"I'm real happy for the hero. You intend to dump the passengers?"
"Between you and me not a chance."
"Copilots seats filled yet?" Lyons asked.
"Saved them for two of you," the man replied.
Lyons turned to Dix. "There's not enough room for everybody on these birds," he said, fanning a hand at the two jam-packed Sikorskys. "Can your chopper take four more?"
She nodded.
A burst of automatic-rifle fire flew high as Gadgets took out a sniper from the top of a dune. Lyons waved Kelly, Mustav and Wilson over. They arrived on the run.
"One of you in each copilot seat. Hold a gun on these jockeys until they unload everyone at UCLA. The extra person hop on. Now, move."
The trio sprinted for the copter's doors.
"Thanks," the chopper pilot said. "That lets us off the hook." He took off for his machine.
Lyons thrust five grenades into the arms of Petra Dix. "They're getting too damn close for comfort," he snapped. He loaded a sixth into the M-79 and then, as the sandstorm from the chopper blades began to whip around them, he ran back along the way they had come. Dix hesitated for a moment, but when she saw Pol, Gadgets and Babette following, she hastened to catch up to Lyons.
The crest of the dune ahead of them bristled with M-16s. Very few heads showed the assault rifles were being aimed at the rising helicopters. Lyons's grenade launcher was the first to speak. The other two Able Team members and Babette joined in with their Ingrams, sweeping the crest of the dune, tearing into heads, kicking up sand. Lyons snatched another grenade from Dix's hand. The M-79 boomed again. Two figures straightened up as nerves were blasted by the impact of thousands of wire shards.
Lyons grabbed another grenade.
"Helicopter is over to the right," Dix shouted. But Lyons did not seem interested in the positioning of the copter; his mind and sights were on the enemy. The second chopper lifted like a monster off the desert floor. All Able Team members felt a great sense of relief. The only bodies on the line were those of Babette Pavlovski and Petra Dix both volunteers on the war's battlefront and themselves, professional fighters, a justice-by-fire death squad.
The eastern horizon was bloody with the arrival of the sun. The sky was light. Soon the sun's strength would be unbearable.
Petra Dix watched as Lyons and his cohorts moved straight ahead, into enemy fire. She wondered what the hell she was doing with them. She was covering a story. She did not want to become one.
When Lyons took the last grenade from Dix's carefully kept hands, she turned right and ran. There was a spare camera in the copter. She could take off and use it on remote. She sprinted. Her lungs, unaccustomed to running, heaved madly.
As she scrambled up the side of the dune she remembered that she had the means of transportation for the others. Later, she thought. Later. She topped the dune in a trot and sped down the other side, right into the arms of four men wearing camouflage combat fatigues. Two of the gunners reached out and caught her by the arms.
"Look what dropped in," one said, a sick grin opening up on his sand-swept face.
"Think we've got us a deserter," said another. The pair threw Dix to the ground. She landed with a thud. She realized her time to play reporter was up. This was no longer a game. By leaving Lyons she had left safety. Now she was paying the price.
The four men were not in a good mood. Their asses were on the line. The athletes had escaped. A small team of crack gunners had decimated their ranks. The sun was up and fast becoming blistering. They wanted no more than to kill the enemy that remained and get the hell out of the sandy battlefield.
One of the bastards held a knife to her throat while another searched her for weapons. He grabbed roughly at her crotch, slapped his hands across her breasts. Dix bit her lip trying not to cry. She wanted to scream but the knife at her throat told her not to.
"How many troops over there?" the man with the knife asked.
"Three men and a woman," Dix whispered.
"Bullshit," the other man snarled, slapping her breast with a powerful swat.
"Hon... honest," Dix gasped. "The rest took off in the copters."
One of the men who hadn't spoken yet piped up. "If they've got only four, let's take them and get out of here."
The man with the knife turned Dix onto her stomach. He took the knife and passed it along her spine. She felt nothing more than a light tingle as the knife sliced through her two-hundred-dollar bush jacket and her bra. The goon pulled her jacket and her bra off, leaving her naked from the waist up. "Tie her feet," the man told his companion. "And hands."
The man, grinning a gap-toothed grin, slobbered on the newswoman as he tied her up.
"We'll have some fun when we're through," he drooled.
Dix appealed to the other men. "You can't leave me here. I'll die of exposure."
"Only if a snake don't get you first," one answered.
"I hope you live," another said. "'Cause when we get back we'll make sure you die of something a lot more fun than exposure."
In the rising heat, Petra Dix shivered.
When the newswoman had bolted away from Able Team, Babette had turned to chase her.
"Don't," Lyons commanded.
Babette returned to her place in their advance on the enemy.
The foursome crested the dune in a line that spread out for twenty feet. Instead of being met by fierce resistance and a storm of bullets, they only encountered three bodies.
Slowly they advanced. One of the men was still alive. He tried playing possum but gave himself away when he twitched as the breeze slapped sand in his face. Pol noticed the movement.
Blancanales stood over the goon. The man had no weapon.
"Which way did they go?"
The man slowly opened one eye, then the other. The supine figure looked up the barrel of Pol's Ingram. He pointed back toward the prison camp. Blood was seeping from various wounds on his body.
"How many?" Pol asked.
The man was silent. Pol brought the conversation back to life with a nudge of his gun.
"Fuck you," the goon screamed, throwing a fistful of sand in Pol's face. The Able Team member turned in time to keep the sand out of his eyes. The goon tried to make a run for it. Pol dropped him with three bullets.
Blancanales looked at Lyons and shrugged. "Looks like they're trying to bottle us."
Lyons pointed a course forty-five degrees shy of moving straight back to the camp. "That'll keep us ahead of the cork and move us closer to the dune buggies. That group straight ahead isn't closing in.''
"They'll probably try an ambush at the camp," Gadgets said.
The four warriors set off at a stiff jog. At the crest of each dune they threw themselves on their stomachs and crawled over. Each person knew that the sun would soon be rising to deadly heights and that they could not survive long if they allowed themselves to be herded out into the desert.
By the time they peered over the top of the final dune and saw the camp ahead, they were drenched in sweat. They surveyed the scene with slow care, spotting, noting the location of as many of the enemy as they could find. They slid back five feet to whisper, each watching the horizon over the head of the person facing them.
" 'Bout thirty?" Gadgets guessed.
The others nodded in agreement.
"Gotta wonder how many are out there," Pol said. "How many of the bastards are behind us?"
"Only one twin-engine plane," Lyons pointed out.
"No more than thirty behind us,'' Pol figured.
"Let's take advantage of the fact that the camp was meant to be wiped out," Lyons said. "I'll create a diversion. You three get a couple of buggies out of there."
Lyons started to skirt the camp, looking for the best place to set up a temporary fire base. The other three crawled along a route that would take them as close as possible to the gate of the compound. They finally reached the dune now slightly flattened by the wind from which Lyons and Babette had breached the gate the first time they had entered the enemy camp.