When the two buggies began to move, Gadgets emptied his Ingram at the enemy. There were no easy targets. The gunners were kissing the sand. The clip emptied just as Babette came charging by in a buggy. The Able Team member grabbed the edge of the windshield, kicking his legs up, letting the momentum of the vehicle swing him over the low door and into the passenger seat.

Gadgets barely had his legs tucked in when a blast rocked the compound, almost lifted the buggy from the ground. Two more shock waves rocked them as they sped away under a hail of bullets. Lyons had barely given them time to make a safe sortie before shooting three HEs into the other buggies. The force of the blast and the flying debris did nothing for the aim of the paratroopers left in the compound.

The two roaring buggies, Blancanales playing catch up to Babette's lead, swept around the first dune out of the fire zone. They circled toward Lyons's position. Phase one of the battle plan complete.

The blitz to liberate the two buggies and destroy the rest had taken only two minutes. By the time the two buggies had roared through the open gate, the surly Captain Young had his paratroopers, and the situation, under control.

"There's only one man up there, you pussies. Take him before the buggies reach him."

Two men tore up a small tent and threw it over the wire. Ten men charged over.

Young unhitched a communicator from his belt.

"Curly. You there?"

"Yeah, Cap."

"How far are you from sector eight?"

"In seven. Almost on top of it."

"A lone gunner. Take him out, now!"

"Got it. Out."

Young stopped five more men who were about to charge out over the tent.

"Rescue as many vehicles as you can. They're our only way out."

The men turned and ran toward the blazing buggies. Several had been protected from direct fire by the wreckage of the others. Lyons had laid the grenades along the edge of the closely packed vehicles. Young's men, prepared to annihilate the camp, had wire cutters. They soon had some fence opened up. They worked feverishly to get a few buggies clear before more gas tanks blew.

Young watched his men work. Not bad for Americans, he thought. But they had botched the ultimate plan — to wipe out the Zambian athletes. Young believed six of his KGB training instructors could have done the job right. He tuned in his small transistor and continued to coordinate his force. He shook his head. They had all made the night jump safely — all sixty-two. Now, his best estimate left thirty alive. As far as he could tell, there were only five or six of the enemy left behind when the copters took off. How in hell did they do so much damage, so much killing?

But things would change, Young thought. Things would change.

Young's men were trained American veterans with no place to use their deadly skills. After Nam they could not adjust to the tedium of civilian living. It had taken Young five years and three million of the Kremlin's precious American dollars, but he had managed to recruit and train these social misfits. The idea had been to have both the blacks and the Klansmen found dead, killed by American guns. It would have been a beautiful black mark against America. It would have been a great propaganda coup, especially since, coinciding with the barbaric murder, many black American athletes would be turning their backs on their homeland, moving to Communist countries.

Now this. Now all of this, because of some crack tactical squad. The bastards will pay, Young thought. They'll pay.

Captain Young rounded up nine troopers. The ten men loaded themselves into the five surviving, slightly damaged, buggies and started along the tracks left by the escaping vehicles. The five vehicles spread out in a V-formation, giving them a wide scan and enabling them to proceed at a high speed without throwing sand on each other.

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.

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.