The Mummy Read Online Free PDF Page B

Russia, or Spain. Narrow of shoulder, sunken of chest, with dark, close-set eyes and a pencil-line mustache in his pasty, almond-shaped face, the resourceful little scoundrel was the closest thing to a friend O’Connell had in the legion—perhaps because there was such a limited supply of worthwhile friends from which to choose.
    “About the only tactic available,” O’Connell said, eyeing the Arab warrior-flung horizon, “is hold your fire until they’re within range.”
    “That’s one option,” Beni said, nodding, “yes it is. But personally, I would prefer to surrender.”
    “Give me your bandoleer.”
    Beni, climbing out of his cartridge belt, handed it to the corporal, saying, “Or why not just run away? There’s another option. I’ll bet these ruins are teeming with hiding places, and what do we owe the legion? Loyalty for cold biscuits and brutality?”
    “These ruins are going to be teeming, all right.” O’Connell had slung on the bandoleer, which joined his own to make an “X” on his chest.
    Working his voice above the swelling shouts of Tuaregs promising slaughter, and the pounding of their ponies’ hoof-beats, O’Connell said to Beni, “I’ll take your revolver, too, since it doesn’t sound like you’re going to need it.”
    “Here,” Beni said, handing the weapon to the corporal, then following him close as a dog’s tail as O’Connell moved quickly along the wall. “You know what nobody tries anymore, Rick? And I bet it would work on these dumb savages: playing dead!”
    Still moving, O’Connell sighed and broke open the revolver to check its ammunition. “These ‘dumb savages’ maneuvered us into this position. But go ahead, Beni, try it—of course you’ll be tortured and probably staked out in the desert to die of sunstroke.”
    “It was just a suggestion.”
    “How the hell d’you end up in the legion, anyway?”
    Such a question was a breach of etiquette: Many legionnaires had embraced that famous motto—“Legio Patria Nostra (The Legion is our homeland)”— because they were wanted by the police of their former homelands. But at this moment, with the whooping Tuaregs bearing down upon them, this lapse seemed permissible.
    Beni shrugged. “They’re after me in Hungary for robbing a synagogue—that’s my specialty, synagogues: Hebrew’s one of my seven languages.”
    “Robbing churches.” O’Connell, sticking Beni’s revolver in his belt, shook his head. “That’s even lower than I’d expected.”
    “Prime swag to be found in holy places,” Beni said in the singsong manner of a grade school teacher. “Temples, mosques, cathedrals—and who’ve they got standing guard?”
    “Altar boys?”
    “Exactly! How about you, Rick?” Beni continued tagging along as the corporal strode the wall to where he could examine their front line of defense, legionnaires kneeling at the ready, watching the approaching horde; Colonel Guizot pacing behind them, apparently contemplating his battle plan. “What did you do, anyway, to wind up in the legion of lost men, Rick?”
    O’Connell turned to answer, but Beni was trailing along so close, they bumped into each other; the little Hungarian lost his balance, clutched at O’Connell in an attempt to regain it, and failed. Locked in Beni’s reflexive embrace, they toppled from the wall and hit the ground in a pile and a puff of sand.
    “So,” Beni continued, picking himself up, offering no apology, “what’d you do, Rick? Murder somebody?”
    “Not yet,” O’Connell said, narrow eyed, on his feet, brushing himself off, checking his Lebel.
    “What, then? Robbery? Extortion? I know! I hear it’s the latest thing in America—kidnapping!”
    “Shut up already,” O’Connell said. He strode down a sand dune within the walls of the ruins and walked out between the front pylons onto the stone ramp where, in another time, the chariots of the high priest of Osiris had rolled up to make a fateful call.
    Beni frowned.