The Mummy Read Online Free PDF

upright, while others had been toppled by time. Stone statues with the heads of lions or rams, exquisitely carved, carelessly chipped, stood tall here, rested there, and within his open shrine, the massive jackal-headed Anubis, swimming in sand, seemed lonely for supplicants. The ruins were themselves the skeleton of a once mighty people, whose deeply held religious beliefs in modern times might seem strange and even barbaric.
    And yet in a day when a telephone wire stretched from Cairo to the pyramids, and European tourists could play lawn tennis in the court of a hotel built near the base of old Cheops himself, the strange and the barbaric remained a potent presence upon these timeless sands. Just as the screams of the tortured Imhotep had echoed across Hamanaptra in that bloodstained golden age, so now did the shrill battle cries of Tuareg warriors.
    Scampering about the ruins of Hamanaptra like children playing in the sand, a “flying column” of legionnaires sought position, a Battalion de Marche of the French Foreign Legion, two hundred men strong. Or they would have been “strong,” had they not been outnumbered ten to one by the fierce tribesmen, who—using time-honored tribal tactics—had at a safe distance followed the legionnaires, on the march, until they were too far from a fort or a supply dump to receive help.
    As wily as they were ruthless, the Tuaregs had waited until the legion’s highly trained soldiers grew careless and tired from too many days under the hot Sahara sun; then the warriors emerged from behind a sand dune like a nightmarish mirage, swords and rifles waving, their long, loose robes flapping like flags as they advanced at full gallop.
    The legionnaires were clumsy in their infantry-style uniforms, burdened with backpacks of spare clothing, ammo, and rations; in this climate, only the black-leather marching boots made sense. The sun-shielding swatch that hung from each man’s kepi—round cloth caps with short leather bills—were waving like white flags of surrender from the head of each scurrying soldier.
    It was times like this that made a man like Richard O’Connell, formerly of Chicago, Illinois, question his career choice.
    His collegiate handsomeness made rugged by intense sky-blue eyes, a leathery tan, and an unruly mop of brown hair, O’Connell—“Rick” to his friends, “Corporal” to his men—wore his kepi at a jaunty angle. Alone among the two hundred soldiers—largely riffraff from every corner of the Western world—O’Connell, in his tan coat, shoulder-holstered revolvers crisscrossing his trimly muscular frame, cut a dashing figure worthy of a recruiting poster. Engagez-vous a la Legion Étrangère!
    Right now, however, desertion might seem more in order, if self-preservation hadn’t edged it out.
    The muffled thunder of hoofbeats on sand merged with the chilling war whoops of the advancing Tuareg horde as O’Connell stood atop what had once been the protective outer wall of the Hamanaptra temple complex. He had been using binoculars, but he tossed them aside.
    No need for them now.
    “I’ve had better days,” he said to no one, hefting his rifle—a sad example of the outdated Lebel bayonets he and his men were encumbered with.
    Perhaps this would be a fitting end, not so much ironic as just. Greed had brought them here—not honor. Their colonel had found a map showing the way to the fabled Hamanaptra, and the promise of ancient riches had seized the imaginations of a garrison composed, after all, of thieves, murderers, mercenaries, and adventurers.
    And now, with the dreaded Tuaregs upon them, this legendary entryway to untold treasures would serve only as a makeshift fort.
    “A tactical suggestion, Corporal,” a thin, weasely voice intoned beside him.
    O’Connell glanced at the voice’s thin, weasely source: Private Second Class Beni Gabor, formerly of Budapest, proof positive that not all of the legion’s rabble came from Italy, England, Norway,