Freedom Express (7 page)

Then one day, Duke Devillian came back into their lives.

Devillian had actually been dealing with the Cross for several years. Long an ardent admirer of the Nazis and their doctrines, the cross-eyed Texan was also a slave to the notion that "White is Right,"

and therefore, like the Nazis, he had little patience for do-gooders who still thought that people of different races could live together in peace.

Colored? Asians? Indians? Mixing peacefully with pure White? How could anyone be that stupid? he would ask himself over and over.

Like his daddy before him, Devillian had jumped into the Ku Klux Klan with both feet as a young man, doing his best to stir up racial hatred wherever he went. In the violent days that followed World War III, he turned to gunrunning-both selling and buying as a way of living. His customers needed only to pass one test: They had to be white. After that he would supply them with any and all weapons he could muster, no matter how perverse their cause might be.

Coincidently the Twisted Cross became one of his best customers, and for Devillian, it was like a dream come true. Nothing like a good mix of business and pleasure to bring out the best in a man, he thought.

Being arms dealers themselves, the Nazi's procurement section hired Devillian as a sort of advance man for them, scouring the fringes of the American continent, his pockets full of Nazi money, buying up weapons caches that were for sale and stealing ones that weren't.

Then came the devastating defeat of the Cross in Panama. When that happened, Devillian was so despondent he nearly committed suicide. His dream of riding to power on bloody Nazi coattails seemed to vanish.

However, it didn't take long for him to see that the Cross's defeat could be a golden opportunity for him.

Over the years, Devillian had built up a fortune in gold and diamonds through his black market dealings. Even more importantly, he had made a lot of contacts with powerful people, including many enemies of America. One by one, those enemies had been defeated by the United Americans-vanquished, but not totally wiped out. Like Heck and his Nazi cohorts, they had retreated to lick their wounds and dream of revenge.

Somewhere along the way, Devillian decided he could be the one to make those dreams come true.

With his nefarious network reaching into many of the terrorist groups around the Bads, who was better positioned to unite all of the scattered enemies of America? Who was better equipped to build a new organization that could rise from the ashes of past defeats and launch a new, even more deadly challenge to the United Americans?

Once this grand idea came to him, Devillian wasted little time putting a plan into action. He recruited some of his old cohorts from the Klan, and together they began to quietly expand their power base by forming a secret alliance of Badlands terrorist organizations that had been operating in their own hit-or-miss fashions.

Supplying arms for his growing army was no problem for the cross-eyed terrorist. He knew most of the major gunrunners and weapons smugglers still operating in the world. Plus his contacts also included people who owned some fairly sophisticated military aircraft. Soon enough, Devillian had himself a patchwork air force containing a number of Soviet fighters as well as French Mirage aircraft.

Then another deal was added to this deadly air corps. It was no secret that the most vicious and feared of the Canal Nazi units was the Skinhead squadron. Eighteen pilots in all, the 'Heads flew their F-4J Phantoms with a bloody and reckless abandon that struck fear into enemies and allies alike. Temporarily "unemployed," they were only too happy to accept Devillian's invitation to join his evil crusade.

But Devillian still lacked a cohesive, well-trained officer corps to keep his unruly bandit gangs in line. So when he finally approached Major Heck, he already had put in place the foundation for a military organization that would rival the Twisted Cross at the height of its power; yet it was one that lacked the needed discipline from the top. Heck jumped at the opportunity to round up what was left of the Canal Nazis' officer organization and join forces with Devillian.

To prove his value to Devillian's cause, Heck had been given a test assignment: stop the cross-country train journey of the Modern Pioneers. Heck accomplished this with typical, ruthless efficiency.

Any lingering doubts Devillian might have entertained about Heck's ability to command troops again vanished when he heard about the fate of the train. The meeting in Houston completed the incorporation of the old Twisted Cross officers' corps into Devillian's new war machine. News of this sinister union spread quickly though quietly through the Badlands, and hundreds of additional air pirates, bandits and other low-lifes decided to jump on the bandwagon. If there was going to be another war, they didn't want to miss out on the action.

With his still-secret army growing in numbers and power, Devillian's recent visit to Football City had been a kind of celebration-
cum
-scouting mission. He loved the very smell of money, and it permeated the very air of the place. Moreover, he dreamed of the day when his forces would march into Football City and he would take over the gambling empire.

But there was something that Devillian liked even more than money, and that was why he was sitting in the cockpit of the fiercesome Hind gunship.

Quite simply, he enjoyed killing people. And not just one or two murders at a time-he'd had enough of that during his Klan days. No, what really turned him on was slaughtering dozens, even hundreds, of people, all at once, and then filming the freshly killed bodies soon afterward. Just the thought of roaring out of the sky in a powerful airplane, with its nose cameras turned on and all guns blazing, blasting away at anything that moved on the ground, was enough to make his scrotum pulsate. Now he knew what the Nazi pilots of World War II must have felt like strafing helpless civilians, bombing hospitals and schoolyards. Getting rid of the riff-raff.

Purify the country. That was the name of the game.

Of course, he couldn't actually fly an airplane, but he could function as a gunner, and that was even better: He got to pull the trigger that unleashed all that glorious havoc, all the while recording the carnage on his video gun cameras. As a favor from Heck, he had flown with the squadron of Skinheads that demolished the old Topeka airport just for the fun of it -and he had loved every bloody minute of it. When they landed and he filmed the death and destruction they had caused, he was overcome with a surge of sexual excitement so strong he nearly passed out.

It had been the best day of his life.

Now the whining of the helicopter's engines starting up knocked him out of his seminal daydream and back to reality.

"Buckled in?" the Skinhead pilot's raspy voice asked him over the intercom from the back seat. Normally an F-4 fighter pilot, this particular 'Head had drawn the shit duty of carting Devillian all around the Badlands.

"Shit, yes, I'm buckled in!" Devillian anxiously replied. "Now just get this fucking thing into the air."

The Red Star that formerly had adorned the tail of the Hind was gone. In its place was a large cross shown against a backdrop of fire-the symbol of Devillian's new organization, the Knights of the Burning Cross.

Devillian glanced back at his Skinhead pilot just as the Hind was lifting off.

He's an ugly bastard, but he sure knows how to put this baby through its paces, Devillian thought.

They turned west, over Oklahoma, heading for the secret headquarters Devillian had established in the wilds of the desert southwest. It was here that he was going to meet with his chief lieutenants to inform them of the news he had picked up during his visit to Football City.

Several days before Devillian flew to the gambling mecca, his spies had told him about a huge train that had rolled into town from the east, apparently headed for the West Coast, Devillian wasn't too surprised. He figured that someone would eventually be foolish enough to try and succeed where the Modern Pioneers had failed. However, from all reports, this latest train was much bigger and was hauling a tremendous amount of firepower.

By the time Devillian arrived in Football City, the whole place was buzzing about the super train. He had even traveled down to the railway station to get a look at it himself, though it wasn't much of a sight as all its cars had been covered over with canvas tarps.

But the trip had confirmed one thing: Just as Devillian had suspected, the United Americans were responsible for assembling and operating the train.

And for many reasons, learning this had made him perversely happy.

They flew along uneventfully, the Skinhead pilot keeping the Hind about a thousand feet above the wide open Oklahoma rangeland.

Suddenly, Devillian became erect with excitement. He grabbed his microphone and screamed back to the pilot: "Over there!" He pointed toward the ground. "I thought I saw something. Let's go down and take a look."

The Skinhead scanned where Devillian was pointing and saw a small band of horsemen. He immediately swung the Hind in that direction and put the chopper into a steep dive.

"Are they Indians?" Devillian asked, his voice murderously giddy. "They are! Fucking moccasin-sniffing Indians. Plug me in, I'm going to let 'em have it!"

The pilot nonchalantly flicked a control switch which supplied power both to the Hind's twin-barreled chin cannon and its nose-mounted video camera. No sooner was this done than Devillian was squeezing the cannon's trigger and screaming like a madman.

"You goddamn buffalo fuckers!" he roared with delight as the helicopter bore down on the horsemen who had all now turned as one to escape.

The cannon was blazing away, spewing streaks of fire into the midst of the terrified Indians. One pass wiped out most of the men and horses, but Devillian wanted more.

"Go back for the rest of the bastards!" he ordered the pilot.

"And keep the cameras rolling!"

They swung the Hind around and dove again, perforating the few remaining riders with two long blasts. Devillian then demanded that they make a third pass, just to make sure no one had survived.

Out of the corner of his crossed eye, he caught sight of a lone horseman dashing across a stretch of open prairie toward the relative safety of a nearby forest.

"
Damn
! we did miss one," Devillian yelled. "Quick -let's get him!"

The Skinhead pilot stifled a yawn and sent the aircraft hurtling toward the fleeing figure. He leveled off the Hind just a few feet above the ground, allowing Devillian to zero in for a final, killing shot. Just as he fired, the rider jerked his mount sharply to the right. A miss. Devillian fired again at the zigzagging horseman.

Another miss.

Suddenly Devillian shrieked: "
Christ
! The goddamn trees!"

A look of mild panic distorted the Skinhead's face as he glanced up and saw the forest looming less than a hundred feet in front of the speeding aircraft. He yanked on the controls, and the Hind shot upward, its belly brushing the tops of the trees as it barely cleared the edge of the small forest.

"You stupid bastard!" Devillian was practically foaming at the mouth. "You almost got us killed."

"
You're
the one who told me to get him," the pilot protested angrily, not accustomed to taking such guff. If it had been anyone else that had talked to him like that, the Skinhead would have landed and bit the man's neck until he died of blood loss.

"I didn't tell you to ram us into the goddamn woods doing it,"

Devillian barked at him.

They circled the small clump of trees twice, but saw no sign of their prey. Devillian settled back and took some deep breaths. "Aw, what the fuck, it'll give the SOB something to tell the squaws about,"

he roared crazily. "That is, if the chicken bastard stops running before he hits South America. Now, let's get out of here."

As the aircraft headed westward, the lone horseman reemerged from the forest. Michael Crossbow's eyes blazed with tears of pure hatred as he watched the Hind disappear over the horizon.

Someday, he vowed, he would find whoever was in that aircraft.

. . .

The
Freedom Express
pulled into the old Topeka railroad station just before dusk.

Hawk Hunter gently set the Harrier down on the landing car and climbed out of the cockpit. Waiting for him at the side of the train were JT and Ben Wa, who had left their Strikefighters with a guard at the nearby airport and hitched a ride back to the train with the Cobra Brothers.

The men immediately went to the Control car where they met Catfish and Fitzgerald, who had spent most of the first day ironing out bugs in the Dash-8's combined computer system.

Hunter immediately asked JT and Ben Wa to describe the scene at the Topeka airport. They took the next few minutes doing so, in detail: the bodies, the widespread, indiscriminate destruction, the evidence of advanced weaponry.

"Nothing was looted though," Ben said. "We found weapons and booze and even money still laying around. Usually a raiding party would suck up all that kind of stuff. It was almost like whoever did it, did it as a lark."

"And of course they left that flag behind," JT said, finishing up his report by describing the banner.

"And I'm not real thrilled with their choice of symbols," Catfish moaned. "God, that's all we need, a bunch of yahoos running around under the banner of a burning cross."