Meanwhile, the two hundred bandits who had actually made it to the tracks found out that the train was going much too fast for them to attempt a boarding. What was more, they realized too late that every fourth weapons car was firing back at them with Gatling guns, rockets and combined rifle fire.
The resulting slaughter was sickeningly brief. Men and
animals were cut to shreds by Gatling guns firing at a rate of six hundred rounds a second.
Within a half minute, the train had passed through Mile Four check post and disappeared around a small, craggy mountain, leaving on the tracks behind a grotesque jumble of dying horses and massacred riders.
Jorge Juarez decided he'd seen enough. Throwing away his sandwich, he ordered his driver to "get this jeep the fuck out of here!" The vehicle began to scramble over the rocky base of the canyon, heading for the relative safety of a nearby area of brush and overhanging boulders.
Spotting the fleeing jeep, Hunter called to Fitzgerald.
"Anyone get on board, Fitz?"
"Not a one!" came the reply. "And we're almost halfway through this."
"OK," Hunter replied. "I've got what looks to be a major officer in front of me, leaving the scene of battle. I'm going to pursue."
He put the Harrier into a 180-degree turn and shot off
toward the jeep. Overtaking it quickly, he buzzed it low, letting the red-hot jetwash cover the vehicle.
In an instant, the jeep and the two men inside it
spontaneously combusted -Jorge's huge mass literally exploding from the intense heat. Out of control and on fire, the jeep failed to turn away from the edge of the canyon. It went over the ledge in a spectacular blaze of fire and smoke, plunging more than a half mile down into the canyon itself.
At the same moment, Devillian and a dozen of his cameramen were also following the action from about two miles away. "That was brilliant!" he screamed with rare authentic enthusiasm as he watched Jorge take his fiery death plunge. "That stuntman was great, whoever he was."
Devillian's rapture was quickly dissipated once he was
informed of the failure of Juarez's bandits to board the train.
Now, all around him, he saw evidence of his script going up in smoke. In the sky above, it was obvious the United American pilots were more than a match for Riggs' KKK Air Force. The combined efforts of the jumpjet, the Strikefighters and the Coaster F-5's had so far been successful in keeping the dwindling swarm of KKK Voodoos from reaching the
Freedom Express
.
And one look into his high-powered binoculars told him the damned train was still speeding through the canyon. With a curse, Devillian retreated to his command tent and lit up a bowl of crack. He still had a pair of aces up his sleeve-both of which he was sure would look great up on the big screen.
And now was time to play his first one. He first ordered his personal Hind gunship to get ready to fly him to another location. Then he took another long drag from his crack pipe and placed a radio call to the officer in charge of his first secret weapon.
The conversation was brief. "I'll be there in five minutes," he told the man. "And then, you're on. . . ."
Hunter rejoined JT, Ben and the Coaster pilots as they
continued to drive away enemy aircraft while at the same time strafing the concentrations of Burning Cross soldiers hidden along the train's route.
They passed through the Four and One Half Mile and entered a section of track that was elevated from the canyon rim and therefore gave the enemy no positions to fire on the train at close range. This meant for the next mile or so, the train would be relatively free from point-blank attacks.
Fitz ordered the train slowed to one third, to give Hunter the time to set down again, arm up and top off his tanks.
"We're almost halfway through," the Irishman said, trying hard not to sound over-confident. "And our casualties have been very light, considering. . . ."
"I know, Mike," Hunter replied. "But we've still got a long way to go."
But even Hunter couldn't imagine what Devillian had waiting for them up ahead. In the previous four and half miles, the train had been attacked by helicopter gunships, fighters, antitank rockets, air-to-surface missiles, mortars, flamethrowers, mounted gunmen, and thousands of regular infantry weapons. Once a mighty mass of shining metal, the train was now a string of scorched, dented and smoking cars, with nearly half of the working locomotives disabled.
But the fact that they still stayed on the track was proof of their rugged construction-and it was almost as if that mettle was flowing down through the entire train. True, the
Freedom
Express
was battered -but it was not beaten.
And true, Devillian's airplanes and troops were still
ahead, but nevertheless, the valiant train pushed forward on its treacherous dash through the canyon.
Hunter could almost
feel
that the
Freedom Express
had taken on a fighting personality of its own. In an instant of
reflection, he knew it was alive -alive with the spirit that was America. The damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead locomotion that had kept the country alive throughout its travails since the big war had also kept it great in its own way. And that power came from its people, its citizens -of all colors, all religions, all walks of life. He knew that America was not about white power, or black power, or green power or polka dot power. Nor was it about one religion, one belief or one God. That kind of rationale was as foolish as saying the country should be about one baseball team, one type of haircut, one type of beer.
For it was the very fact that everyone was mixed in together that made the patchwork stay tight. Anyone who believed different was an idiot-a very unpatriotic idiot at that. But then again, who else but an imbecile would put on a white sheet just so he could play with matches at night once a month? And who but a fool would dare to wave a swastika?
What was the matter with these people?
Hunter would ask himself over and over.
Haven't they ever read a goddamn history
book?
And as for America's true heroes, Hunter knew they weren't hard to find. He was riding with two hundred of them right now.
The respite lasted exactly one minute and ten seconds. Then the inevitable call came in to the Control car.
It was from Cobra Brother Captain Jesse Tyler. He and his partner Bobby Crockett had flown their choppers one mile ahead of the train to reconnoiter the track.
"We've got more trouble up ahead - " the radio crackled with warning-"and you won't believe what it is."
Fitz and Hunter looked at each other, both of them sagging slightly at the bad news. "We give up," Fitz yelled back, as if they were all involved in one long, deadly game.
"Believe it or not," Tyler replied. "There's another armored train in the canyon-and it's heading our way!"
For the first time in his life, Red Banner felt like he really needed a drink.
Beer, Scotch, even rot-gut Badlands wine would do anything to get his nerves settled down and his stomach turned back from inside out.
He was on top of one of the highest peaks on the southern edge of the Grand Canyon -so high, it was as bad as flying.
Sharing this perch with him was a Burning Cross antiaircraft crew, three South African video technicians, and a pair of Burning Cross guards, both of whom had Uzi machine guns leveled at his head at all times.
From this great height, Banner had witnessed the entire battle so far between the Burning Cross troops and the
Freedom
Express
. From the opening shots near the forests at Desert View Point to the attempted Maverick strikes, to the Mexican cavalry attack, Banner had not only seen it all, he had narrated it.
Screaming into a microphone which was hooked to the South African's equipment, he was providing a blow-by-blow
description of the incredible events to go along with the video that was being picked up all along the
Ten Miles of Hell
.
Next to him was a huge satellite dish through which the Afrikaners were beaming both the video and his audio back to his station in Los Angeles. And there was no longer any question that KOAS-TV would broadcast the battle; he had already talked several times with the station manager, Wild Bill Austin himself. Austin assured him that the "live news report" was being watched by millions of people on the West Coast and that Banner's
"reporting" would place his name up there with such journalistic greats as Murrow and Cronkite.
Trouble was, Banner was sure he'd never live to benefit from the honor.
"My God . . ." Fitz kept saying over and over. "How can there be any other trains out here?"
He and the others were still trying to make sense out of Tyler's almost unbelievable report.
"It isn't exactly an Amtrak cross-country pleasure train,"
Tyler had told them. "It's carrying artillery, antiaircraft guns, SAMs-just like ours. It's completely black, from one end to the other, and it's got a bunch of cameras hanging all over it too. The only difference is that it has six locomotives in the front and six pushing it in the back."
The news had temporarily stunned the battle-weary United Americans. But Hunter quickly recovered. In an instant, his mind began racing ahead, planning for the impending encounter.
"We'll need all the aircover we can get," he told Fitz, turning to rush back to the Harrier.
"I'll keep the Cobras way up there and get JT and Ben Wa on the line," Fitz called after him.
Hunter was lifting off his platform car less than a minute later.
He rose to five thousand feet, then quickly throttled the Harrier forward. Within ten seconds, he was passing over the high west end of the canyon rim. From here he could see that after the three remaining miles of Hell, the tracks ran through a series of twists and turns, interspersed with several long straightaways, all of it on a gradual downward slope.
As he cleared the tops of the high hills, JT and Ben pulled alongside him.
"We just caught something about another train," JT radioed over. "Please tell us we're just hearing things."
" 'Fraid not, partner," Hunter told him grimly. "Take a look for yourself."
Down below, probably no more than ten miles away and coming on fast, was a long, black train slithering its way along a set of tracks running parallel to the ones being used by the
Freedom
Express
.
"I can't believe this," Ben said.
"Anything's possible in the movies," Hunter reminded him.
"But what's with the two sets of locomotives?" JT asked. "Six in front, six in back . . . does that make sense?"
"It does to them," Hunter replied grimly. "They know that if we get past them in the canyon, they can just switch gears, have the pushers become the pullers and vice versa, and then chase us all the way to LA."
As the three fighters zoomed down for a closer look, they were met by a barrage of antiaircraft fire from the black train.
Hunter quickly located the source of the gunfire; three flatcars in the midsection were carrying half a dozen S-60 AA guns.
"Those are our first order of business, guys," Hunter radioed to his companions. "But we'll keep it down to cannons.
If we blast that train with anything heavier, it will go off the track and screw the railbed. Then our guys won't be able to get through."
Hunter's suggestion was approved by two calls of "Roger!"
Then they quickly circled behind the enemy train, and before the men on board had a chance to reposition the S-60 AA guns, Hunter was coming at them, flying just a few feet above the roof of the cars, his Adens blazing. He took out two of the guns with his first pass; JT and Ben Wa were right behind him, and they disabled two more.
Leaving the last set of S-60's to his friends, Hunter shot on ahead of the train, turned the Harrier sharply and came right back at the lead locomotive. He opened up with both cannons, tearing up the first engine and damaging the second one in line as well. But just as the
Freedom Express
originally carried a dozen locomotives, so too did this
Death Train
. Its ten remaining engines -now four in front and six in back-generated more than enough power to keep it streaking full speed ahead toward the oncoming
Freedom Express
.
Hunter took the Harrier up several thousand feet to get a better view of the overall area. From this vantage point, he could clearly see the United Americans' train approaching rapidly from the east and its nemesis corning just as fast from the west. After a brief flurry of calculations, Hunter
determined that in about two minutes and sixteen seconds, the two huge trains would be parallel to each other.
"Get ready, Fitz," Hunter radioed. "We slowed them down a little, but they're still heading straight for you. Keep your engines at top speed, and whatever's left, you'd better get it loaded up and ready."
"We are going all out right now," Fitz told him. "But we've lost so many locomotives, our top speed isn't all that fast anymore. I'm afraid that the train will have quite a long time to shoot at us."
What was worse was that the two trains were already so
rapidly closing in on each other that bombing the enemy cars was now too risky.