Predator Paradise. Don Pendleton

be sick, felt his legs nearly fold as despair froze him in his tracks. There would be no rational explanation in the eyes of his cousin, he knew, for this action, much less forgiveness.

      So be it.

      He turned slowly, a nauseous lurch in his heart. As he watched his cousin step through the drifting smoke, the AK-47 up and aimed his way, he experienced a moment of blinding clarity, a strange peace settling over him. It was over; both he and the boy were dead, but he wouldn’t beg for their lives.

      “You disappoint me greatly, Hussein.”

      “As do you and the others, cousin.”

      He decided to try to reason with Omari, if only for the boy, even though he knew it was hopeless. “Do not do this, Omari.”

      His cousin laughed. “You would die for him? For what? Why? You would risk catching plague and infect the rest of us?”

      He smiled at his cousin. “You are already infected, I am afraid.”

      “I have handled none of them, you fool, unlike you, who clutch that boy and are probably now infected yourself.”

      “I was referring to your soul.”

      The weapon was lowering, Omari considering something, baffled, it seemed, then Hussein saw the madness fly back into his eyes. Even before the weapon was up and blazing, Hussein Nahbat had a stark revelation, aware in his dying moment, as he felt the bullets tearing first into the boy, that he had only been dreaming a fool’s dream for thinking he and the boy could have survived this chaos.