We each received a telegram from Elias, requesting aid in the Yucatan. He had a few favors to ask us. The first favor - find out information about a roguish gun-runner named Walter Kimble. The second - obtain whatever information we could about the cult of a Mayan death god, Ah Puch by name... He desired each of us to tell nobody of our mission, and meet at a small hotel - the Hotel San Miguel in Campeche, Mexico. Little did we know how fortuitous that meeting would turn out to be, as each of us settled into the lobby with our research and findings. Case in point, the serious-looking Mohawk man in a sharp dress suit standing at the counter, talking to the slicked-back Desk Manager we would come to know as Carlos.
"Have you seen a man named Jackson Elias come through here at all?" The Mohawk asked, a serious look to his face.
"Si, senor, I know Elias," He said in heavily accented, but perfect, English. "I believe I last saw him a few weeks' prior, heading out to the rail station..."
That caught all of our collective attentions, much to the shock of the Mohawk man. Clearly startled by our staring, he was quiet until someone broke the silence.
"You know Elias?"
"I do, yes, why?"
"... You got a telegram, right? Telling you to come here..."
It quickly became apparent we had all received similar telegrams, and all knew Elias - a mutual thread. Typical of him to lead us on a wild goose chase, just to meet other friends of his. It wasn't long, after pitchers of cold beer and tequila (save for the tee-totaling Mohawk who had warm Coca-Cola), before we came to know each other better and pooled our resources. The lineup:
- Ralph Hemlock, the Mohawk man from before. He was a Federal Marshal, come to seek out Walter Kimble. He knew Elias from working with him a few times, and jumped at the chance to find a way of hunting Kimble down. Admirable guy, Hemlock - but maybe a bit of a stickler for justice.
- Ted Bates, a bounty hunter by trade and hard-ass by nature, also seeking to bring Kimble back to the states with him. Ted had sought out people for Elias in the past, mostly in terms of information-gathering, and was always happy to help out a friend. Southern hospitality, you know.
- Dr. Morgan Baker, the lone female of the group, a surgeon hired on during the Great War to heal those injured in battle. You can imagine our surprise at finding out her occupation! She once helped Elias out while he reported on the war, a stray bullet had hit his arm and she patched him up. You ask me, I think she might even have been a bit keen on him... though she'd never admit it to a soul.
- Clayton Byrd, a hapless treasure hunter by trade who almost always seemed to get to the loot after everyone else. He'd worked with Elias before, and even met Kimble, but never took Kimble's offers - he hated the bastard. Something about Kimble betraying him in the past.
- Brad Donovan, a speakeasy owner and New York native who had known Elias since childhood. Of course, he jumped at the chance to help his childhood friend, along with the promise of adventure. He was a plucky kid but a bit of a baby face, so we always just called him "Pretty Boy". If you ask me, he really was the odd duck of the group, but his upbeat attitude was infectious.
As for this mysterious Ah Puch, we learned thanks to Byrd's Archaeological knowledge that this was some sort of death god of Mitnal, the Mayan underworld. Supposedly, he was an owl or skull-headed figure, and came for the souls of the damned to drag them down below. Before he killed you, the sound of an owl's screech was heard, chilling and piercing... Sort of like a Mayan Satan in a way, a terrifying demonic figure the locals believed responsible for some recent missing persons in the area, and whose power was still palpable in the old legends of the people. Some myths just never really die.
Carlos turned out to have a letter for us, from Elias. The letter asked us to seek out a man named Guillermo at the Campeche Railroad Station, that he would give us what we needed to aid our good friend in his explorations. After gathering what we could, and determining our resources and supplies, we set out to the station.
Finding Guillermo was not hard, since Byrd apparently knew a little Spanish - something about living down in Sao Paulo, Brazil for some time. A few people at the noisy, crowded tropical station pointed us in the direction of a small office, wherein we found Guillermo. He was gruff with us at first, and didn't seem interested in small-talk until we produced our telegrams and mentioned Elias - then he was all smiles and good-nature joking. We talked a bit, and he explained that Elias was apparently exploring some old ruins out near the remote Milepost #126, a place the locals called Mitnal and believed to be haunted by Ah Puch. He hadn't seen Elias in some time, but was asked to contact some friends of his last he saw him. That, and Elias had a letter to give us, guiding us to his camp to meet with him. One set of stamped passes and some supply-gathering later, and we were on a flatbed train car bundled between crates, on our way through rugged and thick jungle.
Have you ever traveled on the back of a flatbed car for the better part of a day? It's not a very comfortable way to travel! Every little jitter and bump on the road hurts, no shocks to absorb them at all. And being curled up amongst cargo behind a wood-burning steam engine's sooty output is none too fun either. Neither is watching the locals dwindle to leave you the only ones on the train at nightfall, in the middle of dense jungle and darkness, with only a lantern and a set of clues to guide you. And did I mention the mosquitoes and biting flies, or the eerie sound of an owl screeching in the night somewhere? It's almost enough to make you believe demons are real...
Of course, Donovan's boyish face betrayed his boyish nature and he was thrilled to explore, taking to the task of swinging his machete with gusto as he hacked away vines and roots with the kind of exuberance all New Yorkers have. Boy's sharp as a tack, but easily excited by any sort of adventure. I guess that's what you get when you grow up used to the bustle and crush of New York City your entire life.
"Boy, you're gonna get us all killed one of these days," Bates drawled in his laid-back Southern way. Ah, the differences between those from the North and those from the South...
The sounds of the jungle aren't anything like those you've grown accustomed to back home in the States. Maybe Byrd, having spent time in Brazil's rainforests, was familiar with them, but as for me I don't think I ever will be. Did you know there's frogs that chirp? Venomous snakes in there as big around as a man's arm with enough piss and vinegar in them to strike first and question later? That jaguars scream? Oh yeah, they scream, and trust me, it's disconcerting as all hell to hear - especially when you hear it coming from behind an ancient Mayan stone stele, overgrown with moss and vines, and engraved with snarling jaguars and skull-faced owl-flanked images of a death god. Again, almost enough to make you believe in demons...
The pathway towards Elias' camp, despite being overgrown and the falling darkness, wasn't as hard to follow as we'd hoped, but darkness approached fast and we had no choice but to camp for the night in the next clearing we found. We were already wary after our encounter with a fer-de-lance earlier, and doubly so when we all saw a dark shadowy figure, catlike and with glowing eyes, slink out of the foliage and cross our path. Let me tell you, even knowing it was a jaguar, it's damn unnerving to see an overgrown cat turn and look at you, totally unafraid of you and seeing you very clearly as prey. It activates something primal in you, makes you realize you're vulnerable. Fortunately, Hemlock's cool head prevailed, and the jaguar slinked into the foliage and vanished, leaving us in one piece.
"Th-that's a big kitty," Donovan stammered, his boyish face pale as a sheet.
"Told you they get big," Hemlock replied, smiling ever so slightly as we headed on our way forward.
Here's the good news - we found both Elias' camp and a spot to camp ourselves. The bad news is, the camp we found had no Jackson Elias in it. It had been ransacked and ravaged, seemingly by some sort of creature or a gang of men - hard to tell. Rumors and speculations swirled, had a jaguar carried him off? Was he dead? What had become of our poor friend? We had no way of telling in the dark jungle, and elected to set up camp for the evening, letting Byrd take first watch.
All went well until some odd noises roused us from slumber. How odd? Try "Atonal wind chimes and reed flutes piping madly" odd. Try "Something is out in the bushes" odd. Try "Ah Puch with a flaming human skull in one hand springing out of the foliage and scaring three out of five of us" odd. Of course, we saw through "Ah Puch" and his ruse of backlighting and a cheesy owl mask, startling the person beneath. He was clearly drunk, and ran for it as soon as Hemlock pulled a gun on him. Not that he got very far. We didn't even need to use force! Of course, once the mask came off revealing the coward beneath, he talked. Told us all about Kimble and the nearby ruins, how he was working for the guy, how Ah Puch was just a legend to scare away locals from Kimble's doings. And, most important of all, how Elias had been knocked out and taken hostage by Kimble's thugs, and was being held captive in the ruins as we spoke.
We didn't waste time in getting to the mossy pyramidal old ruins, thanks to our new friend. It was late at night and most of the guards were gone - our companion said there were fifteen of them, all armed, but just one that patrolled this late at night - so getting into the pyramid itself was cake. Hemlock, the clever bastard, managed to sneak behind the lone guard and cosh him over the head. Guy went out like a light. A little more searching yielded Kimble's dug-in entry point, which we duly entered and began to explore. It wasn't long before we came to a wooden door, barely locked. Behind the door was a makeshift jail. In the jail were two boys and three men. And one of those men, ragged and skinny from his weeks spent in captivity, we all recognized as a weary and worn Jackson Elias.
"Elias! Hey!" Hemlock whispered through the slat in the door, and he turned to face us.
"Ralph, old boy...?" He questioned, at first warily, but then more confident and almost smiling. "Is that you? What took you so long?"
Good to see that captivity hadn't dulled Elias' trademark wit. Pretty Boy managed to pick the lock easily - the door was pretty haphazardly made and the lock was worse. Poor Elias looked like he hadn't slept well in weeks, and no wonder - the floor of that cell was rocky and uneven, with only a few blankets for a bed. Dr. Baker was quick to asses and aid Elias' state, and we learned his captives only fed him cornmeal to keep him alive. But alive he was, and we were grateful nothing worse had happened to him. Elias' companions, two Campeche natives that spoke only Spanish and had a dark sense of humor, were quick to fill us in on the details with Elias acting as translator. Apparently in the dead of night, their camp was ambushed by the same Ah Puch act we saw before. Elias of course was not at all fooled and would have moved to unmask his assailant, but around fifteen or so armed men ambushed the camp from all sides. There was nothing they could do, and when Elias took up a machete to give them a fight one of them hit him in the head with his rifle, knocking him out cold. He woke up here, and his compadres had to fill him in on the details.
Elias told us there was a cache of weapons deeper into the pyramid, something about a gun-smuggling operation. Yes, he'd seen Kimble and knew he was here; they'd thought him a bounty hunter out to catch him, hence being taken captive. The two little boys ran off first chance they got, presumably back to their families, while the companions kept an ear out for anything strange. Sadly, they caught something, and so did we about five minutes later - the sound of around six or so men heading towards the pyramid from the outside. They spoke rapid Spanish, but Byrd was quick to discern that one of them wasn't quite like the others - one of them, he was sure of it, was none other than Walter F. Kimble himself!
Trapped... trapped like rats, we were - but at least our position was a defensive one and we could bottleneck them thanks to the narrow hallway. We wasted no time in getting to the cache Elias mentioned, just past a set of bunks in which Kimble presumably slept, and took up our defenses. I don't think any of us were prepared for just how damn much stuff was in that cache - there must have been hundreds of crates. Most of the unmarked ones had guns, all bolt-action rifles of Turkish make and all illegally gained, while others held ammo - about 8,000 some rounds and 120 some rifles, we estimated. Some of the crates held perishables, including that cornmeal Elias had so become accustomed to and detested. One, a crate of Australian origin marked "Randolph Shipping Co.", held illegal liquors of all stripes; another, marked "Ho Fong Imports" and hailing from China judging by the characters on the crate, held more fireworks and impromptu explosives than you could shake a stick at. Kimble, the wily bastard, had contacts and shipping operations all over the world... He'd been planning this little gun-running trip for a good long time.
As the men approached us from outside, we had little choice but to hide and hopefully sneak out behind their backs. Pretty Boy was clever, and made up a couple Molotov cocktails from the liquor. Dr. Baker took a box of ammo plus some of the alcohol, doused the box, and threw it down the hallway before setting it ablaze to act as a distraction while we made our silent exit. Woman could fix her way out of any jam, no wonder she'd been called in during the Great War. Unfortunately, Pretty Boy was useless in the stealth department - he slipped and fell, some rocks skittering from under his feet and making some pretty obvious noise. Cue six men plus Kimble running into the room while Bates and Hemlock took defensive positions under the bunks in the other room. The men might have been fooled, but Kimble wasn't. The blond, cowboy-booted bastard looked around the room, eyes flicking behind the conspicuous scar over one of them, and immediately spotted us when he entered.
"Y'all best come on out, then," he drawled casually, as if this were nothing but a game. "Ain't no use in hidin' now..."
Of course, we were armed with some of the rifles and he was in a bad position, which he clearly noticed as soon as he saw us all. Problem one for him - Elias and his companions were free, also armed to the teeth. Problem two - he was outnumbered and knew a fight was imminent. You could almost see the gears in his head turning as he thought about how to weasel his way out of this one...
"Late to the party as usual, Byrd?" He smirked, watching the treasure hunter sneer in distaste at his jab. "Long time, no see... Guess you're after one of the warrants on my head, ain't ya?"
"Can it, Kimble," Byrd sneered, eyes hard and cold.
"You'll tell us everything we want to know about your little operation," Dr. Baker added, her grip shifting on her rifle, "Or I'll sink a bullet between your eyes faster than you can say 'Ah Puch'."
He was amiable and charming, and more than welcome to explain. Ah Puch was a ruse the whole time - there was no death cult, no demons, nothing. It was all to keep the locals from drifting too close to the ruins and his little cache of weapons. As for the disappeared people, he planned to leave them in the pyramid, locked up until the feds finally raided it or they all died. Despicable bastard would have thrown poor Elias under the bus the soonest opportunity he had. Of course, Elias was having none of it, rifle trained on his former captor. All was tense for a moment as Byrd, sensing the energy in the air, tried to defuse the situation with his charm and wit.
That is, however, until we all heard the gunshot from the next room, and all hell broke loose. Apparently, Hemlock and Bates, still under the bunks, had gotten trigger-happy and thought they had a clear shot at Kimble. They were wrong. Instead they just caused all six of Kimble's men to come running, while Kimble himself took the opportunity to disappear into the chaos and we quickly lost track of him. Great job there, you two - almost had the bastard!
A shootout ensued, and we thankfully had the advantage due to the hallway bottle-necking the attackers. Pretty Boy Donovan was clever as ever, and still had some of the Molotovs he had made earlier. He took careful aim and threw one down the hall, where it shattered and broke all over a couple of the men. Of course, a gun is no use in case of being set on fire, no matter what caliber the rifle is. They ran like the cowards they were. As for the others, they kept pressing forward and shot - poorly - at us. Bates took a bullet as he shifted position, and I'm pretty sure one of us blasted one of Kimble's men in the shoulder, but it was hard to tell in the heat of the moment. I do know Bates was a stone cold bad-ass, grappling one of the straggling men and throwing him into the fire from the Molotov. Guy ran screaming and on fire out of the pyramid. The rest soon surrendered after that... but Kimble, wily snake he was, had vanished. Slipped into the jungle and disappeared like a jaguar into the shadows of the night. The motherfucker's got a hell of a reputation, that's for sure. It'd be almost admirable if it didn't piss Hemlock and Bates off to no end... and rankle the rest of us for kidnapping our friend.
At least we all were alive, and Elias was safe. In fact, he seemed thrilled by his little adventure, and more than grateful we helped him get out of that bind. The trip back was a lot easier in broad daylight and with more people, though the train ride was just as uncomfortable. We got back to Campeche in one piece, just before mid-afternoon, and Elias was more than happy to join us for his first real meal in weeks. Drinks flowed freely (well, except for Hemlock's tee-totaling, he had a Coke as usual) and conversation was had as we caught up on old times, the tropical sun and humidity leading us to stay inside on some days and watch it set, or head into the beach's crystal clear blue waters for a refreshing swim. Carlos even comped our rooms for us out of gratitude, and the whole of Campeche was astonished to hear the tale of how six or so gringos managed to escape from the clutches of Ah Puch. Elias' companions were happy to oblige in spreading the tale, and who were we to let the truth get in the way of a good story? Some legends really never die, and the old ways are certainly still strong in the lovely Yucatan. Not to mention the fresh mango with lime, which Donovan quickly found to be a favorite, and the spicy, hand-rolled carnitas! You haven't lived until you've had a real Mexican lunch on the patio of a hotel overlooking the jungle. It's innocent and peaceful, Campeche, and had any of us the time we would all certainly have gone back.
Unfortunately, our trip quickly came to an end as we rested, relaxed, and recovered. Once morning, we awoke to find Elias vanished, as was his usual way - he often gave people the slip and headed out on his travels without letting anyone else know. Carlos gave us a letter he left us, and we read. Something about boarding the first steamer he could find to Morocco. He apparently had research to do concerning, in his words, "The unfortunate fate of a certain high-profile expedition..." Damn it, Elias, it'd be just like you to go chasing after that Carlyle Expedition, wouldn't it, even after we all knew it was some Kenyans that offed them...
How innocent we were in 1926. How naive we were. Two quiet years passed after that little excursion to the Yucatan, hearing nothing from Elias, though he did send us each a copy of his book - The God of Mitnal - and gave us fame as helpers in his tale. I can't tell you what it feels like to know we're famous somehow, to have people who read our story know our names. It's a good feeling. Still is, after all this time.
Two years. That was the reprieve we had. Two normal years on our own. We thought we'd go back to our lives, back to before the adventures, and life would continue as normal.
We wouldn't find out just how wrong we were until January 16, 1928, when Elias called for our aid again...