Gadgets sank back into the sand, exhaustion having wrenched nearly every ounce of strength from his body. Babette, looking tired, haggard, flopped down beside him.
After a second of silence, Gadgets swore.
"I was hoping to get one of the goons alive. Wanted to find out what the hell they did with Dix."
"We'll find her," Babette said with a sigh.
"We'd better. She's our ride."
The sudden sound of an approaching buggy brought both of them back on alert. They crept up to peek over the dune. It was Politician and Lyons, scouring the endless dryness for scum.
The duo stopped the buggy.
For a moment no one spoke. Each person was looking at the face of another warrior. They saw the scars of battle, topped with a fine layer of sand. And they saw the worn look of war. None of them liked what they saw. All were grateful they could not see themselves.
Blancanales spoke up.
"Couple carloads with flat tires around here somewhere waiting for the Motor League. Got to find them."
"Anybody seen Dix?" Lyons asked.
No one had.
"Guess we've got some hunting to do," Lyons said.
It didn't take long to find the place where Dix had separated from the party. They proceeded cautiously, Gadgets and Babette on foot, the dune buggy creeping behind them. Lyons stood precariously behind the passenger seat, holding on to the roll bar. All four scanned the dune line for signs of the enemy.
They found Petra Dix and the four remaining paratroopers at the same time, at the same place.
The paratroopers were expecting them.
Captain Young held a Makarov to Dix's head.
"Looking for her?" he spat.
Dix stood beside the man, her exposed upper body raw from its time in the sun and from being forced to lie on the hot desert sand.
The other paratroopers held guns, but no one made a move to shoot. They had seen what Able Team, plus its female gunner, could do. In Dix they had superb bargaining power. They would take the easy way out, with a gun at Dix's head.
"I want one thing," Young said, contempt for the American sharpshooters rich in his voice. "Just give us the buggy."
"What if we don't," Lyons snapped. "What if we take our chances on a shoot-out a shoot-out we know we'd win."
"Then you'd lose the bitch," Young snarled. And as the word bitch fired from his mouth, he made his fatal mistake. For emphasis, he took the Makarov away from Dix's head just long enough to snap the muzzle into her breast. And when he was returning the muzzle to her head...
Dix grabbed the goon's arm and with all her strength she pushed the gun away from herself. Turning, she gave the man a solid shot to the testicles, a shot that swiped the air from his lungs, folded him up.
Lyons's lightning-quick reflexes took over. He squeezed the trigger, putting a burst through the skull of the bent-over KGB killer.
Babette, Gadgets and Pol took care of the other three gunners before the bastards could get off a single shot. The four gunmen lay dead on the sand, their bodies now food for the baking sun. Soon they would become bloated, blistered. Perhaps the only fitting end for the puppets of scum.
Able Team, flanked by a gutsy woman who cared and a nervy reporter who had learned more about life in the past hour of living than she had in the past thirty-two years, headed out of the baking hell.
Their job was done. Complete.
And done in the only way Able Team knew how right.