Freedom Express

by Maloney, Mack;

  Duzz once again looped back over the train, snapping another roll of pictures as he went.

  It had reached the top of the hill and was now slowly going into a long curve which would eventually bring it out onto a straightaway that ran close to the Rio Grande Gorge. Duzz checked his map again, wondering why this particular section was marked as Red Area Two.

  He got his answer a minute later.

  His radio crackled to life with a message from the communications officer that Devillian himself wanted to speak to Duzz.

  “I hired a bunch of wetbacks to suckerpunch the train,” the terrorist leader said, his distinctive high-pitched twang coming through loud and clear over the F-4’s radio. “They’re going to hit it just before it crosses over the Rio Grande Gorge. I want you to make sure those greaseballs don’t destroy any of the railcars or fuck up the track in front of them. Their orders are to only kill people on the train—not snuff it out completely. They are only supposed to be using small arms fire and nothing else. Do you understand?”

  “Sure I do,” Duzz replied.

  “Now, if those refried beanheads do fuck up and wreck that train, then I want you to first call me directly. Then I want you to strafe those assholes until I can send out your whole goddamn squadron to plaster the bastards. Get it?”

  “I get it,” Duzz replied.

  “All right,” Devillian said. “Now keep your eyes open. Those Mexicans should be opening up on the train any minute now.”

  The bandit No Teeth had just finished relieving himself when he heard the first sounds of the approaching train.

  “At last,” he whispered, pulling up his pants. He was getting sick of waiting in the woods, battling off legions of bugs and jumping from fright every time a small animal scampered past. “We do the job, we get even more gold.”

  The sounds of the train—a kind of dull roar—were mixed with the high-pitched scream of the Burning Cross jet fighter that had been circling the area since early afternoon. No Teeth knew that the plane’s pilot probably had two functions: to keep an eye on the train and to keep an eye on No Teeth and his gang. All the more reason that the bandit leader wanted the job to go exactly how Devillian had ordered.

  He made his way back to his gang’s positions, enthusiastic that he couldn’t hear them.

  They must be learning, he thought, silently praising his men for having the smarts to keep quiet as their target approached. Usually he couldn’t stop his men from jabbering for more than ten seconds.

  The train was only about a half mile away by now, and No Teeth was having trouble moving fast through the dense forest. It would be embarrassing if he missed the opening shots of the attack just because he had gone too deep into the woods to take a dump.

  Suddenly he saw that the train had picked up speed and was now closing in on the ambush site at about twenty-five miles per hour. No problem, he thought, finally coming upon the first of his gang’s firing positions. They could still fuck up the train sufficiently, no matter what its speed may be.

  He jumped into the firing hole and whispered to his two men to get ready. When he didn’t even hear a grunt in reply, he turned toward the man beside him and saw that his throat had been slit from ear-to-ear.

  No Teeth almost screamed, not so much at the horror of it, but at the surprise. He pushed the man, knocking him over to reveal his firing partner also had most of his throat hanging onto his chest.

  The Mexican bandit leader jumped straight up out of the hole and belly-crawled to the next firing position. But here too he found his men were dead; one had even had his heart cut right out from his body and stuffed into his mouth. The other was inexplicably covered with ants.

  Verging on complete panic, No Teeth scampered from hole to hole and found nothing but death in each one. All the while the train was approaching, and now, as it passed by, unharmed, he saw a single face staring back out at him from a car window. The man had longish hair and a short beard. He was wearing a blue tunic, and his eyes were slanted in a very strange way.

  The train roared past—one full mile long. The extraordinary collection of military might on the railway cars seemed to mock him as they clicked and clacked on by. In less than a minute, No Teeth found himself staring at the enormous howitzer on the tail end of the train as it passed over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and disappeared around a bend in the mountain.

  “This is like a bad dream,” he murmured.

  He dropped his bag of gold and hurriedly checked each one of the gang’s firing positions, hoping, praying, to find someone still alive. But he could not; every one of his ninety-nine men were dead, most of them butchered beyond recognition.

  What had happened? How could his entire force be killed so quickly, so silently in the few minutes that he had taken to answer Nature’s call?

  Oddly he soon found a graphic answer to these questions.

  Coming upon the last firing position, he stumbled across one of the men who had been tapped to videotape the planned ambush. The viewfinder in the camera was still flickering, and with trembling hands No Teeth first pushed the Rewind button, then the Play button. Then he watched in horror through the viewfinder’s preview screen as the last seconds of his unit’s life played before his eyes.

  The videotape man had obviously clicked the camera on at the first sound of the train. Then, swinging it to his left, he was able to focus in on the firing positions nearest to his own. Suddenly, out of the corner of the frame, a dark-skinned man appeared. With one swift motion, he reached into the firing hole closest to him and slashed the throats of both bandits. The camera started to jiggle at this point, the video man obviously stunned at what he had just captured on tape. With alarming speed, more dark-skinned men appeared. In one swift motion, they jumped into the firing holes, slaughtered the bandits and crawled back out again. The man holding the videotape then caught the image of one man coming straight for him. It was probably from sheer fright that the man kept the camera rolling even as his killer silently approached, a huge Bowie knife in hand. One, then two mighty thrusts later, the camera fell sideways. Its lens was partially splattered with blood, but not enough so as to miss the man with the knife as he slipped away out of the hole and out of the frame.

  No Teeth let the camera drop from his hands, absolutely horrified at what he’d seen. The killers were Indians, he was sure of it. In fact, he recognized the colors on the silent men with the knives. They were Piutes, the most dangerous tribe in these parts, and he imagined that the woods nearby must be swarming with them.

  And suddenly, No Teeth realized that he was alone.

  “Base … this is Black Flight Two … come in.”

  Duzz put his F-4 into a sharp turn and came over the train again, knowing that something was definitely wrong.

  “Go ahead, Black Flight” came the response.

  “The ambush on the train did not happen,” Duzz reported. “Repeat … train was not attacked at Rio Grande Gorge.”

  There was a burst of static, and then the voice of Devillian himself filled Duzz’s headphones.

  “What the fuck are you telling me?” the terrorist screamed at him through a storm of static.

  “I’m telling you that the train just ran through Red Area Two without a shot being fired at it,” Duzz replied. “It picked up speed, crossed the bridge and is now heading down into Tres Piedras Pass. It should be in the San Juan Mountains inside a half hour.”

  There was nothing but silence on the other end of his headphones, but Duzz could almost feel Devillian’s rage burning through the radio waves.

  “OK, baldy,” the man said after a while. “Here’s what I want you to do….”

  Twenty minutes later, Duzz was nearly whistling. He had armed his cannon as well as the two guided munitions bombs that hung beneath his wings.

  With considerable ease, he swooped down on the bridge crossing the Rio Grande Gorge and sent first one, then the second missile into its support girders. Two mighty explosions later, the span was falli
ng into the rapid waters of the Rio Grande, thus insuring that the train was again cut off from any means of reverse-gear retreat.

  This done, Duzz turned back and screeched down along the track straightaway where the train was supposed to have been attacked. On his first pass, he saw what he believed to be about fifty occupied gun positions. Oddly, the men inside them didn’t move a whit as he roared past, but this made no difference to him now. He didn’t care why the bandits had chosen not to shoot at the train. The order from the top man himself was to “fuck up the bean-eaters” for failing in their mission.

  Duzz turned and came in on the positions again, this time opening up with his powerful nose cannon. He felt exhilarated as he watched his cannon shells rip into the bandits’ gun holes, their flimsy camouflage being shredded by his awesome barrage.

  It was the beginning of his third strafing run when he saw a single man leap onto the tracks. He was carrying what looked to be a heavy bag on his shoulder. But as Duzz bore down on him, the man dropped the bag and started waving wildly, almost as if he was pleading for the airplane to stop shooting.

  “Not a chance,” Duzz whispered as he pulled the trigger and cut the man to pieces.

  Chapter 46

  WHEN STUDS MALLOX WOKE up, he was naked and shivering.

  He also had no idea where he was or how he got there. The bump on his forehead was sore and bleeding slightly, and he felt as if he’d been injected with some kind of drug. The frightening sight of the Indian was still blazed upon his mind, as were foggy visions of being carried down the sheer side of the mesa, trundled over the desert and finally thrown aboard a helicopter.

  Now he was in a bare, windowless room, surrounded by three men wearing masks.

  “Surprised, Mr. Mallox?” one of the men asked him gruffly, as the trio moved closer to the bunk. “Surprised that you are still alive?”

  “Who … are you?” Mallox stuttered, trying his best to cover up his genitalia with his hands. “Where am I?”

  “You’re on your deathbed,” one of the other men said. “What part do you want to go first?”

  Mallox almost fainted. He saw that all three men were holding machetes.

  “What do you want?” he asked, gagging on the words. “Money? I can give you lots of money.”

  The three men laughed.

  “It’s not a question of gold,” the third man, the smallest of the three, said with a vague accent. “It’s a question of your actions in the past. The people you’ve killed. The women you’ve brutalized. The lives you’ve ruined. You see, you can consider us your Grim Reapers. You’ve just committed too many sins.”

  “But I was just following orders,” Mallox pleaded. “I have commanders. They told me to do the things I’ve done.”

  “Where have I heard all this before?” one of the men asked.

  Then, in a lightning swift movement, he hacked down on the bunk with his machete, ripping the dirty mattress just two inches from Mallox’s foot.

  “It’s the truth!” Mallox screamed. “I’ve never been a commander myself. I was always under orders…. You want names? I’ll give you names of all my officers. Some of them are still around. You can go get them. I’ll even help you find them.”

  The three men laughed again. “So much for the famous Iron Will,” the man with the accent said. “This guy is caving in like a scared pup.” He walked forward and placed the machete directly over Mallox’s privates. “You actually have two choices,” he said, lowering the huge blade closer to the Skinhead’s groin. “We kill you now. Slow, painful, just like you’ve killed so many, but something that will be over in a few hours. Or, we kill you a piece at a time. And you pick the piece.”

  At that moment, the hooded man poked the tip of the machete into Mallox’s pubic region, opening up a small but bloody gash.

  “Make your decision, you Nazi scum,” the man said harshly. “Our way? Or your way?”

  Mallox was terrified beyond tears. He tried to whimper out some plea for forgiveness, but found his voice would not come out. He looked down at his hands, now bloody from his wound, and nearly vomited.

  The men only laughed at his panicky state. One of them produced a Polaroid camera and started taking snapshots.

  Finally, another hooded man entered the room, carrying a small satchel.

  “Here it is,” he told the trio, handing them the bag and then departing.

  One of the men looked inside the bag and laughed again.

  “Just your style, Curley,” he said, throwing the bag at Studs. The Skinhead looked inside and saw the bag contained a garishly pink dress.

  “That’s for you, Studs,” the man who threw him the dress said. “Now put it on.”

  Studs was so terrified, he did as told.

  By the time he had climbed into the mumu-type dress, the three men were practically rolling on the floor with laughter.

  Thoroughly humiliated, Studs was then made to pose in several positions as the hooded men took about a dozen snapshots and then convulsed with laughter after looking at each one just thirty seconds later. In fact, the men kept on laughing even after they’d run out of instant film.

  “This could be a whole new career for you, cutie,” one of them taunted. “Wait ’til the boys back in your squadron see these.”

  Just then, the whole room started shaking, causing Studs to jump with fright. A rumbling noise filled his ears, nearly deafening at first, then quickly dropping to a rhythmic pulse. Then a new sound, a regular click-clacking, found its way into the room.

  It took Mallox several more seconds to figure out that he was on a moving train.

  Chapter 47

  Near Dodge City, Kansas

  CATFISH JOHNSON THOUGHT HE was finally getting the hang of it.

  Throughout his military career, he had been called on to do strange and varied tasks. In the pre-war years, he had been a Marine DI. During the war he had fought in Turkey with the late, great hero, Captain Bull Dozer. After the war and the imposition of the New Order, he had helped Dozer run the famous 7th Cavalry. Then, after Dozer’s death, he had turned the 900-man 7th into the 10,000-man United American 1st Airborne Division.

  But not once in all that time had he been called upon to ride a horse.

  Still, here he was, sitting tall in the saddle, atop a huge Appaloosa, gun in hand, cowboy hat in place.

  “This isn’t as bad as I thought,” he said to Captain Drews, who, being a cowpoke from way back, had just finished several minutes of spontaneous trick riding.

  “You just got to move as he moves, that’s all,” Drews said.

  Catfish adjusted his backside in the saddle again and for the first time was able to look up and fully appreciate the scene before him.

  It was about an hour before dawn, and the air was absolutely still. He was on the edge of a bluff overlooking the airport located just outside Dodge City. Sitting side-by-side on the end of the airport’s largest, recently elongated runway were four gigantic C-5 Galaxy cargo jets, each one bearing the emblem of the Free Canadian Air Force.

  The Galaxy was the largest airplane ever built in the Free World. Its hold was so cavernous, it could carry more than a quarter of a million pounds of cargo. Yet, Catfish was sure that no C-5 had ever been called on to carry as strange a cargo as what was being loaded into these four particular airplanes at that moment.

  “Lord, I wish Captain Dozer were alive to see this,” Catfish said, as he watched the four separate lines of horses and riders move slowly up the ramps and into the huge airplanes. “Old Bull finally got himself a real cavalry.”

  Chapter 48

  Santa Fe

  JUANITA JUAREZ WAS FRIGHTENED for the first time in her life.

  It had been a strange twenty-four hours.

  The trouble had started early that morning when Studs Mallox—the human slug himself—was first reported missing. She was there when Devillian got the word, and at the time, he calmly ordered the fortress to be searched. When this proved fruitless, several
squads of Burning Cross guards repelled down to the desert floor where they found the half-eaten bodies of two Skinheads—Ant and White Smoke—but no sign of Studs.

  This news served only to inflame the already rampant rumor that someone—or something—was running around the mesa top, scaring some people, killing others and making at least two disappear completely. But Juanita didn’t believe in ghosts; so she just ignored these tattles, at the same time being happily amazed at how skittish the men around her were acting.

  Then came the odd report from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Devillian himself had bragged to her how he’d hired the toughest bunch of Mexican bandits in all of the southwest to “put the hurt on the train.” These bandits—the well-known Sin Dientes—had a reputation even worse than that of her brother Jorge’s various gangs. They had been paid a fortune in gold to be the first bandit group to sting the train as it passed through the narrow trackbed next to Rio Grande Gorge.

  Yet, for some reason, the attack never came off.

  A pair of Hind gunships were dispatched to the location, and their pilots found all the bandits dead, most with their throats slashed. The Skinhead pilot that Devillian had ordered to strafe the bandits after they’d failed in their mission had for the most part expended his ammunition shooting at dead bodies.

  Things got worse by mid-afternoon when it was discovered that a large part of the fortress food supply was infested with maggots. Although it appeared like a faulty switch on the mess hall’s refrigerator was to blame, Devillian insisted that it was in fact sabotaged and, in a fit of rage, executed all of the fortress’s cooks.

  With the night came even more bad news. A supply train of helicopters flying in what supplies were left in the ruins of the bombed port of Desemboque had been attacked over the Sierra de la Madres, about one hundred miles away, by two jet fighters of unknown origin. All eight of the helicopters were lost.

  The tension was relieved somewhat an hour later when Devillian made several quick deals with a syndicate of black market suppliers located in El Paso to truck in supplies overland to the mesa. A three-week supply of food, water and diesel fuel would come first; ammunition, liquor, drugs and other necessities would be trucked in the next day. At the moment the plan was to stockpile the stuff at the bottom of the mesa then lift it up to the base using one or two of the fortress’s six working Hind copters.