The
Freedom
Express
pulled into Dodge later that evening, running right on schedule.
Hunter, Crunch and Elvis were sitting in one of the coach cars, drinking beer and trying to relax as they told Catfish of the mysterious behavior of the Starfighters and the resulting unopposed occupation of the airport. While they spoke, the long process of disconnecting the three heavily armored railway cars that would make up the Dodge City mini-fort had begun.
"So those bandits just high-tailed it out of there, eh?" Catfish asked for not the first time.
"Not your typical air pirate modus operandi, is it?" Hunter replied worriedly. When low-lifes like air pirates went against their normal operating procedures -swarm tactics sometimes fought to the last man-bells went off in his head. He immediately began to think trouble.
"Could be they're just laying back," Crunch said. "Maybe they'll hit us tonight and try to reclaim the airport."
"Maybe," Hunter said. "Maybe not."
"Fitz already called Jones with the news," Catfish said, opening four more beers and passing them around. "He's making arrangements to borrow a dozen F-5's and crews from the Free Canadians. They will be out here tomorrow. It's only temporary, but it should keep the air pirates away from our fort.”
While the others nodded in agreement, Hunter just pulled his chin in worry.
"That's a good move," he said. "But I've got a feeling that those Star fighters aren't coming back. And dammit, that bothers me."
After another hour of conversation, the weary men turned in for the evening.
Hunter fell asleep almost immediately, though he tossed and turned most of the time. Usually his sleep was deep and peaceful, but again tonight his head was filled with strange voices. Still he did not feel the commotion around two AM when the three mini-fort railway cars were finally disconnected from the rear of the train and pushed onto a side spur at the old Amtrak station.
Thus, the new Dodge City was born.
This done, the
Freedom Express
started up again and, while most on board slept, slowly moved out of town.
The next stop was a small settlement named Cimarron, located in the northeast corner of New Mexico. This was going to be one of the most dangerous sites on the entire route for establishing a new settlement. Not only was Cimarron right on the edge of the heart of the southern Badlands, it was less than a hundred miles north of Santa Fe.
Once an attractive and prosperous city, Santa Fe had become a symbol of all that was wrong with the southern Bads. A boiling pot of vice and corruption, it drew bandits, murderers, criminals, black marketeers and other disreputable types from all over the West.
Prostitution, drug dealing, gunrunning, white slavery and terrorism were in such vogue, the place made the anarchic cities of west Texas look like vacation resorts.
During the dark early morning hours, the
Express
made its way steadily across western Kansas and into the tip of the Oklahoma panhandle. A night patrol by Crunch and Elvis found nothing unforeseen coming toward the train from any direction.
But then suddenly, just before dawn, Hunter found himself sitting straight up in his bed, wide awake in a flash.
"
Something's wrong
. . .” an inner voice called to him.
He was strapping into the Harrier less than a minute later.
Skinhead Commander Studs Mallox spotted the train from
twenty-five miles out at twenty-five thousand feet.
At this height, the
Freedom Express
looked like a great silver serpent, slithering through the foothills of Oklahoma. Already he could see the two patrolling Phantom jets circling above the train, a sure indication that his strike force had been detected.
No matter, he thought. In fact, that was the whole idea.
Studs barked out a series of orders to his five accompanying F-4's and the pair of creaky, radio-controlled B-57 Canberra bombers they were escorting.
"You know what to do," he commanded after each of his airplanes had assumed its attack profile. "Don't anyone screw up, or I'll personally fry his ass in butter."
The lumbering remote-controlled B-57's dropped down to a perilously low three hundred fifty feet and roared over the set of tracks toward the approaching train. In the meantime, Studs ordered three of his F-4's to engage the trio of aircraft-one of them a jumpjet-that was coming right toward them.
"Just keep 'em busy," Studs told the other F-4 Skinheads. "That's all "
Hunter sent the Harrier roaring through the formation of oncoming Phantoms, twisting and turning to avoid the cannon fire that suddenly filled the air. He zeroed in on the lead F-4, unleashed a Sidewinder and immediately put the Harrier into a steep climb to escape the flying debris from the resulting explosion.
Per their hastily devised plan, Crunch and Elvis dove and plunged right into the path of the Canberra bombers, knowing the bigger jets could cause more damage to the train than the smaller Phantoms. The Wreckers combined to send both B-57's crashing to the tracks -and did so with surprising ease. Meanwhile, Hunter had circled around for another pass and destroyed a Skinhead Phantom that had doubled back to try and protect the bombers.
Although the B-57's now lay burning on the trackbed about a mile in front of the train, the four surviving Phantoms clustered together and continued the attack. Hunter radioed back to Catfish with a warning, and the major assured him the train's crew members were at their battle stations.
The first two Phantoms came in low over the locomotives, raining cannon fire-but no missiles - onto the Dash-8's as well as the lead cars. One of the locomotives took a direct hit, its turbo-engine exploding in a tremendous flash.
A second later, the enemy Phantoms were greeted with a solid wall of firepower from the train's antiaircraft batteries. At the same time, Hunter, Crunch and Elvis attacked the Phantoms from above with deadly, coordinated dives as the enemy F-4's were pulling up from their bomb runs. One enemy plane was instantly destroyed.
But the battle had raged for barely a minute when, quite suddenly, the three surviving Phantoms turned and fled.
Again, our attackers run, thought Hunter. It was a pattern that kept repeating with mysterious frequency.
He resisted an urge to pursue the retreating Phantoms, deciding instead to turn back and check on the damage to the
Freedom Express
.
The train had come to a complete halt by this time, and circling overhead, he could see at least one locomotive was badly crippled and that flames were shooting from several cars.
Soldiers from the train were already fighting the fires and within minutes had the situation under control. Hunter quickly set the Harrier down on its landing car and joined Catfish and Fitzgerald, who were inspecting the damage. At the same time, the Wreckers headed for Dodge to refuel.
"It's bad, but I don't think it will slow us down that much,"
Fitzgerald told Hunter.
"That locomotive is done for, though," Catfish said, pointing to Engine Number
5. "Too bad it's right in the middle of all the others. We'll just have to drag it along with us for a while."
"At least the train is a little lighter than when we started," Fitz noted, referring to the cars that had been dropped off in Topeka and Dodge City. "And after tonight, it'll be more so-that is, if we make it to Cimarron."
At that point, the two Cobra Brothers pilots appeared. They had just checked out the wreckage of the F-4's downed nearby.
"Are you ready for this?" Crockett asked. "Those F-4's were being driven by Skinheads."
"That's all we need," Fitz said. "First air pirates, and now leftover Nazis."
Hunter instantly felt his worries multiply by a factor of two. Running up against the brutal Skinheads was bad enough. But there was something else: He knew the crazy Nazi pilots had a reputation of never retreating. They would usually fight on until the last man was dead.
So why did they give up and run? he wondered again.
At the controls of one of the fleeing Phantoms was Studs Mallox, and he was feeling very pissed-off.
It was the first time in his life that he and his gang had ever left a fight before it had been settled. Doing so was against their very nature.
But Devillian had been adamant; so much so, Mallox could still hear the cross-eyed leader's words in his ears: "Sting 'em, but that's all."
Mallox hated taking orders from a weasel like Devillian.
But they had agreed to play it his way-for the time being, at least.
"Besides, it ain't
that
bad," Studs told himself, removing his oxygen mask and lighting up his crack pipe. "It's not like we
really
lost."
The sun was just going down in a blaze of desert glory when Hunter lifted off in the Harrier and turned south.
He had spent the rest of the daylight hours helping the repair crews fix the damage to the train. The tally for the strangely limited Skinhead air attack was the one locomotive and a few shot-up storage cars.
However, they were all surprised to learn that the two
B-57's that had crashed on the tracks about a mile in front of the train had not only been radio-controlled, but they had also been carrying hundreds of small mines in their bomb bays, which had scattered in every direction at the time of impact.
Now, what would have been a fairly routine track-clearing operation had turned into a delicate, hazardous and
time-consuming task. Catfish had estimated the train would be dangerously stalled for at least two days.
On first glance, it might have appeared to an outside
observer that the attacks on the train had been random and sporadic -potentially serious, yet just the kind of opposition the United Americans had expected to encounter and overcome during the trip.
But for Hunter, too many things just didn't add up: The lightning quick destruction at Topeka was well executed, yet no victorious troops had taken possession of the prize. The unusually large concentration of Starfighters at Dodge could have seriously damaged the train had they chosen to attack, yet instead, they mysteriously deserted their airbase. The six Skinhead Phantoms could have easily been carrying bombs that would have severely damaged the train, yet they chose only to strafe it with cannon fire.
Most important, the two remote-control B-57's could have been laden with high explosives, enough to blow a
quarter-mile-wide hole in the tracks. But their bomb bays were filled only with bothersome mines.
He knew that no commander in his right mind would attempt to stop a train with mines. Nor was it wise to launch an attack as halfhearted as the one the night before-not unless the goal was something other than total destruction of the target.
And strange as it seemed, that's exactly what Hunter had come to suspect.
He was airborne only twenty minutes when the lights of Santa Fe loomed on the horizon. Bright, garish with a sickly tone of pink to them, the lights seemed to perfectly fit the description of the city itself.
Yet it was here he felt he had to go -not just to play a hunch, but to see if he could sniff out some solid evidence that would make his suspicions a little less fantastic. He knew that in many cases, truth was found only after searching through a pit of lies.
And Santa Fe was a pit.
He had no intention of landing the Harrier at the city's airport and leaving it there, unguarded, while he prowled the untamed city in search of information. Instead, he had to find an area that was properly secluded, yet still offered enough open space to accommodate the jumpjet.
Using a pair of Night Vision infrared goggles, he spotted an outcropping of large rocks about a mile north of the city.
Putting the Harrier into its vertical descent mode, he eased it down into a small, flat area completely surrounded by the high boulders. Then he skillfully maneuvered the versatile aircraft even closer to the rocks, finally managing to get most of it underneath a huge, overhanging ledge.
Satisfied that the plane was nearly impossible to spot
particularly since no one in his right mind would be looking for an airplane out here, anyway-Hunter set off on foot for the edge of town, his trusty M-16 slung over his shoulder.
His adventure
within
an adventure had begun.
He jogged the mile toward the lights and soon entered a particularly rough area known as West Santa Fe, which was actually on the outskirts of the main city itself.
As he walked through the streets, he saw that some of the roadways were brightly lit, while others were dim. So, too, on some streets, most of the houses seemed deserted. On others, they were overcrowded with signs of humanity.
At the end of a particularly gloomy street, Hunter turned the corner and almost ran into two men and a woman who were staggering along, trying to hold each other up.
"Watch where the fuck you're going," slurred one of the men as the trio lurched past.
When he looked up from the brief encounter, Hunter was
astonished at what he saw. The street in front of him was absolutely filled with people -all of them dressed similar to him: shabby fatigues, longish hair, three-to-five-day growth of beard, some kind of weapon slung over the shoulder and a slightly bleary look to the eye.