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warriors were on them now, plowing into the legionnaires, wading into them, and the gunfire lessened as the nomads hacked and cleaved with their sharp, curved blades, and the screams that tore the air now were not war cries, but cries of agony, of death, as the blood of white infidels splashed and soaked the sands, as men who had lost their way in homelands they would never see again lost their lives in this strange place.
    Within the walls of the temple complex now, where legionnaires were taking cover in the ruins, the Tuaregs on horseback were everywhere, charging through the front gates, leaping partial walls, storming through areas where the walls of Hamanaptra were just a memory. Their blades carved at the air when there was no flesh to cleave, and occasionally a warrior would fall under a legionnaire’s bullet . . .
    . . . but O’Connell, still outside the walls of Hamanaptra, throwing down his empty rifle, yanking both revolvers from their shoulder holsters, knew they’d been overrun, knew this was the Alamo, and that he would never see his family again, much less his country. He was just too goddamned busy shooting Arabs off their goddamned horses to worry about it.
    He’d been too busy to find cover, as well, and as he tossed away both revolvers, empty, and yanked one from behind his back and Beni’s from his belt, he got a glimpse of Beni, within the temple grounds, crawling on his belly across the sand, like the snake he was, apparently heading for the open doorway of a structure half-buried in the sand.
    O’Connell, whose attention was immediately back on a pair of Tuaregs bearing down on him, did not see Beni taking time to lift a watch off the body of a dead legionnaire. Nor did he see Beni getting up and sprinting for that beckoning doorway.
    But when another dozen warriors had fallen under his fire, and he was once again out of ammunition, the only legionnaires around him dead ones, O’Connell whirled, tearing ass through the front gate, looking for Beni, who was inside that temple structure now, putting all his wiry muscle behind an attempt to close its massive sandstone door.
    O’Connell grinned: Beni had found his hiding place after all, and O’Connell was ready, now, to accept one of his tactical suggestions . . .
    “Beni!” O’Connell called. “Pal, wait up! Hey!”
    Beni didn’t appear to hear his friend, or if he did, seemed to have no intention of “waiting up.”
    O’Connell hurdled a huge stone column, hitting the ground running, his ears pounding with the hoofbeats of Tuareg horsemen in pursuit of him.
    “Don’t you close that goddamn door!” O’Connell yelled at Beni, who still seemed not to hear, though O’Connell knew damn well he did.
    O’Connell, sprinting like hell for that door Beni was doing his best to close, glanced back and saw the four horsemen bounding over the huge column, charging right after him, yelling their “Ooo-loo-loo-loo!” war cry.
    “You little bastard! Don’t you close that goddamned door!”
    But the door to safety closed, Beni’s dark unapologetic eyes disappearing behind it, just as O’Connell slammed into its stone surface.
    Little bastard closed the goddamned door!
    Shoulder aching, O’Connell did a graceless pirouette, looking for another possibility, even as the horsemen closed in on him. Across the courtyard were the massive columns of an open shrine, and on the ground nearby were several fallen legionnaires whose bodies might provide a weapon or two.
    He ran in perfect time to the cries of “Ooo-loo-loo-loo!” behind him, running for his life, weaving through the ruins, the Tuaregs getting closer and closer, the pounding hoofbeats louder and louder. In his path was the body of a dead legionnaire and he dipped down to snatch the revolver from the soldier’s limp hand, and wheeled and faced the oncoming horsemen, firing the revolver . . .
    Empty.
    The horsemen, yanking back on the reins, skidded to a stop right before him, stirring a