Transformers Dark of the Moon (32 page)

To hell with everything.

In the launch control facility, feeling as if they were watching a piece of human history coming to an end, the onlookers monitored the countdown as the primary ignition sequence in the main rocket fired up. The shuttle
Xantium
clung to the outside, waiting for its lift out of the earth’s atmosphere.

“Saturn V?” said Sam.

Epps was standing at his side. “It was when it got
started. The Wreckers completely redesigned it, though. It’s more theirs than ours by this point. Made it forty percent more efficient. At least that’s what they claimed, and who am I to tell them they’re fulla crap?”

“The
Xantium
couldn’t just, y’ know … take off on its own? I mean, it’s just hard to believe it would be dependent on us.”

“It’s not,” said Epps. “But according to the Wreckers, the engines are too powerful. It’s not constructed to function on our world. If they ignite down here, they’ll tear a hole in the atmosphere that’ll make the one we already have in the ozone layer look like a gopher hole. So the Autobots felt it would be safer if, should a departure ever become necessary, we enabled them to piggyback out of here.”

“So they were watching out for us, even to the end.”

“Pretty much,” Epps said, not sounding any happier about it than Sam was.

Simmons had a ringside seat by the wide windows at the front of the facility. As the countdown reached its inevitable conclusion and as the booster rockets fired up to their full capacity, he spoke out in a voice that rang out above the technicians who were monitoring the impending launch. “Years from now, they’re gonna ask us: Where were you when they took over the planet? And we’re gonna say we just stood there and watched.”

Mearing was near him when he said it. She glanced at him, her jaw set in a determined line, but she said nothing.

“Three …,” intoned the voice of mission control, “… two … one … ignition.”

Nothing happened, and for a second Sam rejoiced inwardly, thinking that there was some sort of malfunction and the Autobots had been granted a reprieve, even if it was only in the form of mechanical failure. But then a roar filled the area, and despite all its shockproofing,
the launch facility trembled slightly as a mass of smoke and flame erupted from the bottom of the rocket.

It was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for the child still living inside Sam Witwicky: He was getting to watch a rocket liftoff and had a ringside seat for it. How cool was that?

The adult in him, however, felt no joy. The words “end of an era” were commonly bandied about, but never had they had a meaning that was both as significant for the whole of humanity and as deeply personal for one young man as they did right then.

Sam followed the trajectory as the rocket hurtled skyward. Within moments the first-stage booster dropped away, the ignition of the secondary booster propelling it higher and faster now that the weight of the first booster was gone. Against the bright blue cloudless skies, the rocket remained clearly visible.

His cellphone rang.

Sam pulled it out and looked. The caller ID read
CALLER UNKNOWN
, but it didn’t matter. He knew who it was going to be. He stepped away from Epps, who didn’t even seem to notice that Sam was trying to distance himself from them. Once he was sure that he was unobserved, he brought up the phone and spoke tersely into it.

“Well? You get what you wanted?”

Dylan’s voice came back to him. “That Bumblebee, God, so friggin’ adorable. But that Optimus … come on! Guy needs to learn to lighten up!”

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.

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.

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.”

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 glancing 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.”