Assumed Identity

5

The helicopter thundered across the sky. Its whump-whump-whumping roar vibrated through the fuselage. Not that Buchanan could feel the rumble. His body continued to have absolutely no sensation. The cabin’s presumably hard floor might as well have been a feathered mattress. Neither hard nor soft, hot nor cold, sharp nor blunt had any significance. All was the same: numb.

In compensation, his senses of hearing and sight intensified tremendously. Every sound in the cabin, especially Holly’s agonized wheezing, was amplified. Beyond a window of the cabin, the sky was an almost unbearably brilliant turquoise. He feared that he would have gone blind from the radiance if not for merciful flicks of his eyelids, which-like his heart and lungs-weren’t part of the system controlled by the drug.

Indeed his heart was nauseatingly stimulated, pounding wildly, no doubt at least in part from fear. But if he vomited (assuming that his stomach, too, wasn’t paralyzed), he would surely gag and die. He had to concentrate on controlling his fear. He didn’t dare lose his discipline. The faster his heart pounded, the more his lungs wanted air. But his chest muscles wouldn’t cooperate, and the panic of involuntary, smothering hyperventilation almost overcame him.

Concentrate, he thought. Concentrate.

He struggled to fill his mind with a calming mantra. He strove for a single all-consuming thought that would give him purpose. Juana, he thought. Juana. Juana. Have to survive to help her. Have to survive to find her. Have to survive to save her. Have to. .

His frenzied heart kept speeding. His panicked lungs kept insisting. No. The mantra wasn’t working. Juana? She was a distant memory, years away-in Buchanan’s case, literally lifetimes away. He’d been so many people in the meanwhile. Searching for her, as determined as he’d been to find her, he’d really been searching for himself, and as a new all-consuming, all-purposeful thought filled his mind-

— it was unwilled, spontaneous-

— Holly-

— listening to her struggle to breathe-

— need to help Holly, need to save Holly-

— he suddenly knew that he finally had a purpose. Not for Peter Lang. Not for any of his other assumed identities. But for Brendan Buchanan. And that realization gave him an urge to look forward rather than behind, something he hadn’t felt since he’d killed his brother so long ago. Brendan Buchanan had a purpose, and it had nothing to do with himself. It was simply, absolutely, to do everything in his power to make sure that Holly survived this. Not because he wanted her to be with him. But because he wanted her to live. Trapped in himself, he had found himself.

While his heart continued to speed, he sensed-from a change in pressure behind his ears-that the helicopter was descending. He couldn’t move his head to notice where Delgado sat next to Raymond, but he could hear them talking.

“I don’t see why it was necessary for me to come along.”

“It was an order that Mr. Drummond radioed to me as I was flying to Cuernavaca. He wants you to see the progress at the site.”

“Risky,” Delgado said. “I might be associated with the project.”

“I suspect that was Mr. Drummond’s idea. It’s time for you to pay off your debt.”

“That ruthless son of a bitch.”

“Mr. Drummond would consider it a compliment to be called ruthless. Look down there. You can see it now.”

“My God.”

The helicopter continued descending, the pressure behind Buchanan’s ears more painful.

Painful? Buchanan suddenly realized that he was feeling something. He had never expected to welcome pain, but now he did-joyously. His feet tingled. His hands seemed pricked by needles. The stitches in his knife wound began to itch. His nearly healed bullet wound throbbed. His skull felt swollen, his excruciating headache returning. These sensations didn’t occur all at one time. They came separately, gradually. Each gave him hope. He knew that if he tried to move, he’d be able to, but he didn’t dare. He had to keep still. He had to make sure that his limbs were fully functional. He had to wait for the ideal moment to. .

“Just about now, the drug should be wearing off,” Raymond said.

A strong grip seized Buchanan’s left wrist and snapped a handcuff onto it. Then the left wrist was tugged behind Buchanan’s back, and with force, a handcuff was snapped onto his right wrist.

“Comfortable?” Raymond’s tone suggested that he might have been speaking to a lover.

Buchanan didn’t answer, continuing to pretend that he couldn’t move. Meanwhile the clink and scrape of metal told him that Holly was being handcuffed as well.

The helicopter’s roar diminished, the pitch of its rotor blades changing, as it settled onto the ground. The pilot shut off the controls, the blades spinning with less velocity, the turbine’s roar turning into a whine.

When the hatch was opened, Buchanan expected his eyes to be assaulted by a blaze of sunlight. Instead, a shadow blanketed him. A haze. He’d noticed that the sky had become less brilliantly blue as the helicopter descended, but with so much else to think about, he hadn’t paid the lack of clarity much attention. Now the haze swirled into the cabin, and the odor was so acrid that he coughed reflexively. Smoke! Nearby something was on fire.

Buchanan kept coughing.

“The drug temporarily stops your saliva glands from working,” Raymond said, dragging Buchanan from the cabin, dumping him onto the ground. “That makes your throat dry. In fact, your throat’ll feel irritated for quite some time.” Raymond’s tone suggested that he enjoyed the thought of Buchanan’s discomfort.

Holly coughed as well, then groaned as Raymond dragged her from the cabin and dumped her next to Buchanan. Smoke drifted past them.

“Why are you burning so many trees?” Delgado sounded alarmed.

“To make as wide a perimeter as possible. To keep the natives away.”

“But won’t the flames ignite the-?”

“Mr. Drummond knows what he’s doing. Everything’s been calculated.”

Raymond kicked Buchanan’s side.

Buchanan gasped, making himself sound more in pain than he was, thankful that Raymond hadn’t kicked him in the side where he’d been stabbed.

“Get up,” Raymond said. “Our men have better things to do than carry you. I know you can do it. If you don’t, I’ll kick you all the way to the office.”

To prove his point, Raymond kicked Buchanan again, this time harder.

Buchanan struggled to his knees, wavered, and managed to stand. His mind swirled, imitating the smoke that forced him to cough once more.

Holly staggered upright, almost falling, then gaining her balance. She looked at Buchanan in terror. He tried to communicate an expression of reassurance.

It didn’t work. Raymond shoved both of them, nearly knocking them down before their momentum jerked them upright and forward. They were being herded toward a wide log building that was partially obscured by smoke.

But what captured Buchanan’s attention was the welter of activity around him, workmen rushing, bulldozers and trucks laboring past, cranes lifting girders and pipes. Amid the din of machinery, Buchanan thought he heard a shot, and then he saw stone blocks scattered before him, hieroglyphs on them, obviously from ruins. Here and there, he saw the stunted remains of ancient temples. At once, as the smoke cleared temporarily, he had a brief view of a pyramid. But the pyramid wasn’t ancient, and it wasn’t composed of stone blocks.

This one, tall and wide, was built of steel. Buchanan had never seen anything like it. The structure was like a gigantic tripod, its legs splayed, unfamiliar reinforcements linking them. Even though he’d never seen anything like it, he knew intuitively what it was, what it resembled. An oil derrick. Is that what Drummond wants down here? he wondered. But why does the derrick have such an unusual design?

At the smoke-hazed log building, Raymond shoved the door, then thrust Buchanan and Holly through the opening.

Buchanan almost fell into the shadowy, musty interior, his eyes needing time to adjust to the dim, generator-powered overhead light bulbs. He staggered to a halt, straightened, felt Holly stumble next to him, and found himself blinking upward at Alistair Drummond.