Nothing much had changed since then. At least, not for the better.
“Well, take care,” Kurtzman said, at a sudden loss for words.
“I always do,” Bolan replied.
The computer wizard was laughing when he cut the link.
“So, what’s the word?” Grimaldi asked him.
“We’re good to go on both ends,” Bolan said. “Addresses, anyway.”
“And what’s the game plan if we don’t find Khamis at the new place? Do we stick around and hunt for him?”
Bolan had already considered that and shook his head. “If he hasn’t gone back to the Hezbollah team, it means he’s on his own and likely lost in Ciudad del Este. Or he could’ve caught the first bus out of town, maybe across the Río Paraná to Foz do Iguaçu. From there, who knows where?”
Foz do Iguaçu lay just across the river, linked by a Friendship Bridge constructed to promote traffic between Paraguay and Brazil. Another crossing, the San Roque González de Santa Cruz Bridge, carried traffic back and forth between Ciudad del Este and Posadas, capital of Argentina’s Misiones province. Either way, there’d be no way to track Walid Khamis once he slipped out of town.
Welcome to the wonderful Triple Frontier.
“The good news,” Bolan said, “is that he’s stranded here, at least for now. If we can find the other remnants of his crew and deal with them, he’s neutralized.”
“Until he makes his way back home and finds another crew,” Grimaldi pointed out.
“It’s not ideal, I grant you,” Bolan answered. “But the time we’d waste looking for him across three countries gives his thirteen pals a chance to plan their next performance.”
“Right, a trade-off. So we’d better hit it.”
Outside, the rain had stopped, and steam was rising from the pavement. To Bolan, glancing up and down the street, it seemed as if fires were burning underneath the city, looking for a place to break through and devour everyone above.
* * *
“YOUR FRIENDS DON’T want you back, it seems,” Ashraf Tannous told Walid Khamis.
“You expected them to pay for me?” Khamis was smiling, but it strained the muscles in his face and did nothing to ease the sickly churning in his stomach.
Tannous shrugged, seeming disinterested. “It was worth a try,” he said. “My problem, now, is what to do with you.”
“Release me,” Khamis offered. “Then you have no problem.”
“On the contrary. I doubt you’d last two days in Paraguay alone, much less in Argentina or Brazil. You don’t speak Spanish, don’t speak Portuguese, can barely manage simple English. How long until you make a mistake and find yourself in custody? From there, it’s but a short step back to us, when you begin to squeal.”
“I’m not a rat,” Khamis said indignantly.
“Not a rat so far,” Tannous corrected him. “Police in Paraguay...well, let us say they are not known for sensitivity, especially to foreigners.”
“Are they worse than the Saudis?” Khamis challenged him. “Worse than the Egyptians? Worse than the Syrian?”
“After the bloodiness this afternoon, they will be hunting Arabs to arrest and question. You, alone, don’t stand a chance against them.”
“So, show me a way out of the city, then,” Khamis replied.
“I have already lost a dozen men because of you and your two friends. You think I’d risk another? Even one?”
“What, then?” Khamis asked Tannous, hating how his dry throat made his voice crack.
“You disappear,” Tannous replied. “If any of your comrades ask—which seems unlikely, you’ll admit—I simply say that we released you, at your own request, to make your way...wherever.”
“Kabeer will not believe it.”
“Have you not been listening? Your friend Kabeer told me to deal with you as I see fit.
“All of Israel wants me dead,” Tannous reminded him, smiling, “along with half of the United States, at least, and much of Britain. The Saudis have sentenced me to death in absentia. Warrants are out for my arrest in Syria and Jordan. I assure you, little man, that Saleh Kabeer is the least of my worries.”
As Tannous spoke, he reached around behind his back and drew a pistol from its place beneath his shirttail. Khamis recognized the Beretta 92 issued to Paraguayan military officers as a standard sidearm, then noticed its extended, threaded muzzle, added to accept a sound suppressor.
“I’m sorry that you ever came here,” Tannous said. “More sorry for my brothers than for you, of course, but still. You struck a blow at the Crusaders. It’s unfortunate that you’ve become a liability.”
Walid Khamis was tired of worrying about what happened next. Now that his fate was sealed, he simply wanted to get on with it and minimize the small talk. Paradise awaited him, he still felt sure. Tannous was simply standing in his way.
“So, kill me, then,” he blurted, as Tannous affixed a sound suppressor to his Beretta. One of his men had produced it from a pocket, all the time watching Khamis for his reaction, seeming disappointed when he did not weep and wail.
“You’re anxious now?” Tannous inquired. “Ready to see the virgins waiting for you? Or would you prefer boys, if I may ask?”
“Bastard!” Khamis spit back at him.
“Alas, my mother is deceased, but she would not have joined in any such activity were she still living. Now, your jackal of a father, on the other hand—”
Khamis lunged for him, hands formed into claws, but someone struck him from behind, and suddenly the lights went out.
* * *
“IT DOESN’T LOOK like much,” Grimaldi said, as they rolled past the target.
“No, it wouldn’t,” Bolan said. “Low profile. Trying to fit in.”
“And Bear was clear about the address?”
“Crystal,” Bolan said. “He’s never steered me wrong.”
“Okay.”
It was still daylight as they drove down Avenida San José, but dusk was closing in on Ciudad del Este after one hellacious afternoon. Bolan knew crime was rampant all along the Triple Frontier, but he had no idea what the average daily murder rate might be for any of the district’s top three border cities. The number was totally irrelevant, but he and Grimaldi had bumped the day’s statistics.
And they were about to give the stats another nudge.
The rain had passed but might return at any time. Both warriors left on their raincoats, concealment for the weapons hanging from their shoulder slings, pistols in armpit leather, frag grenades attached to belts. Even in Ciudad del Este, those accoutrements would raise eyebrows and have observers reaching for their cell phones to alert police.
Their Bluetooth headsets, on the other hand, were normal.
On the drive across town, Grimaldi had scanned the neighborhood on Google Earth, getting the layout and an aerial of the Hezbollah safe house. It was on the small side, maybe four bedrooms, although he couldn’t judge the floor plan from a snapshot of the roof, taken from outer space. The last snap hadn’t captured any dogs roaming the fenced backyard, which faced a narrow alley at the rear. There’d been no guards outside, either, and Bolan wasn’t sure exactly what to think of that.
It could go either way, he knew, after their hit on Calle Victor Hugo Norte. If the Hezbollah hardmen were hurt and spooked badly enough, they might have fled the city, but he didn’t think so. It was more likely, to Bolan’s mind, that they would go to ground at their alternate hideout, pull the blinds and disconnect the phones, hoping the storm blew past them and moved on.
If he was wrong, this second stop-off was a waste of time. They should be airborne, winging out of Paraguay and toward their next meeting with God’s Hammer, on the far side of the world.
But Bolan wasn’t often wrong. He had a feel for what his enemies wer
e thinking, how they’d play it in a given situation. Even dealing with fanatics hyped on hatred and religion, he could get inside most predators’ minds and guess what to expect, at least in generalities.
Because at bottom, where it mattered, they were all the same.
“You want the front or back?” Bolan asked.
“Front,” Grimaldi said. “I know enough Spanish to confuse them and get a foot in the door.”
“As long as they don’t chop it off,” Bolan said.
“No problemo, señor.”
“Okay, you convinced me.”
The back door could go either way, once Grimaldi dropped in around in front. The men they wanted could come boiling out the back or plaster Grimaldi with everything they had to keep him out. If it went down that way, Bolan would be a rude surprise for them, another drop-in they were not expecting.
Watching curtained windows as he made his move, he steeled himself for anything.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jack Grimaldi felt like Avon calling, but with nothing anyone inside the target house would want to buy. The treatment he prescribed wouldn’t improve their health or make them more attractive, but at least, if he applied it properly, the world would be a better place when he was done.
And would he still be living in it?
Doorbells hadn’t caught on yet, it seemed, in Ciudad del Este, though the door did have a peephole set at about eye level for a person five foot four or five. Whoever answered to his knocking wouldn’t see the Spectre M4 held against Grimaldi’s hip, ready to rise and shine the moment that the door was opened, but they’d have a fish-eyed view of the Stony Man pilot’s face underneath a faded baseball cap.
Just for the hell of it, he smiled.
Footsteps approached the door. Grimaldi willed himself to stay relaxed, at least to all outward appearances. A shadow blocked the peephole and a man’s voice called out to him through the door, “Quién es?”
They were speaking Spanish. Great. Grimaldi didn’t know how long the Hezbollah team had been in Paraguay or how much of the native language they had learned, but he could only bluff it out. Dropping his voice a notch to make the doorman strain his ears, he answered back.
“Es mi amigo en su casa hoy?”
Grimaldi had no friends in town, and if he had, they wouldn’t have been here, but what the hell.
“Que estás diciendo?”
Good question. What was he saying, standing there and waiting for a storm of bullets to rip through the door at any second? Broadening his smile, he tried again, pure gibberish this time.
“Mi perro es loco ahora por dias.”
The doorman wasn’t loving it. “Usted tiene la casa equivocada. Vete!”
But Grimaldi didn’t have the wrong house, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Mi elefante está enfermo,” he said, almost whispering, forcing the doorman to lean in closer to hear him.
“Que?”
Instead of answering that time, Grimaldi raised his SMG and fired a short burst through the door, approximately were the greeter’s torso ought to be, eyes slitted against any blowback from the flimsy paneling. A swift kick to the lock forced the door open, and it caught the Hezbollah gunner inside as he was falling, shoving him away to clear the threshold.
A hallway stretched in front of Grimaldi, rooms branching off to either side, the home’s back door facing the pilot from the far end of the corridor. In Dixie, once upon a time, they called homes with that simple layout shotgun houses, meaning you could fire a weapon through the front door, down the hall, into the yard out back, and never hit an intervening wall.
Somewhere inside the house, from some room to his left, a man called out a question. This one spoke in Arabic, not trusting Spanish, and Grimaldi didn’t bother answering. He ducked into the first room on his right and found a parlor, unoccupied, a TV set playing without an audience. Contestants on a game show looked excited, but Grimaldi didn’t have a clue what they were doing.
Two male voices called down the hallway now, first curious, then shouting when they saw their buddy stretched out in the foyer, marinating in a pool of blood. More voices answered from the back, all Arabic, and Grimaldi heard automatic weapons being primed.
The doorman he had taken down was not Walid Khamis. As for the rest, he’d have to meet the lot of them head-on and see what he could see. Grimaldi smiled ferociously and went to meet his enemies.
* * *
ASHRAF TANNOUS HAD watched while others rolled Walid Khamis up in a plastic tarp, secured at each end by black zip ties. Perhaps, he thought, the worthless slug would suffocate in there while they transported him to a disposal site, and save Tannous a bullet. They would have to check him, though, and not risk leaving him to struggle free once they had left
Another problem, courtesy of the strangers whom he had been ordered to accept as guests, providing shelter until it was safe for them to leave. Now, they were never leaving Paraguay, and neither were a dozen of his soldiers who had died in vain, protecting them.
Stupid.
The men in charge of Hezbollah should never have agreed to hide the upstarts from God’s Hammer, but they did not consult Tannous on such decisions, even when the order put his life at risk. He would be happy when the last of them was gone, and wondered if he ought to leave a message with the corpse, something to lead police away from Hezbollah, or would that only make things worse?
A knocking on the door distracted him. He heard Adel Asaad answer the summons, using the Spanish he had learned to send away whoever it might be. Tannous leaned into the hallway, listening, and saw Asaad bending as if to press his ear against the door. In profile, the man looked confused, then angry at whatever he was hearing, all of it inaudible beyond the threshold.
Asaad ordered the pest to go away. Tannous could understand that much, but something else was said, causing Asaad to stoop once more and ask a question. When a burst of automatic fire ripped into him, causing Tannous to jump, the shots were nearly silent but for rattling sounds as they punched through the cheap front door.
Tannous backpedaled, nearly tripping over Khamis in his rolled tarp, cursing as he heard the front door to the house being smashed open. There were no shouts to identify police, but what did that mean, in a town like Ciudad del Este, where the police were a lawless bunch?
Nothing.
Tannous could hear his soldiers rallying, responding to the sudden threat. He stood immobile for an instant, looming over Khamis, then bent and probed the bundle with his free hand, searching for the interloper’s head.
A muffled protest told him when he’d found it, and Tannous stepped back a pace, then fired two muted shots into the plastic where his finger marks were visible. Another second, and the dead man’s blood spilled out, pooling at first, then seeping into cracks between the wooden floor’s thin slats.
At least that job was done, and he could leave disposal to whoever managed to survive the firefight now in progress, echoing throughout the house. Whoever wanted him could have the worthless dog. Tannous had to think about survival now, and that meant getting out before he wound up with a bullet in his own head.
Job one was to obtain a better weapon. He’d already fired two of his pistol’s fifteen rounds and was not carrying an extra magazine. More firepower improved his chances of escaping, and the instrument was already at hand.
Stepping around the leaking bundle on the floor, Tannous retrieved an AK-47 from a nearby coffee table. The assault rifles were plentiful in Paraguay, despite laws restricting civilian ownership. They were traded for drugs at the border, no cash changing hands, or sold by rebel groups who needed money more than surplus arms. Tannous’s rifle was a vintage weapon but in good shape, loaded with a 40-round curved magazine that had another taped beside it, in reverse, for quick reloading in a fight.
He jacked a round into the chamber, swallowed hard and braced himself to join the fight—just as another home invader smashed in the back door.
* * *
BOLAN HAD MISSED Grimaldi’s entry to the house but heard it loud and clear when the defenders opened up on him in there. He waited for a heartbeat, just in case some of them tried to rush the back door, then he gave the door a flying kick beside the dead bolt and pushed through.
Downrange, the front door stood wide open with a body wedged behind it. There was no sign of Grimaldi, but his work was recognizable. Movement to Bolan’s left directed his attention to a kitchen, where two bearded men had been distracted from the chore of chopping vegetables and dropping them into a pot. Both of the Hezbollah hardmen held knives, but neither seemed to have a gun.
Bolan shot them, anyway, one muffled 5.56 mm round apiece, then scanned the kitchen to make sure he hadn’t overlooked a lurker waiting for the chance to jump him once his back was turned.
How many rooms were left to clear? Oddly, the house seemed smaller on the inside than it had when he was on the street, the very opposite of what he usually found on entering an unfamiliar structure. When he checked the central hallway once again, Bolan knew why: there was a second corridor, crossing the first halfway between the home’s two doors, with more rooms leading off it from either side.
More to explore. More traps waiting to close around him, if he didn’t watch his step.
More places for Walid Khamis to hide himself.
Shooting on the street side of the house had lagged for just a moment, but it started up again now, drawing Bolan toward the fight. He still had no idea how many Hezbollah gunners were in the house, how many more might be arriving from some errand or in answer to a hurried cell phone call once Grimaldi had breached the front door, but the racket they were making now would surely prompt at least one neighbor to alert police.
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