LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

      “It’s freaking hot down here,” Jack Grimaldi complained, lifting off his baseball cap to draw a handkerchief across his sweaty brow.

      “It’s South America,” Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, answered from the meager shade cast by his Tilley hat.

      “Hot,” Grimaldi echoed. “Like I said.”

      They were on Avenida los Yerbales, near the sprawling greenery of Parque Jose Asuncion Flores, looking for a man who dealt in death. Their quarry didn’t advertise himself that way—in fact, his neighbors knew him as an importer of farming implements and sporty motorcycles—but behind the public face, familiar from his television commercials, the guy pursued a thriving trade in weapons.

      Paraguayan law mandated record keeping for acquisition, possession and transfer of all privately owned firearms, yet no statute regulated activities of arms brokers or transfer intermediaries. Authorities claimed that one million guns, both registered and otherwise, were owned by Paraguay’s people.

      “We’re here,” Grimaldi said, standing at ease while foot traffic eddied around him.

      Bolan eyed the tractor showroom, looking for a trap, and came up empty. The interior was air-conditioned, almost frosty next to the oppressive humidity outside. Before they’d had a chance to look around, he saw the owner moving toward them, flashing the electric TV smile.

      “Good day, gentlemen. How may I serve you?” the dealership owner said in Spanish.

      Bolan bit the bullet on the coded answer and replied in English. “We’re concerned with pest control.”

      The famous smile lost just a hint of luster, then came back full-force.

      “Of course, if you will follow me.” Crossing the showroom, heading for a storage area, the man called out, “Antonio! You have the floor.”

      In the back, he led them to a steel door, tapped out numbers on its keypad, then they descended to an air-conditioned basement. The “armory” contained a cornucopia of killing hardware racked or hung on walls, some of the larger pieces free-standing on tripods. Crates of ammunition made a double row running the full length of the space, stacked chest-high beneath fluorescent lights.

      “Gentlemen, what I have is yours,” he said, then added, “For a price, of course.”

      “Of course,” Bolan acknowledged.

      He was flush with cash from his last mission in the Bahamas, liberated from a narco-trafficker who didn’t need it anymore. The mony had been converted into Paraguayan currency at the going rate. Browsing, Bolan chose a Steyr AUG assault rifle, backed up by a Glock 22 autoloader in .40-caliber S&W. Grimaldi agreed with Bolan on the Glock but picked a Spectre M4 submachine gun for his lead weapon. Suppressors all around, with ample extra magazines and ammunition to feed their deadly tools.

      Bolan switched next to heavy hitters, picking out a Neopup PAW-20 grenade launcher. Designed and manufactured in South Africa, the Neopup fired 20 mm point detonating rounds from a 7-round detachable box magazine, with an advertised effective range of 400 meters. For closer work, he took a case of U.S.-made M-67 frag grenades, in standard use throughout the Western Hemisphere and well beyond.

      For cutting tools, Bolan bought an all-steel Randall Model 18 survival knife with a 7.5-inch blade honed to razor sharpness. Grimaldi made do with a six-inch Italian switchblade, basic black.

      “Reminds me of the old home neighborhood,” he said, wearing a crooked grin.

      With pistol shoulder rigs and other stray accessories, the price was staggering—at least, in Paraguayan currency. Bolan paid up in one-hundred-thousand guaraní banknotes, significantly lightening his roll, but leaving plenty for their travel and emergencies. Bidding the tractor man farewell, they lugged four heavy duffel bags back to their rented Hyundai Accent.

      “Next stop?” Grimaldi asked, when he was at the wheel.

      “Lay of the land,” Bolan replied.

      Ciudad del Este was Paraguay’s second-largest city and capital of the Alto Paraná Department. It was a chaotic, crowded place, hosting thousands of foreign tourists per year. Visitors were drawn by counterfeit Viagra, exotic pets, pirated CDs or DVDs, and weapons like the stash riding in the backseat of Bolan’s rental.

      None of that had drawn the Executioner to Ciudad del Este.

      He was looking for specific men, and he had payback on his mind.

      * * *

      BOLAN’S TARGETS HAD chosen Paraguay for its place on the Triple Frontier. The name referred to a tri-border region where the Iguazú and Paraná rivers converged, bringing Paraguay into kissing contact with neighbors Argentina and Brazil. The US State Department claimed, with evidence to back it up, that thousands of Lebanese inhabiting the region funneled cash to terrorist groups including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Egypt’s al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya. That was possible, in part, because Paraguay, for all its pious claims of dedication to the war on terrorism, had no laws against financing foreign insurrectionary groups. Such laws as did exist, meanwhile, were hamstrung by the country’s rank political corruption and its weak judicial system

      The men Bolan was hunting were among the world’s most wanted fugitives. Unwanted might have been a better way to phrase it, since no country publicly supported them or made them welcome as official refugees. The FBI had placed three-million-dollar bounties on their heads, sixteen in all, for a payday of forty-eight million if someone could bring them together in one place, then blow the whistle.

      So far, there’d been no takers.

      Bolan didn’t hunt for money, and his lead to Paraguay had come around the hard way, through concerted effort and relentless digging, biometric facial recognition software and the spiteful word of an informer who had lost his woman to a fugitive’s seductive charm. In Washington, there’d been discussion of a covert military op—deploying navy SEALs, maybe a killer drone—but either one could backfire, big-time, in the theater of bitter politics. Americans had come so far from a consensus on the simplest things that no one cared to risk an act of war in South America.

      Enter the Executioner.

      “Are we firm on this address?” Grimaldi asked, wheeling the Hyundai along Calle Victor Hugo Norte, less than a quarter-mile west of the Rio Paraná and the Brazilian frontier.

      “They were confirmed here yesterday,” Bolan replied. “Hanging with Hezbollah.”

      “A meeting of the minds?”

      “Or something.”

      Hezbollah was well entrenched along the Triple Frontier, collaborating with similar groups on occasion, skirmishing with them when tempers flared over logistics or fine points of Muslim doctrine. They were Shi’ites, modestly labeled the Party of God, and if a person bought that one, he or she might also believe that Jesus smiled upon the Ku Klux Klan.

      One thing about extremists, Bolan had discovered during years of hunting them. Most could be flexible enough to deal with kindred souls of alternate persuasions in the short-term, if it profited both sides.

      Sometimes, like now.

      The

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