Now the room erupted in an explosion of cheering and whistles. Finally, they were actually going to destroy the accursed train.
Only the newly promoted communications officer raised his hand.
“Why there, sir?” he asked, somewhat naively. “If we are going to destroy them, why don’t we do it sooner? Closer?”
Devillian turned from pale to red back to pale in a matter of seconds. Possibly the only thing that saved the communications officer’s life was that the Burning Cross leader had recognized that he’d just promoted the man minutes before and that he was entitled to just one stupid question.
“Because,” Devillian began, “when we finally annihilate these assholes on the train, I intend to make it a historic battle. I want to see the bodies fly, burn, be crushed, the very life sucked out of them. But, more importantly, I want every person in this whole damn country to see all that as well. Consider it a live news event—history instantly in the making.”
“But why there?” the man persisted.
Devillian routinely reached for his pistol. “Because, that’s the farthest point that we can still beam TV transmissions back to LA, of course,” he answered somewhat enigmatically.
With that he fatally shot the man in the neck.
There was another, less than spontaneous round of applause, and then Devillian called the meeting to a close by asking, “Does anyone have a camera with them?”
Chapter 51
MIKE FITZGERALD WAS GETTING nervous.
He was standing under the stairway of the dilapidated gray house that sat in the alley off the main drag in West Santa Fe. His trusty Uzi was in one hand, its safety off. A flash grenade was in his other, the pin just a hairbreadth away from being disengaged. He was also carrying a .440 Magnum under his coat, and a back-up 9mm machine pistol in his boot.
Still he wondered if he could really hold off the number of people he envisioned being roused by the racket going on up in the second-floor apartment.
It wasn’t screaming, per se. Quite the opposite in fact. Instead it was the very loud, passionate sound of a woman moaning—and doing it so loudly that Fitz could actually feel its strident tone vibrating the hair on the back of his head. And as the chorus of delight was growing progressively in volume over the past twenty minutes, Fitz could only conclude that it soon would be loud enough to start attracting attention.
And that’s when he’d be forced to break out his weapons.
“Jessuz, Hawker,” he whispered, bringing the Uzi up a little closer to his chest as another even louder wail of undeniable pleasure echoed through the dingy alley. “What are ye doing to the poor girl up there?”
“I can’t take any more of this,” Juanita was saying, her erotic pleasure zones becoming overloaded. “I just can’t….”
Hunter felt the same way—but for different reasons. His fingers were almost numb from carefully squeezing Juanita’s lovely nipples.
He’d been at it for what seemed to be hours now. It hadn’t taken very long for Juanita to remove her clothes for him after he’d first appeared. On first sight of him the amnestic hypnotic suggestion he’d given her during their first meeting had quickly evaporated. However he had thought the real convincer would have been when he told her that Studs Mallox was now a prisoner and that she too would be kidnapped if she didn’t cooperate; after all, that was the whole idea of leaving her the picture of Studs in his mumu. But at that point she didn’t even care. Even when he revealed to her who he was, her only concern was for him to put her back into the orgasmic trance. Clearly she needed this kind of fulfillment as much as he wanted the intelligence on Devillian.
And so slowly he had drawn the information out of her—how Devillian intended to finally attack the train and where.
But as the interrogation went on, the problem was that he was apparently doing his job too well; Juanita’s moans of delight were getting louder by the minute.
Five more minutes went by until Fitz—his anxiety getting the best of him—finally bounded up the stairs and banged on the door.
“You got crowds at both ends of the alley,” he yelled in to Hunter. “Time to wrap it up.”
Hunter was out of the door a few seconds later, Fitz just catching a glimpse of the topless, happily unconscious Juanita as she lay on the apartment’s couch.
“Did you get what we want?” Fitz asked him.
“I did,” Hunter replied, feeling only a mild pang of concern that he didn’t have time to reinstitute the hypnotic suggestion that Juanita forget everything that had just happened to her. “And you probably won’t believe it when I tell you—”
“Save it for the long walk back to the chopper,” the Irishman said. “First we’ve got to figure a way out of here.”
One glance down the stairway told them that a crowd of twenty-five or so armed men was now moving down the alley, the strange wailing coming from the gray house indicating that something was amiss. A look out the window of the second-story porch gave Hunter and Fitz a good view of the smaller, but no less meaner crowd that was coming down the opposite end of the court.
“She must be quite popular,” Fitz said dryly.
“All these guys are either her boyfriends or her brothers,” Hunter observed.
They broke through a skylight and climbed up to the roof only to find that no other adjoining rooftops were within jumping distance.
Back down into the hallway, they briefly discussed their options.
“Flash or crash?” Hunter asked.
“Flash,” Fitz confirmed.
By this time, the two approaching gangs were only about twenty feet apart and getting very close to the stairway that led up to Juanita’s place. Suddenly they were startled to see two men leap from the stairway to the ground right between them.
“On three,” the shorter of the two men said. “One … two—”
He never said three. Instead, the men in the two gangs were suddenly blinded by a tremendous flash. Instantly, everyone went to the ground and raised their weapons.
But by the time the flashsmoke finally dissipated and their collective eyesight returned, they saw that the two strange men had disappeared.
Chapter 52
THE SKINHEAD PILOT NAMED Duzz couldn’t believe his ears; it was as if he were hearing a voice from the dead.
“Just do what the fuck I tell you,” the man claiming to be Studs Mallox told him via Duzz’s F-4 cockpit radio. “Go to the fucking coordinate and land that fucking airplane on the south side of the fucking interstate.”
Duzz didn’t know what to do. It sounded like Studs—the cadence, the obscenities, everything—but the message to land on a nearby long-deserted highway was truly bizarre.
“Studs, if this is you,” Duzz began, “you know that if Devillian caught me doing an unauthorized landing, he’d cook my crogies.”
“I’ll slice them up raw if you don’t do what I tell you!” came the definitely Studs-like reply.
Duzz checked his present position. He was just thirty miles southwest of the San Juan Mountains, heading back to the mesa after having tracked the train for the past three hours as it moved incredibly slowly through the hills. He then checked his critical fuel supply and estimated that he could theoretically set down and take off and still have enough gas left over to return to the mesa. But it would be close.
He decided to buzz the location and four minutes later was flying over the empty highway. He circled down and eventually did see a figure that looked like Studs, waving to him from an overpass.
“Get your fucking ass down here!” Duzz’s radio crackled again. “Or I’ll hunt you down.”
Duzz was convinced now. He turned again and set the F-4 down to a bumpy but successful landing.
Five minutes later, he was face to face with Studs in the flesh.
“Jeesuz, boss, we thought you had bought it somehow,” Duzz said, only now realizing that Studs was wearing a dress. “What happened to you, and what the hell is with this broad’s outfit
?”
Studs’ face was already red—now it grew redder. He resisted the urge to smack Duzz in the face.
“Fuck you,” he said instead, unconsciously straightening the hem on the mumu. “These assholes made me wear it.”
Duzz looked up to see that both he and his airplane were surrounded by about a dozen heavily armed soldiers who had appeared as if out of thin air. What was worse, Duzz could tell right away from their distinctive uniforms that they were members of the famous Football City Special Forces Rangers.
“What the hell is going on here, Studs?” Duzz asked.
This time Studs did hit him—once—with an open palm upside the head.
“What the fuck do you think is going on?” Studs yelled at him. “You’ve just been captured, you idiot.”
Duzz was blindfolded and taken to a helicopter of some kind. After a twenty-minute ride, he was astonished to find himself sitting inside one of the cars of the Freedom Express.
“How the hell did these guys get a chopper off the train?” he asked incredulously. “We’ve been watching them night and day.”
“You dumb fuck,” Studs scolded him. “They were able to fly them off inside of one of the mountain pass tunnels. Then they waited until you jerks moved on and went from there. They’ve been doing it all day!”
It took a few moments for that concept to sink into Duzz’s head.
“Just listen up,” Studs told him, still nervously fussing with his dress. “I want you to go back to the base and tell all the guys to get the hell off that mesa … and I mean now.”
“What!?”
“You heard me,” Studs told him. “We’re pulling out. I’ve cancelled our contract with the fuckhead Devillian.”
“Does he know that?” Duzz asked, still not quite believing what was happening to him.
“He will when you guys take off!” Studs yelled, reeling back to slap Duzz a second time.
Duzz looked at the five other men standing in the windowless room. All of them were wearing hoods.
“Studs, you know how our guys are,” Duzz said. “They’ll think I’ve gone around the fucking bend if I go back and tell them that you say to bug out. They all think you’re dead.”
“Well I’m not, shithead, am I?” Studs yelled at him. “They had some Indian snatch me when I went out to dump Ant. I yelled like crazy when I was fighting this guy off, but you pansies must have been too busy to hear me.”
Duzz just kept shaking his head. “This is too much, Studs,” he said. “You gotta tell me what the hell is going down.”
“I told you, we’re cancelling on Devillian,” Studs retorted. “We’ve just been hired by another employer.”
“Who?” Duzz asked absolutely astounded by this point. “Not these guys.”
“Yeah, these guys,” Studs said flippantly. “They’re going to pay us just to get the hell out of the fight.”
“Pay us? To give up?” Duzz had never heard of such a thing before. “How much?”
Studs threw a left hook that caught the man on the shoulder. “Will you knock that shit off?” he demanded. “They’re paying us by not killing me, you dinkshit. Now go back and tell the guys to pull out. Head for Mexico City—form up there. Wait until this mess is over. These guys say they’ll release me then. I’ll join up with you, and we’ll figure out what to do from there.”
“It might be pretty hard all of us just flying off like that, Studs,” Duzz replied. “The gas situation on that mushroom top is getting pretty low.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Studs told him. “Fill everyone up the night before from our own supply. Mexico City is just a dick hair over eleven hundred miles from the mesa. If you guys go slow and don’t fuck around, you’ll make it on one full tank plus the drops.
Duzz was still having a hard time taking it all in.
“OK,” he said finally. “Let’s say I go back and we get enough gas; how the fuck am I going to make the guys believe that I talked to you? That you are still alive?”
Now Studs’ face really flushed red—but not so much from anger as from embarrassment.
“These heroes already thought of that,” he said, angrily glancing toward the five hooded men.
He reached inside his dress pocket and pulled out a handful of Polaroid photos.
“Show ’em these,” he said, flipping the pictures to Duzz. “They’ll believe you then.”
Duzz picked up the photos. All of them were of the same shot—Studs woodenly posing in his mumu.
Chapter 53
“GOT A LIGHT?”
The South African flamethrower unit’s second-in-command reached down for his Zippo and lit his commander’s cigarette.
“Won’t be long now,” he said, lighting a butt of his own.
They both scanned their unit’s positions for the hundredth time, each man satisfied that at last they were actually going to get to do their job and then get the hell out of the brutal desert woods environment.
They had set up their troops along a bend in the tracks that measured just over a half mile. In all the unit had thirty-five flamethrowers, most of them one-man set-ups, though a few of the bigger models required two-man teams. The fueling process was rather simple. One barrel of gasoline and a half barrel of gelatin mix could supply two flamethrowers. The gas and the jello were pumped in via separate hoses that stretched 125 feet behind each fire team. When the two elements mixed inside the combustor of the flamethrower itself, the long deadly stream of sticky flame was born.
The unit’s officers had to take special precautions in preparation for attacking the train. Never before had their men deployed in positions actually facing each other. Therefore, the spacing of the flamethrower locations had to be such that one team’s tongue of fire wouldn’t somehow jump over the train and across the tracks and envelope a team on the other side. Moreover, the fire teams had to be placed behind rocks and not scrub trees or bushes; when the fire started flowing, no one wanted to be around anything combustible.
“We look all set then, sir,” the second-in-command said. “Should I have the men suit up?”
The commander checked his watch. “I would,” he told the man. “If Devillian’s calculations are right, the train will be here within two hours.”
High above and laying flat out on a small butte about a half mile away, a Piute scout named Green Feather watched through binoculars as the men of the Tongue of Fire climbed into their bulky fire-proof suits and helmets.
After taking a careful note of their number and dispersement, the Indian slipped back down the butte to the desert floor. Then, retrieving his swift horse, he quickly rode away.
It was two and a half hours later when the commander of Tongue of Fire heard the crackle of his walkie-talkie coming to life.
“I can hear the train, sir” came the report from the unit’s advance scout who was positioned about a mile up the tracks. “It sounds like it’s coming down off the mountain right now.”
“Good work,” he radioed back to the man. “Can you estimate how far away it is from your position?”
There was another burst of static, then the scout replied: “Hard to say at this moment, sir. I can see the smoke from its engines over the tops of the trees up here, and it’s getting louder with every second.”
The unit commander quickly checked his watch. He figured the train would pass by sometime within the next five minutes. He yelled the warning to his second-in-command, who in turn shouted the message down the line.
Then the commander called back to his scout. “I want you to keep talking to me until you actually see the train!” he yelled into the walkie-talkie.
Oddly, there was no reply.
“Did you hear me, man?” the commander called.
Nothing.
The commander tried two more times, banging the walkie-talkie and thinking that either his instrument or that of the scout’s had suddenly gone bad.
Still, all he heard was static.
Odd, he thought, tossing t
he walkie-talkie away from him.
Four and one half minutes later, the men of the Tongue of Fire heard the train themselves.
“Here it comes!” several people yelled at once, noting the black smoke that appeared above the trees that separated them from the opposite side of the bend.
“Battle positions!” the second-in-command hollered. “First unit get ready!”
The first unit was comprised of three flamethrower teams that had been positioned at the very edge of the long curve where the unit intended to attack the train. These men would be the first to not only see the train but also to fire on it.
The unit commander checked his watch once again, then stared up into the sky. It was almost high noon—the hottest time of the day. Perfect for starting a fire.
“There it is!” someone yelled.
The unit commander turned and saw the distinctive yellow guardrail of the first locomotive as it slowly made its way around the bend.
“Let’s go to work!” he shouted back to his troops.
But no sooner were the words out of his mouth when he realized that something was wrong. Desperately wrong.
His first teams were already unleashing their streams of flame at the locomotive, but as the engine cleared the bend, everyone could see that it wasn’t the entire train that was approaching. Rather it was just the single locomotive.
“What in bloody hell is going on?” the commander yelled.
Suddenly he thought back to the scout whose walkie-talkie had screwed up at the last critical moment. Maybe it hadn’t been the radio at all.
Confused, the flamethrower teams along the line nevertheless hit the lone locomotive with all they had—much more than what was called for in the original plan. Within seconds the huge engine was engulfed in the broiling, sticky flame. It barreled past the fire teams like a huge rolling house afire, the noise of the flames alone being near deafening. Finally, it tumbled off the tracks and into a gulley below.
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