Assumed Identity

by David R. Morrell

  “Not until we have a deal!” Buchanan winced from the pain in his chest. Another pool of blood formed at his feet. He felt light-headed and fought to concentrate. He had to keep Holly and himself alive. Play your role, Holly. Play your role.

  “What kind of deal?” Drummond asked.

  “I tell you what you need, and I get to walk away,” Buchanan said. “In exchange for calling off my unit, I stay alive. But this bitch gets what she deserves.”

  “You’d believe any bargain I made with you?” Drummond asked.

  “Hey, your problem hasn’t changed! If anything happens to me, my unit comes after you!” Buchanan held his chest, the sharp pain restricting his breath.

  “And what about Juana Mendez? Do you expect me to believe you won’t stop looking for her? Or maybe she no longer matters to you, either.”

  “No.” Buchanan sweated. “She’s the reason I’m in this. I’ll keep looking. I’ll convince her this is none of her business. I want her left alone. The same as me.”

  “She must be very special to you.”

  “Years ago, I should have married her.”

  “Buchanan, don’t do this to me,” Holly said. “Don’t sell me out.”

  “Shut up. Anybody who uses me the way you did deserves to be sold out.”

  “All right,” Drummond said. “Deal with the woman as you like. How do you contact your unit?”

  Buchanan told them a radio frequency. “If you’re using a telephone, the number is . . .” He told them that as well.

  “That’s a lie,” Holly said.

  Good, Buchanan thought. Keep going, Holly. Take my cue. Play the role. Buy us time.

  “A lie?” Drummond asked.

  “I don’t know about the radio frequency, but the telephone number isn’t the one I saw him use several times when he reported in. That number was . . .” She gave a different one.

  “Ah,” Drummond said. “It seems you haven’t been perfectly honest,” he told Buchanan.

  “She’s the one who’s lying,” Buchanan said. “I have to call my people by midnight. Let me use your radio and—”

  “This is bullshit,” Raymond said.

  He picked up the ball and hurled it through the ring.

  He did so again.

  And again.

  “You’re stalling,” Raymond said. “The two of you are pretending to fight with each other until you hope we’re so confused that we’ll keep you alive a little longer.”

  Raymond threw the ball and scored another point. “That’s nine.” He stared at Buchanan. “I don’t believe either of you. One more point, and you’re dead.”

  As Raymond prepared to throw the ball a final time, Buchanan lunged. He felt a tremor. The court seemed to ripple. His legs became wobbly.

  Nonetheless, he kept charging. When Raymond threw, the ball struck the side of the rim. Buchanan intercepted it in midair, bounced it off his padded forearms, and knocked it through the ring.

  But as he landed, his legs buckled. He was suddenly aware that the roar of the construction equipment had stopped. By contrast, the crackle of flames and the rattle of gunshots became louder. Men screamed.

  He wavered.

  “One more,” Raymond said.

  He picked up the ball. “One more.”

  He glared at Buchanan. “And the loser pays the penalty.”

  He threw the ball.

  Buchanan didn’t even bother to see if it went through the ring. He was too busy struggling to remain upright, preparing to defend himself.

  Above him, he heard a commotion. Scuffling. A shout. Someone falling.

  “Buchanan!” Holly screamed. “Behind you!”

  Risking the distraction, he glanced quickly backward and saw that the guard had fallen from the terrace.

  No! he realized. He was wrong. The guard hadn’t fallen. He’d been pushed! By Holly.

  The fifteen-foot drop had dazed the man. He lay, holding his leg as if it might be broken. The man had lost his grip on his automatic weapon.

  Buchanan scurried off balance toward it and was knocked to the side by the startling heavy impact of the ball against his back.

  My head! It almost hit my head! I’ll die if it hits my head!

  Buchanan heard more gunshots, more screams, but all he cared about was Raymond stalking toward him.

  “You lost,” Raymond said. His blue eyes glinted with anticipation. His boyish smile was stiff and cruel. It made him look devoid of all sanity. “I’m going to kill you with this.” He picked up the weighty ball. “It’s going to take a long time. Finally, I’m going to use the ball to smash your head like an eggshell.”

  Dizzy, Buchanan stumbled unwillingly back. He slipped on his blood. His brain felt swollen, his skull in terrible pain. He feinted toward the right, then dove toward the left, grabbing the fallen guard’s automatic weapon.

  Raymond stood over him, swaying, the ball raised over his head, preparing to hurl it down with all his strength.

  Buchanan aimed the Uzi and pulled the trigger.

  But nothing happened.

  The weapon had jammed.

  Buchanan’s bowels felt as if they were suddenly filled with boiling water.

  With a laugh, Raymond compacted his muscles to propel the ball down toward Buchanan’s face.

  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 though
t 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.

  11

  Holly’s blurred face hovered over him.

  The Mayan chieftain, who’d confronted him in the ball court, seemed to hover next to her, the colorful feathers of his headdress radiant in the crimson sunset. Other warriors appeared, gripping blood-covered spears and machetes. Holly seemed not to realize her danger.

  Buchanan tried to raise a hand to point and warn her. He couldn’t move the hand. He tried to open his mouth and tell her. His mouth wouldn’t move. The words wouldn’t come. He felt as if the earth spun beneath him, tugging him into a vortex.

  The Mayan chieftain stooped, his broad round face distorting the closer it came to Buchanan.

  In his delirium, Buchanan felt himself being lifted and placed upon a litter. He had a floating sensation. Al
though his eyelids were closed, he saw images. A towering pyramid. Statues that depicted gigantic snake heads. Evocative hieroglyphics. Magnificent palaces and temples.

  Then the jungle rose before him, and he was carried through a clearing in the trees and bushes, a clearing that went on and on, his litter bearers proceeding along a wide pathway made of gray stone, higher than the forest floor. It seemed to him that everywhere, except on the pathway, snakes made the ground ripple.

  Night settled over them. Nonetheless they continued, Holly staying close to his litter, the Mayan chieftain guided by moonlight, leading the way.

  This is how it was a thousand years ago, Buchanan thought.

  They came to a village, where through a gate, beyond a head-high wooden stockade, torches flickered, revealing huts. The walls of the huts were made from woven saplings, the roofs from palm fronds. Pigs and chickens, wakened by the procession, scattered noisily. Villagers waited, short, round-faced, dark-haired, almond-eyed, the women wearing ghostly white dresses.

  Buchanan was taken into one of the huts. He was placed on a hammock. So the snakes can’t get at me, he thought. Women undressed him. In the light from a fire, the chieftain peered at his wounds.

  Holly shrieked and tried to stop him, but the villagers restrained her, and after the chieftain sewed Buchanan’s knife wound shut, after he applied a compress to Buchanan’s almost-healed bullet wound, after he put salve on Buchanan’s cuts and bruises, he examined Buchanan’s bulging eyes, used a knife to shave the hair from one side of Buchanan’s head.

  And raised a pulley-driven wooden drill to Buchanan’s aching skull.

  The sharp point was excruciating.

  As if a huge boil had been lanced, Buchanan fainted from the ecstasy of tremendous release.

  12

  “How long have I been unconscious?” Buchanan managed to ask. His mind was clouded. His body felt unrelated to him. Words were like stones in his mouth.

  “Two weeks.”

  That so surprised him his thoughts were jolted, forced to be less murky. He raised his right hand toward the bandage around his skull.