Blessed Child Read Online Free PDF

had fewer bullets than were contained in the single burst that had ripped over their heads just now.
    Jason pointed the gun in their general direction and pulled the trigger. It bucked and boomed loudly.
    The machine guns fell silent. The baboons on the cliff above screeched in protest. Jason grabbed the rifle’s bolt and chambered another round. Surprise, surprise! You’re not the only one with firepower!
    As if in response, the air filled with a cacophony of weapons fire and none of it from Jason. The shells came like a stream of lead, thumping and whining on all sides.
    Panicked, Jason fired the .30-06 as fast as he could work the bolt action, hardly thinking the maneuver through. It was only when a small remaining thread of reason whispered that he must be down to only one or two rounds that he stopped.
    He was hardly aware of Leiah and the boy beside him. He glanced their way and saw to his surprise that the boy had crawled over to a gap in the boulders for a clear view of the Land Rover. Neither he nor Leiah appeared to be hit. And as far as he knew, he wasn’t either, but his mind wasn’t working so quickly just now.
    The machine-gun fire cut off abruptly, and he edged his head around the rock for a look. So now he had one, maybe two, rounds left in the rifle, and one in the sand behind him. Three shots. Facing three men armed with machine guns. Three killers trained to . . .
    A figure suddenly broke from the rocks and ran crouched toward another pile of boulders across the canyon. Two thoughts blasted through Jason’s mind with surprising clarity. The first was that from the soldier’s new position, they would be wide open. This was not good. The second thought was that he had not chambered a round.
    Jason flew into action, snatching the bolt back and chambering a round. He held his breath and aimed the wavering sights with as much care as he could extract from his taut muscles. He pulled the trigger.
    If the slug came remotely close, the man did not show it. He ran on, only a few strides away from the boulders now.
    Jason chambered and fired again in one desperate motion.
    The soldier grunted and dove to the ground three yards from the rocks. Only it wasn’t a dive; it was more of a flop. Jason moved the rifle for a clear view.
    The man lay unmoving, facedown in the sand. The canyon lay still in the tall shadows. No one moved. All eyes seemed to have been arrested by this one impossible development. Even the baboons had fallen silent.
    Jason’s breath blasted into the white sand two inches from his mouth; sweat trickled down his cheeks. He had shot the man. The lammergeyer cawed high above, but down here a surreal silence had settled.
    A soft whimpering sound floated through the air. Not from the figure lying facedown forty meters out, but from Jason’s left. He turned his head.
    What followed seemed to proceed in slow motion, in a distant place beyond Jason’s control. Caleb was standing. And then he was walking forward.
    Leiah reached out for him, and Jason saw her mouth open, even heard her cry of protest, but even that sounded muted. Maybe it was the deafening of the rounds he’d fired; or the deadening realization that he was down to one round, buried in the sand behind him; or maybe the certainty of their death. But whatever the reason, Jason’s senses were shutting down.
    The boy was suddenly running across the open sand, straight for the fallen man.
    Jason dropped the rifle and shoved himself to his knees, waiting for the reports of weapons fire. But none came. Perhaps because the two remaining soldiers were as stunned as he over the development.
    Caleb ran silently, with his tan tunic fluttering in the breeze. His wavy hair flew behind him. Leiah left the rock and jumped out into the open, as if she intended to follow. The soldiers could have shot her as well as the boy, but they held their fire.
    Caleb reached the fallen man and dropped to his knees with his