It was an old U.S. Marine AV-8BE, a two-seat, trainer version of the Harrier. The extra room in the enlarged cockpit would give Hunter the needed space to transfer the F-16’s avionics, flight controls, and highly advanced weapons system controls into the jumpjet.
With JT’s help, Hunter dismantled the F-16 cockpit and reassembled it, component by component, inside the extra-wide, extra-long Harrier compartment. Working nights and early mornings, the highly complex operation took just six days.
Now he was flight testing the hybrid airplane for the first time, and everything was working beautifully.
He put the airplane through a demanding series of rolls, flips, mid-air stops and starts, dips and dives, performing them all via his transplanted F-16 controls. It didn’t take long for him to be convinced that the aircraft would respond to whatever situation he could possibly encounter in the skies over the southwest Badlands.
In addition to the special flying features, the Harrier was loaded for bear with weapons, including a pair of powerful Aden cannon pods and a slew of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. He had to admit that the finished product was quite a piece of work—a flying arsenal capable of unlimited aerial acrobatics.
After three hours of flying, Hunter was more than satisfied with the Harrier’s performance. Turning back toward Andrews, he knew he was ready to tackle the Bads.
Chapter 4
One week later
IT WAS CLOSE TO midnight when Hunter and Fitzgerald arrived at the Amtrak station in Washington, DC.
Having completed the final test out of the AV-8BE Harrier, the Wingman had flown into National Airport an hour before, anxious to see the progress Fitz and the others were making on their end of Project Freedom Express.
Now walking through the old train yard, he was so astonished at what he saw, he almost found it hard to speak.
Before him were two hundred armor-plated, gleaming silver railroad cars that had become the Freedom Express.
“I think you’ve created a monster!” Hunter was finally able to exclaim.
“I can only agree.” Fitz smiled.
Quite simply, the train was a two-mile collection of rolling military might.
Its components had come together so quickly, even Fitzgerald felt he’d outdone himself. Calling in favors and working his multitude of contacts across the eastern half of the country, as well as up in Free Canada, Fitz and his procurement agents had bought or bartered for just about everything contained on the wish list compiled by the United Americans’ planning team. The result was an astonishing assembly of weapons carriages, gun platforms, track-mobile missile launchers, radar cars, anti-aircraft cars, supply cars, sleeping cars, oil tankers and rolling storage beds.
Fitz explained that the train was divided into two sections. For the most part, the front section contained the majority of weapons cars, and the rear carried the sleeping compartments and mini-forts. In all, it stretched on for more than the length of thirty-five football fields.
Hunter tapped the side of one of the train’s armored cars. Its metal skin looked thin, yet strong.
“Nice work,” he said. “Who did this for you?”
“A guy I know who used to work for the Navy in the old days,” Fitz replied. “He did research on protection systems for battleships. This stuff looks pretty lightweight, but it’s bulletproof and pretty damn near missile-proof. Each car will be outfitted with it before we leave.”
“But can we really expect to move all this?” Hunter asked over and over as they walked in and out of the cars.
Fitz chuckled mischievously and then led his friend into a tunnel which hid the very front part of the train. It was dark and musty inside the shaft, but when the Irishman dramatically threw the tunnel’s light switch, Hunter saw for the first time the muscle behind the Freedom Express.
“Here’s all we need,” Fitz said proudly.
Before them were twelve powerful Dash-8 diesel locomotives, their red and black paint job still gleaming wet.
Transferred down from the old city of Erie earlier that day, each of the huge locomotives was a 16-cylinder, 4,000-horsepower colossus, a top-of-the-line model built by General Electric Company just before World War III. Miraculously, these engines had survived the war and were discovered by Fitz’s advance men sitting in a railroad yard near GE’s locomotive plant in Erie, far removed from the fighting that had defaced so much of the nation.
Fitz explained that the Dash-8’s were the epitome of high-tech railroading. The first locomotives to be built with on-board computers, all aspects of each engine’s operation was controlled by a collection of self-contained microprocessors located in the engineer’s cabin. Once all twelve of the locomotives’ computer systems were linked together, they would function as a kind of huge, electronic brain for the Freedom Express. The computers would drive the train, set the correct speed and control the amount of fuel used. Plus, their on-board diagnostic systems would be able to locate any problems anywhere on the train itself, report them promptly to the supervising engineers’ video read-out screen, or in some cases, even remedy the situation without any human involvement at all.
Hunter and Fitzgerald knew that all of the people on board the train would have plenty to do during the trip, without worrying about running the train itself. With the Dash-8’s, that operation would be as automated as possible.
“You’ve assembled an amazing piece of work,” Hunter said as they left the tunnel. “I didn’t think there were enough engines and cars left in the country to put together something like … well like this.”
Fitz gave a modest shrug. “It pays to have friends,” he said in his thick brogue.
The two men walked farther up the line and eventually approached the mid-point of the train.
The middle “keystone car” really stopped Hunter in his tracks. Mounted on a huge flatbed was one of the biggest guns he had ever seen.
He carefully studied the giant cannon. “Present from another friend?” he asked.
Fitzgerald, who at one time had run a profitable airfield operation in Syracuse before that city was destroyed in the Second Circle War, smiled again.
“Aye,” he answered. “An old pal from my upstate New York days used to work in the Army’s famous Watervliet Arsenal, making these big babies. He says this thing will toss a shell the weight of a Volkswagen about twenty miles.”
“I believe it,” Hunter said, admiring the gun’s fifty-foot-long barrel, on which someone had painted the name Big Dick. “Good name for it,” he said. “But how did you ever get this thing down here?”
“Well, that was a little tough,” Fitzgerald admitted. “Had to take it apart up there and haul it down here. Took a half dozen trucks the better part of a week.”
The two friends moved on, inspecting the drop-off mini-forts. Arranged in blocks of three, one car contained sleeping and eating quarters, the second was filled with medical supplies and equipment, and the third contained weapons and ammunition. These sets of cars were to be left at strategic points along the train’s route, equipped with all the necessities for a small, well-fortified settlement, including a contingent of one hundred highly trained United American Army troopers.
As the two men approached the end of the train, they were joined by Captain Lamont “Catfish” Johnson, a towering black man who formerly played defensive end for the San Diego Chargers of the old NFL. Johnson was a relatively new member of the United Americans’ high command, taking the place of his long-time commanding officer and friend, Captain John “Bull” Dozer, leader of the U.S. Marine’s 7th Cavalry. Dozer had died valiantly in a crucial battle between the United Americans and the Soviet Red-Star-backed Circle forces at the Washington Monument. Dozer still was greatly missed by Hunter and the rest of the group, both as a friend and a matchless warrior.
But Johnson was cut from the same mold. He had been tapped by Jones to recruit the best troops available for the train trip, and would be their overall commanding officer during the journey. Wi
th Hunter in charge of the aerial cover, the two would be working closely together.
Johnson greeted Hunter and Fitzgerald warmly.
“Quite impressive, no?” Johnson asked Hunter, as all three stood back and took one long look at the Freedom Express.
“A hell of a job,” Hunter replied. “Now all we have to do is get this thing to LA.”
Chapter 5
Three days later
“ARE YOU THAT WINGMAN guy? You don’t look so fuckin’ tough.”
The hulking, nasty-looking man was swaying drunkenly over the table being shared by Hunter and the Catfish.
This is trouble, Hunter thought.
It was their last night in Washington before the Freedom Express was to pull out, and Hunter and Johnson were trying to fortify themselves in a bar located in what formerly was the Georgetown section of the city.
“Yeah. I’m Major Hunter,” he said, standing up to find himself eye level with the man’s chest. “So what?”
“So what?” the man slurred. “So if you’re such a big friggin’ hero, how come you drink with niggers?”
Hunter instantly hit the man squarely on the jaw with a lightning left hook. The drunk staggered backward, stumbled a little, then fell forward, right across the table. Grabbing the man by the scruff of his neck, Hunter slammed his face twice on the table’s beer-sticky surface, before shoving him to the floor.
At that moment, three other steroid-popping freaks—drinking companions of Mr. Flat Face—stood up and rushed the table.
Catfish was up on his feet in a flash. “This’ll just take a second,” he said to Hunter.
He picked the first drunk up off the floor and hurled him right into his three charging buddies. All four went tumbling over the bar and crashed into a row of beer mugs, sending broken glass flying in all directions.
With a symbolic wipe of his hands, Johnson calmly sat back down. “How much do you suppose I’ll have to pay for those glasses?” he asked Hunter casually.
The crowd settled down as the bar’s delinquent bouncers removed the four semi-conscious men. At that point another man approached their table. Hunter recognized him as the bar’s manager.
His own face a mass of scars, his nose a mountain range of broken bones, the manager nevertheless grinned toothlessly. “Drinks on the house for the rest of the night,” he said with a wink.
After the man left, Hunter took a healthy slug of his drink.
“After all this country has been through in the last few years,” he said, “all the fighting, the deception, the destruction … you’d think we would have gotten rid of clowns like those guys.”
Johnson drained his own glass and motioned to the waitress for another round. “Sometimes I think it’s never going to go away, Hawk,” he said sadly. “Hell, the Nazis are the worst of all, and although we kicked their asses down in Panama, I bet some of them are still around.”
Hunter knew Johnson was probably right. Even though the United Americans had recently destroyed the Twisted Cross, the Nazi-based operation that had taken control of the Panama Canal, he too had the uneasy feeling that the Nazis were not completely kaput. Already the United Americans had received reports that one of the most fanatical jet fighter groups allied with the Canal Nazis, the notorious Skinhead Squadron, was still roaming about Central America and had been spotted as far north as Texas.
The waitress arrived with two more drinks and a message.
“You see those two girls over at the bar?” she asked. “They’d like to meet you guys.”
Hunter’s radarlike vision scanned the rail. One of the girls in question was an ebony-skinned beauty with long, inviting legs; the other was a very attractive and very shapely redhead.
He looked at Johnson. “Tempting, eh, Cat?”
Johnson smiled and then shook his head. “Already got a lady waiting for me at home,” he said, quickly draining his shot glass of bourbon and getting up to leave. “And a family. They’ll kick my butt if I don’t get to it.”
Several hours later, Hunter lay awake in his Washington apartment, staring at the ceiling.
Melinda, the redhead, was asleep next to him, one naked thigh still resting across his stomach, her full breasts warm and soft against his chest. She was snoring sweetly and contently. They had made love wildly for more than an hour until she collapsed, fulfilled but exhausted, and drifted off to sleep.
But sleep would not come for Hunter. The last thing Catfish had said to him just kept bouncing around his head.
“‘I already got a lady waiting for me at home.’”
Why can’t I be like that? Hunter thought for the millionth time. Why can’t I have a lady waiting at home … for me?
He pulled Melinda closer to him, and she sleepily rubbed his chest. She was bright, beautiful and one of the most creative lovers he had ever met. Still, he wasn’t completely satisfied. It was always that way—a little corner of himself still ached for something more.
He knew, of course, the reason for this feeling was the beautiful Dominique.
Physically, they had spent very little time together. But ever since their first meeting in war-ravaged France several years ago, Dominique had never been far from Hunter, at least in his mind. And in his heart.
Sappy as it sounded, Hunter actually yearned for a world at peace, where he and Dominique could be together again, this time for good. But he loved her far too much to ask her to share the kind of life he was presently leading. There were still too many battles to fight, too many enemies who wanted him dead.
He had nearly lost her once, when she was kidnapped by the ruthless terrorist Viktor during the black days of the First Circle War. Hunter had rescued her then, but he knew that she would be in jeopardy as long as she stayed close to him.
So he sent her off to one of the few “safe” countries left in the world—Free Canada—where she eventually joined a human encounter group somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. She seemed to be in friendly hands—maybe too friendly. Through his friend, Major Frost of the Free Canadian Air Force, Hunter had learned that people belonging to these encounter groups often shared everything, including their beds.
Not surprisingly, Hunter desperately wanted to forget everything else, fly to Free Canada and find Dominique. But he knew that was impossible. As much as he pined for her, he couldn’t leave as long as his other great love—his country, America—was threatened by so many enemies. Someday, when the violence finally ended and the last foe of freedom was conquered, he would go to her.
But would that day ever come?
Chapter 6
The following day
UNDER A GUN-METAL GRAY sky, the Freedom Express slowly pulled out of downtown Washington and began its long and uncertain journey westward.
Hunter and Catfish were in the first car following the string of twelve locomotives. This car was specially outfitted as the control and communications center for the trip, and therefore was dubbed simply “Control.” From a central console, they could monitor the dozens of video cameras mounted on the train, giving them a clear view of everything that was happening on or near them. A radar screen provided constant surveillance of the air space above; a unique land sonar device would warn them of the unexpected up to a mile ahead. A sophisticated radio/message center—complete with a retractable satellite dish on the Control car’s roof—would keep them in secure scrambled radio and telex contact with Jones back in his Washington headquarters.
As the great train finally gathered speed, Hunter sat with his nose pressed up against the bulletproof window’s remarkably clear glass, peering out at the Virginia countryside rolling past. It looked peaceful in the dim, early morning light.
Better relax now while I can, he thought, because it won’t last long.
The United Americans didn’t expect any trouble during the first leg of the journey. The eastern part of the country had been secure for some time, except for a few stray bandit gangs occasionally spotted in the former Kentucky region. But they wo
uldn’t be a problem; they didn’t have the firepower or the guts to tackle anything as imposing as the powerful Freedom Express.
Since the eastern part of the route was considered safe, it had been decided to load the majority of their troops on in Football City. This way the weight of the train would be reduced for the first third of the trip, not only saving fuel, but also allowing the Express to make better time. To that end, elements of the United American 1st Airborne Division had been flying out of Washington and into Football City for the past three days, using a fleet of giant Free Canadian C-5 Galaxys as their mode of transport.
Hunter’s Harrier jumpjet was securely moored on its specially designed flatbed car which was located several cars back from the Control car. Once they reached Football City and started into the Badlands, he would be flying surveillance missions several times a day. And, in case of an emergency, he could take off at any time if the need should arise, his living quarters/pilot ready room being in the car just behind the Harrier deck.
Nose still pressed against the glass, Hunter looked back toward the rear of the train. It seemed to stretch on forever, cutting its way through the countryside. He wondered if the original pioneers back in the 1880s felt as he did now: excited, yet apprehensive; anxious, yet curiously calm.
For him, he knew another great adventure lay ahead. Another mission to secure his country’s freedom. And at its successful conclusion, he told himself, he would be one step closer to reuniting with Dominique.
“Coffee, Hawk?” Catfish asked him, shoving a mug of steaming java under his nose.
Hunter took the hot liquid thankfully. Then he and Catfish settled down for a couple of quiet, uneventful days.
They would be the last ones for some time.
Chapter 7
Over Oklahoma Territory
“WE’VE GOT COMPANY,” BEN Wa called over to JT as the radar screen in his A-7E Strikefighter started to crackle. “See the blips?”
Freedom Express Page 3