Tommy felt the muzzle press into the back of his skull. A hundred different ideas zipped through his brain. He grabbed one and ran with it. "You kill us, you'll never get that golden boomerang for your boss."
Jack cocked his head to the side with a quizzical look on his face. "Why would you think that? We have the cube. And we know exactly where to look."
"Yeah. But do you know how to decipher the petroglyphs?"
Jack paused for a second, which told Tommy everything he needed to know. The guy was in the dark.
"You're about to kill the only people in the world who can help you decode those ancient circles," Tommy lied. There were plenty of people who could do that, but he was betting this former rugger had no idea. He was out of his element. "You kill us, and you'll never find that boomerang. Then what will happen? I imagine someone like Holmes has enough money to replace you pretty easily. In fact, some of these guys working for you would probably be happy to take your place."
Jack's eyes narrowed. "So, you're going to throw empty threats at me in hopes of living a few more minutes?"
"I was thinking hours would be good," Tommy said. "Call it a survival instinct."
"He's serious," Sean finally spoke up. "Without us, that boomerang is as good as lost to antiquity. You said you have the cube. But what you don't have is what I found while we were in Kings Canyon."
Jack took a cautious step forward. "Ah, so the great Sean Wyatt speaks. I gotta say, mate, you don't look all that tough to me." He stopped a few inches from Sean's nose.
"Me? Oh, I'm not that tough. Not tough enough to play rugby with a guy like you."
Jack towered over Sean by three or four inches. Sean's instincts were to grab him and put Jack between himself and the gun in his back. In the two seconds that move would take, the gunman could easily put a round through Sean's spine. Part of him didn't care. Another part — the well-trained agent deep inside — knew he'd have to wait for the opportune moment.
"Speaking of tough," Sean said, "you always kill women by shooting them in the back?"
A puzzled look filled Jack's eyes. "What are you talking about?"
Sean searched the man for a lie, but there was none to be found on his face or in his voice. "You killed her," he said through clenched teeth.
Then it hit Jack as to what Sean was referring. "Ah. The girl. Yes, she is dead. But I'm not the one who killed her, mate. One of my men did," he said with a cheerful smile on his face that begged to be punched. If Sean hadn't had a gun in his back, he would have knocked that grin into the gorge.
A short snicker escaped Jack's lips. "If it makes you feel better, I heard she died quick."
He met the fury in Sean's eyes with a hollow stare and then stepped back. Jack looked down the line at each of the three men. "Very well. Let's see what you blokes know. I'll let you live for a few more minutes, at least." He turned to two of his gunmen. "Bring the trucks around, and load them up. We're going over to the rocks to have a look."
He twisted around and put his hands on his hips, staring at the three friends. "You try anything funny…"
"Yeah, we know. You'll kill us," Tommy cut him off.
"Right."
An SUV and a four-door pickup truck came around the bend three minutes after Jack's henchmen trotted down the road. The two Americans were forced into the truck bed first, followed by Reece. Two gunmen sat in the back with them, keeping their weapons trained on the prisoners while the driver steered the vehicle down the bumpy dirt road.
The drive from the campground to the petroglyphs only took fifteen minutes or so. It was still so early in the morning, they were the first vehicles to arrive at the heavily frequented site.
Jack hopped out of the SUV and motioned to his men to take the prisoners off the truck bed and herd them toward the trail.
His men did as told, forcing Sean and the others off the truck. They marched reluctantly to the trail head and beyond until the parking area was out of sight.
Reece led the way since he knew where they were headed. "Never thought I'd be coming to this gorge with a gun pointed at me," he said.
"You hang around us long enough," Tommy said, "you'll get used to it."
"No offense, Tom, but I'd rather not get used to having a gun aimed at me."
"It's an acquired taste," Sean said.
"Quiet, you three," Jack snapped from a few guys back on the trail. "Unless you want to cut that arrangement short now. I got no problem dumping your bodies down the gorge."
"Probably going to do that anyway," Sean muttered.
"Don't give him any ideas," Tommy said.
The men kept marching down the trail, by dried brush and diminutive trees until they reached a point where the trail opened. To their right, a wall of dark red rocks jutted up into the sky.
The surface of the stone wall was covered in dozens of circles, lines, white hands, and a myriad of other designs. Tommy drifted unconsciously over to the symbols and ran his fingers over the rock, making sure he didn't touch the art itself.
"So tell us what it all means," Jack said, standing a good three yards away from the American.
"It doesn't work like that," Tommy said. "Each of these symbols could have a different meaning. We have to interpret that first and then figure out how it all ties together with the riddle from the cube."
Jack considered his response and then pursed his lips. He shook his head. "No, I'll tell you how it's going to work. You get thirty minutes. By then, tourists will start showing up. Can't have that, now can we? So if you don't have this little puzzle figured out in a half hour, well… I'll just have my men go ahead and kill the lot of you."
"Half an hour? These things can take months."
"You have thirty minutes. And I already started the clock. You'd best get to it."
Tommy glanced at his friends. Reece and Sean looked back at him with sympathetic eyes.
"We'll do our best," Sean said for Tommy.
He moved close and stared up at the wall.
"Any ideas?" Tommy whispered.
"Yeah, but they all involve the guns these guys took from us at the campsite."
"Touché."
Reece stepped close. "What are you two talking about?"
"Fanciful dreams where we have guns, and those guys are all bleeding to death on the ground," Sean answered.
"Well, those kinds of things don't really get us out of this situation, now do they? I was thinking more in terms of understanding what we're looking at?"
"It's nonsense," Tommy said in a hushed tone so their keepers couldn't hear. "All of this, it's gibberish. There's no pattern to any of it. These circles point to these?" He motioned with his hand as he spoke. "And then you have these pointing off to another set." His hand waved again to other corresponding circles. "And I still have no idea what all these white hands mean."
"Stop worrying about those hands, and focus," Sean said. "We have to live long enough to make a move. I don't care if you have to make up the details."
The men spent twenty minutes studying the wall, desperately trying to understand the code embedded in rock. When twenty-five minutes had passed, Jack gave them a reminder. "You blokes have five minutes left. Then we'll just dump you in the gorge."
Sean took a step back and examined the dark red surface. There were circles on top of circles, like the entire journey up to this point would only end in mass confusion — as was represented by the art.
The only thing that seemed different in the drawings was the figure of a human that lingered high above the rest. At first, Sean didn't think much of it. He and the other two largely ignored the aberration because it lacked detail and wasn't really similar to anything they'd seen before.