by L. J. Martin
Just the kind of place a couple of Iraq vets should be very, very unwelcome.
As we exit the Asuncion metropolitan area, Alex whines. "I cannot drive all night, Señor."
"You won't have to. Skip and I will take over when you get tired. But drive a while, as I have some reading to do."
For the first time, I open the envelope Carmen has provided, with photos and reports, only some of which I understand. The bite was to the back of his neck, and the inflammation, based on what I can see in the pictures, is nothing less than horrible. As terrible as it is, I find a section that makes me laugh, and Skip, beside me in the back seat, looks over.
"What the hell is funny about an autopsy report?" he asks.
"Did you know that the bite of the banana spider, a phoneutria or some bullshit scientific name, gives you a constant hard-on, to the point of it being painful?"
"No," he says, "that's a bit of trivia I did not know. So, did he die from erectus giganticas?"
"No, he died of a spider bite, or so this report says…but I'm sure that's total bullshit. Either that, or he was held down while someone pushed a spider down on his neck until Mr. Spider took umbrage and bit the shit out of him."
"I wonder if they have to bury you in a closed coffin if you have a giant hard-on?"
"Now it's you being funny."
"Keep reading, I'm gonna nap."
"Good." And I do. I study the pictures, including one of the actual fang marks, taken with a centimeter ruler in the shot. I'm a little surprised to see fang marks that are over a centimeter apart. This must have been a very, very large spider.
I tire of trying to decipher the reports, and of looking at the pics of a guy who, from all I can discover, was a very nice young man with a very nice family.
Now that dipshit Glascock has ratted me out, I have one more reason to do the son-of-a-bitch. The more I look at the pics of Toby Bartlett, who obviously died a horrible painful death, the less I give a rat's ass about who gets in the way of my stealing the airplane. I really don't want to have to shoot down a bunch of Air Force guards who are merely doing their job, and will try my very best to avoid such, but I am going to take the G5 out of Paraguay…hell or high water.
As we begin to see more and more lights, I pull off and wake Alex, not trusting my own driving on tight crowded streets.
It's well after midnight when we crawl into Ciudad del Este, a city of over three hundred thousand—the second largest in Paraguay—to the west of the Brazilian and Paraguayan border, which is the Parayan River. Even now the traffic is near a standstill. I've read that the dope smugglers rule the night and the river is not patrolled, as it would be too dangerous.
Adjacent on the Brazilian side of the river is the city of Foz do Iguacu, equally large. Like most South American cities, it is a contrast of modern buildings and slums. My reading has illustrated that it's a city of crime, with Chinese, Russians, Syrians, Lebanese, Koreans, and of course Brazilians, Argentinians and Paraguayans. There are far more casinos and whorehouses than churches, although in the few blocks we've travelled the prevalence of Sunnis and Shiites is obvious which is to be expected with over twenty thousand Muslims in the triple border region. There's even the occasional pagoda.
A good portion of Paraguay's economy stems from the sale of power from the Itapiu Dam, located just north adjoining the city, which backs up a huge body of water, Republic Lake. The river below is at least a half-mile wide.
Ciudad del Este appears to be the underbelly of three countries, and the belly hair is infested with sand fleas from the Near East.
The names I've been given by Pax are both Middle Eastern—Abad Itanid and Hasaan Al-Farashi, both well-known arms dealers. I'm told I can find Al-Farashi at or near the Mosque of the Prophet Muhammad, where a spice shop fronts for his dope and arms smuggling operation. Itanid is located across the river, a farmer, whose coffee plantation is small but obviously profitable, or at least it would seem so as his estancia is two storey with a large indoor pool. The real operation, however, is deep in the jungle, accessible only by foot, and coffee is not the crop. Coca is the primary crop, for the production of cocaine, and cannabis the secondary. It's again amazing to me what Pax can dig out of the web.
Too bad he couldn't dig up a nice ex-patriot American arms dealer whose first inclination would not be tacking my hide to his trophy wall.
25
Alex works his way to the mosque, seemingly a new building. We find a parking spot across the street in front of a coffee house and café, The Alhambra, and decide to sleep the night away, of which there's very little left.
It's not an easy place to sleep—cramped in a car, lots of traffic noise, a populace who would slit your throat upon learning you'd fought in Iraq. It's particularly uncomfortable for Skip, who's six-feet-five and over two hundred and fifty pounds. No matter how cramped, he sleeps.
Dawn finds the coffee shop still closed, but the traffic is even thicker—bumper to bumper—and most of them obviously think the horn will clear the way. Even with the noise, Alex and Skip manage to sleep on, but I decide to walk. Before I circle the first block, I come upon Abad's Spices, if my Spanish is any good…Especia Abad. I pass a dozen street vendors stocking their stalls with Armani and Gucci purses, the latest movies on CD, and electronics with Apple and Sony lables…the rip off of all the great names. Where else can you get a Gucci handbag for twenty bucks?
The spice shop has yet to open, but I suspect it will soon as the lights are on in what appears to be a home-over-business.
By the time I circle three more blocks and return to the car, both Skip and Alex are standing outside watching the traffic go by while Alex begs a cancer with a morning smoke and Skip playfully negotiates with a five foot tall, five-foot-round street vendor, made taller by the red fez with black tassel he wears, for a faux Rolex.
"Coffee?" I ask.
"Coffee, hell," Skip replies. "A few hotcakes, some pork chops and scrambled eggs."
I have to laugh at that one. "You damn sure won't get any pork chops in this neighborhood."
"Yeah, I forgot. Okay, yogurt and some good pan dulce."
I wave for them to follow and we're in the café in ten steps.
Over coffee, bread hot from the oven, goat cheese and fresh fruit, I ask Alex, "Okay, what time will the spice shop open? Especia Abad is only a half block around the corner, and it's the only spice shop for four blocks around, if my walk told me anything."
"Maybe eight, maybe nine…or maybe ten. Quien sabe."
"Who knows," I reply. He's a wealth of information.
After we finish eating and head that way, I turn to Skip. "Hey, I want you to stay out of sight. We may need some element of surprise with this bunch. No reason to lay all our cards on the table."
"I'll hang back," he says and stops to window-shop a couple of doors from the spice shop.
"I stay with Señor Skip?" Alex asks.
"No, you stay with me. You translate."
"Okay, maybe more bucks?"
"Maybe a kick in the ass."
That quiets him. The shop is open and a tall man in a striped disdasha is behind the counter sorting small bags of some yellow substance.
"Abad?" I ask, and he looks me up and down carefully before answering.
"No, Señor Itanid is the owner and only here occasionally," Alex translates.
"Where may I find him?" I ask.
"He works at his warehouse and does not like to be bothered."
"I need to speak with him."
"About?"
"About buying some items from him."
"What items?"
"Personal, but it involves a great deal of money."
"Your name?" he asks.
"Strong. Richard Strong," I lie.
He nods, and walks to the back of the shop, out of earshot, and dials on his cell phone. In moments, he walks back and hands me the phone, which I pass to Alex.
"Señor Itanid wishes to know exactly what it is you wish to p
urchase."
I hesitate a moment, wondering how to phrase it, then offer "War surplus."
And it seems Alex is getting directions.
As we drive south along the wide river, I'm amazed at how many well-armed police and soldiers I see along the roadways. Almost every corner as we drive out of town has at least one policeman or soldier with both an automatic slung beneath an arm and a sidearm. And I see many in street clothes carrying what appear to be full automatics. This place is definitely the wildwest.
After twenty minutes of winding our way through town, the crowded city spreads a little, and becomes more industrial.
When we're a block from the high fence surrounding a yard and the Itanid warehouse, we drop Skip off with instructions to stay out of sight but stand by in case we get in trouble.
We slow and turn into a fenced yard with a gate just inside, with a guard. Alex speaks to him. I note the sidearm he wears under an untucked t-shirt, and he walks over and swings the gate aside. I'd think it a scrap yard, but in fact the vehicles are all of military origin, most old and beat to hell, but a couple of fairly new halftracks. None of them have weapons mounted where they once might have been.
The structure in the distance must cover most of an acre, maybe a hundred feet wide by four hundred long. It appears to be adobe, or maybe plaster over concrete blocks. A guard is seated outside a pass-through alongside sliding doors large enough to accommodate any vehicle in the yard.
He rises from a ladder-back chair and keeps a hand on a weapon on his belt. We exit, Alex speaks to him, and he waves us through.
My eyes immediately settle on a round table near the door to an inside office, where four bearded men sit, some smoking, some drinking tea or coffee, all with either sidearms or an AK47 leaning close at hand. They are fat and skinny, one is bald and one has hair and beard black and curly as steel wool; another has hair and beard ruler straight.
The warehouse smells of spices, but some of the cases I see stacked in the distance, all painted black, which I imagine is to occlude any markings. Their appearance whiffs of crated weapons and a few look to be the exact size to house an RPG—rocket propelled grenade—case.
One of the bearded men rises and waves us toward the interior office door. The inside is divided into two offices, the outer one with a young male with a Hollywood five-day beard behind a desk, the floors covered with what appear to be Persian carpets, the walls with pictures of Mecca and mosques. There's not a Playboy pinup to be seen.
The young man circles the desk and indicates to me to hold my arms out, then frisks me and relieves me of my Ruger from its holster in the small of my back. I allow it. He frisks Alex as well, who looks as if he's swallowed a frog and sounds so as he croaks "Pardon, por favor," and turns and heads back out the door. The young man stops him and points to a chair against the wall, and Alex sits as carefully as if he was about to hatch eggs. As soon as he's seated, the young man instructs him—presume to stay seated—then returns to me and holds the inner office door open.
A portly gentleman, bald except for a thick beard, is behind a metal desk shuffling papers. A smoking gold colored hookah, a water pipe with a long tube, rests on the edge of his desk but the smoke smells like tobacco, not cannabis. The room is barren except for two wooden chairs and a hat rack. The fat man looks up, and rolls of suet stick out on the back of his skull and neck. He doesn't rise, then asks as he continues shuffling papers, "Señor Strong? I speak English."
"Yes, sir."
"You are an American?"
"I am."
"Why does an American come to Paraguay to buy war surplus?"
"This American cannot buy war surplus…weapons…in America, and cannot fly with them to South America…or anywhere else. And I have business in Brazil that requires weapons."
"And who says I have weapons to sell?"
"I have my sources."
He eyes me carefully, like a mongoose eyeing a cobra, then says, slowly and carefully, "If your sources are American spies, you will find yourself in our incinerator and your mother will begin to wonder why you have not called home."
I laugh, even though I don't find him particularly humorous. "If I knew American spies they would be after me, even more than you."
"So, you are a mercenary?"
"Let's leave it at the fact that I have a need for arms and I'm willing to pay good money for them."
"And what would you think an AK47 worth?"
"How about five hundred dollars…U.S.?"
"You only need a single weapon, it would be a thousand U.S., but I will throw in five hundred rounds of ammunition."
"I need five, so five hundred is a good price. And I want one of those RPG's you have in crates painted black."
He smiles tightly. "An RPG would be against the law of every country in South America and your part of the Americas as well, I would imagine."
"True," I say, and smile. "So, are the ones you have 18s or the reloadable 16s?"
"16s."
"So, how much?"
"Three thousand five hundred."
"I'll give you six thousand for the lot. Five AK47s with five hundred rounds each, two thirty shot clips with each, no tracers, one RPG with five reloads."
"I would consider eight thousand, no less."
"Make it an even seven thousand and you have a deal."
"I am not a rug merchant, Señor Strong. But I will consider seven thousand five hundred."
"Fine," I reach across the desk to shake hands.
He smiles at me, one side of his mouth a little crooked. "You are not a follower of Allah?"
"I have no problem with Allah, but no."
"I do not shake hands with infidels. You have cash on you, right now?"
"I do."
He picks up the phone and I hear the young man outside talking with him. He nods, seeming satisfied.
"You came alone?" he asks.
"I have a driver who's also an interpreter."
"You came from Asuncion?"
"We did."
He reaches under his desk and I hear a buzzer ring three times in the outer office, then I hear a door open, but it appears to be the outer door, not the inner, and I hear Alex squeak, "Señor…señor." Then the inner door opens and two of the bearded who were around the table outside—baldy and curly—storm in.
And it doesn't look like they're coming to serve tea.
26
I stand in time to sideslip the butt of an AK aimed at my nose—it does scrape across a cheek—drop to one hand, and side kick the guy in the knee. It folds and he goes down, falling against the second guy, but is between me and the second attacker.
The coat rack is within reach. I grab it and drive it into the face of the second asshole as he's trying to bring the AK up to bear on my gut, then I leap the guy who's on the floor, flopping around like a fish out of water. Twice more I drive the hooks of the coat rack into the guy's wide face. It's gushing blood from gashes from the metal hangars, as he goes back against the wall.
Dropping the rack, I close on him, grab the AK, and fall back, dragging him as he clings as tightly to the weapon as I hoped he would. I drop to my back with both feet in his gut. He goes over my head and releases the AK as he does, and I come up with it in hand and spin to see the fat man with an old Army Colt .45 leveled at my belly. But I have the AK leveled at his.
"You can put one .45 in my gut while I'm cutting you in half with this AK," I snap.
His eyes are flashing fire, but he's standing solid.
"Now, I'm going to back out of here, and we're not going to kill each other," I say, slowly, as I back toward the door and out it and pull it closed behind. "Don't come out of this door," I yell, but have stepped aside, if he fires through the door, I'm out of the line of fire.
He doesn't fire, and I head for the outer door just as it opens and the other two bearded guys come charging in. I meet the first one with the butt of the AK and he goes down like the bag of shit I'm sure he is. I meet the other one a
s he's trying to swing the muzzle of his weapon to me. I catch it with one hand on the barrel, get a half step closer, and bury a knee in his crotch, then drive the banana clip of the AK I'm carrying in one hand into his throat. He suddenly loses interest in those seventy-two virgins he's been promised and hits the ground, clasping his personals with both hands.
I think I'm home free, but then the door between the offices bursts open and the guy I'd flipped over exits in a run, sees me, and his muzzle is coming up, but not quickly enough. I fire a three shot burst, blowing him back into the office.
Spinning toward the door, I see Alex running for the outside, but before he gets there the outside guard fills the doorway and he, too, is raising his muzzle. I have no choice, and stitch him with another three shot burst from the AK, and he's flung back outside to the ground.
Fuck, it's a total cluster-fuck. I head back to the office door and clean up my mess by emptying the clip into the last standing guy, then into the fat man's desk, which he's kneeling behind and firing the .45 as fast as he can pull the trigger, but only blowing holes in his ceiling. The weapon does kick like hell and is hard to keep down on the target…however, he'll never have to worry about it again.
His .45 rests on the desk, and since they absconded with my Ruger, I help myself to it.
It seems Allah will be busy providing the faithful with virgins. I've often wondered what the virgins think of this arrangement, but Muslims don't seem to consider their feelings.
Alex is screaming and heading out the outside door, then spins on a heel with a move that would make a ballerina jealous and as quickly is screaming and heading back inside. I pass him and get to the doorway in time to see Skip heading my way at a run, and look past him to see the gate guard flat on his back, unmoving.