The Western Forces were desperately trying to mobilize. Those already in the service were being sent east to the Denver forward base by any means possible.
Some were riding in converted tractor trailer trucks, others on the one rail link still operating over the Rockies. Still others were flying. In all, Jones knew he had to move close to 45,000 men as quickly as possible.
Jones was also arming and equipping thousands of the volunteers who were flooding into Oregon and San Diego bases. Many of them were good fighters — militia men and free-lance border guard troops — and some of them were just able-bodied men who wanted to fight for the cause. Normally Jones would never have considered using them. But the situation was, critical and he had no choice. If they were willing and could aim a gun, they were transported to the front.
And, as always, there were secrets…
Ghost Rider was really their only hope, but very few people outside of the PAAC High Command knew of its existence. The team of PAAC scientists and engineers — most of them CalTech people with a few former employees of the pre-war West Coast aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Lockheed helping out — were working around the clock on the five extraordinary B-1s. Integrating the Ghost Rider system was a bitch, but early on the team had agreed that the one thing they couldn't do was duplicate the five missing black boxes, because each one was different in its own right.
That's why Hunter's mission was so critical.
But one thing bothered Jones even more than the impending war situation.
Something that nagged him, gnawed at his stomach and his psyche. It was one photograph set aside from the others. One of Dozer's guys had found it tacked on the wall of an abandoned building they'd searched near Hot Springs, South Dakota. Others began turning up almost immediately.
Jones reached for it again and held it in front of him. It was the damndest thing. He was almost considering not showing Hunter. The photo was the first glimpse they'd had of this mysterious Viktor, yet Jones had immediately recognized him. Quite simply, the man looked like the devil incarnate. He was sitting in a chair in a bare room, leering at the camera. Thin face, pointed beard, strange slicked back hair, dressed entirely in black. Very military.
Very dangerous. Jones knew the evil contained in the man's eyes was without measure. This was the man behind it all. Was he a Russian? Was he an American?
Jones didn't know, and at that point, couldn't have cared less. This was their enemy.
But the strangest thing of all was that sitting beside this Viktor in the photo was none other than Hunter's girlfriend, Dominique.
And she was smiling…
Chapter Twenty-one
Pecos, New Mexico was like a living hell.
The highway outside the small town was jammed with refugees from Texas fleeing the butchery of the Mongol raiders about a hundred miles to the east. Inside the typical throwback Old West town, a huge gun battle had been raging off and on for the past five days. New Order New Mexico was a so-called Free Territory — no central government, just every town for themselves. So an-occasional gunfight was nothing new in Pecos. But this one was turning into a small-scale war.
It started with the local sheriff and his small deputized force shooting it out with a band of local criminals, troublemakers and looters. Then everyone who had a gun and a grudge to settle began to take sides. By the end of the second day, it had become impossible to tell who was shooting at whom and why.
The town's two banks had been long ago robbed and many large buildings burned to the ground. The small airport had been bombed, the water supply destroyed and about half the high tension wires bringing electricity into the city had been dynamited. What was worse, someone had blown up all seven of the town's gas stations and also a half dozen small oil derricks on the east side of town, leaving blazes that would take weeks to burn out. It made no difference in one respect, though; most everyone owned a horse and soon the equine was the preferred mode of transportation.
And the two Main Street saloons and the whorehouse on Gowano Avenue were still opening and holding packed houses. Liquor seemed to be in unlimited supply as was ammunition. Card games were going on everywhere, a few of which escalated into smaller gunfights. When the bullets started flying, the nonparticipants nonchalantly took cover, waited for the lead to stop, then returned to their drinking and poker and whoring.
Hunter was an odd sight when he first appeared at the swinging doors of the Pecos' Double Star Cafe. Most everyone at the bar and at the card tables turned to look at him, clad in a black flight suit, carrying an M-16 in his hands and his flight helmet on his belt. He purposely strode into the saloon, staring down the few who chose to look at him for longer than three seconds.
Don't fuck with me, his eyes said. No one dared to. The card playing and the drinking started up again almost immediately. Outside another gun battle was in full fury.
Hunter leaned up against the bar and ordered a whiskey, throwing down a dozen real-silver quarters. The bartender, aware that Hunter had overpaid for his drink by about five times, quickly recognized the bribe and asked: "What do you want to know?"
"Scary Mary," Hunter said. "Who or what is it?"
"Depends on which one you mean," the barkeep said in a voice drenched in Western twang. "Got two of 'em. One in town, the other outside."
Hunter downed the whiskey and motioned for another. It was late afternoon.
Several hours before, he had successfully catapulted out of the Grand Canyon and, instead of flying back to PAAC-Oregon, he had moved immediately to Location No. 4r He set the F-16 down on a desert strip near the town and had walked in, ducking bullets and dodging running gun battles all along the way.
According to notes left behind by General Josephs, the box could be found "under Scary Mary." Adding this clue to what Tracy had told him about Travis' adventures in Pecos, Hunter had to put the pieces together.
"What's the one outside of town?" Hunter asked, swigging the cheap bourbon.
"A big rock," the bartender said, pouring himself a drink. "About 20 miles to the north, near a village called Mary de Vista. Biggest chunk of stone you'll ever see. Mile and a half if you walked around the thing. Might be a meteor, people say, dropped in long time ago from outer space."
"What's so scary about it?" Hunter said, dropping a few more quarters on the bar for a third.
The bartender leaned over to him and poured. "The rock is filled with sink holes and blind cliffs," he half-whispered. "And pumas. And buzzards. And rattlers. And bad spirits. Some people go in, some don't come out again. It's dangerous. The Indians used to call it chimiyo chimayo. Means like 'no hope' or 'no way out'."
Hunter thought it over for a moment. He didn't have the time to go crawling all over a chunk of desert rock — never mind one that was infested with vipers, cougars and vultures and was haunted to boot. And he doubted that Travis did either.
"Where's the other one?"
"The 'other' Scary Mary?" the bartender laughed. "Watch out, pal. It's much more dangerous. Over at the whorehouse. Room 333."
The door to Room 333 burst open, courtesy of Hunter's powerful flight boot.
He was ripping mad. It took him four hours to get the three blocks from the saloon to the whorehouse, so intense was the gunfire in the streets. He had to take a dozen detours and spent most of the time ducked in doorways waiting for the bullet-happy party to pass by. He wound up shooting his way out of a couple tight spots. Luckily his M-16 qualified as heavy artillery in a battle that contained mostly .22s and shotguns.