What was the matter with these people? Hunter would ask himself over and over. Haven’t they ever read a goddamn history book?
And as for America’s true heroes, Hunter knew they weren’t hard to find. He was riding with two hundred of them right now.
The respite lasted exactly one minute and ten seconds. Then the inevitable call came in to the Control car.
It was from Cobra Brother Captain Jesse Tyler. He and his partner Bobby Crockett had flown their choppers one mile ahead of the train to reconnoiter the track.
“We’ve got more trouble up ahead—” the radio crackled with warning—“and you won’t believe what it is.”
Fitz and Hunter looked at each other, both of them sagging slightly at the bad news.
“We give up,” Fitz yelled back, as if they were all involved in one long, deadly game.
“Believe it or not,” Tyler replied. “There’s another armored train in the canyon—and it’s heading our way!”
Chapter 68
FOR THE FIRST TIME in his life, Red Banner felt like he really needed a drink.
Beer, Scotch, even rot-gut Badlands wine would do—anything to get his nerves settled down and his stomach turned back from inside out.
He was on top of one of the highest peaks on the southern edge of the Grand Canyon—so high, it was as bad as flying. Sharing this perch with him was a Burning Cross anti-aircraft crew, three South African video technicians, and a pair of Burning Cross guards, both of whom had Uzi machine guns leveled at his head at all times.
From this great height, Banner had witnessed the entire battle so far between the Burning Cross troops and the Freedom Express. From the opening shots near the forests at Desert View Point to the attempted Maverick strikes, to the Mexican cavalry attack, Banner had not only seen it all, he had narrated it. Screaming into a microphone which was hooked to the South African’s equipment, he was providing a blow-by-blow description of the incredible events to go along with the video that was being picked up all along the Ten Miles of Hell.
Next to him was a huge satellite dish through which the Afrikaners were beaming both the video and his audio back to his station in Los Angeles. And there was no longer any question that KOAS-TV would broadcast the battle; he had already talked several times with the station manager, Wild Bill Austin himself. Austin assured him that the “live news report” was being watched by millions of people on the West Coast and that Banner’s “reporting” would place his name up there with such journalistic greats as Murrow and Cronkite.
Trouble was, Banner was sure he’d never live to benefit from the honor.
“My God …” Fitz kept saying over and over. “How can there be any other trains out here?”
He and the others were still trying to make sense out of Tyler’s almost unbelievable report.
“It isn’t exactly an Amtrak cross-country pleasure train,” Tyler had told them. “It’s carrying artillery, anti-aircraft guns, SAMs—just like ours. It’s completely black, from one end to the other, and it’s got a bunch of cameras hanging all over it too. The only difference is that it has six locomotives in the front and six pushing it in the back.”
The news had temporarily stunned the battle-weary United Americans. But Hunter quickly recovered. In an instant, his mind began racing ahead, planning for the impending encounter.
“We’ll need all the air cover we can get,” he told Fitz, turning to rush back to the Harrier.
“I’ll keep the Cobras way up there and get JT and Ben Wa on the line,” Fitz called after him.
Hunter was lifting off his platform car less than a minute later.
He rose to five thousand feet, then quickly throttled the Harrier forward. Within ten seconds, he was passing over the high west end of the canyon rim. From here he could see that after the three remaining miles of Hell, the tracks ran through a series of twists and turns, interspersed with several long straightaways, all of it on a gradual downward slope.
As he cleared the tops of the high hills, JT and Ben pulled alongside him.
“We just caught something about another train,” JT radioed over. “Please tell us we’re just hearing things.”
“’Fraid not, partner,” Hunter told him grimly. “Take a look for yourself.”
Down below, probably no more than ten miles away and coming on fast, was a long, black train slithering its way along a set of tracks running parallel to the ones being used by the Freedom Express.
“I can’t believe this,” Ben said.
“Anything’s possible in the movies,” Hunter reminded him.
“But what’s with the two sets of locomotives?” JT asked. “Six in front, six in back … does that make sense?”
“It does to them,” Hunter replied grimly. “They know that if we get past them in the canyon, they can just switch gears, have the pushers become the pullers and vice versa, and then chase us all the way to LA.”
As the three fighters zoomed down for a closer look, they were met by a barrage of anti-aircraft fire from the black train. Hunter quickly located the source of the gunfire; three flatcars in the midsection were carrying half a dozen S-60 AA guns.
“Those are our first order of business, guys,” Hunter radioed to his companions. “But we’ll keep it down to cannons. If we blast that train with anything heavier, it will go off the track and screw the railbed. Then our guys won’t be able to get through.”
Hunter’s suggestion was approved by two calls of “Roger!” Then they quickly circled behind the enemy train, and before the men on board had a chance to reposition the S-60 AA guns, Hunter was coming at them, flying just a few feet above the roof of the cars, his Adens blazing. He took out two of the guns with his first pass; JT and Ben Wa were right behind him, and they disabled two more.
Leaving the last set of S-60’s to his friends, Hunter shot on ahead of the train, turned the Harrier sharply and came right back at the lead locomotive. He opened up with both cannons, tearing up the first engine and damaging the second one in line as well. But just as the Freedom Express originally carried a dozen locomotives, so too did this Death Train. Its ten remaining engines—now four in front and six in back—generated more than enough power to keep it streaking full speed ahead toward the oncoming Freedom Express.
Hunter took the Harrier up several thousand feet to get a better view of the overall area. From this vantage point, he could clearly see the United Americans’ train approaching rapidly from the east and its nemesis coming just as fast from the west. After a brief flurry of calculations, Hunter determined that in about two minutes and sixteen seconds, the two huge trains would be parallel to each other.
“Get ready, Fitz,” Hunter radioed. “We slowed them down a little, but they’re still heading straight for you. Keep your engines at top speed, and whatever’s left, you’d better get it loaded up and ready.”
“We are going all out right now,” Fitz told him. “But we’ve lost so many locomotives, our top speed isn’t all that fast anymore. I’m afraid that the train will have quite a long time to shoot at us.”
What was worse was that the two trains were already so rapidly closing in on each other that bombing the enemy cars was now too risky.
Yet Hunter knew he had to do something—anything. Maybe the Freedom Express could weather the first assault from the Death Train. But he knew the United Americans’ train couldn’t endure a constant pounding all the way from here to LA. It was up to him to disable the enemy train to the extent that it would not be able to pursue them.
The question was, how?
As the two armored monsters drew even closer to each other, Hunter’s mind raced through a slew of options. In seconds, he came up with the plan that although risky, was also the only one most likely to succeed. One look told him that the locomotives powering the Death Train were similar to the Dash-8’s pulling the Freedom Express. And, if they were like the Dash-8’s, then they too were controlled by computer.
And if he was able to destroy those computers, then th
e brains of the black train would effectively be destroyed.
Or so he hoped….
“Get ready!” Fitz yelled into the Freedom Express’s intercom.
Like everything else, its speakers were smoking and battered, and his voice came through like a blast of static. Yet no further call of warning was needed. Everyone on board—he, Crossbow and the surviving Football City Rangers and the few remaining Piute braves—could see the Death Train was now bearing down on them, its hundreds of guns loaded and ready.
But those aboard the Freedom Express were loaded and ready, too.
“Fire on my command!” Fitz yelled, as the black train was now no more than a quarter mile away, the distance between the two trains being halved with every second as they hurtled on toward each other.
“Good luck, guys!” Hunter yelled down to the men on the Express, knowing that it was up to the two trains now to determine who would win this battle.
Ten seconds later, the trains met right at the Eight Mile point. Even the enemy troops in the hills on either side of the track stopped firing as the two great trains began to pass each other. Every possible weapon on board the Freedom Express—all of its machine guns, artillery, rockets, even the enormous Big Dick howitzer—was firing at full blast as quickly as possible. If anything the barrage from the Death Train was even more intense.
As Hunter watched from above, the two trains looked like nothing less than two Man o’ Wars passing each other, desperately blasting away almost as if they were moving in slow motion with the horror paradoxically being stretched into hours.
Finally after ten horrible seconds, the trains cleared each other just before the Freedom Express entered the final mile of Hell.
Hunter swooped over the American train once, his heart instantly sinking as he saw that nearly every one of its cars was now ripped apart and smoking, some of them going through massive exploding death throes. Two thirds of the remaining locomotives were now just hulks, wrapped in flames and belching incredibly thick black smoke. The fact that the train stayed on the tracks was almost a miracle in itself.
He tried radioing the Control car but was not surprised when he received no reply.
He coldly rationalized that even if everyone on board the Freedom Express were dead, he still had to stop the Death Train from backing up and hitting them again.
“JT, Ben … cover for me as much as you can,” he said. With that he nosed the Harrier down toward the top of the black train, which had nearly stopped as it prepared to switch directions.
If only he could get down before the train reversed gears and began to pick up speed again.
“Hawk, what are you doing?” JT demanded.
But Hunter had switched off his radio. This wasn’t the time to argue strategy; he knew he could blast away at the black train all day and still not stop it. He quickly scanned the rooftops of the cars on the enemy train, trying to decide where the computer controls might be housed. On the Freedom Express, they were in the first car after the string of locomotives, but the black train had two strings of engines, one at each end.
He decided to pick the back end of the train, which soon would be the front end as the direction changed. Running through a storm of rifle and small artillery fire, he lowered the Harrier gingerly onto the roof of the car nearest the line of locomotives, and quickly scrambled out.
Once again, his instincts were correct. One entire wall of the railroad car he’d suspected was filled with a huge, mainframe computer. That was the good news; the bad news was that three men, armed with rifles, stood in front of it.
The trio was stunned that the Harrier had actually landed on the train, and their bafflement cost them their lives. In a split-second, Hunter cut them down with his M-16, turning quickly to take out two more enemy soldiers who had appeared atop the car opposite the one he’d used for the landing platform.
The fire from the hills had died down by this time as many of the Burning Cross gunners were reluctant to shoot at him for fear of damaging the black train. This lay-off in the opposing fire allowed him to climb down into the enemy train’s computer car without further gunplay.
There was no one tending to the computers; like just about everything else aboard the enemy train, the Control car was totally automated. In all he guessed there were no more than twenty enemy soldiers on board.
“Machines run it,” Hunter murmured. “Machines fire its guns. Machines do its killing.”
Using his M-16, Hunter opened up on the banks of computers, his fiery tracer barrage destroying the heart of the evil calculator with every bullet. Like the killing of a giant beast, the Death Train began to slow down as its computers gave out. It took only a half dozen bursts from Hunter’s gun to disable the computer systems completely.
“But no machine is a hero,” he said aloud.
“How true, Mr. Hunter …” he was startled to hear a voice call out from behind him. The Wingman swung around and found that he was staring into the sneering face of Duke Devillian.
Chapter 69
COBRA BROTHER CAPTAIN BOBBY Crockett had just completed a strafing run on a hillside Burning Cross outpost when his pull-away maneuver brought him directly over the stalled Death Train.
He was astonished to see Hunter’s jumpjet hanging precariously off the side of one of the enemy railway cars—its engines still running.
“What the hell is going on here?” he wondered as he pulled up and came back around. In the last few minutes of brutal, confusing combat, Crockett had lost sight of Hunter and his Harrier, which in itself was unusual as the Wingman always seemed to be everywhere at once whenever the bullets were flying.
Crockett dodged some scattered enemy fire and lowered the Cobra until it was just a few feet above the ground. Flying parallel to the train, he quickly looked through the windows of the various cars as he went along.
In the third car that he passed, he caught a glimpse of Hunter, M-16 in hand, defiantly standing before a man who was also holding a rifle.
It took only an instant for Crockett to realize his friend’s dilemma. The shot-up computer car told the story as to why Hunter had landed on the Death Train in the first place.
Now the Wingman needed an assist to get out.
I hope this works, Crockett thought, as he turned the Cobra sharply and put a single blast of cannon fire through the roof of the wrecked computer car.
Although the stream of bullets was way above his head, Devillian dove to one side of the car. This gave Hunter all the time he needed to leap onto the staggering Burning Cross leader and jerk the weapon from his grasp.
He quickly slammed the butt of the rifle against the side of Devillian’s head, knocking the man unconscious.
Suddenly the door of the railcar burst open and two Burning Cross soldiers charged into the room. Hunter, firing as he went, bolted from the door on the other side of the car, leaving one man wounded and the other gaping at the downed Devillian.
Crockett was circling over the train when Hunter emerged. With a wave to show his thanks, Hunter sprinted to the teetering Harrier, then jumped into the cockpit just as a half dozen of Devillian’s soldiers appeared on the roof of the car with their weapons blazing.
But it was too little, too late. With angry frustration, the enemy soldiers watched as Hunter gunned the engines of his Harrier and lifted off the black train with a tremendous rush of noise and power.
The de-computerized black train was now dead on the tracks.
The soldiers on board, realizing what was happening, intensified their gunfire, doing their best to halt the Freedom Express before it got out of range. But, battered and smoking as it was, the United American train managed to limp out of range of the enemy guns, finally rolling through the last few feet of the hellish ten miles and onto the long sloping incline which would keep it moving west for miles.
Back on the black train, Devillian quickly regained consciousness and tried desperately to assess the damage Hunter had caused to the computers. One look h
owever told him the damage was irreversibly complete. His first secret weapon was now incapacitated.
That left him with only one more card to play. It was time to call in the extras….
One of the men who heard Devillian’s radio order several minutes later was Lieutenant Kolotov, the commander of the fleet of Burning Cross helicopters. He quickly ordered all of his pilots to land near several of the remaining Burning Cross troop concentrations and load as many soldiers as they could into the helicopters.
Then they set off in pursuit of the Freedom Express.
Once they were over the battered, rolling United Americans’ train, Kolotov stunned his soldiers by commanding them to leap from the choppers onto the roof of the train. By now, battle-weary, confused and terrified by Devillian’s rantings, the men didn’t have the will to resist, even though most of them realized they would be committing suicide. So they jumped, and about half of them bounced off the train and fell to their deaths along the tracks.
But several dozen of them managed to hold on long enough to get their bearings. They began to crawl along the burning train until they found cars with broken windows or sides ripped apart. Climbing inside the Freedom Express, they began firing wildly at anything that moved, shredding the insides of several cars with their bullets.
From both ends of the train, the United American soldiers grimly moved in to trap the invaders. With Fitz in command of the men at one end and Crossbow leading a group on the other end, they caught Devillian’s forces in a deadly crossfire. When the bullets ran out, hand-to-hand combat took over.
Once again, the battle was bloody, but brief. About fifteen minutes after the first of the Burning Cross soldiers had dropped onto the train, all of them were dead. About ten cars in the middle of the devastated train were filled with bleeding corpses. For miles along the down slope of tracks, the canyon railway bed was littered with the mangled bodies of dead soldiers.
Ahead of the train, some of Devillian’s reserve commanders, inspired or perhaps crazed by their leader’s orders, actually started piling some of their artillery pieces on the tracks. They even forced some of their men to get onto the tracks, telling them that the Freedom Express was moving so slowly now that they could easily jump on board.
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