Transformers-Revenge of the Fallen

by Alan Dean Foster

  Simmons was right, Sam decided. The traffic in Cairo was by far the worst he had ever seen. The coating of dust they had accumulated out in the desert helped veil Bumblebee somewhat and deflect a little, if not all, of the attention the sporty American car attracted. Besides, none of the other drivers could stare for very long lest they end up crashing into the vehicles in front of or on either side of them—or worse, miss their turn.

  Traveling on the highway they had passed a fair number of official vehicles representing one depart­ment or another before a police car finally spun around behind them, changed lanes and direction, and gave chase. Siren wailing and lights flashing, it closed in on them rapidly.

  “Sam . . .Mikaela murmured.

  “I know” Wrenching hard on the wheel to give im­petus as well as instruction to Bumblebee, he fol­lowed the Twins off the highway.

  Exhibiting remarkable acceleration for so modest a

  police vehicle, the Egyptian patrol car slammed un- apologetically into the Camaro’s rear bumper.

  “We’ve got to shake them!” Simmons was looking around anxiously. “Any minute now this chase will start drawing notice. Gotta lose one pursuer before a dozen show up.”

  “Yeah, but how?” Mikaela turned and shouted “Hey!” as something small, metallic, and active scrambled out of the trunk, utilizing the fold-down access between the rear seats.

  Instantly sizing up the situation, Wheels clambered out the open window on Simmons’s side of the car, scrambled over the roof, and leaped off the trunk cover to land on the windshield of the pursuing car. His screams as he began pounding on the safety glass were exceeded in volume only by those of the two cops inside who found themselves under attack by the biggest, ugliest, maddest bug either of them had ever seen. While the wide-eyed driver fought to keep the car on an even keel, his partner fumbled for his ser­vice revolver.

  Leaping into the air with a matched perfection that would have drawn a “10” from any gymnastics judge, the Twins allowed Bumblebee to pass cleanly beneath them as they changed form. By the time they landed atop the weaving police cruiser they had fully reverted to their natural Transformer shapes. As­sailed from the front by what looked like an insane giant metal spider and from both sides by glaring alien robots, the driver of the cruiser could have been excused for abruptly leaving the road. The car rolled a couple of times before it finally came to a stop upside down at the bottom of a dry ravine, its lights and siren silenced.

  Staggering away from the upturned pursuer and clutching a dislodged windshield wiper as a symbol of his victory, Wheels let out a Cybertronian cry of triumph as he tottered over to the Camaro that had stopped not far ahead. A single leap brought him back inside the waiting car.

  “See, see? Change sides, like Jetfire! Me protect! You safe with me!” Disdaining a return to the trunk, he settled down in Mikaela’s lap and buried his face in her cleavage. Glancing around, she saw all three of her male companions looking on in silence.

  *Whatr she said. “He’s cute”

  Settling back down in his seat, Simmons stared out the windshield and back up at the busy highway. “No one’s stopping to see what happened. My under­standing is that the public isn’t real fond of the local cops. But we gotta get off this main road. We can’t keep traveling in the daytime.” Reaching out, he let his open palm brush across the Camaro’s dash. “Your crazy car kinda stands out in a city full of Fiats and Renaults. We’ll lay low till sunset. Find someplace where the authorities won’t think to look for us. Then decide what to do next. Try to figure out what the old Decepticon meant by the three kings and how that re­lates to the dagger—to the Gulf.”

  Sam was shaking his head. “We’re running out of time. We gotta send a rendezvous message to Lennox. Get Optimus to the ‘Dagger’s tip’ of the Ancients.” The ex-agent shot the notion down immediately. “Negative, kid. You’re number one on the worldwide wanted list. You get on a military frequency, they’ll track us down again.”

  “Military frequency . . .Sam murmured. “Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah—military. ...”

  * * *

  So far away in space, if not in time. So different in feeling, if not in empathy. So . . . busy.

  The sun was shining on the patio at the back of

  Lennox’s house. Sarah Lennox juggled her two-year- old on her lap while Ray Epps’s wife, Monique, at­tempted the impossible task of keeping track of their five offspring. Their four daughters were chasing one another around the pool, occasionally pausing to hop madly up and down in the spray from a hose-fed plas­tic fountain. Above the happy hysteria the insistent ring of a cell phone was barely audible.

  Still maintaining a firm grip on her terrible two, Sarah looked around in confusion. While she could hear the phone, from a practicable standpoint it might as well have been invisible.

  “I think one of your kids has my ...”

  Though she was not in the military, Monique Epps had a fine drill sergeant’s voice—a requirement for keeping a handle on five rug rats.

  “Shareeka! Shaniqua! Sheleeka! Mozambiqua! Where’s your brother? Where’s Fred?” Spotting her isolated male progeny hard at work hollowing out the Lennoxes’ sandbox, she rose and hiked over to him. He gazed up with the guilelessness of a preco­cious three-year-old, plastic sand shovel in one hand and lips wrapped around the other. “Fred, what’d you do with Mrs. Lennox’s phone?”

  Formulating a response required Fred to execute a cursory search of his infantile hard drive. This unleashed a moment’s digging in the sand, where ex­cavation soon exposed the still-yammering communi­cations device. Maintaining his innocence, he picked it up and held it out to his mother. She glared down at him.

  “You best wipe the sand off that phone or I’m gonna reach out and touch your behind. ”

  Fred complied, motivated more by his mother’s stern maternal tone than her only marginally compre­hensible words. Half satisfied, she took it from his small fingers and walked back to return it to her host. Sarah put it to her ear as she acknowledged the call.

  “Hello? Hello, who is this? We don’t have a very good connection.” She smiled speculatively. “Mary­ann, are you calling while riding your Mercedes through the car wash again?”

  It was just as well that the Lennoxes did not sub­scribe to caller ID. Had the phone’s screen come back with a number combined with its location, City of the Dead, Egypt, she might have hung up without a word.

  Most people would have.

  On the other end of the call, his back turned against a light breeze that whipped not-so-light sand around him, Sam squinted as he sought shelter from the blowing desert while cupping his hand over the mouthpiece of the battered pay phone. Nearby, a par­tially occupied yellow-and-black Camaro and a pair of only intermittently occupied compact cars stood watch.

  “Hi—Mrs. Lennox? My name’s Sam Witwicky.

  You don’t know me but I know your husband, Major

  Lennox. Met him two years ago when it started—the thing we all know about but can’t talk about.”

  Sarah’s voice quickened over the receiver. “ ‘Sam’? You’re the kid who ...”

  “Yes—I’m ‘who.’ And the fate of more or less the entire world depends upon me getting a message to

  him, but people are gonna be listening for certain key

  words. I need your help.”

  Silence reigned at the other end, and for a terrible moment he was afraid she had hung up on him. Then a terse but self-assured feminine voice finally re­sponded. “What can I do?”

  He proceeded to tell her.

  He was nearly done when a tall, slim figure draped in local dress came running directly toward him. Pre­liminary panic gave way to amusement and then to admiration as Sam admitted to himself that Seymour Simmons didn’t look half bad in local attire. His arms were full of wind-whipped clothing. While Sam had been setting up the call and talking, the ex-agent had gone shopping.

  “Local police must’ve gotten word. They’re se
arch­ing the town. We gotta move now

  Nodding understandingly, Sam started to replace the handset in its holder. “I gotta go. You got the co­ordinates I gave you?”

  “Yes. Sam, I...”

  “Thank you.”

  Slamming the phone down, he nodded at Simmons and together they raced back toward the waiting Ca- maro. Now thickly coated with dust and sand, all three cars peeled out of the parking area. Moments later, several Egyptian police vehicles pulled in to form a heavily armed circle around the now-deserted and forlorn pay phone.

  Close, Sam thought as they accelerated away. Too close.

  **

  The huge pallet and its irregularly shaped payload was clearly visible from the operations control room as it was being loaded onto the waiting C-17. Stand­ing side by side, a disconsolate Lennox and Epps fol­lowed the procedure. There ought to have been an honor guard, Lennox told himself. And a band solemnly playing. And flags flying. Optimus Prime deserved all that and more. Instead, he was being crated and shipped like an oversize FedEx parcel. It wasn’t right. Beside him, Epps was muttering his own opinion under his breath. The words he was using were considerably less polite than those coursing through the thoughts of his friend and superior offi­cer.

  Behind them, Galloway was reviewing an intelli­gence file when a communications officer appeared and bent to whisper something in his ear. Frowning, he raised his gaze to the far window where Lennox and Epps continued to stare, for some unfathomable reason, out at the runway.

  “I don’t care,” the advisor informed the officer. “There are no private calls. Not even from wives to husbands—or vice versa.” Slapping a button on a nearby phone box, he put the incoming call on speak­erphone.

  The voice of Monique Epps echoed through the op­erations room.

  “Ray? Is Ray on the line?”

  Startled to hear his wife’s voice, Epps turned and started in the phone’s direction. “Yeah, baby, I’m here. You’re on speaker. What is it?” Looking around, he saw that the other operations personnel were stu­diously and politely doing their best to ignore the conversation taking place in their midst. “We’re workin’.”

  Speakerphone. Monique Epps hesitated, looked at Sarah, who was standing next to her, glanced at the kids racing around the Lennox kitchen, and strove to figure out how best to proceed. A questioning look at her friend generated only a raising of hands and a helpless shrug. They would have to improvise as best they could.

  “Don’t you dare gimme ‘we’re working,’ Ray­mond. This is an emergency. You gotta stop what you’re doing and be listenin’1 to me.” Beside her, Sarah Lennox nodded encouragement.

  Trapped in the wide-open operations room and shooting the occasional murderous stare in the direc­tion of now-smirking co-workers, Epps had no choice but to reply. A glance in Galloway’s direction showed that the advisor had turned away and had apparently returned to his work.

  “Okay, baby, okay,” he murmured soothingly. “Calm down. Remember, I’m on speaker here. What’s going on?”

  “Well, for one thing I’m not getting any younger, is what’s going on,” she shot back. “I just took a good long look in the mirror this morning and it hit me all at once that I’ve popped five kids outta this factory and I’m feeling like a damn truck.” A few chuckles sounded around the operations center, only to turn to silence when Epps glared in their direction. Embar­rassed but helpless, he had no choice but to continue listening to his wife rant.

  “Like a big ol’ eighteen-wheeler,” his wife was complaining, “that woulda been easier to drop than five smaller versions, you feel me?”

  Epps looked over at Lennox but found no enlight­enment there. Cupping a palm over the phone’s hand­set, he lowered his voice affectionately. “Uh, I kinda feel you, I think.”

  “You better believe you feel me,” his wife contin­ued, “ ’cause I got a big-ass booty to prove it. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, Raymond, and my mind’s made up. I’m getting it done. Face-lift, tummy tuck, super-boobs, the whole chimichanga redo from Doc Samuels.”

  Epps’s lower jaw dropped. “Whatf When did you—who’s ‘Doc Samuels’? You been seeing a plastic surgeon without telling me, Monique? You know I don’t allow plastic in my house.”

  “Let me remind you it’s not your house, it’s our house, and you’re ’bout to be sleepin’ in the dog house, ’cause you are not listening. Samuels, Doc Samuels. He’s young, you both met him a couple of years ago at the car show? He had that new custom job, probably paid for it with a couple of dozen front end lifts.”

  Epps looked at Lennox, who stared back. Dawning realization was beginning to penetrate the solid bone of both soldiers’ skulls sufficiently to reach into the gray matter beneath. A nearby guard remained at at­tention, inadequately equipped to catch on to the real gist of the ongoing domestic conversation. Lennox decided to announce his presence.

  “Oh, yeah, the car show, I remember now, Mo­nique. That doctor, he had bought himself one fast ride.”

  “Glad you both remember,” Epps’s wife was say­ing, “ ’cause I truly feel that I’m just coming up on my prime now—my optimal prime. So I told this doc that I was feeling like a big oP truck that was just falling down and he thinks he can bring the whole kit and kabooty back to life. You hear what Pm saying now?”

  The voice of Sarah Lennox broke in. “I keep telling her it’s not the end of the world if she doesn’t get this work done, Ray, and she keeps insisting that it is. ”

  “Oh yes, it is” Monique insisted vehemently.

  The watching guard did his best to stifle a smirk. Under ordinary circumstances Epps would have punched him out, stockade or no stockade. Instead, he just gazed back at Lennox. The real meaning buried in the seemingly insouciant conversation had hit them both hard.

  Lennox nodded toward the mic pickup. “Ray— your wife is waiting for a reply.”

  Epps nodded, bent, and spoke. “Sugar Muffin, Pm sorry for getting angry. You need a tune-up? Who am I to say no?”

  “Doc Samuels says it has to happen, like now, baby. After all, the body we’re talking about is impor­tant to both of us. It’s a body that deserves to live again.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, Sugar Plum. Believe me, I understand completely. I mean, what’s truly impor­tant is truly important, right?” He glanced over at Lennox, who did a quick scan of the operations cen­ter. Bored from listening to the marital byplay, the others had returned to their work. No one was pay­ing the two soldiers the least attention except their guard, and he continued to operate under a perfectly wrong set of assumptions. Which meant they could proceed.

  Epps nodded and addressed the mic afresh. “So, uh, Sugar, what’s this operation gonna cost me? Gimme some hard numbers. I need to know where we’re going with this.”

  Having prepared for the conversation by pulling the family atlas from its place on the living room bookshelf, Sarah Lennox already had it open to the relevant section. A Post-it note on the page opposite the critical one was filled with her neat handwriting. Pulling it free, she handed it to her friend. Holding the note in one hand and the phone in the other, Monique resumed talking to her husband.

  “Well, right now it’s looking like around twenty- nine. With all the extras, it comes to exactly twenty-nine point three-one, maybe east of thirty- five—depending on whether we go with ‘saline’ or ‘silicone,’ but it’s definitely in that neighborhood.” Epps nodded as he memorized the numbers. “I got it. Wow. Those are some far-out numbers. As near as I can see, they’re way off base. You tell the doc that’s half my salary. But I think we can swing it. I promise you I’m gonna do my damndest, and I’m sure Bill Lennox will help out in every way he can. Won’t you, uh, Sir?”

  Lennox nodded. “You can bet on it, Sergeant. We’ve been friends too long to let this one slide.” Epps smiled. “Thanks. Sugar, kiss the kids and tell ’em—tell ’em we’re all cornin’ home soon.” He broke the connection, paused, and stared. Turning, Lennox sa
w what had drawn his attention.

  Galloway had risen from his chair to come up right

  behind them.

  “In my long career,” the advisor began gravely, “I bet I’ve heard ten thousand wiretapped conversa­tions. And the one thing I’ve learned?” Both soldiers stiffened. Lennox saw that the guard was paying close attention and might be difficult to jump.

  “What’s that, Sir?” he inquired carefully.

  Galloway never hesitated. “The wife is always right.” Having delivered himself of that immutable truth, he walked past the two of them and out through the nearest doorway. Lennox and Epps watched him go, then exchanged a glance. Nothing was said, but their respective heart rates slowed pro­portionately.

  The C-17 pilot was NEST, but Lennox and Epps still confronted him cautiously. Both men knew there would be only one opportunity to make this work. If the pilot refused to cooperate . ..

  They made a show of looking busy, doing their best to give any onlookers the impression that they were discussing the plane and its forthcoming mission. Which indeed they were, but not according to the procedure that had already been laid out. They kept their backs to the operations center just in case a lip- reader or a monitor manning an audiosnoop might be peering at them through a scope.

  “Coordinates,” the pilot was repeating quietly, “twenty-nine degrees thirty-one minutes north, thirty- five degrees east.” He frowned. “That’s the northeast branch of the Red Sea. Gulf of Aqaba, up where the three countries meet. Eastern shore.” His eyes met Lennox’s. “Not a real peaceful part of the world, Major.”

  Epps’s eyes had widened as he listened to the pilot. Up until now he’d only had the numbers and not a real location. “Jordan? You kidding? Even if we had a way to get Big Daddy there, how’s the kid gonna bring him back to life?”

  Lennox took a deep breath. “If the Decepticons want Sam Witwicky bad enough to try and snatch him straight out of school and reveal themselves the way they did, it must be because he either knows something they don’t or has something they want— which for all we know could be one and the same. Which means that one way or another he definitely knows more than us about what’s going on.” He shrugged resignedly. “We gotta trust him.”