The Veiled Threat (13 page)

Lennox’s expression darkened. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Epps let out a shout. “NEST Five is in position and scanning.” As the humans crowded around the technical sergeant’s open laptop, the Autobots hung back. Their stance did not prevent them from being able to see the information and images that were coming up on the screen.

“There.” It was the acutely observant Petr who first spotted the strange shape moving down the small road. “Hold on that traffic.”

Epps looked over at him. “What do you think you see? The image isn’t clear enough for a positive ident.” He indicated the screen. “That could be a logging truck.”

“Those cannot be logs,” Andronov insisted. “But they could be the barrels of guns.”

Epps challenged the Russian’s analysis of the image they were watching. “What makes you so sure?”

“Because there no trees of that size left anywhere in that part of Zimbabwe.”

Lennox was practically leaning on Epps’s shoulder. “Can you enhance the resolution any more, Sergeant?”

Epps shook his head. “Hey, you’re looking at real-time video beamed from a low-orbit satellite straight to the middle of Africa. This ain’t HBO, Captain.”

“Direct the camera to move farther down the same
road as the vehicle you are discussing,” Ratchet suggested. Epps complied.

As the camera advanced, tracking along the road, it picked up several other vehicles utilizing the same route and traveling in the same direction—but only one was driving at exactly the same speed as the suspect “logging” truck.

“That’s Dropkick.” Ratchet straightened.

Epps frowned at the imperfect image. “Can you be sure? There are several pickups on the road.”

“But no other ones traveling at the same speed as the truck,” Ratchet pointed out. “Why should a pickup truck capable of much greater speed travel neither faster nor slower than the vehicle behind it, but at exactly the same velocity?”

“Ratchet is right.” Optimus straightened. “The two vehicles are moving in tandem but apart, so as not to draw attention to themselves.” One massive finger lightly touched Petr on the shoulder. “When considered together with the preceding botanical observation, I think the identification is accurate. We are looking at Payload and Dropkick.”

“And they’re heading south,” Epps pointed out. He looked up from the computer. “Kariba and Cahorra Bassa are south.”

“Then we must go there as well.” The leader of the Autobots turned his attention back to Lennox. “Even if your supposition is wrong, Captain, we cannot take that chance. This sounds like something Starscream would do. The deaths of thousands, of millions of your kind, would not disturb his conscience for one moment, and all the better if he felt it would advance his cause or help the Decepticons to win the war.”

Lennox nodded. “It’s decided, then. We’ll head back north to the air base outside Lusaka, and they can fly us down to the airstrip nearest Kariba.”

“No.” Reaching across, Optimus put a finger on the human’s shoulder. “I have already calculated the distance and times involved. We will get there faster in our terrestrial modes.” As he rose, his gaze took in his expectant companions.

“Autobots, transform and roll out!”

The guards barely looked up from their station when the garbage truck appeared. Since the winding road to the top of the dam descended through thick forest, they had only just noticed its approach. Taking a break from the card game that occupied his three colleagues, one of the men rose to peer curiously at the oncoming vehicle. What he saw caused him to frown. It did not look like the regular garbage truck. For one thing, it was outfitted with more than just a dumpster lifter. The heavy blades tucked against the top of the vehicle just behind the cab were an accessory he had never seen before. Increasingly intrigued, he picked up his rifle and stepped out of the windowless, open-sided guardhouse onto the hot pavement, leaving the card game behind. He was losing anyway.

The truck was not approaching very fast. The guard’s attention perked up when it appeared as if the vehicle was going to head out onto the roadway that ran across the top of the dam. Then it stopped, backed up several feet, turned to the right, and headed for the tree-shaded corner of the parking lot that was backed by several big dumpsters. The truck’s operator seemed oddly disinterested in his work, but
that did nothing to raise the soldier’s suspicions. Had he been forced to drive a garbage truck for the miserable wages such labor paid he, too, would have spent as much time as possible ingesting the locally available narcotics.

He kept an eye on the work until the truck had methodically picked up and tossed the contents of two of the four dumpsters into its back end. As it did so the purpose of the mysterious five aligned blades became clear. Whirring smoothly, they reduced the refuse to tiny fragments before depositing it in the back of the collector. Why it should be necessary to do this on-site instead of at a waste plant or dump the soldier did not know. Something to do with new recycling regulations, no doubt. Reassured, he turned and walked back to rejoin his comrades, sufficiently satisfied that he did not even bother to check the license plate on the pickup that had pulled up alongside the bigger truck.

As a result, he did not see the thick stream of minced trash that was ejected from the front of the garbage truck to cover the rear corner of the parking area, nor did he hear the exclamation of disgust the vehicle emitted.

“Pfagh!” A front bumper rose unnaturally to wipe at the spewing orifice that had momentarily replaced the truck’s grille. “These humans, they foul their own nest.”

“An entrenched excess that will be appropriately addressed once we have assumed control of this world.” Dropkick spoke with confidence. “Starscream, we are ready to proceed as ordered.”

A voice echoed simultaneously inside the minds of
both Decepticons. “Move out, then. Payload is in position and waiting for you to begin.” High overhead, a jet contrail slashed across the otherwise pollutionfree blue sky. The white line began to arc back on itself, circling. No commercial aircraft in this part of the world would have any reason to describe such a flight path. The guards at the dam might have remarked on it, had any of them bothered to look up. But like that of the technicians and engineers responsible for the operation of the great dam, their attention was attuned to more Earth-bound concerns.

Dropkick led the way, pleased with the human simulation he had projected into the pickup shape’s front seat. He thought it an excellent likeness of one of the soft-bodied creatures. Macerator followed close behind. Together they approached the gate that blocked the road across the top of the dam. There was a second, smaller guard post on the lake side of the road. As the Decepticons drew near, a single soldier emerged. While one hand rested on the short-barreled automatic weapon slung across his body, the other rose in a palm-outward gesture Dropkick knew meant that he should halt.

No foot was necessary to depress the truck’s accelerator. In fact, no accelerator was necessary. With a roar, the pickup leaped forward. Behind it, Macerator’s throaty engine rumbled as the garbage truck shifted gears to follow its smaller brethren.

The guard’s eyes went wide. To his credit he did not panic. Raising his weapon, he dodged to one side and opened fire. A moment later the shots from his rifle were joined by the louder chatter of the machine gun mounted inside the guard station. Slugs that would
have shredded normal automobile sheet metal bounced like pebbles off the two oncoming trucks.

Dropkick didn’t slow as he smashed through the gate. What he did not destroy was crushed and mangled beneath Macerator’s weight. Their path now unimpeded, the two vehicles cruised out onto the top of the dam. Automatic-weapons fire continued to rattle behind them.

Cards were forgotten as the soldiers in the other guard post scrambled for their weapons and rushed to join the fight. Inside the gate guard post, a frantic corporal was jabbering wildly into the local intercom. From a barracks located on the nearby hillside several dozen other hastily roused soldiers were piling into waiting jeeps and open trucks.

Machine-gun fire now began to hit the pair of rolling intruders from opposite directions as the guard post on the other side of the dam opened up. Burning rubber, Dropkick screeched to a halt and parked himself sideways in the exact middle of the crossing. Lining up behind him, Macerator did likewise. Positioned grille-to-tail, they were now in a position to block traffic coming from either direction.

“The humans’ firepower here is puny.” Ignoring the noisy torrent of small-arms fire, Dropkick paused to admire the view down the gorge. “I assume it is having no effect on you?”

“I am feeling little in the way of actual contact,” Macerator replied as a torrent of .50-caliber slugs ricocheted off his armored flanks. “It does not matter. We will not be here for long.”

“Interesting.” Raising a front wheel, Dropkick pointed down the dam-top roadway in the direction
they had been heading before they had come to a halt. “It would appear that they do have some heavier weapons here.”

Showcasing the result of regular drilling, a squadron of soldiers had stopped just inside the far gate and were pulling the protective tarps off a truck whose bed was equipped with a multiple rocket launcher. Inside the truck’s cab, the gunner activated internal electronics to aim the multibarreled weapon at the pair of motionless and seemingly indifferent intruders. Moments later the first of nine available missiles erupted from its launcher as nearby troops covered their ears. The projectile struck Macerator broadside, rocking the big truck slightly back on its wheel-base.

“I did feel that.” The Decepticon’s tone darkened. “I believe my exterior may have incurred a slight smudge. The audacity of these insects astonishes me.”

A portion of the middle of the garbage truck shifted, flowed, and changed shape. Appearing out of its flank was a tightly bound cylinder containing multiple barrels. The sound they made as they fired in unison echoed across the impounded lake below. Shells ripped into the truck-mounted missile launcher, tearing it to shreds. The heat they generated also ignited the remaining eight projectiles where they sat in the launcher. A few exploded in place, sending shrapnel flying in all directions and mowing down every soldier unfortunate enough to be standing too close. Several missiles launched, flying wildly in all directions. One exploded in the air while another struck the lake, a third the forest behind the guard station, and a fourth the road itself, adding to the completeness
of the confusion that had enveloped the dam and its surrounds.

The teams of soldiers from the barracks arrived on the other side of the dam. Deploying to cover and without waiting for orders from their superiors, they opened up on the two trucks parked in the center of the road. Panicked technicians were fleeing from the dam’s installations. Piling into their own vehicles, the guards stationed in the gorge below were now racing as fast as possible up the switchbacks that led to the top in order to join in the fight to save a national treasure.

As soon as the last of them had departed, Payload began to move.

No ordinary vehicle could have made its way down into the gorge without utilizing one of the access roads, but Payload’s treads and low center of gravity enabled him to avoid detection, mowing down brush and trees as he descended. Concealed by the canyon’s thick vegetation, he had waited motionless and hidden until Macerator and Dropkick made their move. Now, with all the defending human forces converging on the two Decepticons parked atop the center of the dam, he pushed forward out of the bush unopposed. No one challenged him as he settled himself on a nice, level piece of beach beside the lake and elevated his multiple guns. Requiring only a few seconds to calibrate distance, he opened fire.

The large-caliber anti-aircraft shells were not aimed at the human defenders; nor did they land within reinforced structures. Instead Payload’s salvos were directed at just one spot—the exact center of the lower portion of the dam. They did not penetrate: the concrete
there was too thick for that. But they did make a start, steadily and inexorably, at chipping away the thick curved wall.

Firing desperately from behind the crumpled security gate, the soldiers situated there turned as a new sound rose above the constant chatter of small-arms fire. The noise was loud, intermittent, and oddly familiar. As they searched, the source revealed itself. Forced to scatter at its approach and knowing nothing of the newcomers, they fired wildly in their direction.

Blowing his horn, Optimus Prime came barreling down the hilly access road. In the absence of identification, the guards assumed the wildly careering diesel was another trespasser. They also unloaded on the two pickup trucks that were following, but ceased fire when the ambulance appeared. Skidding to a stop, Ratchet unloaded his human passengers in a safe area before spinning around in a most un-ambulance-like manner to hurry after his friends.

Recognizing the American flags stitched in place beneath the NEST insignia on the soldiers’ shoulders, a Zambian lieutenant hurried over to confront the new arrivals. Breathless and sweating, he did his best to explain what was happening. Epps didn’t linger to listen. Hearing the steady
ack-ack
of heavy fire echoing through the gorge, he rushed to a vantage point and pulled out his compact monocular. By the time Lennox, Petr, Kaminari, and the Zambian officer joined him, the tech sergeant had already made a guess as to the Decepticons’ intentions.