Freedom Express

by Maloney, Mack;

  And with every mile it got closer to the impending clash with Devillian.

  There had been a piece of good news around noon. Scouts from the detachment of Bad River’s troop that was keeping the mesa under twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance radioed in that they’d seen twelve F-4’s take off from the mesa top around mid-morning with no indication of hostile fire coming from the reluctant allies left back on the fortress itself. Hunter replied that the Piutes should get a message to Crossbow that now that his mission was done, it was time for him to leave the mesa top for good.

  The Wingman spent the rest of the day busying himself with duties on the train, trying his best not to think about what had happened to his F-16. It was only when night had fallen and he had a few moments that the real shock of his loss began to set in.

  He had climbed up on top of his railway car and let the breeze from the slow-moving train cool him. The moon was rising fast, its glow lighting up the desert with a warm orange shine. Yet he was in no mood to appreciate the landscape’s undeniable beauty.

  His period of denial slowly dissipating, he felt the pain of such a huge part of his life being ripped away. It both enraged and saddened him that something so important and precious to him as his F-16 was now in the hands of thieves. And for what purpose? Would the perpetrators ask for a ransom? If they did, he would pay it, get the aircraft back and then hunt them down like dogs. Actually he knew this was just wishful thinking; he should be so lucky that the whole business was just a case of plane-napping. Maybe the thieves would cut the plane up, or sell it, or simply destroy it. He tried his best to shake these thoughts away; they were just too painful for his soul to bear.

  Now looking down at the Harrier, lashed as it was to the platform car in front of him, he felt a little comfort that the brains of the F-16—the avionics and so on—were safe aboard the jumpjet. But it was a cold reprieve; the F-16 was more than just a bunch of gizmos attached to a fuselage and wing and powered by an engine. It was greater than the sum of its parts. It was an entity unto itself.

  It was part of him.

  His melancholy was broken by the sound of someone climbing up the ladder to the roof.

  “Hawk? Are you up there?”

  It was Diamond.

  He helped her up the last few steps, and she settled down next to him.

  “It’s really beautiful up here,” she said, snuggling closer to him. “I feel like we’re a couple of hobos.”

  He nodded, somewhat sadly. “I wish all I had to do was ride the rails,” he said.

  She touched his hand lightly. “I heard about your airplane,” she said. “I’ve never seen it, but you were talking about it in your sleep a few nights ago.”

  He was not surprised that he had been dreaming about the F-16—along with everything else.

  “I spent a lot of time in that airplane,” he said. “It’s carried me just about everywhere, and I’ve been damn lucky with it. Now, to just have it swiped like that …” his voice trailed off.

  She pulled even closer to him, and he put his arm around her. She was a very sweet girl, and in just the few days they’d been together, she’d put up with a lot: the attacks on the train, the crazy forty-eight hours of his out-of-this-world meditation, the uncertainty of their fate. She seemed to roll with it all though, showing an amazing ability to adapt to the strangest situations.

  Through it all, she was never less than upbeat, confident, even optimistic. In a way, he felt himself falling for her.

  He pulled her even closer and was about to kiss her when he felt a damnable familiar feeling run up his spine.

  “Quick, climb down,” he told her, leading her to the ladder.

  “But what’s the matter?”

  “Trouble’s coming” was all he said. “And it’s coming fast.”

  He saw them just about a minute later.

  First one speck of red light appeared on the southern horizon. Then there were two. Then three. Then a dozen.

  “Hinds …” he heard himself whisper.

  By this time, the men on board were scrambling to their battle stations—reacting to his called-out warning as well as the Express’s own radar systems. The train was traveling through a long, low desert valley, with no bends or curves for at least twenty miles. Nor were there any tunnels or forests in which the train could seek shelter.

  Hunter was inside the warmed-up Harrier within the next minute, and airborne a minute after that. By this time, the enemy choppers had reached the train and were circling it at about three thousand feet, much like Old West movie Indians would circle a bunch of wagons. Hunter instantly banked toward the line of orbiting gunships and dove through them with his guns blazing.

  One chopper immediately exploded, and another suffered serious damage from his initial barrage. But at the same time, six of the choppers dove straight for the train. Obviously the Hind pilots’ battle plans were to split their force; six would provide fodder for Hunter while the other six strafed the train.

  Hunter laid a Sidewinder into yet another copter when he heard Fitz’s distinctive brogue come through his headphones.

  “Clear the area, Hawk,” the Irishman yelled. “You’ve got ten seconds.”

  Hunter quickly acknowledged the request and booted the jumpjet forward at top speed. He didn’t question why Fitz had requested he break off the engagement; he already knew why.

  Leveling out the Harrier at 4500 feet about two miles off the train’s starboard, he began to count off “three … two … one—”

  Suddenly the night sky above the train lit up like a massive Fourth of July fireworks display. Streaks of bright yellow light shot off from eight of the railway cars, entrapping the buzzing Hinds in a fiery web. Hunter forced himself to smile; at last he was seeing exactly what the train could do, or at least part of it.

  He knew that in the ten seconds prior to the pyrotechnics, the train’s on-board air defense systems had clicked on. Using radar and infra-red detectors to assess the threat, the computers had ordered eight of the train’s sixteen SAM cars to arm, lock on to the Hinds and launch.

  And launch they did.

  No less than four dozen S-2 SAMs screamed up from the railway cars, in seconds obliterating the half dozen attacking Hinds, some of which suffered as many as ten direct hits. Another smaller, but more accurate barrage was launched four seconds later. This one caught the four remaining enemy choppers that were supposed to be harassing Hunter.

  In a matter of twenty-two seconds, it was over. All ten Hinds were destroyed, leaving ten individual flaming wrecks on flat desert on either side of the slowly moving train.

  It was a display that gave even a veteran like Hunter pause. In the previous enemy aerial attacks, the confined spaces of the mountains and forests had prevented the air-defense computers from formulating such an awesome fusillade of SAMs.

  But in the wide-open spaces, the system had performed to perfection.

  As the train increased speed and disappeared into the night, Hunter swept over the wrecks of the Hinds, double-checking that there were no survivors.

  Then, just as he was about to head back for the train to land, his inner sense told him to proceed farther up the track instead, that something would be found there.

  He had relied too long on his instincts to question them; besides, since his strange meditative period had ended, his instincts seemed to have come back in line. So, after radioing his intentions back to Fitz, he throttled up and sped ahead of the Freedom Express.

  At a point about twenty miles from the train, his sixth sense began buzzing once again. There was something below, in the narrow pass that carried the tracks between two bare desert hills. It was not a threat; the feeling was telling him something different.

  He put the AV-8 into a hover and set it down about fifty yards from the pass. Retrieving his M-16 and his infra-red NightScope goggles, he double-timed it to the tracks and then carefully walked into the pass itself.

  Something happened here, his senses we
re telling him.

  He slowed his pace a little as he reached the middle of the pass, scanning its sheer walls with the infra-red glasses.

  He saw nothing until he turned the slight bend in the tracks.

  An instant later, he found what he was looking for.

  There were 24 of them in all. They were hanging from ten separate gallows, their rickety remains flowing gently in the light desert night breeze. They were skeletons rather than bodies, and each one had a dagger sticking out of its ribcage.

  “So this is how far they got,” he whispered. “Their nightmare ended here.”

  There was little sense in inspecting the corpses. He didn’t need a close-up look to know that he’d just discovered the remains of the Modern Pioneers.

  Chapter 56

  Los Angeles

  NICK “RED” BANNER, LA’S leading newsman, had just finished eating his dinner in his plush apartment’s dining room when he heard the first air raid siren go off.

  Like just about everyone else in the city, the KOAS-TV anchorman thought the alarms had gone off either by mistake or as part of some kind of a test. Unconcerned, Banner poured himself a brandy, switched his telephone back to ON and settled in front of his large screen TV, intent on watching a videotape of his broadcast earlier that day.

  He had just started the replay when his phone rang. Taking a sip of brandy, he answered it in his deep, affected anchorman voice.

  “Nick Banner here …”

  “For Christ’s sake, Nick!” the man’s voice on the other end screamed. “Where the hell you been?”

  He immediately recognized the voice of his boss, KOAS station manager, Wild Bill Austin.

  “I’ve been right here,” Banner answered quickly.

  “With your goddamn phone switched off?” Austin raged. “You know that’s against company policy.”

  “Why, yes, it was off,” Banner stuttered, knowing full well that Austin was the only person who could actually fire him. “Well, actually it’s been broken … going off and on, and—”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit, Banner,” Austin interrupted him fiercely. “Have you taken a goddamn look out of your window?”

  “I’m sorry, Bill,” Banner replied. “I’m having trouble hearing you over these damn sirens. They must be testing them or something. What did you say?”

  “You idiot!” Austin raged back at him. “I said take a goddamn look out of your window! You’re missing the biggest story in years!”

  Banner yanked on the phone’s cord and slowly walked to his porch window. He lived on the 38th floor of a luxurious high-rise right in downtown LA, and as such had an expansive view of the city.

  Drawing back the heavy drapes, Banner walked out onto the porch and peered out on the semi-soggy metropolis.

  And instant later, he wet his pants.

  “Jesus Christ!” he yelled. “We’re under attack!”

  As Banner clenched his sopping wet crotch, he watched in absolute terror as at least a dozen jet fighter-bombers screeched over the city, dropping bombs, firing missiles and strafing indiscriminately. The air raid sirens were now blaring at full pitch, and several SAMs could be seen streaking up from the outskirts of the city.

  “Banner! Banner!” Austin was screaming from the other end of the phone. But Big Red was not in any condition to speak coherently.

  He had just barely gotten over the shock of the crash of the Modern Pioneers train several weeks before and now this!

  “Who … what …” he babbled into the phone.

  “Spoken like a true journalist!” Austin roared. “We don’t know who in Christ they are! But I want you to get your ass down to this station right now. We’ve got to go on the air with this, and you got to do it!”

  “But … how … when …”

  At this point, Banner was even having problems spitting out syllables. A whole newscast might be out of the question.

  Suddenly one of the raiding jets flashed right over his building, emitting a terrifying shriek and rocking the high-rise like an earthquake.

  The next moment, Banner found himself on the floor of his living room, praying that (A) he wouldn’t die and (B) his body functions wouldn’t commit open revolt.

  But the only answer to his prayers was the sound of even louder sirens, more screaming jet engines and more bombs going off.

  Then, amongst the racket, he heard someone pounding on his door.

  Thinking it was some kind of rescue team, Banner leapt to open it, stained pants and all.

  Total incontinence hit when he found three heavily armed men in Nazi uniforms waiting on the other side.

  “You’re coming with us,” one of the men said before slugging Red in the temple, knocking him cold.

  All the while Austin was screaming from the other end of the now-abandoned phone. “Banner? Banner! Are you still there?”

  Captain Crunch O’Malley of the Ace Wrecking Company landed his F-4X Super Phantom at the main base of the Republic of California’s Air Force, not quite believing his eyes.

  Part of the air base—formerly known as LAX—was in flames, and there were at least three burning jet fighters on its auxiliary runway. He taxied around one wreck, noting through the flames and smoke that it was an F-101 Voodoo, and pulled up to a stop in front of his assigned hangar. His partner, Captain Elvis Q, was waiting for him there.

  “What the hell happened?” was Crunch’s first question.

  “Air raid,” Elvis replied in his authentic Southern drawl. “They hit us right after seven; snuck up on us real good. Came in over the ocean. Voodoos mostly. A bunch of them launched a few Mavericks to keep us busy here, while another bunch bombed the city itself.”

  “Christ, who were they?” Crunch asked, removing his helmet and rubbing his neck from his long flight.

  “Still checking,” Elvis replied.

  The air raid was just another bit of strangeness for the Wreckers. Although the distances involved had kept him and Elvis out of the direct action around the train as of late, they had been doing nightly recon missions over Arizona and western New Mexico, trying to spot any Burning Cross troop concentrations.

  “Did the city’s air defenses work?” Crunch wanted to know. “Did anyone scramble to meet them?”

  Elvis nodded. “It was a quick hit-and-run attack,” he said. “But the Coasters were able to launch a half dozen F-5’s. They iced one Voodoo right over our heads. That’s the one burning way out there. SAMs got the other two here, and I hear the inner city AA and SAM guys got another two. It was noisy, but overall the damage both here and in the city was very light.”

  Crunch rubbed his weary eyes, his brain flashing all the implications of the air raid. “You know why Devillian is pulling this crap now, don’t you?” he asked Elvis.

  The younger man nodded. “Sure do,” he replied. “He knows that once the train is in range of the fighters here, we can escort the thing through west Arizona and make it a lot harder for him to attack it full force.”

  “Right,” Crunch replied. “But now, with this new air raid stuff, he knows the Coasters will have to keep some of their fighters at home, just in case the Voodoos come back.”

  “He’s not only crazy,” Elvis said, as they walked toward the base’s debriefing room, “he’s smart, too.”

  “That’s the worst kind of animal,” Crunch told him.

  Twenty minutes later, they were sitting in the debriefing room with three officers from the California Air Force.

  On the TV screen in front of them, a videotape retrieved from Crunch’s recon pod was just beginning.

  “Everything is as it should be,” Crunch said as a burst of static introduced the tape. “Just like Hawk predicted, I found twelve holes in the ground just north of Chihuahua.”

  The tape’s static cleared up and quickly became focused. It depicted first, the vast reaches of the Mexican desert near Sierra del Nido from a height of forty-two thousand feet, and then after a long zoom-in, the mountainous area north of
the mostly abandoned city of Chihuahua.

  “There’s the first one,” Crunch said. “See it?”

  Elvis squinted and soon saw a light stream of smoke rising from the desert floor.

  “And the second,” Crunch went on. “And the third….”

  By this time the other officers saw the columns of smoke as well.

  “Twelve F-4’s took off from the mesa,” Crunch said. “Twelve auger in three hundred and fifty miles due south.”

  “Well, he was right again,” Elvis said, picking up the rest of the smoke columns. “If this were peacetime, our old buddy Hawk could be rich just from gambling.”

  They slowed the tape and zoomed in closer on the dozen spirals of smoke, all that was left of the Skinhead squadron.

  It was the titanium oxide that had done the job. The weird little chemical had effectively turned the twelve F-4’s into time bombs, just waiting for the right moment to go off. When mixed with JP-8 jet fuel, TO added just enough instability to the volatile mix to begin a break-down of the fuel’s molecules. Working mostly on the kerosenelike base of JP-8, just a touch of the TO turned the jet fuel into a completely new mixture, one that actually raised the temperature of fuel proportionately until it quite literally blew itself up. Not only that, but the time of the reaction could be determined right down to the last minute.

  “It must have been quite a shock to them when their airplanes just started going up around them,” Elvis said. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  “Yeah, those boneheads really fell for it,” Crunch said. “When it came right down to it, they were more concerned with saving their own asses than anything else. But I would have felt a whole lot better about it if this air raid thing had never happened.”

  Elvis nodded glumly. “Kind of changes the whole equation, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter 57

  IT WAS CLOSE TO six AM when word reached the Freedom Express that LA had been bombed that previous evening.

  The crew of the train had just completed a sobering ceremony next to the freshly dug graves of the two dozen Modern Pioneers, when a series of messages came over the scrambler telex.