The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (16 page)

“What did you do,” O’Connell said, impressed, “rob an armory?”

“Actually,” Alex admitted, “I won ’em in a high-stakes poker game.”

He frowned at the boy. “Since when did you start playing high-stakes poker?”

“Since boarding school with my allowance. Think back—that’s what I got kicked out for the
second
time . . . remember?”

O’Connell frowned. “All those schools and all those infractions kind of blur together after a while.”

Alex selected a glistening snub-nosed pistol from his trunk. “You ever use a Walther P-38, Dad?”

“No. Looks like a peashooter compared to the Peacekeeper.”

O’Connell withdrew from his trunk a long-barreled blue .45 revolver worthy of Wyatt Earp.

Alex seemed only amused. “Dad, don’t you know? It isn’t about size—it’s about stamina.”

“Is that right?”

The boy nodded. “Your gun’s spent after six rounds. Mine just keeps pumping.”

O’Connell, finding this conversation vaguely disturbing, reached in and grabbed a tommy gun. “You want power, son, I defy you to beat the Thompson submachine gun. One hundred rounds a clip.”

“Yeah, right. That baby’s swell . . . if it’s 1929 and you’re chasing Al Capone. Don’t you find that it always jams? I mean,
always?”

O’Connell’s brow furrowed. “Does not.”

Rather than get into a “does so” debate, Alex said, “Here, check out this Russian PPS-43 Personal Assault Weapon. This is the future, right here.”

O’Connell did not take his son up on the offer, saying, “It’s experience that saves the day, Alex, not firepower.”

“You learn that back in the twenties, too? Anyway, you were just singing the
Thompson’s
praises.”

The father and son had reached a point of uncomfortable stalemate.

Jonathan came ambling over. “Boys,” he said, “if I may—have we developed a plan of any sort?”

O’Connell said to both of them, “The Emperor may have mastery over metal and what-have-you, but he’s not immortal yet. We’re going to hit him hard and hit him fast, and smash his ass like a Ming vase.”

Alex had a skeptical expression. “Didn’t we more or less try that already?”

“Yeah,” his father said, “but we didn’t have enough firepower.”

The argument had come full circle, but Alex didn’t say so.

Jonathan said, “Bloody brilliant—firepower. Good show. But, huh, Rick—if firepower should happen
not
to work . . . ?”

O’Connell said, “That’s where Plan B comes into play, Jonathan—you’re going to blow the bastard sky-high, if he makes it upstairs to that little temple.”

“Excellent plan, that should . . .
What? Who?”

“You.”

Jonathan’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “I am? Really? Me?”

“That’s swell, Dad,” Alex said skeptically, “just so long as the explosion doesn’t kill
us,
too. Of course, if we survive, the
avalanche
can always get us.”

O’Connell scowled at his son. “You have a better Plan B, I suppose?”

Alex nodded. “I say we ambush the Emperor with long-range rifles with silencers. Before they know what hit ’em, we’ll get in close and finish old clay boy off with Lin’s dagger.”

Shaking his head, O’Connell said, “Alex, I’m not putting my faith in your girlfriend’s magic knife.”

“She’s not my girlfriend . . . but that knife
is
magic.”

O’Connell waved his hands like an umpire calling a runner out. “I don’t trust her.”

Alex gestured to himself with a thumb. “Well,
I
do. So I think you should trust my judgment, for a change.”

The father knew dangerous ground was being trod on here.

Carefully he said, “Look, son, it’s not a question of whether I trust your judgment or not. It’s just that I’ve put down a few more mummies in my time than you have. We’ll do this
my
way.”

Alex held up a forefinger. “You’ve put down
one
mummy, Dad.”

“One mummy
twice . .
. and all his minion mummies, too.”

Alex shut the lid on his gun trunk. “Well, if it were me, ol’ Imhotep and his minions would have stayed down for good, the
first
time around.”

From among the nearby stacked supplies, Alex grabbed a box stenciled
DYMAMITE
and began to climb toward the courtyard where the small domed temple called a stupa awaited.

O’Connell shook his head and said to Jonathan, “I swear, if that kid weren’t my own, I’d shoot him myself.”

Jonathan, his face framed in the fur of his parka, said, “Congratulations, old boy—you have a son who is independent, questions authority and approaches life without trepidation. Sound like anyone you know?”

Scowling again, O’Connell said, “Yeah, well, it’s
still
damned annoying.”

With that, O’Connell trudged off to make more preparations, leaving Jonathan alone, looking across the precarious suspension bridge.

“Well, Geraldine,” Jonathan said. “At least I have you.”

But he didn’t—the yak had gone off and left him truly alone with his responsibility as the man in charge of Plan B.

 
8
 

Abominable Conditions

B
eyond the suspension bridge, the ancient stone front columns of the colonnade, topped with the images of long-forgotten Tibetan gods, provided an elaborate entryway to the snow-covered courtyard, stalactites of ice hanging off every undercarriage. At the center of the courtyard was the small temple called a stupa, a single-story dome with a graduated, stairstep-style outer shell with four squared-off stone entryways and crowned in a golden spire that caught the afternoon sun in glinting glory.

That such a historical treasure might be destroyed saddened Evelyn O’Connell, but the stakes today were much higher than that. With luck, her husband’s Plan B would not have to be set in motion. But for now, archaeologist Evy O’Connell was helping the enigmatic Lin finish wiring the charge, the stupa now crisscrossed with sticks of dynamite.

Kneeling, Evy said to Lin, “Hand me the red wire . . . no, make that the
blue
one.”

Lin’s almond eyes appraised Evy critically. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Of course,” Evy said with cool confidence that she did not feel. “I’ve done this kind of thing a hundred times. Two hundred . . . It’s definitely the
red
wire.”

Evy clipped the wires into place, then turned to Lin. “I know you have your share of secrets, young lady . . . but Alex is naive in the ways of the heart. Promise me you won’t hurt him.”

Rather solemnly, Lin said, “I promise.”

The two women, Evy in her red fur-trimmed coat, Lin in her brown hooded one, tramped back to the columns of the colonnade.

Evy said to the girl, “Good—because otherwise I’d have to kill you.”

Lin glanced at the woman, to see if this was a joke.

But that remained ambiguous, though Evy was now smirking and saying, “Of course, we’ll probably all die today anyway, so perhaps the point is moot.”

And the two females Alex O’Connell cared most about in the world exchanged tentative smiles that became a sort of truce before a battle with other, shared foes.

• • •

Rick and Alex O’Connell crouched behind columns, scoping out the terrain. To their rear, up the steps, higher columns above provided firing positions for Evy, Lin and Jonathan, ready with weapons trained.

Last night, O’Connell had thought his wife had never looked more beautiful; seeing her with a Winchester in her hands, with a smile anticipating this adventure as much as he was, he decided she was at her loveliest, today.

Earlier Jonathan had inquired why they hadn’t wired the bridge to explode as well, but O’Connell explained that, first, they wanted to lure the Emperor Mummy to his doom; and second, the O’Connell party might like to leave here, themselves, at some point . . .

“Ah,” Jonathan had said. “And without the suspension bridge, that might prove difficult.”

“Bingo.”

O’Connell, spotting some movement, nudged his son, and nodded toward the bridge and the rocks beyond; from around the bend emerged a line of rifle barrels. He grinned at Alex, said, “Let’s give them a warm O’Connell welcome,” and Alex grinned back and nodded.

O’Connell and Alex opened fire, and then so did Evy, Lin and Jonathan. The thin Himalayan air cracked and snapped with gunshots and went thick with lead and gun smoke as Yang’s heavily armed, helmeted troops in full winter gear poured into view, streaming across the bridge single file, firing as they came, slugs carving out chunks of stone from the ancient columns, blasting away ancient faces that would be now and forever lost to history.

After picking off the first two soldiers, sending them over the side of the bridge, screaming their death throes as they fell, O’Connell kept at it, and so did Alex, and they exchanged tight smiles, feeling good about how Plan A was going so far—these poor bastards were sitting ducks.

Behind the enemy lines, Er Shi Huangdi was not impressed either with twentieth-century warfare or his new general. Irritated, the terra-cotta Emperor said in ancient Mandarin,
“You send them to their deaths! Change your tactics.”

Yang nodded and deployed two men with bazookas, keeping them on his side of the suspension bridge, and ordered,
“Fire!”

Two bazooka-fired rockets streaked across the chasm and the resulting explosions seemed to shake the world, several columns disintegrating, the entire façade of the colonnade crumbling down.

O’Connell and his son had pitched themselves out of harm’s way when the rockets came toward them, but they’d been within seconds of being crushed under falling chunks of stone and showering rubble.

To the trio in the next row of columns, O’Connell called, “Pull back! Pull
back!”

And Evy, Lin and Jonathan, with O’Connell and Alex right behind, moved deeper into the courtyard, to reconnoiter.

Behind enemy lines, Er Shi Huangdi demanded of Yang,
“Who
are
these people?”

Yang, expressionless but sweating despite the cold, said,
“They are but a minor irritation.”

A couple of bullets pocked the Emperor’s brown clay chest, to him less than a gnat bite; automatically, the bloodless wounds sealed.
“Clear a path to the stupa. Show me you are as good a general as you claim to be.”

Yang’s chin went up; he bristled at the challenge, but accepted it unhesitatingly. From his pouch he removed the blossoming gem that was the Eye of Shambhala. He handed it to the Emperor, with a curt bow, saying,
“Immortality is at hand, my lord.”

Beyond the columns, the O’Connell party was taking the steps up to the stupa, two at a time, Alex looking back to fire, twice, with a rifle, knocking out the bazookas in a most effective way: hitting the weapons themselves, exploding them to uselessness as well as taking out four soldiers, who went tumbling into the abyss, shrieking in pain that would soon be over.

But this victory proved minor, since the rest of Yang’s forces were now racing onto the bridge.

O’Connell and company were gathered, with not much cover at all, at the base of the small steps leading up to the one-story stupa.

“Jonathan,” O’Connell said, “I would say it’s time for Plan B.”

Nervous as hell, Jonathan said, “I was wondering if we might try Plan C instead.”

“What Plan C?”

“I was hoping
you
had one, up your sleeve . . .”

O’Connell’s eyes and nostrils flared and he got in his brother-in-law’s face. “We have to blow that dome to Kingdom Come! You’re on deck, Jonathan—we’ll cover you.”

“Fine, and if the explosion gets me, bits and pieces of
me
will soon cover
you . . .”

Jonathan stayed behind, at the stupa’s base, as the others moved along the periphery of the snow-covered courtyard, often with massive icicles above them like crystalline swords of Damocles; they stopped at the crumbling brick walls at the rear, to take cover.

In the meantime, Yang and his men were charging up the steps toward the courtyard, maintaining perfect rifle-company formation, leapfrogging and covering their exposed positions.