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, 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.