David Morrell - Assumed Identity

“Is the distinction too subtle for you to grasp? I’ll make it plain. I’m not going to kill you.”

The man looked simultaneously troubled and bewildered, as if mercy was not a familiar concept.

“Provided you follow the ground rules,” Buchanan said.

“What kind of. .?”

“First of all, you’re going to stay tied up until sunset,” Buchanan said. “You’ll be fed, given water, and allowed to use the toilet. But you’ll remain in the van. Is that clear?”

The man frowned and nodded.

“Second, when you’re released, you will not harm Pedro and Anita Mendez. They know nothing about me. They know nothing about their daughter. They’re totally ignorant about any of this. If you torture them or use any other means to interrogate them, I’ll get angry. You do not want me to be angry. If anything happens to them, I’ll make your worst fears seem an understatement. You can hide. You can switch identities. It won’t do you any good. I make a specialty of finding people. For the rest of your life, you’ll keep looking behind you. Clear?”

The man swallowed. “Yes.”

Buchanan got out of the van, left the doors open, and gestured for Pedro and Anita to come over.

Pedro started to say something in Spanish.

Buchanan stopped him. “No. We have to speak English. I want to make sure that these men understand every word.”

Pedro looked confused.

“You’re going to have a busy day watching them,” Buchanan said. “I want you to find a place where this van won’t be conspicuous. Maybe in back of one of your garages.” He explained his conversation with the prisoners. “Let them go at sunset.”

“But. .”

“Don’t worry,” Buchanan said. “They won’t bother you. In fact, they’ll be leaving town. Won’t you?” he asked the first man.

The first man swallowed again and nodded.

“Exactly. Now all I need is for you to tell me if you have a check-in schedule,” Buchanan said. “Is there anybody you have to phone at a specific time to let your employer know there hasn’t been trouble?”

“No,” the man said.

“You’re sure? You’re negotiating for your life. Be very careful.”

“We’re supposed to phone only if we have a question or something to report,” the man said.

“Then let’s wrap this up.” Buchanan’s legs were rubbery from pain and fatigue. He turned to Pedro and Anita. “I need something to eat. I need a place to sleep.”

“We’d be honored to have you as a guest,” Anita said.

“Thanks, but I’d prefer that you don’t have any idea where I am.”

“We’d never tell.”

“Of course not,” Buchanan said, not bothering to correct her, knowing that Pedro and his wife didn’t have the faintest idea of how vulnerable they would be to torture. “The less you know about any of this, the better, though. As long as these men realize you can’t tell them anything, you’re safe. Just keep the bargain I made. Release them at sunset. Meanwhile, on our way into town, I need to pick up my car. My bag’s in the trunk.”

“What happens later? After you rest?” Pedro asked.

“I’m leaving San Antonio.”

“To where?”

Buchanan didn’t answer.

“Are you going to Philadelphia? To find the people who hired these men? The people you spoke to on the phone?”

Buchanan still didn’t answer.

“What happened at Juana’s house?”

“Nothing,” Buchanan said. “Pedro, drive the van while I stay in back and watch these men. Anita, follow in the Jeep.”

“But what about Juana?”

“You have my word. I’ll never give up.”

THE YUCATAN PENINSULA

McIntyre, the sunburned, leathery foreman of the demolition crew, lay feverish and helpless on a cot in the log building that his men had constructed when they’d first arrived at the site. Dense trees and shrubs had still covered the ruins back then. The ruins themselves had still been here. Sanity had still prevailed.

Now, as it took all of McIntyre’s strength for him to use his good arm to wipe sweat from his brow, he wished from the depths of his soul that he had never agreed to his damnable contract with Alistair Drummond. The considerable fee-a greater sum than he’d ever received for any assignment-had been irresistible, as had the equally considerable bonus that Alistair Drummond had promised if the project was successfully completed. McIntyre had worked all over the world. In the course of his career, his nomadic existence had resulted in two divorces, in his being alienated from two women he loved and two sets of children he adored. All because of McIntyre’s urge to conquer the wilderness, to put order where there was chaos. But this assignment had required him to destroy order and create chaos, and now he was being punished.

The earth itself seemed infuriated by the obscenity that McIntyre and his crew had caused to happen here. Or maybe it was the gods in whose honor the ruins had been constructed. An odd thought for him, McIntyre realized. After all, he had never been religious. Nonetheless, as his death approached, he found that he was increasingly thinking about ultimates. What he would once have called superstition now seemed to make perfect sense. The gods were angry because their temples and shrines had been desecrated.

Destroy the ruins, Drummond had commanded. Scatter them. His word be done. And with each dynamite blast, with each crunch of a bulldozer, with each hieroglyph-covered block of stone dumped into a sinkhole, the earth and the gods beneath had protested. Periodic tremors had shaken the camp. Their duration had lengthened. And with the increased tremors had come a further horror, myriad snakes escaping from holes and fissures in the ground, a pestilence of them, only to be controlled by spraying kerosene and scorching the earth, further despoiling it. A pall of smoke hung over the devastated ruins.

For a time, the snakes had seemed everywhere, but as the tremors had stopped, the snakes had simultaneously vanished. No longer disturbed, they’d returned to their underground nests.

Not in time, however. At least for McIntyre. The previous day, just before sunset, he had reached into a toolbox to get a wrench and felt a sharp, burning pain just above his right wrist. Compelled by fear, rushing toward the medical tent, he barely had a glimpse of the tiny snake that slithered from the toolbox and into a hole. The camp physician, an unshaven man who always seemed to have a cigarette in his mouth and whiskey on his breath, had injected McIntyre with antivenom and disinfected the puncture wounds, all the while assuring McIntyre that he’d been very lucky inasmuch as the fangs had missed the major blood vessels in his arm.

But as McIntyre had shivered from fear and shock, he hadn’t felt lucky at all. For one thing, different snake toxins required different types of antivenom, but McIntyre hadn’t been able to get a good enough look at the snake that had bitten him in order to identify it. For another, even if he had been given the correct antivenom, he still desperately needed emergency care in a hospital. But the nearest major hospital was in Campeche, 150 miles away. A road had not yet been built through the jungle to allow a vehicle to leave the ruins. The only way McIntyre could be taken to Campeche in time for the medical treatment he urgently needed was by helicopter. But two of the camp’s helicopters were much farther away, in Vera Cruz, getting supplies, and weren’t expected back for twelve hours. The third helicopter was in camp but disabled. That was why McIntyre had been reaching into the toolbox when the snake hidden there bit him-he’d been helping a mechanic to fix the chopper’s hydraulic system.