"You're the boss," the pilot replied with a lecherous smile.
"Then, we must leave soon," she told him.
He yawned and stretched and looked out of the stained window of the small, dusty mountain cabin.
"We ain't going nowhere in this weather," he said. "Not for a while anyway." He reached over and pulled the blanket away from her naked body. "Besides, I always get paid in advance."
She didn't fight it. She simply laid back and let him have his way with her. It was over fairly quickly; coincidently, the rain outside stopped at just about the same time.
They rose, and Juanita lit the old stove and heated up the pot of leftover coffee. The pilot, still wearing a wide grin, embraced her like a newlywed husband would his wife on their first day back from the honeymoon, but Juanita quickly brushed him aside.
"Get your machine ready for takeoff," she ordered. "I want to leave as soon as possible."
The pilot just laughed and put on his jacket. "OK like I said, you're the boss," he replied. "And I mean that as a compliment. I actually like this arrangement. It sure beats the assholes I was working for a few days ago. They had plenty of money, but I was looking over my shoulder every second, thinking some fighter plane was about to burn my ass."
"You were carrying some precious cargo then, too?" she asked him, more out of boredom than anything else.
"Just something wrapped up in a big white canvas tarp," he said, zipping up his jacket. "Never did find out what it was, and I wasn't about to ask any questions. But as soon as I dropped it off, I just wanted to get as far away from DC and the Northeast as possible. That's how I happened to go to Santa Fe-heard that people in my line of work could make some, well, 'profitable arrangements' down that way. And I guess I heard right."
With that, he squeezed her buttocks once more, walked out the door, and headed for the huge blue and green Sky Crane helicopter that was parked in a field nearby.
The
Freedom Express
crossed the border from New Mexico into Arizona with anti-climactic ease.
Roaring along miles-long, straightas-arrow stretches of track, the train passed through the territories of De Chelly, Black Mesa and Hopi without incident. However, the relative smoothness of the train's dash west was contrasted by the bits of information that flowed from the train's scramble telex with disturbing frequency.
Hunter and Fitz had been monitoring the communiqués from Washington throughout the afternoon and into the night. First came the follow-up report on the LA air raid. The LA militia was able to confirm the Voodoos were part of a pirate gang linked to the Burning Cross. At the same time, the militia had informed Jones that they would have to station two squadrons of their F-5's around the city to protect against further raids. This meant that only twelve of the LA fighters would be available to fly cover for the
Freedom Express
once it passed into their operating range, which was an invisible point located at about the halfway point of Arizona.
Hunter knew the decision to keep two thirds of the Coasters'
fighters in LA was a sound and logical one, but that didn't make it any less painful to accept that the air cover the train had been counting on for the climactic trip through Arizona would be cut drastically. This was especially true since another communiqué had told them that the information Hunter had received from his second visit with Juanita-that the Burning Cross's major build-up was being planned for a ten-mile stretch on the southern rim of the Grand Canyon-was proving quite true.
High-flying, infrared-equipped recon planes flying out of LA and Dodge City confirmed that the massive Burning Cross troop concentration that had eluded them for so long had finally appeared in the area at the south of the canyon, beginning on the morning before. Apparently the enemy troops had been streaming into the area for the past week, in groups too small to register on the infrared, heat-detecting devices being carried by the recon planes. But now that the train was approaching the area, and all other routes to the north, south and east of them had been destroyed, there was no point in concealing the massive enemy build-up any further. In fact, in the words of one of the recon pilots, there were so many enemy troops located in the area, it was almost like they were
"flaunting it."
"All this way," Hunter sighed, "just for us to meet them along a ten-mile stretch of track."
"It does seem a bit ridiculous," Fitz agreed. "If we can arrange a miracle and somehow make it through them, then we win.
But if they stop us-they'll be so powerful, it will be impossible to prevent them from taking over the whole country if they want to."
"And I'm sure they do," Hunter replied.
Fitz poured them both a cup of coffee and added a generous splash of bourbon to each.
"We've been through many a critical situation," he said a bit wistfully. "But I can't shake the fact that we may have jumped into this one without looking."
"I disagree," Hunter said, sipping his liquor-laced Java.
"If we hadn't confronted Devillian now, it would have been worse as the months went on. He would have gathered more strength, more mercenaries. He would be even stronger than he is now. Then it would be a near impossibility to get rid of him.
"No, Mike-maybe I'm being foolish, but I see this trip as something that we were meant to do. Win or lose, it's like we're holding the magic sword that has the opportunity to slay the beast with one thrust. The heart of this twisted bastard's way of thinking is lying out there waiting for us. All we have to do is get through that stretch, and he'll fall apart like a house of cards."
Fitz smiled for the first time in what felt like years.
"I admire your optimism, Hawker," he said. "The question is, can we do it?"
Another hour passed, and by midnight they were deep into Arizona, passing by the area known as Moenkopi.
Suddenly their scramble radio started beeping, presaging a report from the Cobra Brothers, who were flying lookout about twenty miles ahead of the train.
"Stop now!" was the urgent message from Captain Tyler. "You won't believe what's waiting for us up ahead."
A half hour later, Hunter and Fitz landed the Harrier next to the two Cobra gunships which were parked atop a high butte just south of a place called Tuba City.
The train had stopped about fifteen miles from this point on the suggestion of Tyler. Now, as Hunter and Fitz climbed out of the jumpjet, they could see why Tyler had urged them to halt so quickly.
Gazing down into a small valley in front of them, Hunter could see the tracks stretched in a straight line for at least twenty-five miles, and to the casual observer, it appeared that nothing was wrong up ahead. But then, on Tyler's direction, he studied the tracks through his NightScope glasses. What he saw simultaneously baffled and even amused him.
"I can't believe this," he said. "Either we're all seeing things or Devillian is off his rocker more than we think."
Lined up along a mile stretch of the straightaway was a series of red brick walls.
"He is nuts," Fitz declared, getting an eyeful through his own night goggles. "I've heard of blocking the tracks with trees or boulders or blowing them with explosives. But building-let's see I count thirty-six-
brick
walls? What's the point of that?"
Hunter studied the obstructions closely. "I think we're looking at something that's more than meets the eye," he said, somewhat mysteriously.
Then he turned to Tyler and said, "Let's go down and take a closer look."
It was a brief trip down off the butte to the first wall.
Hunter and Tyler landed about fifty yards away from the barrier and carefully climbed out of the Cobra, their weapons drawn. Meanwhile, Fitz and Crockett kept watch in the other Cobra which was circling overhead.
The first thing Hunter saw were wires. They were running every which way alongside the tracks, stretching from the first brick wall off into the desert. He fingered the first set he could get a hold of and saw that they were actually of different types and gauges. One was a thick co-axial cable, which could be used to transmit TV signals; another was typical silver-gold speaker wire, a heftier version of what would be used on a home stereo unit. Still another was a simple outdoor electrical cable which presumably would carry power to what was actually running the other two.
Finally they slowly approached the first wall itself. It was well-constructed -or so it appeared from a distance of about twenty feet in the darkness. Each brick was bright red with the mortar between being of even brighter white, almost a
luminescent pearl in color.
For a brick wall, it looked perfect-too perfect. Hunter stepped up close to it, and like the famous monkey in the movie
2001
, he touched the brick with his ungloved fingers.
"Just like I thought," he said, turning to Tyler.
The Cobra captain mimicked Hunter's action, running his fingers along the bricks.
"I'll be damned" was all he could say. Hunter then drew back his fist and punched the wall with all his might, an action that seemed likely to break his hand.
But it didn't. Instead, like an optical illusion, a section of the wall collapsed into dust and paper. In reality, the wall was nothing more than an elaborate-looking movie prop.
"This is very strange," Tyler said with appropriate understatement.
They called up to Cobra Two, and soon Fitz and Crockett were also standing next to the ersatz wall.
"What the hell is the point of this?" Fitz asked, punching out a piece of the wall himself.
Hunter followed the band of wires that led underneath the track past the wall and into the desert. They ended in a cemented-over hole about twenty feet off to the left of the track.
"These wires are some kind of trigger device I would think,"
he said. "But what they do exactly, I can't imagine. Unless. .
."
With that he walked back about fifteen paces, and then, to the amazement of the other three, took a running start and crashed into the fake wall.
Suddenly it was as if a bomb had gone off. No sooner had Hunter broken through the paper mache barrier causing it to collapse in a great cloud of smoke-than the immediate area was rocked by the roar of an explosion.
Or actually what sounded like an explosion.
Instinctively all four men hit the ground. Yet just as they did, they realized their reaction was not necessary. The sound hadn't been caused by an explosion at all. Rather the force of Hunter hitting the wall had triggered a hidden recording device which in turn blasted out a sound effect of an enormous explosion. Combined with the fake smoke that burst from the paper wall when Hunter crashed through it, the overall effect of a brick wall exploding looked and sounded very convincing.
"God, can this get any weirder?" Tyler exclaimed.
"Don't ask," Hunter replied. "What is this all about?"
Crockett asked. "Fake walls. Smoke bombs. Sound effects? . . ."
"I think it's just what it appears to be," Hunter said.
"It's all for the benefit of a camera-or many cameras. There are probably a bunch of them hidden out in the desert-ready to take movies when we come barreling through here."
"So what now?" Fitz asked. "Obviously this isn't meant to stop us."
"Hell, we call up the train and break through it," Hunter said. "We know that Devillian is caught up in this weirdo film-making thing. So screw it. Let him get his jollies. We've got more important things to do than figure out just what the hell this all means."
As they walked back to the choppers, Tyler put the whole thing into perspective.
"God, they even have
us
playing a part in all this," he said.
No more than thirty minutes later, the
Freedom Express
screamed down the straightaway and burst through the line of fake walls, triggering row after row of smoke bombs, sound effects and hidden video cameras, which recorded the entire event.
Fifty miles away, Duke Devillian was sitting in his
enormous headquarters tent, one young girl's head between his legs, another at his toes, a huge crack pipe in one hand, and a massive bottle of champagne in the other. Before him was a large video screen on which he was watching the telecast of the
Freedom
Express
bursting through the line of fake walls.
"Stupendous!" he screamed as the walls disintegrated in a cloud of fire and smoke. Combined with the realistic sound effects, it was all very convincing. Even the normally sedate Tony Three, sitting nearby, was bowled over by the footage.
"It's so fucking symbolic I could just about crap my pants,"
the Roman cried out. "I can't wait to see what they do when they reach the Desert Point View Bridge. If your Nazi go-boy Heck doesn't fuck it up, it should give us some great stuff for the opening credits."
Devillian swigged his champagne, drunkenly letting most of it dribble down his unwashed face.
"Props now," he said, forcing the girl between his legs closer to the action. "Real stuff later."
Near Desert Point View Bridge, Arizona
Major Heck wished he'd brought along at least a dozen
amphetamine tablets; as it was, he'd only been able to scrounge three speed pills since midnight.