Cowboy Angels Read Online Free PDF

locomotive, following the soldiers who were escorting Flynn at gunpoint.
    Tom said, ‘We’re gonna take this train all the way to Washington. It’ll be a lot of fun.’
    ‘You won’t get five miles.’ Stone’s ears were still ringing. Nothing seemed quite real, and he had a claustrophobic sense of time passing too quickly, of the narrowing window before the gates were shut down and he was trapped here for good.
    Tom said, ‘We’re going all the way, old buddy.’
    ‘You’re going straight to hell if you don’t come back with me.’
    ‘You came through the mirror because you wanted to, Adam, why don’t you admit it? Admit that you miss the action.’
    ‘I came through to ask you to come back with me, Tom. This isn’t our war, and you know it.’
    ‘Let me show you something,’ Tom said, and led Stone along the side of the train.
    Soldiers were hauling men out of the cattle-cars. The men were manacled in pairs by wrist cuffs welded to short iron bars, or shackled in groups of four or five. Soldiers in the cars pushed them to the open door. Soldiers on the track reached up and grabbed their legs and pulled them down. Men fell and tried to get up and other men fell on top of them. The soldiers worked in a fever, hauling men from the recesses of the cars, screaming at them, pushing them out. A soldier kicked a man square in the crotch and he fell to the ground and the four men chained to him fell down too. Men fell out of the cars and lay in heaps. Only a few managed to get to their feet. Soldiers swore at them and tried to shove them out of the way, but they took only a few steps and stood still again, blinking stupidly.
    Stone caught the arm of a soldier who was about to strike a skinny man with his rifle butt, pushed him away. ‘What are these men? Slaves?’
    ‘Political prisoners. Remember the American Bund? This is worse,’ Tom said, and grabbed the shoulders of the man Stone had rescued, turned him around.
    He wore a ragged shirt and filthy trousers that ended in tatters around his calves. He was barefoot and there were welted scars around his wrists and ankles. He stank horribly. His gaze flicked here and there, not resting on anything or anyone for more than a second. He looked as if he might bolt at any moment, if only he could figure out how to do it.
    Tom plucked a penlight from the pocket of his leather jacket and shone it in the man’s face. His teeth were black with decay and he had no tongue, just a stump that jumped like a frog at the back of his mouth.
    ‘The Commies cut out the tongues of political prisoners and lobotomise them or treat them with a chemical cosh to make them docile,’ Tom said. ‘Send them to work in factories, steel mills, mines, farms. They only last a year or two, but there are always more prisoners. This is what this is all about, Adam. This is what we’re going to destroy.’
    He patted the man on the back and told him he could go, he was free, but the man just stood there, smiling a stupid ingratiating smile.
    Stone said, ‘How about the slaves the Free Americans use on their farms and plantations in Cuba? Are you going to free them, too?’
    Tom pulled a hip flask from the pocket of his leather jacket. ‘Know what we should have done here? Brought a nuke through, set it off in the middle of Washington. The Commies don’t have nukes. If we nuked Washington and told ’em New York or San Francisco was next, they’d cave in the very same day.’
    Stone shook his head when Tom offered him the flask. ‘Commit an atrocity to end an atrocity - is that any way to win a war?’
    ‘Look around you! Look at these poor fuckers! The whole fucking country is an atrocity!’
    The two men were standing toe-to-toe in the near-dark while soldiers hauled men out of the cattle-cars. Shouts, the sound of rifle butts on flesh, on bone. Stone took a breath, put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. ‘You want to do something useful? Come back with me. Tell me why the Old Man needs