LITMIR.BIZ

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but that alone was starting to make him wonder. There was no time to question motives or ponder all that Collins had done and failed to do as far as this leg of the mission fell. Bolan was on his own, and he told the four commandos Collins had handed over as much. They were to sit tight, help the M-60 door gunner with firepower from the air.

      “So, tell me, why bring us along in the first place?” Roadrunner asked.

      “We’re supposed to just sit up here and scratch ourselves, Colonel?” Tsunami added.

      “Contagion,” Bolan told them, as the Black Hawk veered in the direction where it would drop him off. “The good major seemed real concerned about his guys coming into contact with some unspecified disease down there. Consider this a favor. You want to cover me from up here or play with yourselves, that’s up to you.”

      A shrug, a grunt, a soft shake of the head but Bolan could almost read the thoughts behind the body language. He wasn’t looking to play hero, aware he could use all the help on the ground he could get. The problem was he wasn’t sure he could trust them. And if he pulled it off by himself, say cuffed and brought back a few top henchmen to Collins? Perhaps, he decided, it was time to take a deeper measure of the Cobra leader. His suspicion was that Collins had hung him out here to burn. If so, then why?

      “Have it your way, Colonel,” Tsunami said as the Black Hawk lowered, the LZ clear of any hardforce as far as Bolan could tell. “Good luck.”

      The Executioner jumped off, M-16 out and ready to announce his presence. Bolan didn’t have long to wait as two goons in skullcaps appeared from between a row of huts already ablaze. They swung his way, eyes wide, confused and shocked, but just in time for Bolan to wax them off their feet.

      OMARI NAHBAT BELIEVED that not only were they doing a service for their country, but they also were performing God’s work. Surely, he thought, God wouldn’t want his children to suffer a slow, agonizing death from plagues that had no cure. Even if there was medicine to relieve their misery, it would only prolong a life that would end soon enough, flesh succumbing eventually to the ravaging dictates of plague. It was God’s will, since any antibiotics or painkillers that found their way into the country always ran out—or were pilfered by the strong who were meant to rule. Why fight the course of nature? That was hardly murder in his eyes, as he watched the corpses dragged by Ethiopians or the more brave of heart of his clansmen, the dead flung or rolled into the leaping flames. This was containment, pure and simple, a way to save the healthy populace from plague, spare the strong and healthy. Who or what could fight invisible killers, anyway? Fire was the only cure, cremation on the spot of the afflicted the only answer, the way he and the others saw it. There were no regulated state-run hospitals in his country, and doctors usually came in from beyond the borders, provided, of course, they had the nerve, the cash or the medicine to sell just to stay long enough to waste their time on the walking dead. Disease was as monstrous and unforgiving a killer as famine in Somalia, and it was everywhere.

      The shriek jarred him. Nahbat slipped the AK-47 off his shoulder. Two of his clansmen, he found, wrestled with what he assumed had been a corpse. Arms thrashed, a cry rang out, then they tossed the boy’s body into the fire. One of them stepped back, chuckling, slapping his palms as if that might wash away any disease he might have come into contact with. The awful scream chilled Nahbat for a moment, shivering him to the bone, but he was grateful when it ended moments later.

      He turned away, suddenly wondering, as he searched the line of clansmen, where Hussein had gone. There had been something in the boy’s eyes he had found unsettling. What was it? Horror? Contempt for the rest of them? Judgment? He was young, unaccustomed to the harsh realities of life, but that was no excuse for Hussein to neglect his duties, to not pull his weight. The boy needed to learn respect, he thought, show gratitude to a cousin who had given him life beyond being a simple goatherd and who might have perhaps been destined to suffer the same fate as the afflicted in the remote regions of the country.

      The shooting was subsiding now to the south, the stink of plastic on fire from that direction flung up his nose, compounding the queasy churn in his gut as he found still more huts being torched. He strode from the pyres, both to clear his senses of burning flesh and to find Hussein. He had been standing at the edge of the pit moments ago, but the boy’s familiar short, spindly frame was nowhere to be found.

      He needed to have a talk with Hussein anyway, find the truth of whatever was in the boy’s heart. There was no room in the clan for weaklings. If he discovered Hussein couldn’t cut it, he would have to kill his cousin, if only to save face.

      He was forging into a wall of drifting smoke, searching the village, the fires spreading now, warping the plastic-covered tents, when he thought he spotted a large black object in the sky. It appeared to fly south, there then gone, but it was nearly impossible to make out what it was, the towering barricades of smoke all but obscuring his view.

      He decided it was nothing more than his senses bombarded by the task at hand, eyes playing tricks, and went in search of Hussein.

      “COME WITH ME, little one. Do not be afraid. I will take you from this place.”

      He heard himself say it, only Hussein Nahbat didn’t believe his own words of assurance, much less feel any confidence he could pull off a disappearing act. If he did manage to escape into the surrounding wasteland, leading this boy to safety, then what? Where would he go? His parents were dead, and the village he had come from had perished recently from famine or disease, or so his cousin had said. Better to die, wandering in self-imposed exile, he decided, wasting away, step by step, hungry and thirsty, leaving his and the boy’s fate in the hands of God than play any part in the evil around him. Beyond his flesh, he had a soul still to think about, to attempt to save in the eyes of a merciful God. And surely God would judge this evil, he had to believe, in a world far better than the one he so desperately wished to escape.

      He wanted to think himself a coward for running, not standing up to them, fighting back, but what could he do? He was only one against a small army of murderers. Not only that, he wasn’t sure he could even pull the trigger on his clansmen, despite the fact he knew they were evil men who deserved only death. And if he didn’t participate in throwing the dead—and, God have mercy, the dying—into the fires or shoot down unarmed women and children, they would deem him unworthy to live among their ranks, brand then execute him as traitor and coward. Flee, then, leave it all to fate. Perhaps, at the very least, he could find a way to spare one innocent from this madness, even if that meant risking his own life.

      The sudden chatter of weapons fire from nearby jolted him. Nearly gagging behind his bandanna from any number of ghastly smells, he stared at the child, figured he was no more than five or six. It was hard to tell how old he actually was, the boy little more than a dark, emaciated scarecrow, flesh hanging loose on a body that hadn’t seen perhaps even a morsel of wheat, a crumb of bread, he believed, in days. The eyes were sunken, lifeless orbs, the face nearly a skull, that death’s-head expression he had seen on children who were too weak from hunger to even speak. Hussein felt the tears coming back, the burning mist equal parts grief and air singed by heat and the sting of death. How the boy had been missed by his clansmen, he couldn’t say.

      Fate? Divine intervention?

      Somehow he had gotten this far, managed to slip away, the others too consumed by their hideous undertaking, a few of them even laughing and joking about what they did, their callous displays somehow making the atrocity even more revolting. It had been an accident—or was it something else again?—when he had stumbled over what he had believed at first was a discarded bundle of rags.

      He laid down his assault rifle. He had never fired the weapon, never would. He reached out a hand, swept away the debris the boy had hidden under.

      “We must go.”

      Did he see a flicker of hope in those eyes?

      The boy took his hand, too weak to stand on his own, Nahbat knew, so he scooped the child up, clutching him to his chest.

      He looked around at the firestorms consuming their homes, searching, fearing his armed brethren would discover him now, just as he was moving. He coughed, the sound alarming him, afraid he would

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