(Chapter 3 - Through the Fire)

(disclaimer in chapter 1)

Most of the next week went quietly. Sam put in twelve-hour days. Will was putting him through their own private version of boot camp. He had picked up a lot from Epps' boys, and he had good instincts under fire. That was a good start for learning to use their weapons and equipment and tactics. Now that he had Carly to protect, he never complained about the lessons no matter how tired and sore and bruised he was at the end of a long day. He was also learning from Mearing how to make himself useful in Ops. She was also determined to teach him all the CIA tricks she could cram into his head in however much time she had before she got reassigned. She said that anyone who had managed to clue off Prime that he was compromised while under surveillance, without getting Carly killed, had the right stuff to be an agent.

Sam sat down hard as the memory of that horrible moment crashed in on him. "I thought we were both dead. I thought I was gonna have to blow my cover."

Mearing's eyes didn't soften. "That wasn't necessary because you kept your nerve. But you were ready to do that."

"It was two lives or God only knows how many! I was out of options. Carly doesn't know."

"She's a civilian. They don't want to know."

"I can't live lying to her."

Mearing nodded. "Just understand that she might not be strong enough for the truth, Sam. Sometimes love isn't enough when you can't give them normal. But I guess it's better to find that out now."

"Nothing's ever simple, is it?"

She shook her head. "Not after the shooting stops. Let's have Dutch get you up to speed on comms."

He followed her to the big board to start learning the ins and outs of the hybrid communications system they were building that would coordinate the Autobots and the NEST team under a better unified control system, more resistant to jamming and hacking. From Chicago he could see how that would make everyone exponentially safer.

Mearing nodded. "From an intel point of view, that was a clusterfuck. Nobody knew which units were in position or even who else had got inside their perimeter. If you people hadn't got that UAV going so we could get some coordination going, nobody would've made it out of there."

"If a lot of things, nobody would've got out."

"I'm not generally a believer, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility that we had a little help," Mearing replied.

A phone rang and Mearing picked it up. It was the mayor of New York City.

"Good afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg."

"Director Mearing, we have a situation. At least five Decepticons have occupied the St. Margaret's Square subway station. They have an as yet undetermined number of hostages. There would have been about two hundred people on that train at that time of day, as well as the people in the station waiting to board the train."

She hit an alarm. "Sir, I'll need any information that you have available about exactly which 'Cons we're dealing with, any maps of the surrounding area-and somewhere nearby that several thirty-foot-tall bots can set up a staging area."

Bloomberg introduced the city's emergency management director, who quickly transmitted all the information she had requested. He had even anticipated their need for a staging area and suggested a nearby city-owned parking lot. The NYPD's Emergency Services Unit was on site, and would be placed under NEST command when they arrived.

Nobody was left behind at NEST HQ, in case this was a diversion intended to create a chance to grab some hostages. Bee picked up Carly from their place. They met their transport at Andrews and then were in flight an hour. They landed at La Guardia, the smaller of New York's airports. The NYPD were standing by to clear the streets to give them a straight shot in to the parking lot that had been designated for the command post. The ESU command van was there already. Dutch pulled their command van up alongside it and he and a police tech quickly started rolling out cables to get their comms integrated. Sam and Carly got to work carrying things for them and generally making themselves useful.

Prime, Lennox and Mearing met with the deputy police chief in charge of ESU, Thomas O'Bannon. O'Bannon had come to ESU via the Army Rangers, so he and Lennox knew a lot of the same people.

A lot of other bots, police and NEST personnel gathered around, basically keeping their mouths shut unless they had something important to contribute. The police officers gave Georgie some strange looks. Nobody had a clue what an old lady in a wheelchair was doing there. But since she had come in with NEST, nobody said anything about it while the big brass were talking.

O'Bannon had street-level surveillance of one of the Decepticons from an ATM security camera. His alt form was a garbage truck. Prime and Lennox both remembered him from the skirmish on the Washington Mall, but neither of them knew anything about him other than that. "Apparently they've got the location of the energon detectors, because we didn't know about them until they got into the St. Margaret's square area."

Prime agreed. Stealth technology that could defeat the detectors was rare. It wasn't likely that five random survivors would have it.

O'Bannon played a brief video of the 'Cons blasting their way down the stairs into the station, gunning down a transit officer, and forcing a crowd of hostages up against a wall. Then one of them smashed the camera.

"How many hostages are there?" Mearing asked.

O'Bannon told her, "One hundred eighty-nine, in this video. There may be more hiding in the restrooms or other areas of the station."

Georgie looked at the crowd of hostages. The 'Cons were guarding them, but not paying any attention to any individual ones. They were right by the bathroom doors and the entrance to the workers-only area of the station. What Prime was always saying about destiny rarely calling at a moment of one's choosing came to mind. She poked Shimmer's leg and pointed to the picture of the crowd of hostages, and whispered, "We could blend into the crowd if we could get in there."

Shimmer said, "Maybe but getting in is the big 'if.'"

Prime asked, "Do you two have something to contribute, Shimmer?"

The femme stood up straight and said, "Yes, Prime! If we could get in there we could send back telemetry. Nobot would pay any attention to a lady in a wheelchair."

Prime said, "There's too great a risk that you'd be detected if one of them got too close, even with your suppression system."

Georgie told them, "I could do it with Simmons' chair. Shimmer, you send in a really small spy camera. Swipe the batteries out of something to power it so there won't be any energon for them to sniff out."

Mearing said, "That could work. All she has to do is pretend to be a random hostage. They probably didn't even bother counting the 'insects,' they won't notice one more if she doesn't do anything to attract attention. As soon as we know where everyone is in there, we can move."

Lennox told Georgie, "You know if you go in there and they get suspicious, you're not comin' out. For that matter, they could just decide to kill the hostages at any time for no reason we could make sense of."

"I understand, son."

Shimmer said, "Let me see what kind of surveillance gear we have to work with. The more Earth tech the better."

Lennox gestured to his elint tech and the former Ranger started putting equipment out on a folding table. Soon he and Shimmer had their heads together over it. Simmons parked his chair beside Georgie's and used Prime's shin plate to hold himself up while she transferred to his chair. Prime could feel him shaking with pain and effort, but Simmons kept it to himself as he told her, "My M9 is duct-taped under the seat. You wouldn't stop anything bigger than Wheelie and Brains with it, but you could blind the biggest ones. You have sixteen rounds, one in the chamber and fifteen in the magazine. Fire and move-they'll return fire at wherever you were."

"Does the safety on that work the same as a Beretta 92 I used to have?"

Mearing told Georgie's chair, "Get your dumb aft over there!"

It rolled over to Simmons-facing the wrong way. Prime turned it around and Simmons sat down gratefully. He reached under the seat of the other chair for the weapon. "Not exactly, they redesigned it so it's just as easy for lefties to operate. Leave it off. If you need it you won't have time to screw around with the safety."

She stuck the gun in her waistband, careful that a misfire wouldn't hit her and that her shirt hid it. The cold weight pressing into her skin brought home that this was serious. She looked around at them and growled, "Don't start the wake, I ain't dead yet! We still need to figure out the best way for me to get in there. Right up the subway tunnel?"

Simmons and Mearing both vetoed that. "This is New York, remember? Those tunnels have been covered with sensors since 9/11 and that mess with the Fallen. We have to assume the Decepticons can pick up the feed," Mearing said.

Simmons snapped his fingers. "Wait a minute. The tunnels that are in use today are covered. What about the old ones?"

Prime asked, "Old ones?"

O'Bannon said, "Yeah, New York is an old city as American cities go, it was first settled by the Dutch in the sixteen hundreds. Even before the subway system was established, it was full of tunnels. A lot of those aren't in use any more, or they just have pipes running through them if they are, but they're still there. Let us get with Homeland Security and see what I can find. If Lady Luck is smiling there might be another way in there besides right up the tracks, and it may not be as well secured."

Lennox told them, "Do it fast. They're not known for patience."

"We're on it, Will. See what you can come up with to give Georgie more of an edge than my M9," Simmons said.

"Christ, boys, I can't go in there looking like a video game character," she laughed. "My edge is going to be looking like a harmless little old lady."

Shimmer said, "You may be the hostages' last line of defense as well. But nothing we send in there can be detectable to them."

"Which means all Earth-tech," Prakowski, NEST's elint tech, mused. "I may have one idea." He picked up a small thin device about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

"What's that?"

"Something I've been fiddling with. Decepticons usually stop to gloat before they stomp. I figured if it ever came down to it, I'd get one shot."

"What's in it?"

"A new plastic explosive, it's a lot like C4 but it packs more punch—a lot more. The trouble is, they'll never deploy it for field use because it just degrades too fast under field conditions. Keep it sealed up and its fine, but as soon as the air hits it, it starts to deteriorate. After eight hours you've got an expensive firecracker, but it hardly ever takes us eight hours to engage the enemy. I put it on a timer. The case is an electromagnet, so with the power off, all anyone would detect is the battery. Push the button and throw it at anything metal, it sticks and ten seconds later, kaboom. You got yourself a 'Con with no leg. Or a doorway where there wasn't one before. The blast radius is about fifteen feet, so you'd have to have at least that much room between your target and any hostages."

Georgie nodded and put it in her purse, where it would be mistaken for a cell phone or the like. "I hope they haven't got any bomb sniffing dogs down there."

Shimmer said, "Most of us can scan for chemical trace, but that wasn't on my alert list until now. The compound is not a well-known explosive. If they had a specialist he would probably be able to figure out what it is, but they have no one like that."

Simmons said, "I might have something here. Right behind the station is a sub-basement of St. Margaret's Church, and on the other side of that is some kind of a tunnel that runs between these two buildings. It looks like the church and the subway station connect, or they did at one time."

Shimmer said, "We could get in there with Colonel Lennox' team-at least Bumblebee and I could. They wouldn't detect us all the way in the church basement. If something starts to go really bad with the hostages, we might be close enough to do something about it."

Bee nodded. "It could work, Prime."

The leader nodded. "Okay. The rest of us will take positions at the next stations up and down the line."

Ratchet asked, "Would they trade the hostages for energon? It would be worth it if it would save lives."

Prime shook his head. "They'd drink it as soon as they got their hands on it, and once they got overloaded the hostages wouldn't have a chance. But an empty cube, they might go for that."

Lennox said, "Even those assholes would smell a trap, Prime."

"Not if someone known to put innocent lives above everything else went rogue and tried to make his own deal with them," Prime said, dropping a big hand on Ratchet's shoulder.

Ratchet said, "I could sneak in through the subway tunnels, like I didn't know about the sensors. The worst that could happen is, it will get another one of us in position."

"The worst that could happen is, they could kill you and take the cube and then kill the hostages to spite you," Sam told him.

"They could try," the old medic replied, with some heat. Then he thought about it. "But if they did try, it would distract them from the hostages, especially if I act scared of them and back off up the tunnel. It all depends on good intel from Georgie about exactly where the hostages are. I need to come in from the best direction to lead the 'Cons away from them."

Georgie nodded. "So it all really depends on whether that connection between the church and the subway station is still there, or was ever really there in the first place. If not I can't sneak in."

Lennox said, "We might still be able to burn our way in with acid or thermite, then hide the hole somehow. We'll send a scout in first to make sure it's doable before we commit the whole team."

The scout team consisted of a sniper, a Californian named Jake Christianson, and his Canadian JTF2 spotter Henry McKenzie. The tunnel that Simmons had discovered ran between a warehouse and a former store which had been turned into apartments. The warehouse manager knew the old tunnel existed, but he had never been down there. He found a ring of old keys in the back of his desk drawer, grabbed a flashlight and led the way to a huge metal freight elevator.

"How much weight will this thing hold?"

"I don't know but we pack it full of stuff all the time. Why?"

"Like a car?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure, but why would you wanna—?"

"If this works out, you'll see."

The elevator let them out in a vaulted brick basement. On one wall was a wooden door about the size of a garage door. The manager found the right key and fought with the lock for a few minutes. Then he sprayed it full of WD-40 and finally got it open.

The tunnel was round and about ten feet high. There were narrow gauge railroad tracks running down the middle of it. "When everybody had coal furnaces, they used to deliver coal from here to all these buildings, but nobody's been in here in forever. I heard a brick fell outta the ceiling and busted some guy's head in."

Christianson shined his flashlight around. There were definitely fallen bricks lying around. He was thankful they had helmets. "This is as far as you go, pal."

"Fine with me. Anything else I can do, just let me know."

They followed the tunnel. Sure enough, there were several more doors into other basements, but the ones that were still marked had the names of stores that had been out of business for a century or more. They just had to keep count.

Until they came to one marked St. Margaret's church.

The door lock was on the other side, and completely rusted shut. Christianson radioed it in.

O'Bannon considered the chances the parish priest would know where that key was, if they could even break the rust loose, and the chances the whole op would get blown by people messing around making noise in the church basement. He advised, "Colonel Lennox, if your men can open it, I'd suggest they do so."

Lennox nodded and ordered, "Burn it."

The scouts used thermite strips to burn through the hinges and wrenched the door out of the frame, careful to keep the noise down. It was going to be a tight fit but it looked like Shimmer and Bumblebee would be able to get in.

Since the church had stopped using coal, there was nothing much down here. Fortunately, it was too damp to be used for storage. They made their way across to the wall shared with the subway station. There actually was a human-sized door there, with a subway schedule from 1943 tacked to it. The church basement must have been used for something during the second world war.

The door was human sized. Listening carefully, they heard nothing to indicate that there was a huge crowd of hostages directly on the other side, much less five Decepticons.

McKenzie threaded a length of fiber-optic cable under the door. There were no lights in there. With extreme caution not to make any noise, he picked the lock. They liberally oiled the hinges and eased the door open.

The room was full of boxes. As Georgie and the rest of the NEST and ESU teams joined them, they started shifting the boxes out of the way into the church basement. Another door opened into a cleaning closet, and from there into the station bathrooms.

They found a guy in a business suit in the men's room and a woman with a baby in the ladies'. The three hostages were quickly and silently whisked out of there. Bee and Shimmer stayed far back in the church basement.

Georgie put the pen with a camera and microphone that she had been given in her shirt pocket and rolled into the bathroom. There wasn't a door into the station, just the way the walls were made nobody could see in.

She wiped her sweating hands on her pants legs and edged slowly around the wall.

It was the first time she had seen 'Cons since the one in Chicago. These two looked bigger in the darkened confines of the subway station. There were two women's bodies near the dead transit officer. It looked like they might have tried to run for it. Everyone else had been made to sit on the platform. They either had the sense to play it cool or they were too scared to do anything else.

Georgie could see that a distraction was all they needed to get the hostages out through the bathrooms. But right now there were two short, hulking 'Cons right there at the edge of the platform. She couldn't see what they'd done that they were walking around on the third rail with metal feet, but the lights on the train were out so they must have cut the power. Just as well, that was one thing they didn't have to worry about. She kept her head down and stayed in the shadows, but when the 'Cons weren't looking she moved around to give the camera a good shot of the whole station.

One of them was up by the stairs, some skinny beanpole with guns on both arms. He was the one who had shot down that poor transit cop. She didn't know what he could have transformed into.

The one they had tagged Garbage Truck after his alt form was giving the orders. The last one, the smallest, stuck close to him as they wandered back and forth in the tunnel.

She centered herself and waited. Her martial arts days were behind her, but the discipline that she had learned in the dojo served her well now.

Mearing and O'Bannon watch Dutch form a panorama of the whole station from the telemetry Georgie was sending them. Mearing indicated the Autobots' positions on the overlay map. "Ratchet's making his move."

O'Bannon told the commander on site to stand by. He got a click over his headset. "One of my sniper teams down in the tunnels has one of the 'Cons in his sights."

"Which one?"

"Don't know. They have orders to communicate only with clicks in case our communications have been compromised. But the Autobots will have to go right past them to get to the station, so they'll be able to coordinate."

"Do they know to target the optics?"

"Yes, ma'am, and they're using explosive rounds. Chicago PD intel made the rounds, as soon as the government saw fit to stop lying to us about a credible terrorist threat."

Mearing decided she was a lot of things but she didn't have the brass to argue that one with an NYPD deputy chief who had lived through 9/11. She just told him, "That decision was way above my pay grade at the time. And a different administration."

"Ratchet's almost there, saints preserve him."

Mearing hoped if there were saints, a few of them were looking out for him. In her time she had worked control in ops while agents did some dangerous things but walking into a hostage situation like that was about as far out on a limb as you got. Dutch added the medic's feed to the situation map.

Ratchet made his way down the tunnel. It was too low for him to walk upright. He could hear the 'Cons muttering to each other, but not a sound from the hostages. The empty energon cube he carried glowed with a pale pink light. The cubes could produce energon from sunlight, more quickly if filled with gasoline or something similar. The 'Cons would definitely find it valuable. As he got close to the station, he made a point of scanning behind him a couple of times.

"Hold it right there!"

Ratchet stopped. "Don't shoot! I want to make a deal!"

"What kind of a deal?"

"Let the hostages go, and I'll give you this energon cube—and I'll tell you how you can get out of here without tangling with Prime!" Ratchet replied.

That started an argument among the 'Cons. Beanpole was all for taking the deal, the whole thing had been about energon in the first place.

Garbage Truck said, "Don't be a glitch, he'll send us right at Prime!"

Ratchet said, "No, no, listen, they don't know I'm here! They're arguing with the Mayor's office. Those New Yorkers are so mad you wouldn't believe! You picked the wrong town to pull this slag! Prime's been trying to talk sense to them ever since we got here. All I care about are the hostages. Take the cube and get out of here. You're three blocks from the East River. Jump in, swim underwater, they won't be able to track you—get the Pit out of here while you still can. I'm telling you, it's my deal or you're gonna be decorations in front of Gracie Mansion!"

"He might be right, Boss, if we're still here when they get their slag together we can't take 'em all on."

"I'm not runnin' out of here. We got an energon cube and we got us another hostage. Turn out your hold and get up there with the rest of 'em!"

Ratchet decided that wasn't altogether a bad idea. He turned over the cube and emptied his subspace hold. All he had in there was his medical kit. Then he obediently jumped up on the platform and crouched with his servos on his head. He got right where he wanted to be, in between one of the guards and a sizable number of hostages. When the rescue started he would tackle the guard. He was pretty sure he could take that one hand to hand.

Garbage Truck was still squabbling with Beanpole, with the little mech trying to get them back on track. The guards were watching the argument instead of the hostages. Ratchet knew Ops was getting the whole thing.

Mearing said, "Now, while they're distracted and not paying attention to the sensor feed."

O'Bannon agreed. He gave his sniper team the go, and Beanpole went down, the wages of sin for a cop killer. Ratchet made his move, drawing the attention of the other guard. The rest of the Autobots came charging up the tunnel from either direction.

The second guard looked like he was about to stab Ratchet in the back while he was fighting with the first one. Lennox and a lot of NEST troops came out of the bathrooms shooting and yelling.

Georgie got the explosive that Prakowski had given her. She pushed the button and threw the explosive with all her might, then rolled back until the chair slammed into the wall. She ducked and crossed her arms over her head a second before the Decepticon's head exploded, raining fragments and energon over the screaming hostages. A few scalds and cuts and bruises sure as hell beat the alternative.

Bee knocked a hole through the wall and he and Shimmer got in the fight, helping Ratchet cover the hostages' escape. The NEST team and ESU herded them out through the church basement as fast as they could. Nobody wanted to be in the subway if any of the heavy ordnance the 'Cons were tossing around caused a collapse. The Autobots were all too aware of that danger and closed to hand to hand range as soon as they could, but the inexperienced Decepticons fought with a suicidal disregard for common sense born of sheer desperation. Their frenzy was no match for the Autobots' teamwork and savage precision in battle. By the time NEST got the last hostages out and returned, there was no fighting left to rejoin.

Shimmer caught up with Georgie. "Are you all right? You were really close to that explosion."

"My ears are ringing, but other than that I'm fine. You?"

Shimmer had a lot of dents and her left servo was flattened where she had got stepped on somehow, but there was nothing that wouldn't self repair. "Prime took the worst beating. A mech his size just isn't meant for fighting in tunnels like that, so he just soaked up whatever they could throw at him and kept coming. But he got out on his own. Are the hostages all OK?"

"By some miracle, I think they are. I heard one of our guys say they were all accounted for."

Ratchet and Georgie were the heroes of the hour. Some reporter got a picture of them that ended up on the front page of the New York Times. Ratchet wasn't happy that the rest of them were perfectly happy to let him get all the attention, but Georgie hissed at him, "Behave! Y'all need all the good publicity you can get!" Then she smiled sweetly for the camera.

They were all relieved when the hoopla finally died down and they could go back to base.

A.N.: Chapter title from Through the Fire by Larry Greene, from the Top Gun soundtrack. /A.N.