Freedom Express (26 page)

"Stomp! Stomp! Stomp!"

Mallox smiled again as the terrified Ant backed into a

corner of the barracks.

"The jury has spoken, Ant," he said, standing over the cowering man. "See you in hell."

With that, Mallox delivered a mighty blow to Ant's

forehead, cracking the man's skull with his heavy hobnail boot.

Ant reeled backward, hit the wall and fell facedown on the barracks floor.

In an instant, the rest of the Skinheads rushed toward his twitching body and began viciously kicking him with their boots, all the while screaming:
"Stomp him! Stomp him!"

It took the screaming Ant three long minutes to die.

Mallox considered it a stroke of genius to have the two love slaves clean up the blood and waste and cranial matter that had once been Ant.

Killing their colleague was just the tonic the 'Heads

needed to keep their edge. Fucking the girls after they'd been covered in blood would serve to raise their killing lust even higher.

But even Mallox had his limits; he didn't want to ravage the women with a stiff in the room. So, after dutifully taking photos of the body to give to Devillian later, Mallox had the corpse wrapped in a plastic sheet and tied with twine.

Then he selected a 'Head named White Smoke to help him carry the body outside and to the edge of the mesa, where they would unceremoniously dump it over.

"Don't do a thing until I get back," he told his drooling legion while he roughly fondled one of the terrified girls before heading out the door with White Smoke. "Remember, I'm always the first one in and the last one out."

It was a fairly cool, moonlit night.

Mallox had White Smoke do all of the heavy lifting of

course, leaving the man to drag Ant's body alone while he strolled ahead to the dumping spot, admiring the broad expanse of stars above him.

Studs was proud of the Skinheads' little corner of the

fortress, it being well away from the other Burning Cross units.

At his insistence, Devillian had even built a separate runway and parking strip for the 'Heads' Phantom jets. Knowing the Skinheads' reputation as human vomit was well-deserved, the rest of the Burning Cross members were more than happy with the mesatop's segregated living arrangements.

Mallox reached the edge of the mesa and waited impatiently as White Smoke dragged the damp corpse across the landing strip and passed the row of F-4's.

Finally he reached the place where the 'Heads dumped all of their snuffs. "Must be getting pretty crowded down there,"

White Smoke said, peering over the mesa to the ravine below.

"Kind of smelly, too."

"Are you kidding?" Mallox told him. "Those bodies don't stay down there very long. Either some big cat eats 'em up or the bugs get them. You're history in a matter of days."

"What a way to go," White Smoke replied.

Mallox resisted the temptation to push the man over the side, just for the hell of it. He would have done it-he was in that kind of a mood -but at the same time he knew it was foolish to lose a perfectly adequate pilot.

"C'mon, let's get this over with," Mallox told the man. "We got some young pussy waiting for us back there."

White Smoke was about to lift the body up and over some edge rocks when suddenly both men heard a strange noise-kind of a
whoosh-thump
! It was dark, and at first they could not see what had caused the odd sound.

"What the fuck was that?" Mallox asked, instinctively reaching for his sidearm.

Suddenly White Smoke grabbed hold of his arm. "Jessuz, Studs-look!"

Mallox looked down at the corpse and was astonished to see an arrow was now embedded in its throat.

"Where the fuck did that come from?" White Smoke asked.

An instant later, they heard the noise again.

Whoosh-thump!

This time, they looked down to see another arrow had pierced the body bag in the stomach region.

"Shit, Studs, those stories are true!"

Even a big, bad brave guy like Studs was nervous now. The Burning Cross fortress had been rife with rumors that some kind of a ghost was running around on top of the mesa, fucking with the equipment, starting little fires and scaring the shit out of the midnight to-dawn guards. About a half dozen regular Burning Cross soldiers had sworn they'd seen the spirit in the past few days, but the Skinheads had always just attributed the sightings to the fact that the rest of the soldiers on top of the mesa were just pansie-asses.

Until now, that was.

"Shut up," Mallox told White Smoke, trying to calm his own nerves by talking brave. "There's nothing up here."

Whoosh-thump!

Mallox spun around to see the shaft of a third arrow

suddenly embedded in White Smoke's throat.

Neither of them could believe it. There was no blood -yet.

But White Smoke's face had drained completely of color in a half-second.

"Is it bad?" he gurgled to Mallox before tumbling backward.

Studs began to panic. Instantly he kicked White Smoke's still-twitching form over the side of the mesa, pushing over Ant's stiffening corpse for good measure. Then he hit the ground and covered his head with his hands, petrified that he would be on the receiving end of the next deadly arrow.

What seemed to Studs like an hour passed -it was really only a few seconds-before he became aware of a figure standing over him. Too terrified to even open his eyes and look up, he began crying, certain that a painful death awaited him. In a second, his mind flashed over the scores of people he had killed. Bloody and decaying faces, they were all laughing at him.

He felt the cold edge of an extremely sharp knife slowly slide under his throat. Every time he would whimper, the knife would slice a little deeper into his Adam's apple. Finally he heard someone say to him: "Get up."

Studs slowly rolled over, his eyes still closed and crying.

One mighty hand lifted him up to his feet, the knife at his throat never moving an iota.

Finally, he had no choice. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into those of an Indian.

Hawk Hunter only stopped writing long enough to splash a handful of cold water onto his face.

He could not even smell the incense now; in fact, the cabin didn't even look that smoky anymore. However, Diamond still looked beautiful-even more so.

Her beauty was the only bright spot in his increasingly darkened consciousness. His prediction that Devillian was very much alive and preparing for battle had proved all too true. He had just gotten a report from Jones that Burning Cross

fighter-bombers had destroyed all the track junctions to the north and south of them, meaning that if the train was to keep moving, it could only move on tracks Devillian deigned to keep open for it.

Plus, the madman's recon planes were now keeping the train under hourly surveillance.

But like buzzards, Hunter knew they would not attack the train -and for the moment, he would not attack them.

He had picked up pen and paper about three hours before and, for the first hour, drew nothing but squares and triangles. By letting his hand move where it wanted, his sheets of paper would quickly become filled with intricate patterns using only those two shapes: squares inside of the squares, triangles within triangles. Soon, he began drawing the triangles inside of squares and vice versa. Then hundreds of tiny triangles inside of one huge square.

He knew what an unbeliever would call it: automatic

writing. The supposed written link with -the spirit world. But Hunter knew better. The seemingly endless drawing actually had a meaning, one connected to the flow of information from his psyche. His continual mining of this strange wellspring had simply taken on another manifestation.

At the beginning of the third hour, he began writing down the phrases that were now coming to him with renewed regularity.

When you traverse mountains, forests, steep defiles or any
route difficult to travel, this is called bad ground.

When the way is narrow and a small enemy force can strike
at you even though your numbers are greater, this is called
surrounded ground.

When you will survive if you fight quickly and perish if
you do not, this is called dying ground
.

By the fourth hour, his hand was stiff and getting numb from writing. But he knew the words of wisdom were just a trigger.

They were telling him of things to come. He was certain they would be attacked soon.

"Diamond?" he called out into the smoky room. "Please ask Fitz to come here."

Over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains

The Skinhead pilot known as Duzz checked the time, then called back to the mesa.

"This is Black Flight Two with the quarterly time report,"

he told the Burning Cross communications officer on the other end of the radio. "The train is still moving very slowly. I estimate no more than ten to twelve miles per hour. It is presently climbing an incline, approximately twenty miles west of Arroyo Honda, and approaching the Rio Grande Gorge, which is marked at Red Area Two on my map. You got all that?"

"Affirmative" came the reply.

"Any weapons display?"

"No" was the reply from Duzz.

"Any warning tones or radar emissions?"

"No."

"Any aircraft launched from the train?"

"No."

"Roger Black Flight Two, stay on station. . . . Out."

Duzz clicked off his radio and put the F-4 into yet another of the endless sweeping orbits needed to keep the train in sight.

"This is a drag," he whispered. "A real
fucking
drag."

Duzz was more on edge than usual. This was the day after a strange night on the mesa. First of all, the anticipated gang bang never happened because Studs never returned from getting rid of Ant's stompified body. White Smoke never reappeared either-but that made little difference to 'Heads waiting to pounce on their intended female victims. Studs' last word to them was not to commence until he got back. When he didn't, most of the 'Heads simply passed out or eventually went to sleep.

They awoke to find Studs had still not turned up, but this wasn't all that unusual. Their leader had been summoned to Devillian's mansion at odd hours before, and Studs was not the type to send a note back to his worried brood.

Still, it was peculiar that the man still hadn’t appeared by the time Duzz lifted off just after two in the afternoon. When he flew out over the mesa, he saw the search parties were just starting to organize on the ground below.

Duzz once again looped back over the train, snapping

another roll of pictures as he went.

It had reached the top of the hill and was now slowly going into a long curve which would eventually bring it out onto a straightaway that ran close to the Rio Grande Gorge. Duzz checked his map again, wondering why this particular section was marked as Red Area Two.

He got his answer a minute later. His radio crackled to life with a message from the communications officer that Devillian himself wanted to speak to Duzz.

"I hired a bunch of wetbacks to sucker punch the train,"

the terrorist leader said, his distinctive high pitched twang coming through loud and clear over the F-4's radio. "They're going to hit it just before it crosses over the Rio Grande Gorge.

I want you to make sure those greaseballs don't destroy any of the railcars or fuck up the track in front of them. Their orders are to only kill people on the train-not snuff it out completely.

They are only supposed to be using small arms fire and nothing else. Do you understand?"

"Sure I do," Duzz replied. "Now, if those refried beanheads do fuck up and wreck that train, then I want you to first call me directly. Then I want you to strafe those assholes until I can send out your whole goddamn squadron to plaster the bastards.

Get it?"

"I get it," Duzz replied.

"All right," Devillian said. "Now keep your eyes open.

Those Mexicans should be opening up on the train any minute now."

The bandit No Teeth had just finished relieving himself when he heard the first sounds of the approaching train.

"At last," he whispered, pulling up his pants. He was getting sick of waiting in the woods, battling off legions of bugs and jumping from fright every time a small animal scampered past. "We do the job, we get even more gold."

The sounds of the train-a kind of dull roar-were mixed with the high-pitched scream of the Burning Cross jet fighter that had been circling the area since early afternoon. No Teeth knew that the plane's pilot probably had two functions: to keep an eye on the train and to keep an eye on No Teeth and his gang.

All the more reason that the bandit leader wanted the job to go exactly how Devillian had ordered.

He made his way back to his gang's positions, enthusiastic that he couldn't hear them.

They must be learning, he thought, silently praising his men for having the smarts to keep quiet as their target approached. Usually he couldn't stop his men from jabbering for more than ten seconds.