Five Rings of Fire at-11

by Dick Stivers

  Young was banking on the fact that even if the two enemy buggies managed to break the circle and pick up their friend, they would not be able to break back out in a hurry. Before they could fight their way out, his men would have them. And if they didn’t get them, the sun would. The desert was firing up like the blast furnaces of hell. In the heat, the smaller force would expend its energy sooner.

  *

  As he retreated from his firing spot near camp, Lyons searched the bandolier. He took out the one remaining grenade, then threw the bandolier away. From here on in he’d put his life on the 5.56-caliber bullets from the M-16 portion of his gun.

  Lyons knew his teammates had sprung two buggies.

  Lyons knew he had scant seconds before the enemy trying to box him in would meet the troops that had charged out of the camp.

  Lyons knew when that happened he’d be caught. Dead in the middle.

  Carl Lyons had tried his best to tone down his self-professed craziness; but he had not lost it.

  With a grin on his face he turned and ran straight up the dune — back toward the compound.

  17

  Lyons’s boots churned up sand as he sprinted up the side of a dune. He heard the heated grunts and panting of troops running up the other side toward him. Not breaking pace, not even bothering to pull the pin from the grenade in his hand, he threw it over the crest of the dune.

  “Grenade,” he shouted as he reached the crest.

  “Grenade,” an enemy echoed from the other side.

  Lyons topped the crest as camouflaged bodies dived in all directions to escape the lethal shrapnel they believed was on the way. A good soldier knows that survival depends on instant reflexes. No one noticed the pin was still in the grenade.

  Lyons did not slow his pace. His lungs burned in the arid battleground. He let the downhill side of the dune propel his feet. As he ran he emptied the M-79’s clip into the fallen troops. They were sitting ducks. Five dead sitting ducks.

  At the bottom of the slope he grabbed the grenade and continued up the next slope, a smaller dune. He was almost to the top before six more men, coming in from the far left, got the big blonde in their sights. He heard a bolt click. He dived over the top of the dune, tucking, rolling, halfway to the bottom. As soon as he could gather his feet under him, he pulled the grenade’s pin and let the killer fly.

  Six men ate sand and shrapnel. Six men died.

  Again Lyons, having snatched a fresh clip from his remaining bandolier and slammed it home, took off toward the camp. Lyons had one more cooling pack in his jacket. He was seeping water but had no time to stop. Even in their flak jackets, the men of Able Team were finding the hellish heat hard to combat.

  *

  Blancanales heard the shooting above the roar of his machine. He veered toward the sound. The blast made by the grenade helped him to home in on the spot. It was difficult to judge distance by sound in the rolling dunes.

  Gadgets saw that Pol’s vehicle was changing course, moving toward the camp. Suicide, he thought. But he shouted to Babette, “Swing wider.”

  The gutsy woman nodded, acted, swinging wider. Gadgets, full of admiration for her driving skills, held on for his life. He knew that in any war the chance of meeting death was high — but he didn’t want to meet death as a passenger in a dune buggy.

  Politician swept over another dune and surprise-attacked two goons with his vehicle. As they swung to face him, he bounced them off the fender. He continued tightening his spiral until he was headed directly for the camp.

  Babette was doing her best navigating in the sandstorm Pol was leaving behind. As they crested another ridge, to the left they spotted the crew that had been trying to box Lyons in. Gadgets turned and managed to empty half a clip at them before they were lost in a cloud of sand behind the buggy. Babette dropped the buggy into the next trough. Schwarz struggled to keep his stomach out of his mouth.

  *

  Lyons paused for a second, gasping deep, dry breaths of air. Ahead of him was the prison camp, easily entered now with the tent thrown over the wire. Behind him was the roar of the buggies and the stutter of an Ingram. To his left and closing in fast was another set of buggies. Lyons was pissed. He thought he had shelled the machines into another world. Obviously not.

  With a quick glance he could see that his Able Team partners had swung wide into the desert while the enemy had followed the perimeter of the camp. His teammates would not reach him in time to slow down and pick him up. Lyons started running for all he was worth, racing for the tent draped over the razor wire.

  *

  Pol swore when he saw what a close race they were running. He swung his Ingram on the sling until it rested across his left forearm. He steered the buggy with his left forearm, keeping the right arm wrapped around the machine pistol. Spotting Lyons, he veered so that his buggy would arc between his buddy and the approaching force.

  At the top of the next rise, both Babette and Gadgets got an eyeful of what was happening. Like a seasoned pro Babette swerved harder left to bring the approaching vehicles between themselves and the camp.

  Politician spewed sand between Lyons and the enemy. He was having a hard time controlling the speeding machine. He swung the wheel farther left until he was rushing to meet the enemy, aiming to pass between the goons and the camp’s razor wire. As he sped past, he fired bursts until the clip was empty. As he passed them, he was ducking low.

  Blancanales’s shots, in spite of the jouncing, pegged one driver who lost control. The driver, clutching a torn chest, got his passenger hung up in the razor wire. The buggy came to rest in the compound, its engine stalled, its driver dead.

  The return shots fired at Pol’s speeding form zipped wide and high.

  As the enemy battled the sandstorm, and Pol’s firestorm, Babette and Gadgets swooped in from the other side. It was a quick sweep — the pair keeping as low as possible, Gadgets remaining in a firing position throughout the pass. Gadgets’s Ingram leveled two gunners and spilled the blood of another driver.

  By the time the three remaining vehicles — five remaining enemies — recovered from Able Team’s one-two punch, they had passed Lyons. The big blond gunner had hit the sand. When the goons passed, he was kneeling, spraying shots as another clip expired.

  Lyons didn’t wait to see the results. He got back on his feet and took off again, changing clips on the run.

  When Pol passed the enemy vehicles, he took his foot off the gas and jammed his thigh against the steering wheel. His other foot disengaged the clutch. The dune buggy quickly lost speed in the sand. By the time it could come to a complete stop, he had changed clips and was resting the Ingram on his lap. He grabbed the wheel in one hand and the shift lever in the other and used the slow speed to make a tight curve. In a quick maneuver, he was speeding after the remaining mobile enemies.

  Babette put the machine she was driving into a tight turn that threatened to dump Gadgets onto the sand. He hung on and changed clips only after the course was straightened out. When the gun was ready, he pulled a grenade from his jacket.

  “Back to the group on foot,” he hollered to Babette.

  She corrected their course. Gadgets pulled the pin from the grenade, but did not release the spoon.

  The enemy had turned and were now closing in on Lyons from two sides. A single vehicle was closing on his left, two on his right. The tent over the wire was only five feet in front of him. He dived under the nearest part of the tent and brought the M-203 up to face the enemy.

  From his low, almost totally hidden position, Lyons could see little of the enemy. But he wasn’t shooting for flesh, he was aiming at tires. He sent a careful burst of 5.56mm wreckers through a tire on each of the three buggies.

  Pol, who had turned to attack as Lyons hit the turf, could see no sign of Lyons. He headed for the middle vehicle, prepared to battle in a high-speed game of desert chicken.

  Suddenly the three vehicles swerved crazily as drivers fought to prevent the buggies from r
olling. Blancanales slipped through the ranks without being shot at. The enemy were limping toward the desert, each vehicle minus a tire.

  Lyons scrambled out from his hiding place, changing clips on the run. He had only two clips left. They would have to do.

  The three enemy vehicles were out of sight. Pol’s machine could be spotted in the distance as the Able Team member stood on the brake. The wheels locked and dug into loose sand. Blancanales slammed the shift lever into reverse and started churning back the way he had come. The wheels clutched sand, shot sand, spun free. The engine whined its complaints as Pol kept the pedal to the floorboard. The little bomb shot back over the dune in reverse.

  Pol skidded to a dramatic halt in front of Lyons.

  “Well, if it ain’t the cavalry,” Lyons said with a laugh. He vaulted into the passenger’s seat.

  The sound of a grenade exploding came from the desert.

  Pol took off toward the sound.

  When the dune buggy driven by Babette crested a dune and swooped down on the remaining foot soldiers, each side was braced for battle. Babette and Gadgets sank low in their seats as the gymnastics coach aimed the machine straight at the seven survivors. Bullets disintegrated the windshield. Others thudded into body metal. One tire blew and Babette had to fight to keep the buggy from rolling on them. The gunfire quickly thinned out as gunners scrambled out of the path of the racing machine.

  When they had just passed the line of thugs, Gadgets dropped the grenade. As the enemy turned to lay fire at the retreating pair, the blast tore two of the gunners to bloody pieces and scattered the others.

  Babette fought the buggy to a stop just over the crest of a dune. She and Gadgets jumped out and ran back up to the crest. They split, topping the crest about fifteen feet apart. Quickly they laid deadly fire onto the disorganized enemy. Quickly they killed the five remaining guncocks. The bastards had nowhere to hide. They fell under a hail of bullets.

  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.

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