Dead Reckoning

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.

There was no time to waste.

Bolan had only two rules that he followed without deviation in his endless war. First, he would always minimize the risk to innocent civilians before he made a move or pulled a trigger. Second, he would not kill a cop. He viewed police in general as soldiers of the same side, earning danger money in pursuit of criminals.

If cops arrived, he had two choices: slip away somehow, or go to jail.

And jail, inevitably, would mean death.

Hearing the clock tick in his head, he left the kitchen, edged along the hallway toward the sounds of combat, closing on the next two doors in line. One ought to be a dining room, judging by proximity to the kitchen, while the other would be up for grabs.

The door to Bolan’s right flew open as he neared it, someone coming late to join the party, with a toilet and a dripping shower in the background. It was not Walid Khamis, which made the new arrival Hezbollah. He had a pistol in his hand, a towel around his waist and an expression on his face that might have been excitement, maybe fear. Whichever, Bolan shot him through his naked chest before the man had an opportunity to attack him.

Four down, including Grimaldi’s kill in the entryway, but from the sound of it, there were enough defenders left to hold the house if they could pull themselves together and decide on a strategy.

His job was to make sure they died before they had that chance.

* * *

ASHRAF TANNOUS SPENT a moment in the open doorway, wondering if he should fight or flee. He was a leader, with a certain standard to uphold, but that was only useful if he lived to fight another day.

The neighborhood would surely be aroused by now. The police were not loved there, were rarely called, and never to a simple family disturbance, but he knew that someone would alert them to a full-scale battle going on. Arrest meant prison, once they found Khamis and matched the bullets from his body to Tannous’s pistol. There was no death penalty in Paraguay, but he would rather die than spend his life inside a stinking prison cell.

With that in mind, Tannous began to plan his exit from the house. The room where he had killed Khamis was windowless—the very reason he had chosen it—so he would have to find another exit. That meant moving toward the sounds of gunfire and away from safety for the moment, until he could break off to the left or right, choosing a door and slipping through it, hopefully unseen.

Get on with it, a harsh voice in his mind commanded, spurring Tannous into motion. Three of his men passed by his doorway, one of them—Maroun Rahal—pausing to stare at him and ask, “Are you all right, Ashraf?”

“Fine,” he replied. “I’m right behind you.”

With a jerky nod, Rahal moved on, seemingly anxious for his chance to face the unknown enemy.

Young fools. At Rahal’s age, Tannous had felt the same, but he had quickly learned to bide his time, strike without warning and retreat, keeping survival foremost in his mind. Let others wear the vests with high explosives packed in scrap metal and cow dung, hastening their flight to Paradise. Tannous was happy to remain on Earth and plot his moves against the enemy from safety, letting others do his killing for him—and the dying, too.

What famous general in history was not the same?

He stepped into the hallway, saw Rahal and his companions jogging off to meet whatever fate awaited them, and followed at a cautious distance. When they reached the central, east-west corridor, Rahal and company turned left. Tannous had picked the opposite direction as his best path to escape, and he would hold to that unless something prevented him from using it.

“There is no shame in living,” Tannous muttered to himself. In fact, it was his duty to their sacred cause.

An explosion rocked the house as Tannous neared the central hallway. A hand grenade, he thought, and that was bad, because his men had none, even assuming they were fools enough to set one off indoors, where it could kill or wound their comrades. That told Tannous that his enemies had come prepared for anything and did not plan on taking prisoners.