Freedom Express

by Maloney, Mack;

  Hunter nodded, as did the others.

  Jones then turned to Catfish. “How long do you need to clear the tracks up ahead, Major?” he asked.

  “Another twenty-four hours maximum, sir,” the man answered.

  “That’s all the time we’ll need,” Hunter said quickly.

  Chapter 18

  A CHORUS OF COYOTE calls greeted the full moon as it rose big and orange over the New Mexico desert.

  The campfire crackled and snapped, sending showers of sparks up into the night sky, where they took their places among the stars. The sweet smell of mesquite smoke was everywhere.

  “So that’s the story,” Hunter was saying, pouring himself another cup of coffee from the pot placed next to the roaring fire. “She was one fine lady, with a huge set of guns.”

  The other men around the campfire—Fitzgerald, Cobra Brothers Tyler and Crockett and Captain Crunch—laughed at the joke. It was a rare humorous moment in an otherwise humorless day.

  He had finally told them about his unusual interrogation of Juanita—but only because it had to do with the urgent missions that now faced them. For although he had established that Devillian’s lieutenants—most notably Juanita—were using West Santa Fe as a massive recruitment post, he still had no idea where the super terrorist’s headquarters was located.

  This alone told him something: It was only under the fear of death that Juanita had held the secret location so tightly that it couldn’t be extracted under his all-persuasive spell. And yet finding out where the viper Devillian lay was the key to planning any further action against the man.

  Hunter took another sip of coffee.

  “We’ve got two critical pieces of information missing,” he said, reviewing the very reason why they were sitting at the remote location. “The location of his HQ and the time frame in which he intends on attacking us for real.”

  “We’re really walking a fine line here in deciding which is the more important, Hawker,” Fitz said.

  “Well, look at it this way,” Hunter replied. “There ain’t much between here and LA except mountains and desert.”

  “Well, if we let him, he’ll spring a trap on us somewhere,” Crockett growled. “It all depends if we’re stupid enough to walk into it.”

  Fitz let out a long sigh. “In the old days,” he said, “we’d hunt this bastard down and carpet bomb him.”

  Hunter nodded glumly. “Things aren’t that simple anymore, Mike,” he said. “Right now, getting this train to LA is the most important thing in my mind, and even a squadron of B-52’s might not help at this point. Plus I’d like to believe that we’ve moved beyond the point of devastating whole sections of our own country.”

  “We’ll be back to doing it if this guy isn’t stopped,” Fitz replied.

  “Getting more information on him is the key,” Hunter said once again. “And that’s why we’re all here. Everyone know what they’re doing?”

  He looked up at his friends and saw them all nodding.

  The four other men had arrived at the desert meeting via the Cobra gunships, one of the choppers carrying a steamer trunk full of various uniforms and disguises. Now Fitz and Tyler would commandeer that Cobra and fly on to West Santa Fe, while Hunter tried to follow his instincts and search the nearby territory for any sign of the mysterious Burning Cross. Crockett and Crunch would stand by in case Fitz and Tyler needed help quick.

  They discussed some last-minute aspects of the plan and then broke camp.

  “One last thing, Hawker,” Fitz said as they began to douse the fire. “We’ll need descriptions of the people you want us to interrogate in West Santa Fe.”

  For only the second time that day, Hunter actually smiled.

  “Believe me,” he said. “Recognizing these two guys will be easy.”

  Chapter 19

  Santa Fe

  The next morning

  THE BARTENDER’S ARM WAS nearly breaking under the weight of the food tray.

  He had just spent the last two hours frying what amounted to an entire side of beef, along with three gallons of chili, several pounds of grilled hot peppers and two spaghetti pots filled with refried beans on the side. And although he’d prepared this somewhat questionable feast every day, it never seemed to get any easier.

  Grabbing a jug of tequila from under his bar, he finally made his way over to the saloon’s corner table, setting the huge tray down with a slam.

  “Eets about time,” Manuel the Giant grunted, grabbing the first chunk of meat with his bare hands.

  “Pay first,” the bartender bravely told him, daring to actually prevent the meat from being sucked into the man’s cavernous mouth.

  Manuel literally threw a half bag of gold chips at the bartender, who wisely retreated without another word. Within five minutes, half the huge meal—which was actually the giant’s breakfast—was already gone.

  Not overly blessed with much peripheral vision, Manuel wasn’t quite sure when the two men had sat down at the table next to him.

  “Kinda hungry, aren’t you, big fella?” he heard a voice ask.

  Looking up from a handful of red peppers, Manuel comprehended the pair of men for the first time. They were dressed in a style of black military uniform he’d never seen before. Bored, he sent a long, low belch their way, and then continued eating.

  “How would you like to make five bags of gold, big guy?” one of the men asked him.

  “Leave me alone,” Manuel replied, washing down a mouthful of beans with a long slug of the combustible tequila.

  “OK, ten bags,” the smaller of the two men continued. “Gold coins, not chips.”

  “Get out of here before I keel you both,” Manuel growled as he attacked his chili in earnest.

  “Final offer, twenty bags,” the man persisted. “And all you have to do is get laid.”

  Manuel looked up from his chili. “Get laid?” he asked, two rivers of red sauce pouring out from the corners of his mouth and onto his massive, unshaven chin.

  “That’s right,” the smaller man said in a rapid-fire, slightly accented delivery. “You know, sink the putz? Hide the salami?”

  “Fuck girl?” Manuel asked.

  The two men at the table looked at each other and shook their heads.

  “Yeah, and you can cook her and eat her afterward,” the taller of the pair said.

  “What mean?” the giant demanded, now turning away from his food and toward the men.

  They produced an elaborate-looking video camera. “We’re in the movie business,” the small man said. “The dirty movie business. We heard that there was a lot of it around in these parts; so we’re making a film right here in town, and we need a leading man, like you.”

  “Fuck girl in movie?” Manuel asked. “What name?”

  “It’s called Freaks and Chicks,” the man told him. “We already got the girls and another actor. All we need is a strong silent type like you.”

  “Thirty bags,” Manuel said, with sudden, surprising authoritativeness. “Up front. Plus you buy me lunch. You buy me tequila. And then we talk percentage, points and distribution allowances.”

  Mike Fitzgerald looked at Tyler and rolled his eyes.

  “It’s a deal,” he told the giant.

  Carlo the Midget knew he’d been tricked just as soon as he heard his brother Manuel’s footsteps lumbering up the stairs of the hotel.

  He looked at the two partially clad young hookers who were lounging on the bed nearby and, quickly determining that they knew less about all this than he, jumped down off his chair and headed for the dingy hotel room’s only window. Lifting the dirty curtain, he found the window was barred.

  The door opened, and Manuel and the two men in black uniforms walked in.

  “Carlo!” Manuel bellowed. “You are in movie, too?”

  “Manuel, my brother,” Carlo cried back. “Thees is a trick.”

  They were in the room and the door was locked by this time. It took Manuel a few seconds to realize that no
movie would be made here today—at least not one called Freaks and Chicks.

  When it finally sank in, he spun around, intent on crushing the throats of the two men who had lured him here. Instead, he found himself staring down the barrel of a M-6 grenade launcher.

  “Relax, Manuel,” Fitz told him, forcing the giant to sit on the edge of the bed. “All we want is a little chat.”

  “No, Manuel!” Carlo shouted, jumping from the bed to the floor and back again like a monkey. “Don’t tell them anything.”

  “Keep yer yap shut!” Fitz shouted at the midget, simultaneously taking the grenade launcher from Tyler. “Or the big guy gets a gut full of shrapnel.”

  Tyler pulled a small bag from his trouser pocket and retrieved a syringe with an extra-long needle. Within seconds he’d loaded it up with a massive quantity of sodium pentothal—enough truth serum to get an elephant blabbing.

  But when he turned around and gave the needle a test squeeze, Manuel the Giant took one look at the syringe and passed out, hitting the floor with an earth-shaking thump!

  The hookers thought it was hysterical, but Fitz and Tyler didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “You-know-who is going to pay for this,” Tyler said, half-angrily referring to Hunter. “Giants. Dwarfs. Teenage hookers. He owes me at least a case of bourbon.”

  “Me too,” Fitz said, turning his attention to Carlo.

  It took the both of them to wrestle the midget to the floor and inject him with the truth drug, although in a quantity substantially less than they’d prepared for the giant.

  Once this was done, the midget went out like a light. The two men then easily moved him from the floor to the bed.

  After setting up the video camera and adjusting its tripod and built-in light meter, Tyler propped the dwarf up on several pillows and faced him toward the camera. Then he slapped the midget once across the face.

  “Can you hear me, Carlo?” he asked.

  The midget’s eyelids barely flickered.

  He slapped him again. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” came the squeaky reply.

  Tyler then turned to Fitz and said, “OK, roll it.”

  “Rolling,” Fitzgerald replied, adding, “Carlo the Midget, take one.”

  “OK, Carlo,” Tyler said, consulting a small notebook. “Tell me everything you know about the Knights of the Burning Cross….”

  Chapter 20

  HUNTER WAS FLYING WEST and feeling lousy.

  Before his current state of disillusionment had taken hold, he had planned to cover as much territory as he could, looking for something—anything!—that might give him a clue as to the location of Devillian’s main encampment.

  But in his heart it just felt as if he were wandering aimlessly. Flying low above the arid New Mexico desert, he was doing little more than scaring the desert animals and kicking up a lot of dust.

  “What’s the point of all this?” he asked himself for at least the hundredth time.

  Was he nuts, talking in these crazy proverbs and actually advocating that the Freedom Express continue on its trip westward? With one hundred and fifty thousand enemy soldiers standing in their path? Armed with God-knows-what? What was the matter with him? Had the bartender back in Santa Fe been right when he said, “You must be tired of living?”

  Pride. That was probably the reason, he knew. He was too damn proud to see the train turned around. Too damn proud to see what had been his idea turn into what would be perceived as a defeat.

  His pride was hurt because another of his big time adventures had gone awry. He had boldly blown into Santa Fe thinking that only he could get the needed information. Only he could identify the villain’s hideout. Only he could play the big hero and save the world again.

  What a bunch of bullshit! he thought.

  Did he really think that he—and his pride—could actually defeat this overwhelming force? The train trip had seemed like such a good idea when they first started out: Just move across the country and show all those scumbags in the Badlands who’s boss.

  Had he really failed so miserably to expect the unexpected?

  What had it gotten him so far? One blown-up locomotive and a completely freaky trip to Santa Fe during which he played with a strange woman’s tits and mind. Some hero!

  Back to the comic books, Hawk, he thought to himself bitterly.

  He was flying only a few hundred feet off the ground, halfheartedly keeping an eye on terrain ahead and below. An hour before, the mountains and forests around Santa Fe to his left had given way to great stretches of arid scrubland. Now just ahead, he saw a cluster of small mesas rising out of the desert.

  Maybe it’s just fate, he thought gloomily. His strange dreams. His conflicting emotions. His less-than-focused instincts. The weird voices that were regurgitating up against his will.

  Maybe it’s just time to hang up the old flight helmet and check into the rubber room.

  Suddenly he felt a familiar tingling along his spine. An instant later, the radar screen confirmed what he already knew. There were two other aircraft in the vicinity.

  Then he spotted them, five miles ahead and slightly to his south. They appeared to be attacking something on the ground. In a burst of pure instinct, Hunter pushed the Harrier at top speed toward them.

  As he approached, he saw that the two jets were Dassault-Breguet Mirage III’s. And there was something else he recognized: On the tail of each plane was the same insignia that had been on the flag in Topeka … the sign of the Knights of the Burning Cross.

  “Someone up there must like me,” he murmured, arming his weapons.

  In a matter of seconds, he was close enough to see what the two jets were attacking. He could hardly believe his eyes. They seemed to be chasing a single horseback rider across the desert, firing their cannons at him … and intentionally missing him! Although the rider was using much skill to weave his horse in a zigzag pattern across the open desert and thus make himself a very elusive target, it was quite obvious that the jet pilots were merely toying with their victim.

  This changed a heartbeat later. The attackers suddenly spotted Hunter and hurriedly turned in his direction, their cannons blazing. Hunter avoided their fire by putting the Harrier into a sudden dive. He had been flying so low to begin with, he had very little airspace to work with. But it was enough.

  When he was about fifty feet off the ground, he jerked the nose of the Harrier up into a hover, then looped around behind the two Burning Cross airplanes, both of which had overshot him by this time. As one started to turn back in his direction, the Wingman fired a Sidewinder that hit the Mirage dead center, nearly cutting it in half with a tremendous explosion.

  The remaining aircraft obviously wanted no part of Hunter and turned to flee. Hunter knew that the Mirage was nearly three times as fast as his Harrier, so he didn’t set out in pursuit. Instead, he fired one long burst from his Aden cannons, just enough to wing the tail end of the Mirage’s port wing fuel tank. Then he took a careful reading of the enemy airplane’s escape route. It was dead south.

  Once the slightly damaged Mirage had disappeared over the horizon, Hunter swung the Harrier back toward the spot where he had last seen the fleeing horseman. The man and horse were standing near the base of a small butte, apparently unharmed. The tingling of Hunter’s sixth sense went to work again; something deep down inside was telling him that he should meet this man.

  In this part of the desolate country, Hunter was guessing that the lone horseman was an Indian. He also wondered if the man had ever seen an airplane drop straight down out of the sky and land vertically, as he was doing now, kicking up a great amount of dust and making an ear-splitting racket.

  Maybe this guy has never even seen any airplane up close before, Hunter thought, finally settling down and shutting off the airplane’s main switches.

  As Hunter climbed out of the cockpit, the rider approached. Whoever the man was, Hunter was sure he was friendly—and therefore he didn’t even bot
her to reach for his trusty M-16. Instead, he wondered if they would be able to speak the same language.

  The man pulled his horse up about ten feet from the still-smoking jumpjet. He rode tall in the saddle, with jet black hair pulled back from his face. His high cheekbones and chiseled features indicated to Hunter that his hunch about the rider being an Indian was correct, as did his clothes, which looked like they came from Hollywood central casting.

  The men just stared at Hunter and his airplane, his mouth open, but apparently too in awe to speak.

  Hunter resisted the urge to raise his right hand and say, “How!” Instead he called out, “Can you speak English?”

  The man still said nothing.

  “Spanish?”

  Still nothing.

  “French?”

  Just when Hunter thought that verbal communication would be impossible, the man shook his head and started to laugh.

  “My God, an AV-8BE Harrier?” he said in succinct English, his eyes darting up and down the jumpjet’s fuselage in wonder. “Please excuse me. I just never thought I’d ever really see one.”

  Duped again, Hunter thought.

  The man dismounted and met Hunter as he climbed down from the cockpit. He greeted him with a long handshake.

  “That was mighty impressive flying up there, my friend,” the Indian said. “And you certainly couldn’t have come along at a better time for me.”

  “Glad I was able to help,” Hunter replied, somehow recognizing the man’s voice. He was obviously very well educated. “It didn’t look like a very fair fight.”

  “My name is Michael Crossbow,” the Indian said slowly, allowing a puzzled look to come over him. “Have we met before?”

  “It would be a hell of a coincidence if we did,” Hunter told him, sweeping his arms to indicate the utter desolation of their present position.

  Suddenly a look of recognition came over the Indian’s face. “But you’re Hawk Hunter, aren’t you?”