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