The Adventures of Latakia Billows

Episode VIII: Atop the Mountain


“Well, Latakia, it’s been a week, and that nickname is all you’ve found.”

Jose had found himself a little outcropping of rock and was now squeezed under it to get the most of its shadow. It’s not that he was avoiding the work, but he’d given up on success. Asia was already asleep, having given up not only on the mission but also on their leader.

“Let it go, Latakia,” Jose said, pulling his hat down to doubly shade his face.

Chris had long since given up stable footing for a chance at uncovering a buried door or symbol or clue. He was knee deep in loose rocks precariously close to a cliff at the highest point of the Superstition Mountains, the focal point of the mountain range of the same name. If he fell, he would die splayed out on Peralta Trail.

This was the most likely home of the Lost Dutchman Mine, on the eastern side of Lost Dutchman State Park, but he was having as much luck as the scores of treasure hunters that had been there before. They had studied the rock and matched the landmarks, and it led them to only one place, but Chris was standing in that very spot with nothing to show from it but a farmer’s tan and a reddening neck. His shovel rested against a rock wall, as he had long since reverted to using his hands to clear rocks and trace cracks that could have been, but never were, outlines of doorways.

Jose reached into the bag and pulled out Chris’s pipe.

“Hey Popeye,” he called, “come get your spinach.”

Chris stared at him briefly, trying to reconnect with the world beyond the rocks he had been throwing.

“I guess we should try to think about this a little,” Chris said, accepting the pipe and loading it with a Latakia-laden Proper English. The leathery plume that erupted from the bowl stirred Asia from her sleep.

“God, you stink,” she said.

The smoke billowing out of Latakia’s pipe wasn’t the only cloud rising. Jose spotted the park rangers heading up to the mountain. Strictly speaking, treasure hunting wasn’t encouraged. Strictly speaking, it was outlawed. Chris sank low to the ground, hoping the rangers wouldn’t make the climb if they didn’t see anything. He slid over to the pack that held the mapstone. The line traced between mountains to what was clearly the tallest point. It made it easy to find the destination, but it seems the destination was just another legend, another joke of the Peralta family or Joseph Waltz or whoever really started these stories.

As he studied the stone without progress, Chris sipped at his pipe as lightly as he dared, just enough to keep it lit so as not to send smoke into the air. Asia stirred, and he held out his hand to keep her from rising. She glanced over the edge to see the park service had sent a second car. They might have appeared as hikers if not for the shovels. Everything else fit in their packs, but Chris had insisted on speed, on foregoing collapsible shovels for standard ones that could be obtained more easily.

All three of them were awake now and straining to hear any sound that might tell them if the rangers were coming or going. Jose broke the silence.

“You know all they’ll do is give us a ticket, right?” he asked.

“Whoa, now,” Asia countered. “We’ve heard all about that crazy sheriff in Arizona.” She looked directly at Jose as she continued. “They think any of us is illegal and they’ll probably shoot us all.”

“Yeah, but I was born in Jersey City,” Jose spat back at her, “and maybe you look a little too much like you were born in Kenya.”

Chris shushed them both.

“Guys, the park rangers don’t work for the sheriff,” he said. “This is a state park. But if it makes you feel better, you both look like Canadian border jumpers to me.”

As carefully as she could, Asia peaked over the edge of the cliff. One vehicle was driving away. The other sat motionless. She couldn’t see the driver. She tried to listen for sounds of footsteps. Instead, she heard a 10-year-old dragging a stick along a picket fence. Then it was a Ford Pinto in serious need of repair. But the volume kept growing, and the ground started to shake. Chris was grabbing the equipment, and Jose was securing the supplies, but it was all Asia could do to slide herself further and further from the mountain’s edge.

A gust of wind shook them all and pushed around their gear. It caught the shovel bag Chris was struggling to fill and sent it tumbling, tumbling straight toward Asia. The wind and the bag slapped at her, pushing her precariously toward the cliff. The ground dropped out from under one leg, and then the other.

Panic wrapped its hands around her throat and blinded her eyes. She flailed her sculpted arms, but the muscle couldn’t help her find anything to grab. Fear warped her senses, keeping her from seeing hope but making every unstable pebble under her body feel acutely like the mountain pushing her over its edge.

The wind continued to push, and she could feel the edge under her stomach. Asia opened her mouth to scream, but the wind forced her voice back. In those brief moments, she began to resign herself to a long, long fall.

Four hands reached her at once. Jose was on his feet, his heels dug into the little bit of dirt covering the rock, while Chris was face down on the ground, with his fingers tightly wrapped around Asia’s wrist and his foot hooked around the biggest rock near enough to provide some anchor. The steepening angle of the wind started to work in their favor. The blast of air striking them from above added to the little traction they had been able to find. With cries of desperation, the men pulled Asia to level ground, and they lay there on their backs, panting and staring at the helicopter hovering above.

A rope ladder unfurled from the metal bird, fluttering out like confetti in a tickertape parade. Chris “Latakia” Billows realized he still had his pipe between his teeth, and it felt snagged a little as he removed it. He held it between himself and the sky, dumping what little tobacco was left, only to see the sky through the black of the stem.

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath, but he shrugged off his disappointment when he thought about how much worse it could have been and wondered how long the button of a pipe stem would take to go through his digestive system.

A pair of boots slapped the ground next to him. The man standing over them, dressed in black that was made only darker by the sun behind him, may not have seemed bulky had the three not still been lying down. Another man — like the first, he could only be described as a soldier — was speeding down the ladder. The pair was an almost identical match, except one hadn’t been issued a full head of hair. The first man bent down to help Chris to his feet.

“Mr. Cornell sent us,” the bald hulk said in a voice that was gruff from too much time in the desert or too little time being used. “He said you’d need some help.”

His friends were standing again, and Chris fought off the distraction of wanting to dust off Asia’s jeans for her.

“What makes him think that?” he asked the brute. “Wait, how does he even know where we are?”

The soldiers said nothing. There were no smiles or smirks, no gestures, no answer of any kind. They just turned around and raised their heads to catch the gear being dropped to them. The five of them let the silence build until it was as undeniable as the hot Arizona sun bearing down on them.

“At the risk of jeopardizing this scintillating conversation,” Chris blurted out, “we’ve already hit a dead end, and we’re heading home.”

The bulk brothers only stood still, giving no indication they intended to ever speak again.

“We’ve searched this whole rock,” Chris said, “and we’ve found as much as you.”

Still, there was no reaction from the soldiers, only the cold, dead stares.

“Well, there is always…” Chris reached into his deepest pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Can you get your helicopter back?”

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Randall Lewis was a nerd’s nerd. His glasses were always broken and usually smudged. If he was awake, he wore an apron over a button-down flannel shirt. He was always surrounded by paper. He had his notes, his journals, his reports and his comic books piled around the room in some form of organization understood only by him. To fit five people in this room, they needed to do a little redecorating, moving stacks of paper, each with its own paperweight, and piling them where they could find any space level enough to hold them.

Even with the extra space, the five of them still couldn’t stand without pushing some stacks precariously close to falling. The best bet was to sit, just a little, on top of the stacks, because they’d be less likely to fall sideways while being pushed downward. Randall entered the room and immediately lost his cool, not that he really had any to start with.

“What have you done?!” he yelled with his white hair standing on end, looking like a cross between Albert Einstein and Jerry Lewis.

Chris and Jose hid their silent laughter behind their hands and Asia glared at them for their insensitivity, while the two brutes still showed no evidence of a personality. Randall scrambled around them, trying to restore the papers and paperweights to their previous positions, even to the point of shuffling his guests out of the way. Asia, still scowling at the boys and their reaction, reached out a hand to calm Randall.

“We can get more room if you combine the stacks,” she said, lifting a paperweight to add papers beneath it.

“Stop!” the mad geologist yelled. “Those papers don’t go with that artifact!”

The realization palpably struck them, and each of them, including the soldiers, turned to the paperweight closest and seized it.

“What is this writing?” asked Jose, turning his rock over in his hands and understanding it no better with each turn.

Randall shrieked and scrambled to grab each artifact and return it to the pile.

“Don’t touch them!” he yelled. “You’re going to damage them!”

Christopher gave his up with a laugh. As the scientist replaced his artifacts, Chris reached into his bag.

“Since you like rocks so much, I was hoping you’d take a look at this one,” he said.

Randall, whose bulging eyes were only made larger by his bottle cap glasses, slowly reached his trembling hands toward the mapstone. Greedily, he snatched it and shuffled over to a desk, which they only now noticed behind a wall of papers and artifacts. With a dramatic flourish, Randall swiveled a mounted magnifying glass between his searching eye and the stone. The inspection did not last long.

“Oh, this one?” Randall asked. “I’ve seen this one before.”

Chris pulled the letters from his pocket.

“We know; we’ve read what you sent to my grandfather,” Chris said.

Randall gave him a dismissive wave.

“If you’ve read my letters, then you already have your answer.”

The scientist flipped the rock toward Chris, whose fingers barely snatched it before it fell to the floor.

“But it doesn’t work,” Latakia Billows said. “It leads to the highpoint, but there’s nothing there.”

Randall’s face showed a combination of mockery and disbelief.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve found the beginning of the map. It doesn’t lead to the high point. It leads from it. You are meant to see the path before you take it.”

Chris returned the rock to his bag and turned to go, with all four others following suit. They threw their thanks over their shoulders as they rushed back to work, eager to find out where that new information would take them.

“Wait,” Randall called after them. “You need to be careful.”

The door closed. The scientist was alone again.

“You don’t know what happens in those hills,” he said to the empty room.

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