David Morrell - Assumed Identity

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.

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. Although 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.

“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.

“Don’t touch it,” Holly said.

“What happened to my-? How did-?”

Holly didn’t answer. She soaked a clean cloth in rainwater that she’d collected in half a hollowed-out coconut shell. While Buchanan lay partially naked on a hammock outside a hut, the late-afternoon sunlight comfortably warm against his wounds, she bathed him.

“Tell me.” He licked his dry, swollen lips.

“You almost died. You’d lost a lot of blood, but the medicine man was able to stop it.”