Freedom Express

by Maloney, Mack;

  Fitz took a long look at his friend. Not only had Hunter’s voice changed, but it seemed like his features had also been transformed somehow as well. His hair appeared to have grown several inches in just a few days, yet his stubble beard remained the same. But strangest of all, the corners of his eyes seemed to have become slightly slanted.

  This overload of scary mysticism was nearly too much for Fitzie’s Old Sod sensibilities. Still, Hunter was his closest friend, and he had stuck by him in strange times before.

  “Well, our boys are ready for anything,” Fitz finally told him. “Just give us the word and we’ll do it. We’ve just got to remember that it will be hard to fight anyone off with us moving so slowly.”

  “I know,” Hunter said, rubbing his weary forehead and hearing his own voice return to normal. “But there is a reason why we are down to just a crawl. We can’t let them know our true capability.”

  Fitz nodded and gave Hunter a fatherly pat on the back.

  “How are you holding up, Hawker?” Fitz asked him sincerely. “I don’t pretend to understand any of this, but I can tell it’s quite a burden to carry.”

  Hunter nodded wearily and sneezed again.

  “It’s just something that has to be done, Mike” was all he said.

  Chapter 39

  La Casa de las Estrellas

  The next day

  JUANITA TOOK A DEEP breath and knocked once on the Play Pen’s massive oak doors.

  There was no reply.

  She turned to the squad of sentries behind her and nodded.

  “Break it down,” she said calmly.

  It was a big decision. No one had seen or heard from Devillian in nearly twenty-four hours—not since he’d received the news about the devastating attacks on Santa Fe, Port Desemboque and the near-annihilation of the Skull and Crossbones battalion.

  Predictably, things had ground to a halt on top of the mesa. Many believed Devillian was dead—shot by his own hand shortly after hearing all the bad news. Others theorized that he was simply wounded inside the vast sin chamber, or perhaps unconscious from too much crack and liquor.

  Still, despite these fears, none of the officers at the Burning Cross headquarters had enough gumption to break into the Play Pen and find out. They knew from past incidents that should Devillian still be alive, he would most likely shoot the first, second, and even third person to walk into the room, for little or no reason at all.

  Only Juanita had had the guts to agree to go in to the room first, and then only after the soldiers broke the door down for her.

  Now two guards walked up and smashed the door with their heavy axes. It took only about a half dozen blows to spring the bulletproof lock. Once this snapped, the soldiers retreated. Juanita on the other hand kicked the door open with her high-heeled black boot and calmly walked inside.

  To her utter astonishment, Devillian was sitting on the huge couch, a large box of popcorn in his hand, watching a movie on his giant TV screen and listening to the audio through a pair of headphones. In one corner, the terrorist leader’s popcorn popper had overheated and had filled the room with a haze of sickly salty smoke.

  Yet, despite the damage and commotion caused by the broken door, the cross-eyed white supremacist hardly winced when he saw Juanita standing before him.

  “You look beautiful today,” he said, glaring at her after freezing the frame on the TV screen.

  “We were concerned,” Juanita replied, noting by the frozen TV frame that Devillian had been watching a cowboys-and-Indians movie. “We thought you were … despondent.”

  Devillian laughed as he took off his headphones completely. “You thought I was dead,” he told her bluntly. “I’ll bet suicide was the theory, wasn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised,” he continued. “However, I’ve spent this time very constructively. Do you remember, my sweet, that at the first meeting of our command officers I mentioned that my grand design was actually in two phases?”

  Juanita nodded. “Yes, the first phase was to draw the train into our territory,” she said. “To hit it only marginally—sting it—as you called it.”

  “Very good,” Devillian replied with a leer. He then pointed to a bulging notebook next to the couch. “In there, my beauty, is the blueprint for the second phase,” he bragged. “It is my auteur theory, you might say. I have finally completed the details of my plan for final defeat of the United Americans.”

  “I admire your enthusiasm,” she told him. “We have lost two major points of supply and almost five hundred of our best troops. Anyone else would have considered what has happened to us in the past few days to be very dire.”

  Devillian began laughing hysterically.

  “When will you realize that I’m not like anyone else, my dear?” he asked her, his voice affecting a strange, childlike tone. “In fact, I am authentically happy that those events happened.”

  “But why?”

  “Because, my dearest,” he continued. “Now our ultimate goal can be fulfilled. Don’t you see? The United Americans are continuing this foolish adventure of theirs, even though many of their troops have left the train. If I was despondent over anything, it was the fact that three days ago, it had appeared like they have given up before I could complete the second bold stroke of my plan.”

  “But I do not understand why you are so happy that the train continues,” Juanita said. “To my mind, we should have hit it—destroyed it—as soon as we learned about their surprise attacks on us. Now, I’m sure the word has spread across the country that the train is still moving west, and that can only make the citizens root for these United Americans even more than before.”

  “That’s exactly my point, my lovely,” Devillian replied. “The people in this country will be even more enamored with these fools than before. And for us, that’s perfect. Because this increased adoration will be like a monkey on the backs of the people who stayed with the train. With every mile west they go, they will have that many people rooting for them. And that means when we finally crush them, we will have the undivided attention of everyone. Everyone! That is the essence of the second phase of my plan.”

  Juanita was authentically confused now, but this did nothing to stop Devillian from continuing his speech.

  “What I am saying,” he continued, “is that we will have our audience! Millions will see our grand finale. It will be an event on the order of the greatest production ever undertaken.”

  Suddenly, Devillian’s momentary gleeful appearance gave way to a worse-than-usual scowl.

  “These United Americans probably think they’re playing tough,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Well, we’ll see just how tough they are when I start to cut them with a thousand knives. I will bleed them—slowly. Then, when they get to precisely the right point, I will crush them once and for all!”

  “But what if they are simply heading for the next track turnaround?” Juanita asked him. “There are many they could try for. Perhaps this is all just a way for them to salvage the valuable weapons on the train and escape.”

  Devillian looked at her and for the thousandth time fantasized what it would be like to ravage her.

  “My dearest, our first phase was so successful in drawing the train into our territory that I promise you it will have no choice but to keep moving west,” he said. “In fact, I guarantee it will go right where we want it to.”

  Juanita cocked her head to one side as if to say that Devillian’s boast was impossible to fulfill.

  “You doubt me?” he asked her. “Then just watch.” He reached down and pushed his intercom button. “Get me the commander of the Skinhead squadron,” he barked into the microphone.

  Three seconds went by, and then a gruff voice came on the line.

  “Mallox here…. What do you want?”

  Devillian’s harsh voice turned to an authentic growl. “I want you to launch every one of your aircraft immediately and bomb every railroad j
unction that the train could use in order to turn back,” he commanded. “The only track route I want still intact by the end of the day is the Amtrak southern tier track—the one that the train is riding on now. Do you understand?”

  They could hear Mallox start to swear. “Why don’t we just go and blast the shit out of that fucking train like we should have done days ago?” he asked.

  “No!” Devillian screamed back at him. “That train will be destroyed only when I give the order to do so! Now, do you understand the mission I just gave you?”

  “Sure, I do.” came the Skinhead commander’s less than enthusiastic reply. “But you realize this is going to take a big bite out of our fuel reserves.”

  “Fuck the fuel!” Devillian screamed. “Just do what I tell you!”

  With that, he pushed the intercom’s OFF button, effectively hanging up on the man. Then he pushed it on again and reached one of his bodyguards.

  “I want every one of those hoodlums from Rome up here, right now,” he screamed at the man. “And tell them I want an entire inventory list of their stuff—lights, cameras, everything.”

  Devillian released the intercom button, took another toke of crack and turned back to the beautiful Juanita.

  “The show, my dear, is just about to begin.”

  Part Two

  Ten Miles to Hell

  Chapter 40

  STUDS MALLOX NEARLY BURNED himself trying to light his crack pipe while at the same time keeping his F-4 Phantom level.

  The leader of the Burning Cross’s Skinhead squadron was bored—very bored—and even the insane pleasure of smoking dope in the cockpit while flying a high-performance jet fighter was beginning to get dull.

  “Damn, I hate this hanging-around crap,” he said to himself. “I want to shoot something. Kill something….”

  However, the only thing Mallox was able to shoot was the camera sticking underneath the nose of his F-4; his only ammunition was its special brand of high-speed recon film. His mission was to keep constant track of the Freedom Express as it snaked its way through the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It was a long, laborious piece-of-shit job that Devillian had typically thrown on the Skinheads once all the nearby railroad junctions had been destroyed.

  “Why the hell does he give us these babysitting duties?” Mallox asked himself after taking one last quick drag on his crack pipe and readjusting his oxygen mask. “He’s got all those pansie air pirates just sitting around jerking off. God knows what would happen if they ever had to actually shoot at somebody.”

  In the same instant, he knew why Devillian had ordered the ’Heads to keep an eye on the train. For the most part, the air pirates’ planes were older than the Skinhead F-4’s. They weren’t as efficient and therefore used more fuel. And right now, fuel was getting in short supply on top of the fortress.

  Still, Mallox and his men lived under a solemn pact to kill something—anything—once a day. It had been several days since anything like that had happened—the attack on Eagle Rock had been their last offensive action—and his troops were getting restless.

  Mallox just hated dealing with it all. The pay was good, but even that was starting to lose its appeal on his men. Gone were the glory days of the Twisted Cross. During that time, his superiors insisted that the Skinhead squadron draw blood every day, just to keep up the veneer of terror in the skies of Central America. Now he and his guys were nothing more than a bunch of photographers, taking snapshots of the mile-long train as it moved through the hills at less than ten miles per hour.

  His radio crackled once, and then he heard the repulsively sissy voice of one of Devillian’s communication officers come on the line.

  “Recon Two-Four, this is base—time for the quarter-hour report.”

  “Big fucking deal,” was how Mallox answered. “The fucking train is about two and a half miles from where it was the last time I talked to you, asshole.”

  “Any weapons displayed?” the comm officer asked, going down the usual list of questions that constituted the fifteen-minute reports Devillian had insisted on.

  “No, you fucking jerk,” Mallox replied. “They ain’t so much as showed a pop-gun.”

  “No warning tones, no SAM radar emissions detected?”

  “I just told you no, shithead,” Mallox grumbled.

  “Have they launched their choppers or the jumpjet?”

  “Jesus Christ—no!”

  “Have they significantly altered their speed in any way?”

  “Fuck you, I’m hanging up!” Mallox shouted, switching off his radio and ending the transmission.

  He put his F-4 into another, long and lazy sweep and brought it high over the train once again. It was still another two hours before his relief was due on station.

  “Man, am I getting sick of this,” he said, lighting his pipe again.

  Five thousand feet below, Hawk Hunter shivered as he felt another message spring up from his psyche. Divide them. Destroy their alliances.

  Chapter 41

  ANTONIO ANTHONY ANTONIONI WAS sweating bullets.

  He had never been so hot—not in Rome, not in Naples, not even in Tripoli. And all that crap about the heat in the American desert being bearable because it was “not the heat, but the humidity” was total bullshit. Hot was hot, and Antonio Anthony Antonioni—Tony Three to his friends—was, at the moment, very fucking hot.

  He sat down under the sliver of shade provided by an outcrop of rock and cursed himself for ever leaving Rome.

  Back there, he and his men were practically kings, their every whim and fancy granted by the puppet government that served as the seat of the New Holy Roman Empire. Just like the old one, this rekindling of glories past was hardly holy, or Roman, and only an idiot would consider it an empire. Rather, the fiefdom barely stretched south from Rome to the end of the Italian peninsula. And in truth, it was run by Sicilians. And not one of them had been to church in years.

  Still, Tony Three and his men had had a good thing going back there. Broads, booze and “booga sugar” had all been in ample supply. All they had to do was control production and distribution of the hundreds of X-rated videos that were being made in the south of Italy every month. The post-war dirty movies were the New Holy Roman Empire’s chief export in trade—and it was a very profitable business. Buying jerk-off films didn’t go out of style just because the planet was turned on its ear by World War III. If anything, they had increased in popularity.

  But somewhere along the way, Tony Three had gotten bored. He had felt the need to strike out—not so much to make more money, but to see another part of the world. So when he heard that some guy named Devillian was looking for people of his skill and acumen, Tony Three and his boys simply hijacked a jumbo jet, filled it with the very latest in stolen movie-making equipment from Italy and Cannes, France and headed for New Mexico. Once there, they cut a lucrative deal with Devillian’s underlings—a ten-picture agreement, which would have included at least three bombastic X-rated extravaganzas directed by Devillian himself. Their pockets filled with Burning Cross gold, they put the jumbo in storage, bought ten Chinook helicopters and moved the stuff to Devillian’s mesa fortress.

  Things started to go wrong shortly after their arrival.

  First of all, Devillian turned out to be a total fruitcake. In the Roman parlance, he was a gootz, meaning an idiot, or in this case, a man with power and money but absolutely no fucking brains or class. Rather than reveling in the pleasures of making young tit films, Devillian insisted on bizarre elaborations that De Mille or even Fellini himself would have scoffed at. It didn’t take long for Tony Three and his boys to realize that despite his bluster, Devillian didn’t know dick-shit about making a good porno.

  Then this whole thing with the train popped up—and it was something that Tony Three and his boys hadn’t expected. Nor could they understand it all. If you wanted to go from the east coast of America to the west coast, why take a train? Wasn’t it easier just to hijack an airplane?

 
; Things got worse when Devillian insisted that the Romans’ Chinooks be made available to carry his troops here and there. Then their jumbo jet got blown up in the air strike that obliterated Santa Fe Airport.

  Since then, they had found themselves to be little more than prisoners of the cross-eyed madman. And that’s why Tony Three was now sweating buckets in the middle of the Grand Canyon.

  “Finally got one of the generators working, boss.” One of his boys, a guy named Rico, climbed up the rock formation to tell him.

  “Thank God,” Tony Three replied. “Will it pump out enough juice to run the tools?”

  Rico just shrugged. “I hope so,” he said. “Or at least enough for us to get one of the other generators working. If we bust ass, we can probably have juice to the whole set-up in two days.”

  Tony Three wiped his forehead with his already-soaking rag.

  “Well, if we do it that quick, Devillian will be happier than a pig in shit,” he said.

  “I know,” Rico answered. “The question is, how long will the diesel fuel hold out? Once we flick on those big lights, them generators are going to start drinking the stuff nonstop.”

  Tony Three thought for a second, then turned and studied the broiling landscape before him.

  They were approximately three miles south of the southernmost rim of the Grand Canyon. Directly below him were two sets of railroad tracks that ran straight for a full ten miles, the only section of track that did so for such a distance anywhere within one hundred miles of them. At the beginning of the stretch, about three miles to the east, was a bridge that crossed the Desert Point View River. The tracks ran through a small forest right after this bridge and then broke out into the straightaway that was bordered on both sides with various hills, cliffs and outcrops of rocks. Off to the west at the end of the uncurving railbed, there was a sharp hill that was steep enough to roll a train all the way into Las Vegas itself.