were by now no less fluid-soaked than the rest of their clothes. Simmons’s legs, she noted, looked as if they hadn’t seen the light of day in years.
“Wow, pasty. Government troglodyte. Vitamin D, sunlight, definitely look into it.” She moved toward him. “Legs like that, you don’t even have to open your mouth to scare the girls on the beach.”
There was a power pole nearby. Working with the skilled fingers of a trained auto mechanic she soon had both agents cuffed securely to the post. Simmons did not take his eyes off her the entire time.
“Little lady, this is the beginning of the end of your life.”
Laughing, she retreated to the ripped-open SUV and recovered her purse. “Man, if Trent could see me now.”
It was possible that the remarkable events of the day notwithstanding, nothing stunned Sam more than her comment right then. He gaped at her. “Excuse me, what’d you—if Trent could see you now?” There was no mistaking the sheer disbelief in his voice. “You’re serious.”
She blinked at him, oblivious of the fact that she might have said anything in the least unsettling. “What?”
He stood rooted to the ground near the abandoned SUV. “I just—I can’t believe this! We contact an alien race together and all you care about is what that Neanderthalic jock thinks about you?” He shook his head. “You don’t think that’s a little weird?”
Her defenses were still up from the confrontation with Simmons. “What are you, my therapist all of a sudden?”
He didn’t back down. Not now. Not anymore. “This isn’t like your average Friday night where we’re just hanging out. I mean, a little while ago I had some four-foot little gremlinny alien machine try to cut my legs off!”
“I know.”
Slipping into a daze of an entirely different kind than the one that had enveloped him on the forced ride away from his house, he looked off into the distance and framed an imaginary scene with both hands.
“Wait, I’m having a vision! We’re gonna possibly save the world and go back to school Monday morning and nothing’s gonna have changed. I’ll still be the invisible guy in homeroom and you’ll go back to being shallow.” He turned and looked upward. “Optimus, dude, back me up on this.”
The robot’s tone was profound. “We cannot take sides in your adolescent gender battles.”
A furious Mikaela promptly got right up in Sam’s face. “Shallow? I got a record ’cause I wouldn’t sell out my dad! When’ve you ever had to sacrifice anything in your perfect little life? Did you cry ’cause you didn’t get the latest Xbox for Christmas? All pouty ’cause you only got an old Camaro instead of a new Corvette?”
They were nose to nose when the rapidly escalating argument was interrupted by the whup-whup of several helicopters cresting the nearby hillside. A moment later a small fleet of SUVs arrived, screeching to respective halts on several sides. Robots and escapees alike found themselves suddenly surrounded.
