As always, Hunter was carrying an odd assortment of munitions under the Harrier’s wings.
After first speaking with Fitz in the Control car, he put the jumpjet into a quick dive, pulling up at one hundred fifty feet into a long slow, right-to-left bank. Those on the train saw first one, then two, then a half dozen retarded-flight bombs fall from the Harrier’s left wing. They hit the ground with terrifying precision, scoring direct hits on four out of six enemy anti-tank positions, and severely damaging the other two.
Then without missing a beat, the jumpjet reversed direction via a 180 degree horizontal translation and mimicked the first bombing run, this time over on the other side of the tracks. Within seconds, five of the six enemy targets were utterly destroyed.
Instantly the enemy rocket and rifle barrage petered out to a few random, badly aimed shots. The train continued plunging forward at full speed through the early morning mist, all of its windows and weapons openings electronically shuttered.
“Everything OK down there?” Hunter called down to Fitz.
“So far,” Fitz quickly replied, his voice fighting a storm of interference.
“We’ve got a lot of company up on the overpass ahead,” Hunter yelled through the static. “So stay locked up.”
Captain Luis Repello was the commander of the bandits stationed on top of the overpass footbridge, and at the moment he was having a hard time calming his troops.
They had just witnessed the Harrier’s incredibly brutal air strike on their comrades’ positions on either side of the tracks. Now they watched in confused horror as the jumpjet went into a quick hover and then shot straight up into the sky.
“Forget the airplane!” Captain Repello was screaming to his junior officers via his walkie-talkie. “Get your men ready for the train.”
Somewhat reluctantly, the first wave of bridge bandits lined up on the edge of the structure, paired off in twos. Then, with commendable if not exactly rational aplomb, the bandits began leaping onto the train as it passed underneath.
“Go! Go!” Repello was screaming so loudly, he didn’t need his walkie-talkie. “Keep them moving.”
In the midst of the action, Repello was surprised by the enthusiasm of his troops. It seemed as if they were all leaping onto the train at once.
Suddenly, the bandit commander was aware of a strange high-pitched noise coming from behind him—one so loud it even drowned out the roar of the mighty train streaking by underneath the bridge.
Repello turned around to see the Harrier hovering no more than fifteen feet off the opposite side of the bridge, its Aden cannons blazing away.
In an instant Repello realized that the men he saw toppling off the edge of the bridge were not enthusiastically jumping onto the train at all. Rather they were being blasted off the overpass by the jumpjet’s guns. In the last moment of his life, Repello saw the distinctive lightning bolt helmet of the pilot inside the jumpjet, who was coolly mowing down the bandit unit, and in that instant, he realized that this time he had indeed joined the wrong side.
Hunter kept his cannons spitting fire until he had eliminated most of the soldiers on the bridge.
But nearly twenty-five had managed to drop onto the tops of the cars in the speeding train. Some of them lost their balance and tumbled off to be crushed by the mighty steel wheels of the train below. But the others managed to crawl over the sides of the cars and started firing their rifles through the windows. The bulletproof glass resisted most of the onslaught, but several windows cracked under the pressure of the constant bombardment.
Now clear of the bridge, the train rolled around a sharp curve, Fitz pushing computer control buttons like mad, trying to get every ounce of speed out of the remaining Dash-8 locomotives.
Hunter jammed his throttle forward and was soon flying over the lead locomotive, matching its speed exactly. The bandits crawling on the roofs of the railway cars looked like a pack of human-size spiders. Hunter knew that he would have to help get them off, yet he didn’t want to light up his cannons for fear of damaging the train.
Instead he dropped the Harrier down to a point just ten feet off the top of the train. Then deftly lowering his vertical thruster deflectors, he was able to blow off a number of bandits from the roof by brutally scorching them with his downward-pointing, red-hot jet engine exhaust blast.
Inside a half minute, the roof of the train was cleared of the enemy.
But suddenly a new threat appeared.
As the Express roared down onto the canyon rim itself, both Fitz and Hunter saw that the mighty train was barreling headlong toward a huge pile of rocks blocking the tracks straight ahead.
Chapter 65
A FOOTBALL CITY RANGER combat engineer named Spreat was the chief driver of the train. Viewing the pile of boulders on his closed-circuit TV screen, he frantically radioed back to Fitzgerald in the Control car.
“Do you see what’s up ahead?” he yelled. “We’ve got to stop!”
Both Fitz and Crossbow had already seen the blockade.
“Could they be fake?” Fitz asked Crossbow, remembering back to the line of cardboard “brick” walls and the flash bombs on the Desert Point View Bridge.
The Indian shook his head. “I don’t think we’ve got the time to find out.”
Fitz knew he was right; there was no time to think about the choices or the consequences. Both sides of the tracks had come alive again with small arms fire, interspersed with some increasingly heavy artillery shelling. To stop the train now was tantamount to capitulation.
Relying strictly on his instincts, Fitz called ahead to Spreat: “Any way of telling whether those might be props or not?”
“They look damn real from here!” came the instantaneous reply.
“Then what happens if we don’t stop?” Fitz urgently radioed back. “What happens if we give it everything we’ve got and they turn out to be real?”
There was just a slight delay before the engineer replied. “Jeesuz, I don’t know,” Spreat called back. “I know these Dash-8’s pack a lot of power, but—”
“If we stop now, we’re dead,” Fitz cut in. “I say, boot it—full speed!”
Spreat relayed the order to his computers. Within a split-second, each of the locomotives hauling the massive train received the command. The powerful engines responded, and the Freedom Express hurtled toward the barrier of rocks at a deadly speed.
Fitz had his face pressed up against the bulletproof window and was screaming back to Crossbow: “Keep your fingers crossed … they might be fakes!”
They weren’t….
The train hit the boulders with such force that the nose of the first locomotive was completely shattered, sending chunks of steel flying everywhere. But the train kept going, driving with relentless force against the pile of rocks. Two, three locomotives were smashed; still the Freedom Express drove forward. Finally the train broke through as the last of the huge rocks was blasted from the tracks.
“Goddamn!” Fitz yelled. “Even I hope they got that on film!”
Billy Lee Riggs taxied to the head of the line of F-101 Voodoos that were waiting at the Grand Canyon airport, their engines roaring.
Suddenly his radio crackled to life.
“Triple-K flight,” said the voice from the speaker. “You’re on.”
Riggs checked the last page of his script, and then strapped on his oxygen mask.
“OK, guys,” he called to the seventeen other pilots. “Just like we rehearsed it. Six flights of threes, starting at Alpha-One. Check?”
“Check!” came the chorus of replies.
“Roger,” Riggs said, popping his brakes and gunning his own engines. “Alpha One, follow me.”
By now the first full streaks of the sunrise were appearing in the eastern sky. The deep blackness of the canyon depths were slowly turning into murky, misty shades of gray.
Hunter’s inborn radar was flashing like crazy when he saw the first six Voodoos appear out of the south. At the same moment, he hear
d the radio calls of the Coaster Air Force fighters approaching from the west, the very familiar voice of JT and Ben Wa being mixed in.
Turning back toward the Voodoos, he saw they were climbing up to fifteen thousand feet, much too high to begin a strafing attack on the train. Within a half minute, they had leveled off and banked into a large circular flight pattern. Hunter recognized the tactic right away as an umbrella formation.
“Red flight, this is Blue, do you copy?”
Hunter keyed in his radio mike. “This is Red flight.”
“Hey, Hawk!” JT called over. “What the hell are you getting us into here? We just flew over the canyon rim, and it looks like something out of a Hollywood nightmare.”
“Couldn’t say it any better myself,” Hunter replied. “This is one movie we won’t have to wait to see.”
They quickly discussed the orbiting Voodoos.
“Just waiting for us to come up and meet them,” Ben Wa radioed over. “So their buddies can jump the train.”
“How about we give them a ’burst,” Hunter replied. “With a three-king finisher?”
Being former Thunderbird pilots, Ben and JT knew exactly what Hunter was proposing. As the flight of five Coaster F-5’s dove and formed a low CAP over the train, Hunter, Ben and JT quickly formed up ten thousand feet below the circling Voodoos.
“Any idea who these guys are?” JT inquired of Hunter.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Hunter replied, arming two of his four Sidewinders. “On three … one … two….”
On the next heartbeat, the two Strikefighters and the Harrier booted their engines and zoomed up into true vertical climbs, their three airplanes forming a triad that looked like a huge dagger heading for the heart of the Voodoos’ orbiting pattern.
Within seconds, they roared through the line of F-101’s. Then, with exquisite split-second timing, the three airplanes turned over and came screaming down in a three-pronged dive, perfectly completing the old Thunderbird demonstration stunt known as the starburst.
The United American fighters had moved so fast, the KKK pilots didn’t have time to react. Suddenly three of them were being chased by a like number of Sidewinders. Three puffs of smoke later, the sky was filled with pieces of burning, tumbling Voodoo wreckage.
Their stunt only half over, the three fighters continued their earth-shattering dive, arriving back at five thousand feet just as the first trio of reserve Voodoos were making their move toward the train.
Hunter bore in on the lead F-101, ripping a large gaping hole in its wing with two solid blasts from his Aden cannons. The Voodoo began to smoke and spin downward, its pilot punching out just a second before its wing fell off. It was only then—when Hunter got his first good look at the emblem on the F-101’s busted wing—did he realize that they were fighting against the KKK Air Force.
“There’s your answer, JT,” Hunter said, indicating the fluttering Voodoo wing. “It’s the scumbag of scumbags’ air force. It had to be their airplanes that attacked LA too.”
“The Klan?” JT called back. “I didn’t think any of those guys were smart enough to fly.”
“Me, neither,” Hunter replied. “But they just made a hard job a little easier for me.”
As the aerial battle continued, Hunter and his allies dueled with the numerically superior but less-skilled force of the KKK Air Force. Although the Harrier was slower than the Voodoos, its incredible versatility, plus Hunter’s extraordinary flying talents, more than evened the score. Time after time, a KKKAF pilot had Hunter in his sights, only to find that the Harrier had somehow disappeared. Seconds later, a missile would rip into the Klansman’s airplane, and his last earthly thought was along the lines of “Where in the fuck did that come from?”
By now, a second wave of Coaster F-5’s had arrived, but so had another nine Voodoos. Devillian’s fleet of Hind helicopters was also cued, to be countered by the out-numbered but nevertheless effective Cobra Brothers. The ever-lightening sky over the Grand Canyon was now filled with flashes of gunfire, streaks of smoke, and sudden bursts of brilliant flames as airplanes exploded.
Then on Hunter’s call, the United American airplanes suddenly evacuated the area. A snap second later, the roofs of four of the train’s SAM railway cars clanged open, and a massive barrage of SA-2 surface-to-air missiles were launched. Four Voodoos fell victim to the SAMs, the roofs of the SAM cars clanging shut almost immediately after the missiles were away.
Far below, in the guts of the gorge, the Freedom Express rumbled on, assaulted on all sides by recoilless rifles, bazookas, steady waves of rifle fire, grenades and flamethrowers. All the while the Football City Rangers were pouring the fire right back, in some cases deflecting their artillery gun muzzles down to level and firing away at point-blank range. Several railway cars caught on fire—from the enemy fire as well as the close-in muzzle flashes—but the Rangers assigned to fire duty managed to douse the flames quickly.
In the midst of the hundreds of enemy soldiers firing at them, the Football City Rangers also saw dozens of cameramen, lighting technicians, and sound men. Huge, bright klieg lights would nearly blind them at every turn. Wires, ropes, cables and perches made of scaffolding were everywhere. The presence of the massive filming crew only added to the unbelievable and surreal pandemonium.
Yet in a testament to their moral values, the Rangers couldn’t bring themselves to fire directly at the unarmed members of the film crew. Instead they sought to destroy their cameras, lights and sound equipment whenever possible, the TOW anti-tank missiles being the weapon of choice for this job.
Through it all, Fitz and Crossbow were everywhere—directing the fire-fighting, encouraging the soldiers, firing out of broken windows with their own M-16’s whenever they had the chance—all the while staying in touch via radio with Hunter overhead.
“We’ve already gone a mile and a half!” Fitz yelled to Crossbow at one point.
But that still left eight and a half miles to go….
“Where’s that fucking script girl!” Devillian screamed as he watched the relentless and ongoing air and ground battle from his high-perched command post.
A scantily clad young blonde—she had played a role in an earlier White Power Fuck Movie—ran up, her hands full of notebooks and long sheets of paper.
“What the fuck is coming next?!” Devillian demanded of her.
She quickly consulted the appropriate script pages.
“There’s gas attack scene at Mile Three,” she said hurriedly. “Then the Mexican Cavalry guys come in. Their cue is a smoke bomb explosion at Mile Three and Three Quarters.”
Devillian threw away his high-powered binoculars in a rage.
“It’s moving too fast!” he raged. “The pacing is all fucked up now.” He grabbed his radio. “Where are those fucking bombers?!” he screamed so loudly that the vibration on the other end of the line nearly busted Tony Three’s eardrum.
“Last report they were orbiting at thirty miles south,” he told Devillian, checking his schedule sheet for the position of the four B-57 mercenary bombers.
“Well, call them and tell ’em to get their asses over here now!” Devillian screamed through the line. “They might be going on earlier.”
Tony Three gladly hung up on the terrorist leader and radioed the flight commander of the bomber force.
“What do you mean, go in early?” a nasty Austrian named Shinz replied. “Those fighters will pick us off in a minute.”
“Just do it,” Tony Three wheezed back at the man. “Or you’ll never fly again.”
There was a brief burst of static, then Shinz radioed back: “OK, but we’re definitely going to have a meeting on this after this is over!”
“Yeah, sure,” Tony Three replied. “And I’ll bring the doughnuts, asshole.”
At that moment, the Harrier roared right over Tony Three’s position, its Aden guns blazing away at a wildly jinking, yet already doomed KKK Voodoo.
Knowing what the United American pilots wou
ld do to the slow bombers, Tony Three immediately thought of Shinz and his pilots. “Those guys should get a new agent,” he mumbled.
As their airplanes were shot from the skies by Hunter and his mates, the Burning Cross stage commanders simply called for reenforcements and wave after wave of Voodoos, as well as the few remaining mesa-top based Floggers and Mirages, joined the attack. Meanwhile, as the train passed Mile Two and A Half, huge guns of all types were hurling tons of ammunition against the walls of the train.
Yet the Freedom Express kept driving forward.
As he was gunning down still another Klansman, Hunter suddenly felt bigger planes were approaching.
“Bombers coming in,” Hunter called to JT, who was flying next to him.
A few moments later, they saw the outline of four B-57’s streaking in over the northern horizon about thirty miles from the on-going train battle.
“Something tells me they ain’t going to be dropping mines this time,” JT radioed back.
As he watched the four planes break into two formations, Hunter began to suspect what the bombers were up to. A quick check of his threat-evaluation radar confirmed this suspicion.
“They’re carrying Mavericks” was all Hunter had to say to raise an alarm with JT.
“Christ, that’s all we need,” the other pilot groaned.
The AGM-65 Maverick was a TV-guided air-launched weapon that had an unparalleled reputation for accuracy. It was especially effective in piercing protective armor like that on a tank, or a bunker—or a train.
“They’re going to try to blast the armor of the weapons cars, open them up like sardine cans,” JT said.
“Not if we stop them first,” Hunter replied.
As Hunter pulled the Harrier away from a swarm of Voodoos and toward the bombers, he was followed not only by JT, but by two of the Coasters’ F-5’s who had heard their exchange. Within a few seconds, the four fighters were rushing toward the bombers at full speed.
Freedom Express Page 28