Freedom Express

by Maloney, Mack;

  That had been two days ago. Now Sheehan was sitting at a poker table in Santa Fe Airport’s largest barroom, losing his shirt and not caring a whit. Locked in the strongbox between his feet was his payment from the Burning Cross for a job well-done. It was more than eighty pounds of gold—so much bullion that he had taken to wondering if he would ever have to work again.

  His daydreams were interrupted when he realized he was in the process of casually losing still another pot to the four bloodsuckers sitting around the poker table. They were a motley collection—no different from all the other air pirates, bandits and highwaymen who had been drawn to the airport like flies to garbage in hopes of getting in on the Burning Cross’s largesse.

  “Big doing up in the hills,” an air pirate appropriately named Shithead kept saying over and over. “They’ll need some air cover soon.”

  “Who will?” a scummy highwayman named The Scratch asked. “You keep jabbering away about this, but you never provide any details.”

  “The Burning Cross, you idiot,” Shithead replied, trying but failing to sound properly conspiratorial. “I’m telling you, they are bombing the living shit out of those United American heroes.”

  “The guys who have the train?” Scratch asked.

  “The guys who had the train,” Shithead corrected him, at the same time shuffling the cards and dealing out a hand of Jacks-or-Better. “They bugged out two nights ago. Left without a fight, the pansies. Now the word is that Devillian’s going to get all his guys together and attack LA. If he does, he’ll be offering top dollar for guys like us, and I want to be in on that.”

  Sheehan had just leaned back in his chair to admire the absolutely lousy hand he was holding. Another hour with these assholes and I’ll go nuts, he thought.

  But in the next moment, he knew he wouldn’t have to wait that long. Shortly after completing the deal with the Burning Cross, he had bought himself a small T-38 trainer jet. It was being readied for flight at that moment, and quick check of the time told him he had barely a half hour to go before he could take delivery and get the hell out of Santa Fe forever.

  “I call,” Shithead declared after everyone had finished betting.

  Sheehan drunkenly laid down nothing more than a pair of threes.

  “I lost again,” he said with a laugh.

  Each of the four other men at the table eyed him suspiciously.

  “What the hell are you so happy about?” The Scratch asked him. “You haven’t won a hand in two hours.”

  “Can’t help it, I guess,” Sheehan responded, downing a shot of bad whiskey. “Just not my lucky day.”

  “You don’t seem too upset,” Shithead told him. “Must be a reason, unless you just like losing.”

  “Maybe I just don’t give a fuck,” Sheehan told him, kicking the strongbox between his legs for luck. “And maybe I just completed the biggest deal of my life.”

  Suddenly Shithead’s ears perked up. “You doing some work for the Burning Cross?” he asked.

  “Maybe” was Sheehan’s coy reply.

  “Big money?”

  “Maybe,” Sheehan repeated.

  Shithead let out a whoop that attracted the attention of just about everyone in the bar.

  “So it’s true,” he said, banging the table with his fist. “The Cross is paying big bucks to everyone.”

  “Yeh, but you’ve got to have a brain to get hired on,” Sheehan snapped back at him, effectively silencing the big mouth air pirate.

  “How’d you do it, Cowboy,” asked the third man at the table, a drug runner named Twix. “Kill somebody?”

  “Nothing that messy,” Sheehan boasted. He then went on to describe his adventure in Algiers, taking note not to mention that his grandiose payment was sitting at his feet.

  “There’s plenty for everyone” is how Sheehan ended his story. “You’ve just got to know what they want.”

  Three hands later, Shithead and The Scratch cashed out. A minute later, Twix bought a hooker who just happened by, and he too was soon gone.

  This left only Sheehan and the fourth man, a small, dark character who had spoken not a word during the entire card game.

  “So tell me, Mr. Sheehan,” the man said through a thick Irish brogue, lighting up an enormous cigar. “Just where were you able to store all those blockbusters?”

  An hour later, Bull Sheehan was sitting in the cockpit of his T-38, literally chewing his lip in nervousness, waiting to get clearance to take off.

  “You’ve always been too greedy,” he whispered to himself. “Someday it’s going to catch up with you.”

  He fervently hoped today was not that day. Stored behind the cockpit seat was his trunk full of Burning Cross gold. Sitting in the sack between him and his parachute was an additional forty pounds of bullion, the result of a quick and very dangerous transaction he’d made with the last man at the card table.

  All the guy wanted to know was where in the complex of hangars and bunkers that made up the Santa Fe Airport did the Burning Cross store the 108 blockbuster bombs.

  Sheehan had haggled the price up from twenty pounds to forty pounds of gold in less than a minute—astronomical figures that had blinded him to the foolishness of the deal. If the Burning Cross ever found out that he had pinpointed the storage bunker on the west side of the field as the resting place of the blockbusters, he was certain that a squad of Skinheads would be dispatched to track him down and kill him—slowly.

  “Damn that fucking Mick!” he grumbled, as he heard another two airplanes get clearance before him. “I should never have listened to him.”

  The fourth man had been all too persuasive—and forty pounds of gold was hard to turn down.

  Still, Sheehan continued to curse him, even though he would never find out the temptor’s real name was Mike Fitzgerald.

  Sheehan finally got his clearance and executed the quickest take-off of his life.

  It was just in time as it turned out. No sooner was he aloft and turning south when his early-warning radar started flashing.

  Looking out to the northeast, he could see at least a dozen specks of light heading right for him. Before he knew it, the specks turned into aircraft: two F-4’s, two F-5’s, several old F-105 Thunderchiefs and a handful of hot-shit F-20 Tigersharks. Leading the pack was a AV-8BE Harrier jumpjet.

  Even before Sheehan had a chance to alter his course, the jets were peeling off and screaming in on the airport. He watched in a mixture of fascination and horror as the Tigersharks strafed row after row of fighter planes and cargo jets, all of them belonging to the Burning Cross. One of the first airplanes to go up was the black Boeing 707 that Sheehan knew belonged to the Burning Cross’s top dog himself.

  Meanwhile, the F-4’s and F-5’s were firing barrages of air-to-ground missiles into the airport’s most important structures, such as the control tower and main terminals. As this was happening, he could see the antique F-105 “Thuds” flying low over the airport’s runways, their underbelly weapons dispensers crackling as they deposited thousands of asphalt-cratering bomblets up and down the landing strips.

  Just where the airport’s air defense crews were all this time Sheehan didn’t know. However, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Mike Fitzgerald had paid them off too.

  Meanwhile, the Harrier was doing slow orbit of the base. Suddenly it went into a screeching dive and, at about five hundred feet, released a large, pencil-shaped missile.

  Sheehan watched as the missile went through a series of wild gyrations, weaving back and forth in such a way that he knew it was most likely being guided to its target by a laser aimed by someone on the ground.

  When he saw the missile do one final twist and streak toward the bunker containing the blockbusters, he realized his worst fears had come true. Undoubtedly, the man who he’d sold his soul to for forty pounds of gold had shot a laser designator at the bunker, and the skill of the Harrier pilot was enough to deliver the missile on target.

  Sheehan couldn’t bea
r to watch as the missile slammed into the bunker. He had turned the T-38 around and was now fleeing west as fast as its rather smallish engine would carry him. Still, despite his speed and altitude, the airplane was buffeted by the enormous shock wave resulting from the 108 blockbusters igniting at once.

  He dared only one more look over his shoulder before he set out for the Fiji Islands or someplace equally distant. The glance produced a vision he’d never forget: All that was left of the Santa Fe Airport was one big, smoking hole in the ground.

  Chapter 35

  FEW PLACES ON THE post-war world were as isolated as Port Desemboque, Mexico.

  Located on the north western edge of the Mexican mainland, the city looked out on to the Gulf of California and the Baja beyond. No more than two thousand people lived there, and just about all of them worked on or around the docking facilities that provided the settlement’s total flow of income.

  In the pre-war years, the harbor was known as a major shrimp fishing center. Since the war, the boats tying up there had tended to carry more lethal loads: drugs and guns, as well as fuel, food and basic supplies. Most of this larder came from the fairly prosperous countries and kingdoms of South America.

  Despite this change in imports—or actually, because of it—the small seaport did well in the post-war world. Its location close to the border of America helped—it was only one hundred miles south of the Arizona border—as did its less than honest harbormasters, who controlled every pound of cargo that went in and out, skimming a profit from each one.

  Still, the attitude in the city had always been seriously laid back. No one had to work very hard to get fed, clothed, and to put some gold in his pocket. Plus the typical post-war vices—drugs, hookers and guns—were always in ready supply. The city leaders never had to worry about such things as security, because no one had any reason to attack them. In fact, the local bandit gangs actually served as the police force for the port city, and they had ruthlessly pursued their assignment to keep the place free of anyone who would attempt to screw up a good thing.

  All of this changed in one day.

  A man named Duke Devillian visited the small port city one morning. Arriving completely unannounced, he and his entourage met with the harbormasters, seeking to lease the city’s entire waterfront. The harbormasters initially agreed, but when a dispute arose concerning their skim-off percentage in the deal, Devillian pulled out an Uzi submachine gun and shot them all.

  From that point on, the people in the port of Desemboque worked exclusively for the Burning Cross.

  Little changed in the ensuing months. Few people worked very hard, the bandits were still the police force, and if anything, the flow of cargo—from guns to food—had picked up. The only real difference was that every pound that came into the port was earmarked for Devillian, specifically for his Burning Cross headquarters. Thus, the route plied by Devillian’s helicopters between Desemboque and the Ring of Fire area was the major lifeline for the isolated mesa fortress.

  Desemboque was so relaxed that the city’s only SAM installation hadn’t been serviced in two years.

  Its owners felt there was no need. But now, on this fateful day, just six hours after the devastating attack on Santa Fe Airport, they would discover how mistaken they had been.

  They heard the jets before they saw them. There were six in all: Two A-7E Strikefighters had roared in from the east and linked up with four bomb-laden A-10 Thunderbolts that had appeared out of the northwest. The half dozen jets buzzed the port for five minutes, flying low and loud, their engines emitting screeches terrifying enough to drive everyone away from the docks.

  The port facilities thus cleared, the jets went to work.

  The four Thunderbolts lined up in a single file and one by one screamed down and methodically unloaded their ordnance—cluster bombs, mostly—on both the clockworks and the dozens of storage facilities lining the harbor. Once each A-10 had dumped its bomb load, it returned to strafe any target of opportunity with its enormous GAU 8/A Avenger 30mm cannon. All the while, the two Strikefighters circled overhead, ready to deal with any return fire.

  There was none.

  When the six attackers finally regrouped and roared off to the north ten minutes later, more than three-quarters of the port of Desemboque was in flames.

  Chapter 36

  La Casa de las Estrellas

  DUKE DEVILLIAN COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he’d felt so good.

  He was sitting in the middle of the Play Pen, perched on a high-backed director’s chair. An enormous bowl of crack cocaine sat on the table in front of him; a case of chilled champagne was to his left. Juanita Juarez was there, gulping the bubbly as usual and rummaging through Devillian’s videotape collection. Four young girls were there too, and at the moment, Devillian was directing them in a scene.

  One of his Roman visitors was manning the video camera; another was handling the lights. Two of the girls in front of him were playing out a seduction scene Devillian had scripted just minutes before.

  “Have you ever been with another girl?” the older of the two “actresses,” she being dressed like a schoolteacher, asked the other right on cue.

  “No,” the other one answered, her outfit being the Catholic school uniform left over from Devillian’s airborne orgy two days before. “I’ve always been afraid.”

  “Don’t worry,” the schoolteacher said, slowing moving her hand down the younger girl’s blouse and caressing one of her small, sweet breasts. “Take these pills, and then the lesson will begin.”

  Suddenly there was a commotion at the front door of the Play Pen.

  “Cut!” Devillian screamed.

  He turned to the two men who had just barged in. They were officers of his communications squad.

  “Are you crazy?” Devillian shrieked at them. “I’m going to have you both cut up into bacon!”

  Both men gulped simultaneously.

  “We are extremely sorry, sir,” one of them stuttered. “But we’ve been getting some pretty way-out messages that you should know about.”

  Juanita stopped perusing the videotape file. “What kinds of messages?” she asked.

  “Bad news,” the other communications officer croaked. “From all over.”

  Devillian clapped his hands once, and everyone but Juanita and the two communications men fled from the room.

  The cross-eyed terrorist leader hastily sucked on a bowl of crack and chugged half a bottle of champagne at the same time. His incredibly good mood—most of it the result of Juanita accepting his invitation to watch him direct the two girls in action—was now completely dissipated. He felt that such a rare excitement would never return to him, and this made him especially furious.

  Finally he gave the signal for the two communications officers to go ahead.

  “First of all,” one began, reading from a telex sheet, “the Skull and Crossbone battalion has been nearly wiped out.”

  Devillian’s face drained of color. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “We just got a message from Major Heck,” the man continued. “He was hurt real bad, and it took him almost a half day to get through to us on the radio. It seems that train was booby-trapped. When he and his guys moved up to take possession, half of it just blew up on them. He says that more than eighty percent of the unit was killed.”

  Devillian took a long, desperate draw on his crack pipe.

  “Damn, did they get pictures?” he wanted to know.

  The communications officers looked at him strangely for just a moment, then one of them hastily replied: “He didn’t say, boss.”

  “Go on,” Devillian ordered them.

  “Well, after the half of the train blew up, the other half took off.”

  Devillian nearly spit out his mouthful of champagne.

  “What do you mean it took off?” he demanded. “That train was abandoned two days ago.”

  “Apparently not, sir,” one of the men replied. “The first half—the one ca
rrying all of the weapons cars—pulled out right after the Skull and Crossbones guys got blasted.”

  “Those fucking comic book heroes!” Devillian sputtered. “Those goddamn flag-waving sons-of-bitches.”

  “They tricked you,” Juanita said with a cruel smile.

  Devillian fought the temptation to shoot her on the spot. Not now, he thought. Maybe later.

  “Major Heck is being airlifted back in a medivac chopper,” one of the officers said. “He’ll be here within the hour.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about him,” Devillian seethed. “Is that it?”

  “No, boss,” one of the officers replied. “There’s more. A lot more….”

  The men took the next five minutes detailing the devastating sneak attack on Santa Fe Airport. The more they talked, the harder Devillian sucked on his crack pipe.

  “It’s just a big hole in the ground” was how they ended the report. “Nothing left at all. The 707 is gone, as well as a lot of our supply planes and some fighters.”

  “Christ, did someone nuke the place?” Devillian asked angrily.

  “Not quite,” replied one of the officers. “The only thing we can figure is that the United Americans somehow found out where we were storing the blockbusters and they hit it with a guided munitions missile.”

  The other communications man took a deep breath. “One of our guys who survived said he saw a jumpjet launch a missile just before the place went up.”

  Devillian was beyond words by this time. He nearly passed out from rage when the two men told him about the similarly devastating strike on Port Desemboque just an hour before.

  “These United Americans do not give up so easily,” Juanita said to the terrorist leader.

  The man did not answer her. Instead he just closed his eyes and lowered his head.

  “It appears as if they fooled you completely,” Juanita pressed on, enjoying herself. “The abandonment of the train was obviously a ruse. And now these attacks on our major installations. When the people of America get wind of all this, it will be us that look like the fools, not them.”