Don Pendleton - Dead Reckoning

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.

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