Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, January 1866

"Commodore!" Sub Lieutenant Watson yelled. He had a young, brown-skinned native girl by the arm. "Lookie what I got." The girl was bare-breasted, wearing only a thin, woven cloth around her middle. "I ain't had me one of these in neary a year."

"As long as you share her with the rest," Commodore Ian Macintosh decided. "They burn for a woman just as much as you."

"This is not the way to endear ourselves with the natives," General Creed protested.

"Quit your yappin," the commodore snapped. "Go ahead, Sub Lieutenant. We in the Confederate Navy don't answer to General Creed. Have your girlie."

General Creed glared at him. "Some navy genius you are; one United States warship and here we are in this crap hole."

"Ships sink. That's part of naval life. If your men hadn't failed to get President Davis to our rendezvous, we would be in Mexico City instead of this bug-infested crap hole," the commodore snapped back. "Now, he sits in a Union prison and we hide from the Union navy--and the Federales. If you want to blame someone, look in a mirror."

"Gentlemen, we need to get along," Commander Philo McGee intervened. There are just a handful of us in a very foreign land."

Sub Lieutenant Watson had his trousers off and the cloth was off the girl. Just after throwing her to the ground, his head--in that instant before he lost consciousness--realized it was no longer attached to the rest of his body.

There were lots more shirtless brown people. One of them held a big knife in his right hand and Sub Lieutenant Watson's head in his left. He held the head up into the air and admired it.

The confederates stood motionless, each with a similar knife at each of their throats.

The men were tied, then marched off into the jungle.

Confederate General Renaldo Creed, a West Point graduate, found the rhythm of the drums beating to be oddly compelling. Soon, they were taken into a clearing. A massive stone building stood before them. It looked to the general like one of the pyramids in Egypt, or at least a terraced version of one of them.

The drums stopped. Ten men wearing orange and black robes marched single file to a point behind an altar-like stone table that was erected in front of the pyramid. One of them, though dressed identically, seemed in charge. More robed men brought an ornate chair and placed it behind the altar. Then, a lone man brought an owl, an odd-looking owl, to the altar.

"Must be their god," the commodore said.

"You are right," the man in orange and black robes said.

"You speak English?" the commodore asked.

"No. You are speaking Mayan," he corrected.

"How can this be?" the commodore asked.

"Which one of you is in charge?" the man in the orange robes asked.

The commodore pushed past General Creed. "That would be me."

Two of the men without shirts grabbed him by each arm. One of the wickedly sharp knives they'd just seen relieve the head of Sub Lieutenant Watson did the same for the commodore. As the head rolled along on the ground, the body was placed on the altar.

The owl moved the lower part of its body into the neck cavity of the commodore's body. In a few moments, it sat up. The owl-headed man briefly looked at his new body, then moved over to the ornate chair and seated himself. He looked at the confederates. "Why have you come?"

"We were in a naval battle, sir," General Creed explained.

"Address Ah Puch as Great Lord," the man in the robes instructed.

"We were in naval battle, sir ... Great Lord," General Creed said.

"A naval battle?" Ah Puch asked. "What is that?"

"A battle between two ships, at sea."

"At sea? With cannons and such?"

"Yes."

The man in the robes gave General Creed a look.

"Great Lord," the general added.

"Where are you from?" Ah Puch asked.

"The Confederate States of America," General Creed said.

"Fascinating," the Mayan god of Death said. "Tell me more."