Freedom Express (2 page)

Finally his cameraman grabbed him by the shoulder. "Red! There it is!"

Banner swung around to look, just as the pilot swerved the chopper sharply to the left to give him a better view.

Banner felt his stomach roll up into his mouth.

"What the hell are you trying to do, kill me?" he bleated into his microphone, to the delight of several thousand viewers.

The newsman quickly regained his poise and resumed describing the scene below him.

"The crowd is really becoming excited now ... we can see the Pioneer's train. It's racing toward the station. It should be pulling in within a minute or two . . . we're going to land very shortly so we can be on hand to greet the brave members of this history-making train crew. Until then, this is Red Banner for KOAS-TV."

This time Banner remembered to turn off his mike before growling at his pilot.

"Get this damn thing down," he yelled. "
Fast
!"

In his haste to return to solid ground, Banner failed to spot something that many of the people lining the tracks had already noticed as the train shot past them on its way to the station.

They had expected to be able to catch at least a glimpse of the crew members waving triumphantly from the train windows. Yet no faces appeared at those windows.

As the train approached the Amtrak terminal, an even greater concern began to grow in the crowd. Although it now was only a few hundred yards from the platform, the train was still rocketing along the tracks at an incredible speed.

With growing horror, the crowd realized that this train, careening along at nearly one hundred thirty miles an hour, wasn't going to stop.

All along the tracks, people tried to flee. Only moments before, the air had been filled with the sounds of celebration; now it was filled with screams of terror and panic. Hundreds were trampled as the crowd quickly turned into a desperate, howling mob, scrambling for survival.

Under the feet of the unlucky ones, the ground began shaking.

But this was no earthquake tremor. Like a giant metal monster relentlessly tracking its victim, the train charged into the mouth of the station.

The loading platforms inside the terminal were filled with dignitaries ready to welcome the heroic crew members. Although they had heard the shouts of panic from outside, there was no time for them to escape. The speeding train roared into the building, past the loading platform and, with a horrible, deafening crash, continued on into the back wall of the station.

As the wall collapsed, the roof of the building caved inward, raining tons of steel and concrete onto the crowd. The impact did little to slow the train, however. It rampaged on for several hundred yards, smashing out of the far end of the station and onto the crowded street before finally coming to rest in the middle of an abandoned department store. The resulting impact and explosion sent this three-story building toppling to the ground.

Behind the engine, the train's twenty cars were tossed in all directions. The crash sent some of the cars catapulting high into the air. Others shot off the tracks and into the path of the fleeing mob, crushing bodies underneath. In seconds, death and debris were everywhere.

The veteran pilot of Red Banner's helicopter had realized just in time that the train was going to crash. He managed to dodge the whirlwind of flying debris, rocketing the chopper back up to a safe altitude at the last possible second. Now the aircraft was slowly circling the devastation, the video cameraman hanging halfway out the window, capturing the horror below.

Yet Banner's viewers were deprived of hearing his golden tones describe this scene of carnage and panic. He was too busy vomiting.

It would take almost a week for workers and volunteers to sort through the tons of wreckage surrounding what was left of the train and the station.

For days, the smell of seared wreckage and burned diesel fuel permeated downtown LA. The death toll finally was established at 502, many of the bodies burned or crushed beyond recognition.

The extent of the destruction made it virtually impossible for investigators to determine the cause of the crash. The locomotive was totally destroyed, so tracing any mechanical or electronic failure was out of the question.

But after dozens of hours of probing through the demolition, however, the city's Civil Guard investigators were able to come up with one indisputable, haunting fact: When the death train roared into the LA station, no one had been on board.

Washington, DC

"So what in hell happened to those guys?" The speaker was General David Jones, the Commander in Chief of the United American Army. He and his top advisors were meeting in the conference room of his Washington headquarters in the mostly deserted Pentagon Building.

"And what does it mean?"

These were the two questions on just about everyone's mind this morning.

Although the United Americans were now in control of the major cities on both coasts, they had long considered the Badlands a double threat: first, as a too-perfect spawning ground for new terrorist groups that might eventually arise and challenge the security of the newly united American nation, and second, as a refuge where once-defeated enemies of America could gather to regroup and plot their revenge.

It was obvious that the American continent would never be completely secure and free again until the Badlands were tamed. So the high command of the United Americans Jones and his most-trusted colleagues-had watched with more than a passing interest as the adventurous Modern Pioneers attempted to make the first train journey through that section of the country since the war.

Then came the disaster in LA.

Jones repeated his question. "The guys on the train. What could have happened to them? Any ideas?"

He turned to the man seated to his right. Major Hawk Hunter was tall, handsome and widely regarded as the best fighter pilot who ever lived. Better known to his admirers and his enemies as the Wingman, Hunter was probably more responsible than any other person for keeping alive the struggle against oppression and tyranny in the dark days following World War III. From the cockpit of his highly advanced F-16XL fighter jet, it was Hunter who had led the forces of freedom to victory after victory over a series of brutal, power-mad enemies.

Now he turned to his Commander in Chief and friend, General Jones.

"I hope I'm wrong, but I think there's only one reasonable explanation," Hunter said. "That train was attacked, and everyone on board was either killed or taken hostage. I'll also bet a bottle of booze that the accident in LA was no accident. I say it was planned.

Someone wanted to send a message to us."

"If that's all true," Jones replied, "then it had to be a fairly well-planned operation."

"I agree," Hunter said. "I mean, we all know that there are probably hundreds of half-assed bandit gangs roaming around the southwest Bads, right? And we also know that they spend a lot of the time fighting each other. But to pull off something like this would take some coordinated thinking, and that's something the bandits are definitely not known for."

"That's for sure," agreed Mike Fitzgerald, the burly Irishman sitting next to Hunter. A fighter pilot who had become a millionaire entrepreneur and arms merchant after the Big War, Fitzgerald was one of Jones' most important advisors as well as one of Hunter's closest friends.

"And despite what the LA press might have led everyone to believe," Fitzgerald continued, "we all know those Modern Pioneers weren't a bunch of beach Bums. They kept it quiet, but all of them were soldiers-trained by the Football City Special Forces Rangers themselves and they were well armed, too. Hell, they were carrying a howitzer, plus a few rocket launchers and even some SAMs. I know because my boys sold the stuff to them."

Next to speak was the Oriental fighter ace, Ben Wa, a colleague of Hunter's since before the war and a man who had provided strong aerial support on many of Hunter's most dangerous missions.

"So, we're saying that somewhere in the southwest Badlands there's an organized, well-armed group," he said. "One that was able to stop a well-defended train, overpower the small army on board, and then send it down through the mountains to crash into the middle of Los Angeles."

Just about everyone present nodded at the grim assessment.

Jones looked around the room at the dozen men who had gathered there. All of them had been fighting the foes of freedom for what seemed like forever. And still it wasn't over.

"I agree that it appears this was more than a random act of violence by a gang of roving hoodlums," the general said with a low voice. "But just how big or how organized they are is still pretty unclear."

"Maybe a few of the bandit gangs got together," Wa offered.

"Formed a small alliance. ..."

"That's a dangerous possibility," Jones replied. "If those other gangs see one alliance working, they might start to jump on the bandwagon, and it could get out of hand. Then we'd have a
real
problem."

"The question is," Fitzgerald said, "how can we find out what really happened?" "We don't have much of a choice," Jones replied.

"We have to track down whoever attacked that train and stop them before they turn into a bigger threat. But finding them in the Badlands is going to be like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack."

"A haystack filled with rattlesnakes," Wa added.

No one spoke for several moments. The men gathered in the room wrestled inwardly with their emotions, for the most part a mixture of anger and frustration. These were professional warriors, patriotic men afraid of virtually nothing. They had proved that over and over again during the last few years. And if another threat had to be overcome, then they would do it.

Still, it was disheartening. After regaining control of much of America, wiping out the Nazi threat in the Panama Canal, and recapturing the traitorous vice-president who had plotted World War III in league with the fanatical Red Star, they had allowed themselves to hope that maybe the fighting was over for a while.

Obviously, it wasn't.

Even JT "Socket" Toomey, a highly skilled if rather impulsive fighter pilot, didn't have a quick answer. Usually his solution was to suggest an immediate air strike on the bad guys and ask questions later.

"I'd give anything to know who they are," Toomey said. "And where they are."

"Wouldn't we all," said Captain "Crunch" O'Malley of the Ace Wrecking Company, the freelance F-4 fighter unit that had become a valuable part of the United Americans' team.

Hunter spoke again. "One thing we do know. It doesn't make sense to just send out a giant search party to look for these guys. There are several thousand square miles of territory out in the southwest Bads. They could be anywhere."

"Are you saying we're not going after them?" Toomey asked.

"Maybe not in the usual way," Hunter replied. "I've been thinking about this since we got the news from LA, and I've got a suggestion."

Jones leaned forward in his seat. Most of the world knew Hunter as the highly publicized, incredibly talented fighter pilot that he was. But Jones knew there were other facets to the Wingman. He had been a certified genius as a child and had earned a doctorate in aeronautics from MIT at seventeen. But even more, the man had an incredible intuition, one that went way beyond what some would simply call ESP. At times, Hunter's foresight was downright spooky.

"Well, let's hear it, Hawk," the general said.

Hunter ran his hand through his longish dark-blond hair and took a deep breath. "The next time a train tries to cross the Badlands, my guess is that our unseen enemy will be waiting to strike again,"

he said. "When it happens, we should be ready."

"You mean we follow the next train across the country?" Toomey asked.

"Not exactly," said Hunter. "We are the next train." A silence enveloped the room for a moment as the others let Hunter's proposal sink in.

"Could you explain that, please?" Wa finally asked.

Hunter shrugged good-naturedly. "We assemble a train," he said.

"Then we fill it with weapons and troops and follow the same route as the last train-"

"And when the attack comes," Toomey said, excitedly interrupting him, "Ba-
Boom
!"

"Well, more or less," Hunter replied. "But I think that should be only part of the plan. Just think for a minute about what the Badlands are like today. That whole territory has almost reverted back to the early days of this country. It's totally untamed, just like the Wild West.

To make it secure again, we've got to do more than just go after some bandit gangs or get one train safely across the continent. We've got to literally resettle that entire part of the country. So why not use the same approach the frontiersmen did when the West was settled the first time?"

"You mean wagon trains?" asked Captain Elvis Q, another member of the Ace Wrecking Company. "Like scouting parties, forts, the whole cowboy-and-Indian bit?"

"Basically, yes," Hunter replied. "But more high-tech. We put together a
modern
version of the wagon train. I mean a real goddamn train with powerful locomotives and dozens of railroad cars. Hell,
hundreds
of railroad cars. But some of these won't be ordinary cars-they'll be filled with weapons, medical supplies, food. Many of the cars can be, in effect, miniature, self-contained fortresses.