The Veiled Threat (18 page)

Petr nodded. “It can be mentally unsettling to not know if bus you board is going to take you to your destination or take your life. Tracking satellites can pick up evidence but still have difficulty resolving the specifics of individual vehicles, as we recently saw for ourselves in Africa. And errant Decepticon signals are only intermittent.” He jerked a thick thumb in Longarm’s direction. “The Autobots will know.”

Morales looked behind him, in the direction of the big cargo jet that continued to unload a steady stream of supplies. “This is it? You are the whole team? Two humans and two Autobots?”

“Hey,” Epps chided him. “I was at
Mission City
.”

“We are more than enough to handle one Decepticon signal,” Petr replied. “Unless, of course, it is Starscream.”

The officer’s eyes widened. “Starscream! You don’t think
he’s
here, do you?”

Epps looked back at the tow truck that was following them. “Hey Longarm! You hear that? You think ol’ Starscream might be messin’ around hereabouts?”

“Since you ask my opinion, Sergeant Epps, I do not. It would be highly uncharacteristic of Starscream to engage in any terrestrial operations by himself.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Epps turned back to Morales. “We don’t even know for certain yet that we got us a Decepticon here, Pierre.”

“
Verdad
, my friend. Hopefully you will find out later today.”

“Not today.” Sucking the thin air, the sergeant regarded the pale, leaden sky. “Nobody’s blowing up any local infrastructure, so there’s no immediate emergency. This Decepticon, if that’s what the signal is coming from, doesn’t know we’re here. So the only thing Petr and I are gonna roll out of tonight is bed.” He patted his stomach. “Any suggestions for dinner?”

“I can recommend,” Morales told him. “Would you like to try some local specialties? I know an excellent place for
cuí
.”

“I’m up for anything that sounds cute,” Epps replied enthusiastically.

“Not myself, I think.”

The sergeant eyed the Russian. “Why not? You know something about this ‘cu
í
’?”

Andronov shook his head. “Who, I?
Nyet
, nothing. I just want some real tea, is all. Something stronger and sweeter and blacker than this flavored water we have been given.” He eyed his cup of pale liquid with obvious distaste.

Epps shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll eat your portion, too.”

But he did not.

The following morning dawned cold and rushed. Rushed, because an angry Epps spent a number of minutes chasing the guffawing Andronov several times around the NEST compound’s offices.

“What is the matter with you, my friend?” Panting hard, the scientist sought shelter behind a long, wide desk.

“I’m gonna kill you, man!” Facing him, Epps finally paused and straightened. “Maybe later, when I can catch my breath. Cuí! I’m gonna cuí your …!”

“Did you not like the taste of guinea pig? The ‘rabbit of the Andes,’ it is called. A staple food of the Incas and is still so today.” He was grinning hugely. “The little hairs, are they not so nice and crunchy when they have been burned?”

“Shoulda told me I’d be eatin’ some kinda big rat.” Epps saw Morales approaching. “Kill you later. Gotta resolve us a possible Decepticon sighting today.”

Despite the tech sergeant’s chronological disclaimer, Petr continued to maintain some distance between them as Morales offered greetings. By the time they had left Cuzco behind and found themselves heading in the direction of the suspicious signal, memories
of Sergeant Epps’s gustatory calamity had been put aside as he came to see the humor in it. Leastwise, his mind did. His stomach was still not entirely assuaged.

Riding in a civilian Hummer so that local operatives could maintain NEST’s usual low profile, they were followed by a four-wheel-drive van carrying half a dozen of Morales’s heavily armed colleagues. Epps would have preferred more backup, but because this was not a part of the planet where the Decepticon threat had ever loomed large, NEST’s presence was recent and correspondingly slight.

In his tow truck guise Longarm brought up the rear, but he was unable to keep Knockout from zooming ahead of the others or taking side trips onto dirt roads. Every time the younger Autobot took off on his own he did so with a roar and a flourish, sending dirt and gravel flying. Local farmers tending their herds and ancient fields looked askance at this odd convoy, but because of Longarm’s presence assumed it had something to do with repair or construction farther along the route.

They were grateful to see that something was being done. In this part of the country there was only the one road running eastward through the mountains, and it was always in need of maintenance. It looked as if the government was providing a road crew to maybe do something about fixing the important route. At least it was a change from the usual somber convoy of ambulances and hearses.

Cresting the pass near the turnoff to Tres Cruces, the convoy slowed as it began its descent. Despite the altitude it was soon impossible to see anything except
the trees that began to shadow the road. After a while even they were swallowed by the perpetual mist.

From his seat behind Morales, Epps leaned out his open window. The air had rapidly grown so moist that it seemed as if it were raining
up
.

“Damn! This is like San Francisco on a bad day. We could be surrounded by Decepticons and never even see ’em. When does it clear up?”

“It never ‘clears up,’ my friend.” Turning in his seat, Morales looked back at his passengers. “This is cloud forest. One sees the sun here but rarely. It will be like this for another thousand meters or so of steady descent until we reach the first foothills of the rain forest.”

Opening his computer Epps positioned it on his lap as best he could, but was unable to pick up a signal. The lack of contact was not unexpected. They were dropping down into an incredibly steep, winding canyon on the eastern slope of the Andes. In places the rock seemed to overhang the road. Not the likeliest spot to locate a satellite signal even with the best equipment, much less with his laptop’s small integrated antenna. Frustrated, he closed the clamshell. They were heading for the last recorded location for the Gamma pickup. As the Hummer slowed to a crawl in order to negotiate increasingly tight curves and switchbacks, the question that had been bothering him and Lennox as well as Optimus Prime ever since this signal had been detected rose once more to the fore.

What on Earth, pun intended, had drawn so much as a single Decepticon to this isolated corner of the planet? There was no technology here to adapt, no
supply of metal, no population to terrorize. Only scantly inhabited mountain and rain forest. Had they overlooked something before the sergeant and the others had been dispatched? Or was the satellite pickup simply an error—a computer glitch or false reading?

Regardless, Epps knew it had to be checked out. No Decepticon signal however questionable could be allowed to go uninvestigated.

He glanced to his left. If the Russian scientist had any better theories, he wasn’t voicing them. Instead, Andronov appeared completely engrossed in the wall of green that was sliding past the Hummer. Epiphytes clung tenaciously to overhanging trees while mosses and other hydrophilic growths covered even the bare rock from which the road had been laboriously chiseled.

Chiseled and blasted, Epps told himself as he studied as much as he could see of the winding route ahead. He found that he was increasingly thankful for the dense cloud cover. The single-lane dirt road, which provided the only access from the highlands to the Amazon basin for hundreds of miles in either direction, had not a single guardrail. He sensed rather than saw the sheer drop on his side of the Hummer.

Leaning forward, he tapped their guide on the shoulder. “What happens if you meet somebody coming up? A truck, or a bus?”

Morales didn’t smile. “They back up until we find a place where one or the other can pass. Traffic descending always has the right-of-way.”

A plainly dubious Epps peered out the window
again. “I don’t see anyplace to pass. Unless you’re a bird.”

“There aren’t many such places. It all depends on the relative sizes of the confronting vehicles. I once heard of a petrol tanker that had climbed halfway up to the pass only to have to back all the way down to Pilcopata. Took both drivers hours to complete the trip.”

Epps contemplated the mist. “Anybody ever go over the side here?”

“Oh, frequently.” Morales spoke as if it were the most normal thing in the world, like a traffic sigalert on the Los Angeles freeways. “The canyon below us is littered with the corpses of dozens of trucks and buses.”

The sergeant swallowed. “ ‘Dozens’?”

“Maybe hundreds. Nobody knows for certain because no one keeps track of such things and because so much of the canyon is inaccessible without special mountaineering equipment. You can’t use aircraft in here, obviously, because of the narrowness of the canyon walls and the permanent cloud cover. Also, many of the accidents are not reported because the truck is carrying illegal or smuggled cargo, or the bus has improper brakes, or any one of a number of other reasons.” He smiled reassuringly. “Do not worry. We are in a new vehicle with four-wheel drive, as is the van behind us. And I assume your Autobot friends do not have issues with traction.”

Leaning far out the window, Epps looked back up the treacherous road. Longarm’s reassuring shape was clearly visible behind the van. He could not see
Knockout, but he could hear the rumble of the smaller Autobot’s engine. He eased back into his seat.

“If they do, none of ’em has ever spoken about it to me. Though even an Autobot can only survive a fall of so many hundreds of feet.”

“Then it is best that they keep to the road. There are drops in places here that are considerably greater than a hundred meters.”

Finally, something that drew Andronov’s attention away from the local biota. “A hundred
meters
, you say?”

“Yes, but such drops will grow smaller and more infrequent as we continue to descend.”

Epps was about to ask the Russian if he would care to switch seats when a sudden shout from Knockout rose above his concerns as well as above the steady growling of gears and engines.

“There—there they are! I’ve got them on my perceptors!”

“Hey, wait …!” Epps yelled out the window. Either his admonition was too late, its subject did not hear him, or else he was simply being ignored.

Cutting so close to the edge of the roadway and the clouds below that his rear tire sent dirt and gravel spinning out into emptiness, Knockout came roaring past the Hummer to vanish into the mist ahead of it. Within seconds his exhaust had been swallowed up by the clouds. An alarmed Epps leaned forward.

“Stop! Hold up right here.”

Morales passed the order to the Hummer’s driver. The officer’s translation was unnecessary, as the driver had already hit the brakes—“stop” being one
English word that was recognized pretty much everywhere across the planet.

With the Hummer in park and the oversized brake set, Epps dragged his launcher from behind the seat and climbed out, taking care to move to the front of the vehicle while keeping well away from the lethal drop on his side. Armed only with a pistol, Morales joined him. Showing that despite his continual distractions he could shift his attention quickly from aphids to enemies, Petr emerged behind them gripping his special rifle.

As the three men peered down the cloud-swathed road, a rumble approached from behind. Skirting perilously close to the edge, his tires kicking pebbles off into emptiness, Longarm had squeezed past the van to come up behind the Hummer. As he did so, one of his rear wheels actually hung out in open air for a moment before regaining contact with the roadbed.

Humans and Autobot listened intently. Though the bends in the road and the heavy mist combined to mute noise, the sound of Knockout’s engine receding into the distance could still be heard.

Clutching the launcher, Epps looked back at the tow truck. The tech sergeant was quietly fuming. “All of a sudden he just went zooming past us, shouting something about having ‘them’ on his perceptors.”

“I know,” the truck replied. “I of course received his broadcast the instant it was generated.”

“I yelled at him to stop. He ignored me. Or pretended he didn’t hear.”

Longarm sighed heavily. “Knockout is smart, but
impulsive. I myself am presently sensing nothing directly in front of us.”

“Good!” The sergeant raised the muzzle of his weapon. “Won’t hurt him to admit he’s made a mistake.”

“That is what concerns me. We rarely make such mistakes.” Longarm spoke absently, the bulk of his attention focused on the section of canyon just ahead. “Utilizing different wavelengths and instruments that are more sensitive than human oculars, I can see reasonably well through the water vapor in which we are currently enveloped. But I cannot see through solid rock—at least, not very far—and the twists and cutbacks in this route prevent me from accessing Knockout’s present position.” A moment passed during which the only sounds were those of idling engines and unseen rain forest birds. Then …