"On three," the shorter of the two men said. "One . . .
two
-"
He never said three. Instead, the men in the two gangs were suddenly blinded by a tremendous flash. Instantly, everyone went to the ground and raised their weapons.
But by the time the flashsmoke finally dissipated and their collective eyesight returned, they saw that the two strange men had disappeared.
The Skinhead pilot named Duzz couldn't believe his ears; it was as if he were hearing a voice from the dead.
"Just do what the fuck I tell you," the man claiming to be Studs Mallox told him via Buzz's F-4 cockpit radio. "Go to the fucking coordinate and land that fucking airplane on the south side of the fucking interstate."
Duzz didn't know what to do. It sounded like Studs-the
cadence, the obscenities, everything-but the message to land on a nearby long-deserted highway was truly bizarre.
"Studs, if this is you," Duzz began, "you know that if Devillian caught me doing an unauthorized landing, he'd cook my crogies."
"I'll slice them up raw if you don’t do what I tell you!"
came the definitely Studs-like reply.
Duzz checked his present position. He was just thirty miles southwest of the San Juan Mountains, heading back to the mesa after having tracked the train for the past three hours as it moved incredibly slowly through the hills. He then checked his critical fuel supply and estimated that he could theoretically set down and take off and still have enough gas left over to return to the mesa. But it would be close.
He decided to buzz the location and four minutes later was flying over the empty highway. He circled down and eventually did see a figure that
looked
like Studs, waving to him from an overpass.
"Get your fucking ass down here!" Duzz's radio crackled again. "Or I'll hunt you down."
Duzz was convinced now. He turned again and set the F-4 down to a bumpy but successful landing.
Five minutes later, he was face to face with Studs in the flesh.
"Jeesuz, boss, we thought you had bought it somehow," Duzz said, only now realizing that Studs was wearing a dress. "What happened to you, and what the hell is with this broad's outfit?"
Studs' face was already red-now it grew redder. He resisted the urge to smack Duzz in the face.
"Fuck you," he said instead, unconsciously straightening the hem on the mumu. "These assholes made me wear it."
Duzz looked up to see that both he and his airplane were surrounded by about a dozen heavily armed soldiers who had appeared as if out of thin air. What was worse, Duzz could tell right away from their distinctive uniforms that they were members of the famous Football City Special Forces Rangers.
"What the hell is going on here, Studs?" Duzz asked.
This time Studs did hit him -once -with an open palm upside the head.
"What the fuck do you think is going on?" Studs yelled at him. "You've just been captured, you idiot."
Duzz was blindfolded and taken to a helicopter of some kind.
After a twenty-minute ride, he was astonished to find himself sitting inside one of the cars of the
Freedom Express
.
"How the hell did these guys get a chopper off the train?"
he asked incredulously. "We've been watching them night and day."
"You dumb fuck," Studs scolded him. "They were able to fly them off inside of one of the mountain pass tunnels. Then they waited until you jerks moved on and went from there. They've been doing it all day!"
It took a few moments for that concept to sink into Duzz's head.
"Just listen up," Studs told him, still nervously fussing with his dress. "I want you to go back to the base and tell all the guys to get the hell off that mesa . . . and I mean
now
."
"What!?"
"You heard me," Studs told him. "We're pulling out. I've cancelled our contract with the fuckhead Devillian."
"Does he know that?" Duzz asked, still not quite believing what was happening to him.
"He will when you guys take off!" Studs yelled, reeling back to slap Duzz a second time.
Duzz looked at the five other men standing in the windowless room. All of them were wearing hoods.
"Studs, you know how our guys are," Duzz said. "They'll think I've gone around the fucking bend if I go back and tell them that you say to bug out. They all think you're dead."
"Well I'm not, shithead, am I?" Studs yelled at him. "They had some Indian snatch me when I went out to dump Ant. I yelled like crazy when I was fighting this guy off, but you pansies must have been too busy to hear me."
Duzz just kept shaking his head. "This is too much, Studs,"
he said. "You gotta tell me what the hell is going down."
"I told you, we're cancelling on Devillian," Studs retorted. "We've just been hired by another employer."
"Who?" Duzz asked absolutely astounded by this point. "Not these guys."
"Yeah, these guys," Studs said flippantly. "They're going to pay us just to get the hell out of the fight."
"Pay us? To give up?" Duzz had never heard of such a thing before. "How much?"
Studs threw a left hook that caught the man on the shoulder.
"Will you knock that shit off?" he demanded. "They're paying us by not
killing
me, you dinkshit. Now go back and tell the guys to pull out. Head for Mexico City form up there. Wait until this mess is over. These guys say they'll release me then. I'll join up with you, and we'll figure out what to do from there."
"It might be pretty hard all of us just flying off like that, Studs," Duzz replied. "The gas situation on that mushroom top is getting pretty low."
"I don't give a fuck," Studs told him. "Fill everyone up the night before from our own supply. Mexico City is just a dick hair over eleven hundred miles from the mesa. If you guys go slow and don't fuck around, you'll make it on one full tank plus the drops.
Duzz was still having a hard time taking it all in.
"OK," he said finally. "Let's say I go back and we get enough gas; how the fuck am I going to make the guys believe that I talked to you? That you are still alive?"
Now Studs' face really flushed red-but not so much from anger as from embarrassment.
"These heroes already thought of that," he said, angrily glancing toward the five hooded men.
He reached inside his dress pocket and pulled out a handful of Polaroid photos.
"Show 'em these," he said, flipping the pictures to Duzz.
"They'll believe you then."
Duzz picked up the photos. All of them were of the same shot
-Studs woodenly posing in his mumu.
"Got a light?"
The South African flamethrower unit's second-in-command reached down for his Zippo and lit his commander's cigarette.
"Won't be long now," he said, lighting a butt of his own.
They both scanned their unit's positions for the hundredth time, each man satisfied that at last they were actually going to get to do their job and then get the hell out of the brutal desert woods environment.
They had set up their troops along a bend in the tracks that measured just over a half mile. In all the unit had thirty-five flamethrowers, most of them one-man set-ups, though a few of the bigger models required two-man teams. The fueling process was rather simple. One barrel of gasoline and a half barrel of gelatin mix could supply two flamethrowers. The gas and the jello were pumped in via separate hoses that stretched 125 feet behind each fire team. When the two elements mixed inside the combustor of the flamethrower itself, the long deadly stream of sticky flame was born.
The unit's officers had to take special precautions in
preparation for attacking the train. Never before had their men deployed in positions actually facing each other. Therefore, the spacing of the flamethrower locations had to be such that one team's tongue of fire wouldn't somehow jump over the train and across the tracks and envelope a team on the other side.
Moreover, the fire teams had to be placed behind rocks and not scrub trees or bushes; when the fire started flowing, no one wanted to be around anything combustible.
"We look all set then, sir," the second-in-command said.
"Should I have the men suit up?"
The commander checked his watch. "I would," he told the man.
"If Devillian's calculations are right, the train will be here within two hours."
High above and laying flat out on a small butte about a half mile away, a Piute scout named Green Feather watched through binoculars as the men of the Tongue of Fire climbed into their bulky fire-proof suits and helmets.
After taking a careful note of their number and
dispersement, the Indian slipped back down the butte to the desert floor. Then, retrieving his swift horse, he quickly rode away.
It was two and a half hours later when the commander of Tongue of Fire heard the crackle of his walkie-talkie coming to life.
"I can hear the train, sir" came the report from the unit's advance scout who was positioned about a mile up the tracks. "It sounds like it's coming down off the mountain right now."
"Good work," he radioed back to the man. "Can you estimate how far away it is from your position?"
There was another burst of static, then the scout replied:
"Hard to say at this moment, sir. I can see the smoke from its engines over the tops of the trees up here, and it's getting louder with every second."
The unit commander quickly checked his watch. He figured the train would pass by sometime within the next five minutes.
He yelled the warning to his second-in-command, who in turn shouted the message down the line.
Then the commander called back to his scout. "I want you to keep talking to me until you actually see the train!" he yelled into the walkie-talkie.
Oddly, there was no reply. "Did you hear me, man?" the commander called.
Nothing.
The commander tried two more times, banging the
walkie-talkie and thinking that either his instrument or that of the scout's had suddenly gone bad.
Still, all he heard was static.
Odd, he thought, tossing the walkie-talkie away from him.
Four and one half minutes later, the men of the Tongue of Fire heard the train themselves.
"Here it comes!" several people yelled at once, noting the black smoke that appeared above the trees that separated them from the opposite side of the bend.
"Battle positions!"
the second-in-command hollered.
"First unit get ready!"
The first unit was comprised of three flamethrower teams that had been positioned at the very edge of the long curve where the unit intended to attack the train. These men would be the first to not only see the train but also to fire on it.
The unit commander checked his watch once again, then
stared up into the sky. It was almost high noon -the hottest time of the day. Perfect for starting a fire.
"There it is!" someone yelled.
The unit commander turned and saw the distinctive yellow guardrail of the first locomotive as it slowly made its way around the bend.
"Let's go to work!" he shouted back to his troops.
But no sooner were the words out of his mouth when he
realized that something was wrong. Desperately wrong.
His first teams were already unleashing their streams of flame at the locomotive, but as the engine cleared the bend, everyone could see that it wasn't the entire train that was approaching. Rather it was just the single locomotive.
"What in bloody hell is going on?" the commander yelled.
Suddenly he thought back to the scout whose walkie-talkie had screwed up at the last critical moment. Maybe it hadn't been the radio at all.
Confused, the flamethrower teams along the line
nevertheless hit the lone locomotive with all they had -much more than what was called for in the original plan. Within seconds the huge engine was engulfed in the broiling, sticky flame. It barreled past the fire teams like a huge rolling house afire, the noise of the flames alone being near deafening. Finally, it tumbled off the tracks and into a gulley below.
But suddenly the unit commander was aware of another noise, this one coming from high above him.
He looked up and was terrified to see that while their
attention had been drawn to the single locomotive, a jumpjet had managed to maneuver right above their position.
And now it was starting to descend.
The Aden gun pod carries a powerful 25mm cannon, capable of firing at an astounding rate of fifty shells
a second.
What's more, the shells themselves were capable of great destructive power due to their iron sheeting and their long, slender length. More suited to piercing metal, one cannon shell could literally cause a man to explode if it hit him full in the chest or abdomen.
The Harrier jumpjet that had suddenly appeared in the midst of the Tongue of Fire teams carried two Aden guns. Stunned by the jumpjet's sudden appearance, the flamethrower teams were ironically frozen to their spots. They were not equipped with SAM weapons; few of them even had rifles. So they could do little else but watch in horror as the Harrier went into a hover only about twenty-five feet above them. The plane's pilot expertly dipped its nose, at the same time putting the jet into a tight, quick 360 degree turn.