Freedom Express (43 page)

It was Catfish and the 1st Airborne, bearing down on the Burning Cross foot soldiers at full gallop on their herd of Kansas horses. They had made it to the battle through the sheer determination and stubbornness that had been the trademark of their last leader, the late Bull Dozer.

Having completely fooled Devillian by their retreat from Eagle Rock, the mighty 1st had been dropped off ninety miles from the southern rim of the canyon the night before, the nearest place that their huge C-5 transports could set down upon. After meeting up with Bad River and his main group of Piutes, the combined force had traveled all night, first through the brutal cold of the desert and then into its scorching sun, to arrive on the scene of the climactic battle-the right place at the right time.

Now Hunter put the Harrier into a screaming dive, a glimmer of hope burning in his heart.

"Just hang on," he silently urged the men inside the train.

"Just a few minutes longer. . . ."

The final battle was brutal yet brief.

At the first sight of the approaching United American

cavalry, many of the Burning Cross soldiers actually a

hodgepodge of mercenary gangs deemed unsuitable to take part in the main canyon battle turned and scattered. Those who ran to the south were met with a withering fire from Hunter's jumpjet. Those who fled north chose a slower, more painful death; there wasn't a piece of shade, a drop of water or a spot of civilization for a hundred miles around in that direction.

Most of the Burning Cross soldiers who stayed and fought were cut down by the mounted United American soldiers in brutal short order. By the end of ten minutes of sharp combat, those enemy soldiers still standing, threw up their hands in surrender.

The war was done. . . .

That evening, the scorched, battered but still-proud

Freedom Express
sat quietly in the middle of the Mojave Desert, less than two hundred miles from Los Angeles.

Although the men who had survived the horrors of the Grand Canyon were exhausted, many of them were spending several hours cleaning and repainting the train. Others were patching up the two workable locomotives in hopes that they would be able to pull the remainder of the railcars the last couple of hundred miles to their destination. The UA leaders were not surprised at the
espirit de corps
of the men on the train. As one of them told Catfish: "We want to look our very best when we roll into LA.

We took on the Badlands and won . . . and we want to look like winners."

Hunter and the other pilots pitched in, and before midnight the battle-scarred train had been at least symbolically restored to its former splendor and dignity. The two remaining

locomotives now proudly sported the red, white and blue colors so cherished by the American people.

Despite their fatigue, Hunter and his friends talked far into the night, unwinding from the tremendous battle they had just won. Spirits were high and the booze was flowing.

"I've got just one regret, Hawk," Crossbow observed. "I wish I'd been the one to get Devillian. After what he did to my people, I owed him."

"Don't worry. When I put that Sidewinder into his Hind, it was for all of us," Hunter said.

"God, Jones better watch out," JT broke in. "Hawk's starting to sound like a politician; he'll probably want to run for president pretty soon."

"Not a chance," Hunter replied.

He had other plans. . . .

"I think the worst thing for Devillian in this whole thing,"

Catfish said, "was that a black man had a hand in beating him.

That must have hurt almost as much as Hawk's missile." \

"Not to mention that a bunch of Indians wound up on the winning side," Crossbow added. "I hope we are just rid of him for good." It was the only piece of uncertainty left. Hunter had told them that while his last Sidewinder shot had been true, it had been hastily fired as he was turning in a hurry to get back to the train as it was being attacked by the last of Devillian's forces. Thus all the talk about the demise of Devillian left Hunter with a slightly uneasy feeling.

But he quickly shook it off when they were informed via the scrambler that General Jones would be on hand for their entrance into LA the following day.

"He wanted to be with us for the whole trip," Hunter said.

"But his security people would never have allowed it."

Fitz smiled and raised his glass of beer in a toast. "I never felt for one minute that he wasn't here with us," he said.

That comment brought a few moments of silence, as most of the men in the group recalled experiences they had shared in the past with the general. Finally Hunter raised his bottle of beer again and proposed a second toast.

"To the general-the
second
father of his country."

For a long time, the man lay in the smoldering ruins of the helicopter, feeling nothing.

Finally, consciousness began to return. And with it came an overwhelming sensation of pain. His entire body felt as if it was broken in half. Much of his skin was burned. And the frigid desert night air was nearly as unbearable as the flames in the chopper had been.

But Duke Devillian was alive.

It took what seemed to be an eternity, but finally he

managed to pull his battered body away from the wreckage and the gruesome skeleton of Lieutenant Kolotov. Everything started spinning around in his head, and he nearly collapsed again. But he fought the urge to pass out and, through sheer determination, continued crawling.

Slowly, his head cleared, and he was able to sit up and look around. It was freezing, the full moon mocking him with its display of false warmth. He painfully turned his head in every direction, only to find nothing but flat, endless desert and rocks.

Devillian began staggering across the barren landscape.

For nearly an hour he wandered aimlessly, tripping over dozens of animal and human skulls lying in the desolation of the aptly named Death Valley. Finally, his battered body could carry him no farther, and he collapsed, facedown, in the ice-cold sand.

Just before dawn, a single helicopter appeared on the

horizon.

It was a Soviet-built Hook, capable of flying long

distances and carrying as many as two dozen people. The sharp-eyed female pilot spotted the body lying in the desert, and turned back for a second look. Flying low enough to see the man's features, the pilot called back to her crew to prepare to land.

Within five minutes the chopper was down and the

unconscious body of Duke Devillian loaded aboard. Taking off shortly thereafter, the female commander of the Hook pushed a series of buttons on her console and sent a coded message back to the chopper's secret base, a location deep in the wilds of Alberta, Free Canada.

"Tell Elizabeth that we've found him" was all the message said. Also shivering in the desert night air was Red Banner.

He had turned religious about twelve hours before, after one of the helicopters from the train fired a barrage of missiles into the gun and communication station where Banner had been doing his enforced play-by-play commentary of the Grand Canyon battle.

Miraculously, the missiles had killed everyone at the

position but Banner.

It had taken him more than a couple hours to recover from the shock and to convince himself that he was indeed still alive and breathing. Then he spent another eight hours climbing down from the high, all encompassing perch.

Now he was hiding behind a large boulder, watching as a huge helicopter took off and turned to the north. He had just witnessed the crew-all women, so it appeared -retrieving what may have been a wounded soldier from the desert floor.

He had surprised himself by not running toward the chopper as soon as it appeared. He'd been scanning the skies for nearby choppers all night and into the early morning, planning to flag down the first one he saw in an effort to get rescued. But something inside him-they could call it newsman's instinct he supposed-told him that he wanted nothing to do with this particular chopper.

Instead he waited for another hour when the sun was finally rising and the desert air was beginning to heat up. Within minutes of the dawn, the sky was filled with helicopters belonging to the Coasters as well as the LA militia, sweeping back and forth over the battle area, looking for survivors.

All it took was several waves of his bright red toupee for him to attract a Coaster Chinook, and soon Banner was on his way back to LA, already composing the speech he intended to deliver to Wild Bill which would list his demands for a doubling of his salary-at the very least.

Preparations for welcoming the
Freedom Express
to Los Angeles dwarfed the festivities that had been planned for the illfated train of the Modern Pioneers, now more than a month before.

Nearly every citizen within reach of Los Angeles tried to jam into the vicinity of the hastily rebuilt Amtrak station, awaiting the arrival of the United Americans' famous train.

Stretching for miles from the station into the outskirts of the sprawling city, the train tracks were lined with flags, banners, balloons, and more than a million people, all of them eager for a glimpse of their new heroes.

In downtown LA, hundreds of bands had gathered to greet the train with rousing, very loud, patriotic music. As one witness put it, the long-awaited earthquake that people for years had feared would split California apart from the rest of the continent might well be caused by reverberations from this

"battle of the bands." The World Series quake of years ago would have seemed dull in comparison.

Red Banner, having survived his flight to LA by the Coaster rescue chopper earlier that morning, insisted that he was up to covering the arrival of the train for KOAS-TV. As many as twenty million people had listened to his "brave" and "stirring"

commentary during the broadcast of the titanic Grand Canyon battle, making him as much of a hero as the men on the train.

Thus, the last thing he wanted to do was pass up the opportunity to bask in the sunshine of his mushroomed popularity.

But this time, he was keeping his feet solidly on terra firma. He had built a temporary broadcasting booth on a platform not far from the Amtrak station, giving him a good view-not an aerial, birds-eye view, but close enough -of the festivities.

And just to be safe, he had insisted the booth was surrounded with bulletproof glass.

Bandaged and pleasantly sedated, Banner was warming up his audience now, assaulting them with a constant barrage of overblown language.-"It won't be long now, citizens. Not since Hannibal crossed the Alps . . . not since Columbus crossed the Atlantic . . . not since man first traveled to the moon . . .

has there been a journey to match this one. Take it from one who was there, never in the history of mankind has a group of brave, valiant souls overcome such odds, suffered such horror. . ."

Banner rambled on, never suspecting that the TV audience for his masterful performance, the epitome of his reportorial career, had been reduced to little more than a handful of shut-ins. Just about everyone else in the LA region was on hand in person to witness the train's arrival.

After hours of waiting, the crowd was rewarded with the first sign that the
Freedom Express
was coming.

Hunter's Harrier came into view from the east, flying low along the tracks, leading the way for the train. Then came the two Cobras, their blades flashing in the bright California sunshine. Finally, the
Freedom Express
itself-or what was left of it -roared into view, the two battered red, white and blue locomotives heralding its triumphant arrival. There were only four cars still attached to the Dash-8's, the rest of the damaged railway cars having been disconnected at a switch off near San Bernardino. However, this quartet of cars was covered with the surviving Football City Rangers as well as Bad River's Piutes.

And serving as the caboose was the heavily damaged but still imposing weapons car carrying the gigantic cannon known as Big Dick, which had its share of Football City Rangers hanging all over it.

The City of Angels simply went wild at the first sight of the train. A mighty roar went up from the crowd, starting out in the valley and rolling like a huge tidal wave through the foothills, into downtown LA and to the shores of the Pacific.

On board, Fitz and Crossbow watched as the throngs

thundered their welcome. Thousands of flags filled the air; guns fired ear-splitting salutes; bands blasted songs like "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "When the Saints Go Marching In." The accumulated noise was louder than anything the United Americans had endured during the height of the Grand Canyon battle.

Finally, the train rumbled into the Amtrak station, where a huge, flag-draped platform had been erected for a welcoming ceremony. By this time, Hunter and the Cobras had landed nearby, and now they climbed onto the platform to join General Jones, Louie St. Louie, JT, Ben, the Wreckers and many other top officials of the United American Command. This distinguished group also included Catfish-whose troops were riding toward the city and were scheduled to arrive to another huge welcome later that evening-and the clearly bewildered, but very dignified Piute chief, Bad River.

General Jones took his place in front of the microphone, and at this point, the crowd's roar reached an even greater crescendo.