Hunter closed his eyes and sat very still for five long minutes.
"Devillian will begin to deploy his major formations within thirty-six hours," he said finally. "He is planning his final attack right now."
Fitz was astonished. It was almost as if he were talking to an entirely different person.
"Are you sure, Hawk?" was all he could ask. "Once we get over these mountains and into Arizona itself, there won't be many places they can attack us from concealed positions. That terrain out there is pretty flat-most of it anyway."
"This is why we must prepare to be attacked while we are still in these hills," Hunter replied. "But these will not be the major actions-rather they will be designed to weaken us.
Therefore, we must ward off these smaller attacks as
economically as possible. We must not deplete our strength swatting at flies."
Fitz took a long look at his friend. Not only had Hunter's voice changed, but it seemed like his features had also been transformed somehow as well. His hair appeared to have grown several inches in just a few days, yet his stubble beard remained the same. But strangest of all, the corners of his eyes seemed to have become slightly slanted.
This overload of scary mysticism was nearly too much for Fitzie's Old Sod sensibilities. Still, Hunter was his closest friend, and he had stuck by him in strange times before.
"Well, our boys are ready for anything," Fitz finally told him. "Just give us the word and we'll do it. We've just got to remember that it will be hard to fight anyone off with us moving so slowly."
"I know," Hunter said, rubbing his weary forehead and hearing his own voice return to normal. "But there is a reason why we are down to just a crawl. We can't let them know our true capability."
Fitz nodded and gave Hunter a fatherly pat on the back.
"How are you holding up, Hawker?" Fitz asked him sincerely.
"I don't pretend to understand any of this, but I can tell it's quite a burden to carry."
Hunter nodded wearily and sneezed again.
"It's just something that has to be done, Mike" was all he said.
The next day
Juanita took a deep breath and knocked once on the Play Pen's massive oak doors.
There was no reply.
She turned to the squad of sentries behind her and nodded.
"Break it down," she said calmly.
It was a big decision. No one had seen or heard from
Devillian in nearly twenty-four hours -not since he'd received the news about the devastating attacks on Santa Fe, Port Desemboque and the near-annihilation of the Skull and Crossbones battalion.
Predictably, things had ground to a halt on top of the mesa.
Many believed Devillian was dead -shot by his own hand shortly after hearing all the bad news. Others theorized that he was simply wounded inside the vast sin chamber, or perhaps
unconscious from too much crack and liquor.
Still, despite these fears, none of the officers at the Burning Cross headquarters had enough gumption to break into the Play Pen and find out. They knew from past incidents that should Devillian still be alive, he would most likely shoot the first, second, and even third person to walk into the room, for little or no reason at all.
Only Juanita had had the guts to agree to go in to the room first, and then only after the soldiers broke the door down for her.
Now two guards walked up and smashed the door with their heavy axes. It took only about a half dozen blows to spring the bulletproof lock. Once this snapped, the soldiers retreated.
Juanita on the other hand kicked the door open with her high-heeled black boot and calmly walked inside.
To her utter astonishment, Devillian was sitting on the huge couch, a large box of popcorn in his hand, watching a movie on his giant TV screen and listening to the audio through a pair of headphones. In one corner, the terrorist leader's popcorn popper had overheated and had filled the room with a haze of sickly salty smoke.
Yet, despite the damage and commotion caused by the broken door, the cross-eyed white supremacist hardly winced when he saw Juanita standing before him.
"You look beautiful today," he said, glaring at her after freezing the frame on the TV screen.
"We were concerned," Juanita replied, noting by the frozen TV frame that Devillian had been watching a cowboys-and-Indians movie. "We thought you were . . . despondent."
Devillian laughed as he took off his headphones completely.
"You thought I was dead," he told her bluntly. "I'll bet suicide was the theory, wasn't it?"
She didn't answer him.
"I guess I shouldn't be too surprised," he continued.
"However, I've spent this time very constructively. Do you remember, my sweet, that at the first meeting of our command officers I mentioned that my grand design was actually in two phases?"
Juanita nodded. "Yes, the first phase was to draw the train into our territory," she said. "To hit it only marginally-
sting
it
-as you called it."
"Very good," Devillian replied with a leer. He then pointed to a bulging notebook next to the couch. "In there, my beauty, is the blueprint for the second phase," he bragged. "It is my auteur theory, you might say. I have finally completed the details of my plan for final defeat of the United Americans."
"I admire your enthusiasm," she told him. "We have lost two major points of supply and almost five hundred of our best troops. Anyone else would have considered what has happened to us in the past few days to be very dire."
Devillian began laughing hysterically.
"When will you realize that I'm not like anyone else, my dear?" he asked her, his voice affecting a strange, childlike tone. "In fact, I am authentically happy that those events happened."
"But why?"
"Because, my dearest," he continued. "Now our ultimate goal can be fulfilled. Don't you see? The United Americans are continuing this foolish adventure of theirs, even though many of their troops have left the train. If I was despondent over anything, it was the fact that three days ago, it had appeared like they have given up before I could complete the second bold stroke of my plan."
"But I do not understand why you are so happy that the train continues," Juanita said. "To my mind, we should have hit it
-
destroyed
it -as soon as we learned about their surprise attacks on us. Now, I'm sure the word has spread across the country that the train is still moving west, and that can only make the citizens root for these United Americans even more than before."
"That's exactly my point, my lovely," Devillian replied.
"The people in this country will be even more enamored with these fools than before. And for us, that's
perfect
. Because this increased adoration will be like a monkey on the backs of the people who stayed with the train. With every mile west they go, they will have that many people rooting for them. And that means when we finally
crush
them, we will have the undivided attention of everyone.
Everyone
! That is the essence of the second phase of my plan."
Juanita was authentically confused now, but this did
nothing to stop Devillian from continuing his speech.
"What I am saying," he continued, "is that we will have our audience! Millions will see our grand finale. It will be an event on the order of the greatest production ever undertaken."
Suddenly, Devillian's momentary gleeful appearance gave way to a worse-than-usual scowl.
"These United Americans probably think they're playing tough," he said, gritting his teeth. "Well, we'll see just how tough they are when I start to cut them with a thousand knives.
I will bleed them -slowly. Then, when they get to precisely the right point, I will crush them once and for all!"
"But what if they are simply heading for the next track turnaround?" Juanita asked him. "There are many they could try for. Perhaps this is all just a way for them to salvage the valuable weapons on the train and escape."
Devillian looked at her and for the thousandth time
fantasized what it would be like to ravage her.
"My dearest, our first phase was so successful in drawing the train into our territory that I promise you it will have no choice but to keep moving west," he said. "In fact, I guarantee it will go right where we want it to."
Juanita cocked her head to one side as if to say that
Devillian's boast was impossible to fulfill.
"You doubt me?" he asked her. "Then just watch." He reached down and pushed his intercom button. "Get me the commander of the Skinhead squadron," he barked into the microphone.
Three seconds went by, and then a gruff voice came on the line.
"Mallox here. . . . What do you want?"
Devillian's harsh voice turned to an authentic growl. "I want you to launch every one of your aircraft immediately and bomb every railroad junction that the train could use in order to turn back," he commanded. "The only track route I want still intact by the end of the day is the Amtrak southern tier track
-the one that the train is riding on now. Do you understand?"
They could hear Mallox start to swear. "Why don't we just go and blast the shit out of that fucking train like we should have done days ago?" he asked.
"No!" Devillian screamed back at him. "That train will be destroyed only when I give the order to do so! Now, do you understand the mission I just gave you?"
"Sure, I do." came the Skinhead commander's less than enthusiastic reply. "But you realize this is going to take a big bite out of our fuel reserves."
"Fuck the fuel!"
Devillian screamed. "Just do what I tell you!"
With that, he pushed the intercom's
OFF
button, effectively hanging up on the man. Then he pushed it on again and reached one of his bodyguards.
"I want every one of those hoodlums from Rome up here, right now," he screamed at the man. "And tell them I want an entire inventory list of their stuff lights, cameras, everything."
Devillian released the intercom button, took another toke of crack and turned back to the beautiful Juanita.
"The show, my dear, is just about to begin."
Ten Miles to Hell
.
Studs Mallox nearly burned himself trying to light his
crack pipe while at the same time keeping his F-4 Phantom level.
The leader of the Burning Cross's Skinhead squadron was bored -
very
bored -and even the insane pleasure of smoking dope in the cockpit while flying a high-performance jet fighter was beginning to get dull.
"Damn, I hate this hanging-around crap," he said to himself. "I want to shoot something.
Kill
something. . . ."
However, the only thing Mallox was able to shoot was the camera sticking underneath the nose of his F-4; his only ammunition was its special brand of high-speed recon film. His mission was to keep constant track of the
Freedom Express
as it snaked its way through the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It was a long, laborious piece-of-shit job that Devillian had typically thrown on the Skinheads once all the nearby railroad junctions had been destroyed.
"Why the hell does he give us these babysitting duties?"
Mallox asked himself after taking one last quick drag on his crack pipe and readjusting his oxygen mask. "He's got all those pansie air pirates just sitting around jerking off. God knows what would happen if they ever had to actually
shoot
at somebody."
In the same instant, he knew why Devillian had ordered the
'Heads to keep an eye on the train. For the most part, the air pirates' planes were older than the Skinhead F-4's. They weren't as efficient and therefore used more fuel. And right now, fuel was getting in short supply on top of the fortress.
Still, Mallox and his men lived under a solemn pact to kill something
anything
-once a day. It had been several days since anything like that had happened the attack on Eagle Rock had been their last offensive action -and his troops were getting restless.
Mallox just hated dealing with it all. The pay was good, but even that was starting to lose its appeal on his men. Gone were the glory days of the Twisted Cross. During that time, his superiors insisted that the Skinhead squadron draw blood every day, just to keep up the veneer of terror in the skies of Central America. Now he and his guys were nothing more than a bunch of photographers, taking snapshots of the mile long train as it moved through the hills at less than ten miles per hour.
His radio crackled once, and then he heard the repulsively sissy voice of one of Devillian's communication officers come on the line.
"Recon Two-Four, this is base-time for the quarter hour report."
"Big fucking deal," was how Mallox answered. "The fucking train is about two and a half miles from where it was the last time I talked to you, asshole."
"Any weapons displayed?" the comm officer asked, going down the usual list of questions that constituted the fifteen-minute reports Devillian had insisted on.
"No, you fucking jerk," Mallox replied. "They ain't so much as showed a pop-gun."