Free The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor by Max Allan Collins Page B

O’Connell woman’s brother, a fool named Jonathan Carnahan.”
    He gave her the cold, blank stare that was his response to good news, bad news and everything in between. “Do they have the Eye?”
    “They do, General.”
    This news brought a remarkable response from the stone-faced general: a tiny, curt smile.
    “Then our hour is at hand,” he said. “Call the troops to order.”
    In minutes, General Yang was standing on the steps outside the crumbling temple to address his seventy-five mercenaries-turned-zealots, in perfect formation and supervised by the lovely woman with the scarred face, Colonel Choi.
    His head was up, as he said in Mandarin, “Soon all of our training, all of our sacrifice, will bear fruit.” He gestured downward. “Out of this soil soaked with the blood of centuries, we will raise our emperor once more.”
    All eyes were on the general, his men as motionless as the Emperor’s terra-cotta warriors.
    Yang continued: “We will live for him . . . and die for him . . . until China is again the most powerful nation on earth, as it was two thousand years ago. We will fulfill the vision of Er Shi Huangdi and rule the world.” His eyes traveled along the rows of soldiers. “Tonight, we few will summon the might. Tonight, our great battle begins!”
    Choi nodded permission to the troops to respond, and they did, cheering wildly and firing their weapons in the air in the ecstasy known only by true fanatics.
    Neons of blue and orange and yellow and white were further illuminated by bursts of firecrackers and small rockets as the white Bentley—Jonathan Carnahan’s prized possession—crawled in heavy traffic down a major Shanghai thoroughfare.
    The cars were mostly American, but this traffic consisted of both tourists and natives, and was more than automotive: bicycles and rickshaws and horse-drawn wagons mingled with revelers on foot, who claimed the rain-slicked street on this New Year’s Eve as their own.
    Rick O’Connell rode shotgun as Jonathan drove, if this snail’s pace could be calling “driving,” and Alex and Evelyn were in the back. The little group was spruced up even beyond the fancy attire of the night before at Imhotep’s: O’Connell and Jonathan in black tie, Alex in a white dinner jacket, Evy in a pink backless satin grown with lush white furs wrapped around her shoulders.
    O’Connell watched as a rickshaw, drawn by a wrinkled prune of a man, passed them by. “We’d do better if we hired him,” O’Connell said with a nod to the old boy.
    Jonathan was smiling, though, casual at the wheel. “Chinese New Year—you have to love it.”
    “No,” O’Connell said, “I don’t.”
    But Jonathan, beaming, burbled blithely on. “God, I adore this country—they have all these extra holidays and drinking is virtually mandatory . . . a bar owner’s dream!”
    In the rearview mirror, O’Connell saw Evy reaching to take her son’s hand, but the father’s eyes caught the mother’s and warned her not to. Alex was in no frame of mind to be coddled, and O’Connell knew it, and Evy got the point—she withdrew her gloved hand.
    But she couldn’t contain her pride in her offspring, saying to him, “I can’t believe we’re on our way to see your first big discovery—it’s so exciting!”
    Rather sullenly, as he looked out the window at the revelers and the colorful goings-on, Alex said, “After last night, I’m surprised you even want to see it at all.”
    Now Evy caught her husband’s eyes in the rearview mirror and her look told him to say something positive to their grown-up child.
    “Are you kidding, Alex?” O’Connell said. “We wouldn’t miss it.”
    Evy smiled at him in the rearview mirror.
    Then O’Connell shrugged and said, “Anyway, we have a package to drop off at the museum.”
    Evy frowned at him in the rearview mirror.
    Alex smirked sourly. “I get it— my life and your mission just happen to intersect, so why not throw the kid a