Assumed Identity

10

And froze, his body eerily motionless. His blue eyes seemed more empty than ever, glassy. His grotesque smile seemed even more rigid.

At once the ball fell from his hands, dropping behind him, thunking on the court.

But his arms remained upstretched.

Blood trickled from his mouth.

He toppled forward, Buchanan scrambling to get out of the way.

As Raymond’s face struck the court, Buchanan saw a mass of arrows embedded in Raymond’s back.

He stared forward, in the direction from which the arrows must have come, but all he saw was smoke. Hearing a noise to his right, he spun. The guard, having adjusted to the shock of his fall from the terrace, was drawing a pistol. Buchanan pulled back the arming lever on his Uzi, freed the shell that had jammed, chambered a fresh round, and pulled the trigger, hitting the guard with a short, controlled burst that jolted him backward and down, blood flying.

“Holly!” Buchanan yelled. The terrace above him was deserted. “Holly! Where-?”

“Up here!”

He still couldn’t see her.

“On my stomach!”

“Are you all right?”

“Scared!”

“Can you climb down? Where are Drummond and-?”

“Ran!” She raised her head. “When they saw. . My God.” She pointed past Buchanan.

Whirling, crouching, aiming the Uzi, Buchanan squinted toward the smoke at the end of the court. Any moment, he feared that more arrows would be launched.

He saw movement.

He tightened his finger on the trigger.

Shadows, then figures, emerged from the smoke.

Buchanan felt a chill surge through him. Earlier, when Raymond had arrived with his leather armor and his feathered helmet, Buchanan had experienced an uncanny sense that Raymond was stepping not only through smoke but time.

Now Buchanan had that skin-prickling sensation again, but in this case, the figures striding toward him from the smoke were indeed Maya, short and thin, with straight black hair, dark brown skin, round heads, wide faces, and almond-shaped eyes. Like Raymond, they wore leather armor and feathered helmets, and for a dismaying instant, his mind swirling, Buchanan felt as if he’d been sucked back a thousand years.

The Maya carried spears, machetes, and bows and arrows. A dozen men. Their leader kept his stern gaze on Buchanan all the while he approached, and Buchanan slowly lowered the Uzi, holding it with his left hand parallel to his leg, pointing the weapon down toward the ball court.

The Maya stopped before him, their leader assessing Buchanan. In the background, only the crackle of flames could be heard. The gunshots had stopped, and Buchanan thought he knew why: This wasn’t the only group of Maya who, outraged by the desecration of their ancestors’ temples, had finally rebelled instead of allowing themselves to be hunted.

The Mayan chieftain narrowed his gaze with fierce emotion and raised his machete.

Buchanan didn’t know if he was being tested. It took all his control not to raise the Uzi and fire.

The chieftain whirled toward Raymond’s body, striking with the machete, chopping off Raymond’s head.

With contempt, the chieftain raised the head by its hair.

As blood drained from the neck, Buchanan couldn’t help being reminded of the engraving on the wall of the ball court that Raymond had singled out at the start of the game.

The chieftain pivoted and hurled the skull toward the stone ring. It whunked against the rim, spun, then hurtled through and landed on the court, spattering blood, rolling, making the sound of an overripe pumpkin.

Raymond, you were wrong, Buchanan thought. It wasn’t the loser but the winner who got sacrificed.

The chieftain scowled toward Buchanan and raised his machete a second time. Buchanan needed all of his discipline not to defend himself. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink. The chieftain nodded, made a forward gesture with the machete, and led his companions past Buchanan, as if he didn’t exist, as if he and not they were a ghost.

Buchanan felt paralyzed for a moment, watching them stride forward into the smoke, disappearing as if they had never been, and then his legs felt wobbly. He glanced down, appalled by the amount of blood at his feet, his blood, the blood from his reopened knife wound.

“Holly!”

“Next to you.”

He spun. Her features strained with fright, she seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

“Lie down,” she said.

“No. Can’t. Help me. This won’t be over”-he swallowed, his mouth dry-“until we find Drummond and Delgado.”

Ahead, through the smoke, men shrieked.

Dizzy, Buchanan put his arm around Holly and stumbled forward, ready with his Uzi. They entered the smoke. Briefly, nothing could be seen. Then they emerged into what seemed a different world. The ball court had been left behind. So had hundreds of years. They faced the obscene pyramid-shaped oil rig that stood where a pyramid of stone, a temple, a holy place, had once stood, focusing the energy of the universe.

Except for the crackle of flames, the place was unnervingly silent. The bodies of construction workers lay all around.

“Dear God,” Holly murmured.

Abruptly, Buchanan heard a metallic whine. An increasing whump-whump-whump. An engine’s roar.

The helicopter, Buchanan realized. Drummond and Delgado had reached it. He strained to peer up, squinting in pain past the flames that whooshed up from trees ahead of him. There. He saw the blue helicopter rising.

But something was wrong. It wobbled. It had trouble gaining altitude. As Buchanan struggled to clear his vision, he saw the cluster of men that clung to its landing skids, desperate to be carried away. Inside the crowded chopper, someone had opened a hatch, kicking at the men, trying to knock them off the struts.

The helicopter wavered, fought for altitude.

And plummeted into the blazing trees. An instant later, a walloping explosion burst from the flames, scattering bodies and wreckage in all directions. The blast reverberated across the site and into the jungle.

Buchanan and Holly were jolted back, horrified, smoke drifting over them. Coughing, wiping sweat and grime from their faces, they surveyed the wreckage. The steel pyramid had been struck by a huge spinning chunk from the helicopter. A support beam had been severed. The derrick listed, drooped, and toppled, metal screeching. Construction equipment was buried by twisted metal. Only the remnants of once-great monuments, the ruins of the ruins that Drummond had allowed to remain, seemed permanent.

A man groaned, “Help.”

Buchanan glanced around, hobbling, following the voice through the smoke.

“Here. Oh, God, please help.”

Buchanan recognized the voice before he saw him. Delgado. The man lay on his back, a spear projecting from his chest. His face was ashen.

“Help.” He gestured weakly toward the spear. “Can’t move. Pull it out.”

“Out? Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“If that’s what you want,” Buchanan said. Knowing what would happen, he gripped the spear and tugged.

Delgado screamed. At once his scream became a gurgle as the force of the spear’s removal caused him to hemorrhage internally. Blood erupted from his mouth.

“For what you did to Maria Tomez,” Buchanan said, “you deserve a whole lot worse.”

Holly clung to him, just as he clung to Holly. The sun was setting. The crimson-tinted, smoke-obscured area seemed completely deserted.

“Dear Christ,” Holly said, “did all of them die? Everybody?”

“The Maya. I don’t see them,” Buchanan said. “Where are they?”

The bump of a falling log disturbed the illusion. Buchanan stared toward the right.

And bristled, finding another survivor.

Alistair Drummond staggered from a leaning, smoking remnant of the log building that had been the camp’s office.

At last, he showed his age. Even more than his age. Stooped, shriveled, his cheeks gaunt, his eyes sunken, he seemed the oldest man Buchanan had ever seen.

Noticing Buchanan, the old man shuddered, then hobbled to try to get away.

Weakness forced Buchanan to hobble in imitation. Several times, Drummond fell. So did Buchanan. But relentless, Buchanan persisted, passing hieroglyph-covered blocks of stone that stood next to fallen clumps of twisted girders.

Drummond faltered from something before him. Turning, he tried to stand proudly, failing miserably as Buchanan stumbled up to him.

“I thought you died on the helicopter,” Buchanan said.

“They wouldn’t let me on.” Drummond’s white hair had been singed by flames. His scalp had been seared. He was almost bald. “Can you believe it?” Drummond’s voice wavered. “They were all so eager to escape that they wouldn’t let me on.”

“Tell me,” Buchanan said. “What made you ever think you could get away with this?”

“Think? I know. As old as I am, as powerful as I am, what can anybody do to punish me? Never forget I’m so very rich.”

“What you are is a bastard.”

Buchanan reached out and pushed him with his right index finger. The minuscule force was enough to throw the old man off balance. His gangly arms flailed. He listed. He screamed. He fell.

What had stopped him from continuing to hobble away from Buchanan was a deep, wide pit above which the ancient Maya had built their stone pyramid to hide and control the god of darkness, the god of black water, the god that seeped from the earth. The steel pyramid with which Drummond had replaced the original pyramid had collapsed into the pit, and at the bottom, oil rippled thickly, its petroleum smell nauseating.

Drummond struck the surface of the oil.

And was swallowed.

“He wanted that oil so damned bad. Now he’s got it,” Buchanan said.

He sank to the ground. His mind swirled.