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Pain and Frustration
by Lianne Burwell
August 2004
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Carl felt like an idiot, and he didn't like that feeling. 
First he shot that bastard, Unomundo, only to have him get 
up again. And then worse, he got away! This was the first 
mission where they -- *he* -- had let the bad guy get away, 
and damnit, he was pissed.

And then, to top it all off, he'd gotten hit by a piece of 
flying shrapnel when a truck had exploded. For a moment 
he'd thought he'd lost the arm. Then he'd realized that 
he'd been hit by the rearview mirror, of all things. No 
blood. No maiming. Thank God.

But it had done damage. From the feel of it, the muscle was 
probably torn, and he was betting that the bone of the 
shoulder was chipped. If so, he was going to be out of 
action for a month or more. Right now, his arm was in a 
makeshift sling while they waited for extraction, and it 
hurt like hell.

"Relax Ironman," Gadgets said. He made a move to slap Carl 
on the shoulder, then thankfully thought better of it. Then 
again, Carl figured he probably deserved the extra pain for 
screwing up so damn badly.

His partners were pretty perceptive men, though. While 
Gadgets moved on to check their perimeter, just in case a 
few survivors got the wrong idea, Pol took a seat next to 
Carl on a tumbled post. "How's the arm?" he asked.

Carl growled softly. "It hurts like hell and I can't move 
it. So unless you've got some percocet in your pocket, 
forget about it."

Pol nodded sympathetically. "The plane will be here soon to 
pick us up, and there will be lots of lovely drugs on 
board. I promise."

"Good." Damn, he was tired. It had been a long hike through 
the jungle, followed by an intense firefight. Now that the 
adrenaline rush was fading, all he wanted was a chance to 
sleep. If nothing else, the pain was helping to keep him 
alert at least.

"And don't worry about Unomundo. We demolished his little 
Nazi paradise. So what if he got away with his life. That 
doesn't change the fact that he lots. And if he does dare 
to show his face again, he'll be taken down so hard, he 
won't know what hit him."

"What will hit him is *me*," Carl said through clenched 
teeth. "I'm going to find him, and I am going to ventilate 
his ass. He's a dead man walking."

"Exactly!" Pol said, far too brightly for Carl's taste. If 
the man was humoring him, he was going to knock his block 
off. After his arm healed. "He thinks he's the next Hitler, 
but he's just one more petty little dictator with delusions 
of grandeur, and we all know what happens to them."

Carl knew that the pep talk was just Pol's way of trying to 
make him feel better for not having made sure Unomundo was 
dead, and strangely enough, it was working. If nothing 
else, it was distracting him. That plane couldn't get there 
soon enough.

A clatter of stones had them both reaching for their guns. 
Carl relaxed slightly as Gadgets burst into view, but the 
man was followed by the chatter of gunfire. "Shit," he 
muttered to himself. Firing a gun one-handed was a bitch, 
but he would do what he had to do.

After all, this is what he'd chosen to do for a living.

>>>~~~<<<

Half an hour later, the last few nazis were pushing up 
daisies, and Able Team was on board a cargo plane, heading 
north towards California. His arm hurt even worse than 
before, but as promised, the plane had a well-stocked first 
aid kit. Now if only the drugs would kick in fully.

The only problem now was that the plane hadn't exactly been 
built with passenger comfort in mind, and every course 
change or patch of turbulence jarred his arm, sending 
shockwaves of pain through his system that even the best 
drugs would have problems tackling.

"Shit!" Carl bellowed as a sudden drop sent him into a 
wall. Sparks went off behind his eyelids.

He followed the shout up with a string of invective that 
would have made a marine blush. At this rate he was going 
to be black and blue by the time they made it back to the 
States. Brognola damned well better be sending them a 
Learjet to get them from California to the Farm.

"Come over here, tough guy."

Carl blinked away the pain to find Pol sitting on the floor 
of the cabin. If the seats were uncomfortable, the floor 
looked even worse. "What?" he said, forcing a grin. "You 
had your chance. Now I'm a committed man."

Pol rolled his eyes. "You should *be* committed. Now, get 
your ass over here," he ordered, patting a piece of metal 
floor next to him.

Carl decided to humor him -- jungle fever had obviously 
gotten to the man, although Gadgets, one eye opening to 
watch them, didn't look terribly concerned -- and did as he 
was told. Pol promptly manhandled him until he was lying on 
his side, injured arm up, with Pol spooned up behind him, 
holding him tight. A pillow had appeared from under a 
bench, letting him rest his head on something soft at 
least.

He was tempted to comment about lousy timing for joining 
the mile-high club, but even on the hard floor, he was 
pretty comfortable. The shared body heat was nice, since 
the plane didn't have very good heaters, outside of the 
tiny cockpit.

And then Gadgets was curling up in front of him, the three 
of them sharing the one pillow. Between -- literally 
between -- the two of them, he was so well anchored that 
the next sudden move of the plane was so muted that he 
barely noticed.

In fact, without the tension of trying to keep still and 
warm, the painkillers were finally starting to kick in, and 
Carl's eyes were drifting shut. He was warm and protected, 
the danger was over, and he was on his way home to where 
his lover would be waiting.

And maybe someday he'd get his partners to do this again in 
a proper bed, without the clothing or pain. Andrej would 
understand.

>>>~~~<<<

Klaust de la Unomundo-Stiglitz waved off the cautious 
salutes as he made his way to his private study. After 
several days with no sign of pursuit -- there was no way 
that any agency anywhere in the world would be able to 
trace this compound to him -- his soldiers were finally 
starting to relax.

He, on the other hand, found it impossible to do so. The 
multiple gunshot wounds that he had taken had left him in 
constant pain, since he was not foolish enough to take any 
drugs that might cloud his mind. It would show weakness, 
and in his world, weakness was death.

He would heal. But for the moment, the only thing that 
distracted him from his pain was his fury.

How dare they! How dare they interfere with his cause. 
Three men, two of them swarthy inferiors: That was all that 
had been required to destroy a valuable facility, kill many 
men loyal to him, and set back his plans for months, if not 
years. Because of them, he could not return to his native 
Guatemala. While that bothered him very little, since he 
considered Germany, home of his forefathers, to be his true 
fatherland, the loss of the large portion of his wealth 
based in Guatemala was galling. He still had plenty to see 
his plans through, but he disliked being denied what was 
his.

Being shot had been a personal insult on top of everything 
else that had happened that night. Although, if he had to 
be shot, at least it was by the one proper Aryan in the 
attacking force. What the man was doing with the other two, 
he could not understand. Of course, he was forced to work 
with such men himself, but for him, they were mere tools.

Tools and inferiors. But the man who had shot him, he was 
the perfect example of what a true Aryan male should be: 
Tall and muscular, with blond hair and blue eyes. He was 
wasted working as a mercenary; surely mercenaries, since if 
the men had been government agents, his informants would 
have warned him that they were coming.

And handsome. The man was very, very handsome, Unomundo 
thought to himself.

He had agents around the world, loyal to his Fourth Reich, 
and many were now tasked with finding the man. Eventually 
they would succeed. And when that time came, the man's 
partners would die. But not him. He would live. And he 
would join Unomundo, either as a willing partner -- he 
smiled to himself and reached down to touch himself through 
his trousers at the thought, then undid the buttons -- or 
as a prisoner to breed future members of the master race.

Either way, he would be delivered into Unomundo's waiting 
hands, where he would pay for his temerity in shooting him. 
Unomundo looked forward to that. The man would learn his 
lesson, and by the time he was done with him, the man would 
be begging. Begging for all that a man like Unomundo could 
give him.

Begging, he thought, his head falling back as he stroked.

It was just a matter of time.

THE END