Freedom Express (41 page)

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 the 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.

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 however 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 Uttered 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.

Seeing what was going on, the Cobra Brothers dropped their powerful gunships down in front of the train's lead locomotive and led it along the next several miles of track, blasting the human barricades out of the way. The once-mighty
Freedom Express
now had only two of its original twelve locomotives pulling it.

But this, in addition to the momentum gained by the train as it rolled downhill, provided enough power to plow through the few piles of artillery and other flimsy barriers that the desperate Burning Cross troops had tossed onto the tracks. A few fanatics actually tried to leap onto the front of the lead locomotive, but were immediately hurled onto the tracks and crushed underneath the huge, grinding wheels.

Leaving a path of blood and death in its wake, the
Freedom
Express
finally approached the far western end of the mighty gorge.

At last, the tracks ahead looked clear.

But overhead, the remainder of Devillian's air force

continued to pursue the train.

Hunter and his companions managed to keep most of the enemy aircraft at bay, but an occasional KKK Voodoo would slip through and riddle another car with a new round of cannon fire.

Still, KKKAF leader Billy Lee Riggs had seen his

once-formidable force of Klan pilots dwindle to about a dozen.

But he wasn't through yet. During his many forays over the train, he had come to realize that the key to the brilliant aerial defense the United Americans were providing for their train centered on the amazing feats performed by the lead Harrier.

Obviously, Hawk Hunter was at the controls of that aircraft.

With his final group of Voodoos behind him, Riggs decided to make one last, all-out effort to get Hunter.

That might finally break down the train's protective