High in the dark recesses of the chamber, racks of crossbows on gimbals sent arrows raking blindly to kill any living thing that dared violate the sacred aisles below. Alex ran, the arrows seemingly chasing him, flurries of them landing just behind him as he pressed forward into the gloom. Wilson was running, too, and the surviving digger.
Then the arrows seemed to have stopped.
But another ratcheting noise announced another volley, this time of the razor-sharp throwing disks, like the one that had dispatched Bembridge so many years ago.
Alex called, “Duck!”
Wilson dove behind a terra-cotta warrior, who was decapitated in short order. The remaining digger caught a star deep in his chest, and flipped backward, dead before he hit the floor. At the same time, Alex dove as one of the buzz-saw-like disks flew almost close enough to give him the shave he needed.
Again the mausoleum fell quiet.
No one moved for what seemed a very long time, but was actually a matter of seconds. Finally Wilson peeked out cautiously. He and Alex were the only ones left alive, and Alex—tucked behind a terra-cotta horse—felt not at all cocky at the moment, his self-confidence drained out of him like blood from a wound.
Nonetheless, the young man rose and strode out and over to the final of the diggers, on his back with that disk sunk into his chest, a spreading red blossom on his tunic around the deadly steel star. Alex knelt next to the man, and checked his pulse just to be sure.
Wilson came up. “He’s dead, son. There’s not a thing in the world you can do for him.”
Alex stared at the dead man. He remembered seeing him laughing and drinking with his fellow diggers the night before, vital, alive. “He’s dead because of me, Professor. All three are dead because of me.”
Alex got to his feet and punched one of the terra-cotta warriors in the face, crumbling its head.
Wilson took the distraught young man by the shoulders and faced him, sternly but not unkindly. “Danger of this sort comes with the territory, lad. You know that better than most.”
Alex swallowed and nodded. He pushed the guilt down so he could get back to the work at hand.
Wilson clapped his hands. “Now! Let’s find the crypt, and make sure these poor sods didn’t die in vain.”
They walked into the open central space, the bare area that the terra-cotta warriors were lined in rows to face.
Alex squinted. “All the warriors are arranged as if they’re waiting for an order from their emperor.”
Wilson nodded. “Agreed. But then . . . where the hell is he? There’s no statue, no coffin. Or did some grave robbers beat us to the prize?”
“I don’t think so.” Alex stepped to the middle of the circle and, with his foot, wiped sand away. “He’s still here.”
Excitement rushing through him, Alex reached into the satchel on its shoulder strap and whipped out an archaeological brush. He got on his hands and knees and began to dust off the floor, quickly revealing bowls carved into the floor surrounded by Chinese figures, all inset in a circular stone.
“They locked him in,” Alex said, “using the five Chinese elements . . .” He gestured to the bowls, one by one. “Water, earth, metal, wood, fire.” He looked up at the professor. “It’s configured like a compass, but not just any compass—a feng shui one . . . Professor, please, shine your torch this way.”
Wilson, standing nearby, held his flashlight so that Alex could get out his own compass from a pants pocket. “This is true north, but the compass is set in the opposite direction—we need to realign it.”
Using the bowls as handholds, the two men strained to revolve the stone, trying to make a wheel of it. When the stone clicked into place, an ancient mechanism rumbled . . . and the entire circular floor split apart, like a giant hinged trapdoor.
Scrambling, Wilson managed to roll off and save himself, but Alex fell into the newly revealed crevasse, taking a nasty hit on the rump of a bronze horse and bouncing off to find his face in someone else’s face.
Someone else who had been dead for a very long time.
Pushing the mummified corpse away, and getting to his feet, a horrified Alex used his flashlight to identify three mummies, arms around one another. Based upon their feminine garb, Alex deduced that these were concubines the Emperor had buried with him.
Wilson called down, “Are you all right, son?”
Alex said, “Fine!”
Then Alex swung his flashlight around and was confronted by the find of a lifetime.
“Oh . . . my . . . God . . .”
“Dear boy, what is it?”
“Nothing much. Just the greatest discovery since my grandfather found King Tut . . .”
A ceremonial bronze chariot, drawn by four magnificent bronze horses, stood connected to an even larger cortege wagon on which rested an ornate sarcophagus; the entire affair perched on a platform. Commanding the chariot was a slightly oversized bronze figure of the Emperor—even in bronze, Er Shi Huangdi’s face radiated a fierce cruelty and a dark charisma.
The scale of it all dwarfed the young explorer. Millennia of blackness had shrouded these impressive objects, and now his eyes were on them.
Above, kneeling over the edge of the crevasse, Wilson clenched a fist and said, “Finally! At last . . . at last . . . yes!”
But before his victory could be relished, Wilson was sent into a black pit—not that of the crevasse before him, rather into unconsciousness, thanks to a vicious kick in the head from an assailant so silent, the professor hadn’t heard even a whisper of approach.
In the Emperor’s crypt below, Alex was unaware of the attack on his mentor. Right now he was climbing up a chariot wheel to get at the sarcophagus, the top of which he dusted off with a gloved hand, revealing a bas-relief of a three-headed dragon.
The Emperor’s symbol!
Now Alex knew for sure—this was indeed Er Shi Huangdi’s final resting place.
Pleased with himself, the young explorer jumped down. His flashlight traveled to the various mummified figures, including the concubines. Horny selfish bastard, he thought. Even had his lovelies buried alive with him.
His attention elsewhere, Alex did not see the lithe, masked figure in black drop silently down into the crypt, behind him.
He turned just as the assassin was blending into the darkness, and called up, “Professor Wilson! You want to come down and have a look?”
Nothing.
Grinning, Alex called, “What’s wrong, Professor? So overwhelmed by the prospect of fame and fortune, you can’t even find the words? It’s not like you!”
Craning to try to catch a glimpse of his mentor, Alex presented a perfect target for the intruder, who hooked a kick around and caught him in the neck, knocking the boy hard against a bronze horse’s rump. Alex shook the blow olf and drew his nine-millimeter automatic, but a foot whipped out and flicked it away. He heard the gun clunk somewhere across the crypt, but between him and the weapon was a barrier . . .
. . . an assassin in black, from turban to toe.
And that assassin was unsheathing a dagger with a dragon hilt.
With lightning speed, the assassin attacked, dagger in hand, but Alex ducked with similar speed, and the blade sparked off the bronze animal, momentum bringing the assassin forward enough to give Alex the opportunity to kick the figure behind the knee. Then the young explorer dove onto the floor, like he was stealing a base, to slide through an array of bones and skulls to retrieve his gun.
Alex plucked up the Browning and thumbed back the hammer and began firing, only the assassin was the moving target to end all moving targets, backflipping behind the chariot, the bullets digging noisy holes in support beams as Alex emptied his clip. One stray bullet cut through the rope of a huge granite counterweight and an ominous grinding groaned through the crypt.
The floor—actually the platform of the monument—began to rise, chariot and all.
Alex had an empty handgun now, and his extra clips were in his satchel, which had co
me off his shoulder during the fracas and was likely still below, as the platform slowly raised. He edged around the chariot, hoping to surprise the assassin, who surprised Alex instead, swinging between two bronze horses to kick the boy back, almost off the platform, which was perhaps five feet off the ground now.
Now the figure in black faced the husky young explorer and each began to circle and assess their respective foes; the appraisal period was a short one, as feet and fists began to fly, in a martial-arts test of wills, limited only by the relatively small area of the rising platform dominated by the chariot, bronze horses, and cortege wagon.
Alex had an apparent advantage—he towered over his foe, and definitely had the reach and the weight; but his opponent was wily and lithe, and seemed to anticipate his every blow. Of course the same could have been said about Alex, because blows and blocks were evenly traded in blurs of speed that challenged the eye.
Backflipping over the low point, where the chariot was tethered to the cortege wagon, the assassin seemed to have retreated; but then almost magically reappeared, leaping over the chariot to grab Alex in a flying scissors that took both of them down, hard, raising a cloud of dust. As this ancient elevator continued to rise, Alex found himself with his head hanging over the platform’s edge, the counterweight on its way down to smash his head like a damn two-minute egg!
The assassin swung the dagger down to stab him, but Alex knocked the knife-in-hand out of the way; as they struggled, Alex could see only that counterweight, maybe two feet above his face, inexorably lowering itself. He got a hold of his opponent’s turban and yanked, snapping the guy’s head back. Finally Alex could roll away from the platform’s edge—they were a good eight feet up now—the counterweight brushing his hair . . . too close!
Then he leaped to his feet, the flung dragon dagger also just missing him, whizzing past him to thunk deep into the wooden side of the cortege wagon.
That’s a bloody ’nuff, he thought, and threw an American-football-style block into the assassin, knocking the guy into a wagon wheel on the cortege. He wrapped his hands around the assassin’s throat and lifted him off the floor by the neck, then removed a hand to whip off the black mask . . . and it was no “guy,” no “him,” at all!
He was now staring into the defiant eyes of a Chinese beauty, a slender young woman not much older than Alex, if at all. Her face was oval with symmetrical features, her almond eyes large and dark, her nose aquiline, her lips full and sensuous. Had she not just tried to kill him a dozen times, it might have been love at first sight.
Maybe it was, anyway.
“You’re a girl?” he asked, not exactly a question worthy of a Harvard man.
Her only reply was to use the momentary stasis to find her leverage and position her feet in the wagon spokes behind her. She thrust forward and butted him in the head and set herself free as she sent him reeling.
She vaulted over him, along the way grabbing the hilt of the embedded dragon dagger to free it from the wooden cortege wagon, and landed nimbly. She’d barely touched down when shots rang out and echoed through the mausoleum.
Wilson was above as the platform rose to him, and he was firing at the girl, who leaped off the platform and up and out, disappearing through the rows of terra-cotta warriors and into the darkness of the vast tomb.
Alex said, “That’s enough,” but the professor was already clicking on an empty chamber.
The platform had risen to floor level now, bringing the chariot monument and the sarcophagus to their rightful position among the thousands of clay warriors.
Alex, feeling groggy from hand-to-hand combat the likes of which he’d never known before, looked to Wilson quizzically. “Where is she?”
“You might well ask . . . what is she?”
And the young man and the older one stood staring into the darkness, and neither sight nor sound of the lovely assassin was forthcoming.
3
Everybody Comes to Jonathan’s
Shanghai, China
Not much more than a year before, Shanghai—China’s leading city and one of the world’s busiest seaports—had been under Japanese rule. By now it had resumed its rightful position as a citadel of wickedness, where monied Europeans rode in American cars past the poverty of market-choked streets and alleys zigzagged with lanterns and washing lines. Shanghai police on their way to quell rioting factory workers would rumble down neon-washed avenues along which platoons of prostitutes offered their wares outside posh hotels while fireworks celebrated the opening of yet another nightclub.
One such nightclub bore a neon sign that flashed the word IMOHTEP’S. Two Chinese doorman in full livery waited to welcome wealthy visitors to an elegant interior invoking an art moderne Egyptian fantasy. Even the Asian barmaids invoked sensual exotic dreams, their lovely flesh covered with wisps of cloth but mostly body paint.
A bartender had compared the nubile young women wearing black blunt-cut bangs to Cleopatra herself, but Jonathan Carnahan—the proprietor of Shanghai’s latest favorite nightclub among the elite tourist trade—had in fact patterned the barmaids’ distinctive look after that of another ancient Egyptian princess: Anck-su-namun.
Legend had it, Anck-su-namun had been the Pharaoh Seti’s concubine of choice, at least until she murdered him, and then took her own life, knowing her lover, the great High Priest Imhotep, would raise her from the dead. Of course, Jonathan knew this to be more than a legend, having met both Anck-su-namun and Imhotep personally, and not thirteen hundred years ago . . .
Considering what travails Jonathan, his sister, Evy, and his brother-in-law, Rick O’Connell, had been through, thanks to Imhotep and that nasty piece of Egyptian business called Anck-su-namun, the last thing Jonathan should want to do was surround himself with images that recalled those nearly fatal adventures.
But Jonathan was if nothing else an entrepreneur, and the publicity he and the O’Connells received, both from their Egyptian finds and then the popular novels his sister had written (which featured a dashing second lead not unlike a certain Jonathan Carnahan), had made Imhotep’s (and its Valley Nile decor) a natural.
He raised his cocktail glass as if toasting his wealthy patrons. “To Imhotep,” he said to no one in particular. “May the bugger actually stay dead, this time . . .”
Jonathan was in his late forties, but thanks to boyish features, looked younger, despite a certain tendency toward activities that might tend one to dissipation. His light brown hair was touched with surprisingly little gray, and his brown eyes were sharp and intelligent, though sometimes casually half lidded. Just under six feet, Jonathan, in his blue brocade tuxedo and black tie, made the perfect picture of a sophisticated nightclub owner.
He was sipping his drink when he spotted his tuxedo-sporting nephew, Alex O’Connell—My, the lad cleans up well, he thought—coming down the stairs from the entryway into the club, carrying himself with a confidence worthy of either of his celebrated parents.
With amusement and perhaps a little pride, Jonathan watched as a beautiful brunette heiress from New York floated over to his nephew, her charms spilling from a low-cut gown.
Jonathan was close enough to hear the conversation that followed.
“Hello, handsome,” she said.
Not exactly a brilliant opening gambit, Jonathan thought. But a woman who looked like that did not need to sound like a character out of Noel Coward. She was dangerous, though, a slightly soiled debutante who gave a whole new meaning to “The Lady Is a Tramp.”
She was saying, “Just get into town?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, with a brash smile. “I’ve been out west on an archaeological expedition.”
She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes as she squeezed his nearer arm. “That sounds fascinating. Maybe we could find somewhere quiet, and cover some unexplored territory of our own.”
The boy’s confidence fizzled. “Well, uh, er, ah . . .”
Jonathan frowned. Didn’t they teach these college boys anything over
in the States?
She was working a gloved hand along Alex’s chest when Jonathan decided he needed to swoop in and save the lad from a fate worse than death. Well, perhaps not worse than death. . . actually quite a nice fate, unless one of her other boyfriends was around . . . still . . .
Jonathan moved in, slipped an arm around his nephew’s shoulder, and gave the heiress a pick-on-someone-your-own-size smile, to which she responded with a mind-your-own-business frown, and walked the lad toward the bar.
“Alex, my boy,” Jonathan said. “Let your uncle buy you a drink . . .”
Alex was craning to look at the brunette ship he seemed to be passing in the night. “Well, that’s swell of you, Uncle Jon, only that young lady seems to have the same idea . . . and to be honest, she’s better-looking than you.”
They were at the bar now.
“That’s a matter of perspective,” Jonathan said, “and trust me, old son, there isn’t much virgin territory to be explored on that continent. Let me put it in archaeological terms—that’s one tomb in which many a pharoah has lain . . . Tell me, have you given any thought to how you’ll handle your parents, when they find out what you’ve been up to of late?”
Alex shook his head and smirked sourly. “It’s not my fault that they got out of the family business.”
Jonathan ordered up a cocktail for himself and a Coca-Cola for his nephew; this may have been Shanghai, but the lad was still only twenty. “My boy, your discovery will be all over the press in a matter of days—papers, radio, newsreels. Your father may not be a genius, but even he will be able to add two to two and come up with four . . . ‘four’ being the simple fact that you have dropped out of college.”
The brunette wandered by, flashing Alex a smile. Virgin territory or not, the boy seemed interested in planting a flag for Great Britain.
“Alex! Pay attention. This is serious business. Can you imagine what your parents’ reaction will be?”
The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Page 5