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 were 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.
Jack Grimaldi felt like Avon calling, but with nothing anyone inside the target house would want to buy. The treatment he prescribed wouldn’t