The Secret of the Stones (35 page)

“What
are you looking for, Mr. Schultz?”
 
Ulrich’s annoyed voice interrupted his thoughts.
 

He’d
been crouching over slightly and at the question, had stood back up
straight.
 
“I don’t know for
sure.”
 

Ulrich
motioned for the guard to start looking down at the other end.
 

Tommy
finished inspecting the first pole and moved to the next, Ulrich staying close
with him.
 
They spent several
minutes meticulously checking the surfaces of the stone without coming across
anything out of the ordinary.
 
He
walked around granite the centerpiece, still hoping there was something there
to be found.
 
This had to be the
place.
 
Everything they had found
thus far had pointed to it.
 

As
he came back around to the front of the chiseled stone, he noticed it.
 
Small, almost invisible at first
glance, Tommy had not seen it before, even though he’d thought he was looking
carefully.
 
An owl stared at him,
its eyes lifeless and eerie.
 
The animal’s
face contained amazing detail.
 
Its
mouth, in particular, caught his attention because unlike the other animal
carvings, the beak was open.
 

He
moved his finger up to the opening.
 
“This is it.”

“Are
you certain?”
 

“Yeah,”
Tommy replied.
 
“I’m sure.
 
It makes so much sense now.
 
In ancient Indian lore, owls were
guardians to the other world.
 
They
protected the spirits of ancestors who were already on the other side.
 
It was also believed, that sometimes,
the bird itself was a long gone relative who had returned as a guide for a
person or people.
 
Seems logical
that whoever built these would have put an owl here to protect their greatest
secret.”

Ulrich
stood up straight again.
 
“So, what
do we do now?”
 

Tommy
sighed, thinking for a moment.
 
“There must be some kind of key we have to use here.
 
If my guess is right, whatever the key
is probably fits into this Owl’s mouth.”

“Why
do we not simply pick lock?”
 
The
guard suggested in broken English.

“We
can’t do that.”

“Why
not?”

“Do
you honestly think that the ancient people who put this here would have hidden
everything so well and simply closed it up with a pad lock?
 
My guess is, it is probably rigged with
some kind of anti-manipulation device.
 
If we try to mess with it without the correct key, we may lock ourselves
out of the chamber forever or something worse.”

“So
how do we find this…key you speak of?”
 
Ulrich asked, as Tommy could make it appear out of thin air.

“You
mean this key?”
 
The male voice
interrupted the conversation from behind.
 

All
three men turned around quickly, surprised by the sudden intrusion.
 
Sean, Joe, and Allyson stood about
fifteen feet away, guns trained on the two villains.
 

In
his left hand, Sean held something small and white, precariously gripped in his
fingers, was a quartz arrowhead.

Chapter
54

Eastern
Georgia

The
astonished looks on the faces of Ulrich and the guard were priceless.
 
Tommy’s head went back and forth, not
sure if he was hallucinating.
 
“Boy, am I glad to see you guys.”
 

“It’s
good to see you too, Schultzie.”

Joe
echoed the sentiment.
 
“We weren’t
sure if we were gonna see you again.”

“Likewise,”
Tommy replied, reflecting on the past forty-eight hours.

The
guard and the blonde man stood frozen, a deer-in-the-headlights look on each of
their faces.
 

Sean
cautiously stepped towards the group.
 
“Wasn’t that difficult to find you, actually.”
 

He
glared at Ulrich.
 
“Shooting the
old man was a mistake, but leaving him alive was a bigger one.
 
He gave us the final clue.”
 
Sean laughed.
 
“Although, I have to admit, convincing the park that the IAA
center needed to borrow this arrowhead for analysis was a bit more difficult
than it should have been.”

Tommy
stepped away from his kidnappers.
 
“Thanks, gentlemen.
 
It’s
been real.”
 
He smiled, “So, Sean,
how did you know that the arrowhead was the key?”

Wyatt
handed the little rock to his friend.
 
“I remembered seeing a presentation about this place a few years
ago.
 
The speaker had mentioned the
oddity of the quartz arrowhead that had been buried with the body in the bird
effigy.
 
That’s when it clicked
with me, “The key with sacred bones does lay.”
 

Realization
washed over Tommy’s face.
 
“Of
course.
 
I should have thought of
that.”
 
He raised the arrowhead to
examine it more closely, admiring the precise detail.
 
Every edge of it appeared as though it had been shaped by a
laser.
 

The
pinkish-white stone was small, only about three inches long and half as
wide.
 
“It must go into the mouth
horizontally.”
 
He walked back to
the pole while his captors eyed him warily.

Then,
he motioned toward Allyson.
 
“Who’s
the girl?”

“Allyson
Webster,” she answered.
 

“She’s
with Axis,” Sean added.

“An
agent?
 
Really?
 
Did you make a phone call or
something?”

“Actually,
no.
 
Pretty sure she was already on
your trail.”

Allyson
just smiled back, obviously not interested in giving away any more details.

Wyatt
turned his attention to Ulrich and the bewildered guard, “Now if you two boys
don’t mind, please move out of the way.”
 
He waved his gun in a motion indicating they should step to the left.
 
“First, though, you are going to need
to go ahead and drop those weapons that you’re carrying in your jackets.
 
And do it real slow.
 
I have more than enough excuses to
waste you two right now.”

They
complied, carefully reaching into their jackets, then dropping the guns to the
ground.
 

“Good.
 
Now step away.”

The
two shuffled sideways, moving away from the pistols.
 
Ulrich never took his cold gray eyes off of Wyatt.
 
Even unarmed, the man’s gaze was
menacing.

With
his free hand, Sean reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone.
 
Keeping the gun leveled at the two men,
he held up the device up to his face.

“Detective,
we got ‘em.”

“What
do you mean you got ‘em?”

“We
got Tommy and the guys that kidnapped him.
 
Me and Joe are holding them at gunpoint as we speak.”

“What’s
your location?”
 
Morris’ voice
sounded urgent.

“A
couple of miles from Rock Eagle, standing in front of eight big totem poles.”

“Okay,
I’ll get the local authorities over there as quickly as I can.
 
Will and I are on our way, we’re about
fifteen minutes from there.”

“You
drove down here?”
 
Sean was a
little surprised at the cop’s persistence.

“Like
I said, I got a lot of questions for you.
 
You won’t be able to answer them if you’re dead.
 
And I thought you could use some
backup.”

“Don’t
worry about us, Trent.
 
The
situation is under control.
 
See
you in a few.”

Tommy
had been busy taking a closer examination of the quartz and the mouth of the
owl.
 
“I hope we don’t need to get
it back out.”

With
that, he cautiously slipped the arrowhead into the mouth of the chiseled
bird.
 
It was a perfect fit.
 
With his index finger, Tommy pushed the
quartz all the way into the open hole.
 
As the projectile went deeper, there was a click then a few more until
it was completely inside.

Suddenly,
the large totem pole and the earth underneath their feet began trembling.
 
For a brief second, Sean took his eyes
off the two men, bracing himself by bending his knees slightly.
 
His gun, though, stayed pointed at
them.
 
The entire group took a few
steps back, not sure what was happening.
 

The
seven smaller poles began to move slowly.
 
To the left, all the rods were sinking into the ground.
 
On the right, they were rising but the
post in the center never moved.
 
The bizarre event lasted for only a minute, but when the pillars had
stopped moving, their heights had changed to a more staggered look, like a
staircase.

All
five witnesses stood in silent awe for a minute, gazing at the oddity.
 

“So,
what now, Schultzie?”
 
Sean broke
the silence.

Tommy
looked perplexed.
 
“That should
have been it.
 
Something‘s wrong.”

“Maybe
you didn’t do it right,” Joe chimed in.

“No.
 
Pretty sure that was it and that had to
be the key.”
 
He looked around as
if expecting some kind of sign from heaven to point the way to their goal.
 
None came.
 
“I don’t understand.”
 

The
two captives stood silently while the others attempted to solve the problem;
Ulrich’s eyes locked on Joe like a rattlesnake eyeing its prey.

Sean
looked curiously at the scene.
 
“Mac, keep an eye on those two.”

“What
is it?” Tommy asked.

Tossing
the gun to Tommy, Sean ignored his friend’s question for a moment and walked
over to the totem that had lowered to where the top was only about four feet
high.
 
“They’re steps,” he finally
answered.
 
“The ancient natives had
a ritual for new warriors.
 
It was
the final test they had to pass.
 
They had to stand on top of a pole like one of these for an entire
night.
 
If they could accomplish
this without falling off, they would be initiated.”

“Realization
came to Tommy.
 
Of course.
 
How did I forget that?”

“Beats
me,” Sean said, hopping up onto the short log.
 
“You’re the expert on Indians.”
 
He grinned cynically down at his friend.
 

“Hope
you know what you’re doing.”
 

“It’s
only about five or six feet in between them.
 
The problem isn’t the jumping, though.
 
It’s the landing.
 
The gradual escalation isn’t going to
help either.”

He
steadied himself on the two foot wide platform and leapt to the next one,
making it look easy enough.
 
Below,
Tommy rejoined Joe and their new prisoners, still watching as Sean jumped to
the third pole.
  

He
made it to the center pole with relative ease.
 
Again he repeated the maneuver up to the fifth.
 
The platform was up about fifteen feet
at this point and the jumping was becoming riskier each time.
 
Thinking ahead, the final leap would be
to a height around twenty-five feet, a point at which the danger would be
broken bones or worse.
 
He tried to
shake the fear from his mind, but it was still in front of him as he made the
next two leaps.
 
The lack of
concentration nearly cost him on the seventh as he shorted the distance by
about a foot.
 
His fingers caught
the front lip of the stone, gripping tight and his feet dangled below.
 
Tommy made a quick movement to get
below him in case he fell.
 

Struggling
to keep his hold on the top, Sean hung over the ground, kicking his legs in an
effort to worm his way up.
 
With
his right foot, he found the nose of a wolf’s face sticking out of the front of
the tall facade and used it to brace himself while he hugged his way onto the platform.

His
allies below exhaled a breath of relief as Sean hoisted himself up and readied
for the last jump.
 
“I’m okay,” he
assured them.
 
“Just lost my
concentration for a second there.”

He
let his eyes search the surroundings for a brief second, hoping that the
location would be revealed from his current vantage point.
 
It wasn’t.
 
So, with trepidation, he moved to the very edge of the
pole.
 
He was surprised at how much
his legs were burning at this point.
 
Sean took pride in the fact that he exercised regularly and had very
high endurance for physical activities.
 
This routine must have been working out body parts that he was
unaccustomed to using.
 

With
every last ounce of leg power he could muster, Sean launched himself across the
void.
 
This time, adrenaline must
have taken over because he almost over shot the thing, landing on the very back
edge and waving his arms like a gymnast on a balance beam to keep from toppling
over.

Steadying
his weight back on the center of the beam, he gazed out across the
landscape.
 
Rolling forests lay out
before his eyes.
 
He couldn’t help
being a little surprised at how such a small elevation could improve one’s view
of things.
 

His
eyes passed across the horizon, as Sean turned around a full 360 degrees.
 

“You
see anything?”
 
Tommy shouted from
below.

“Just
a bunch of woods, the road….”
 
Then, his gaze locked onto something.
 
“Wait a minute.
 
There is something.”
 
He
pointed over towards what, to the group on the bottom, appeared to only be a
thick growth of trees.
 

“What
is it?”

“I
don’t think you can see it from down there. But I see another totem, sticking
up from the trees on that small hill, over in that direction.”
 

Tommy
stood on his tiptoes in an attempt to locate what his friend had found.
 

Allyson,
too, took a few steps closer to the row of stone faces to see if she could
glimpse what Sean was pointing at.

For
one second, Joe took his eyes off of the blonde and flat top to take a glance
towards the forest.
 
A second was
all Ulrich needed to pull the hidden gun from his back and fire off three quick
shots.

Joe
stumbled and dropped his gun as one of the bullets found its mark, sending the
man reeling backwards, shock on his face as he collapsed to the ground.

In
another instant motion, Ulrich had spun forward and grabbed Allyson around the
neck, immediately putting the gun to her head.

Tommy
looked on helplessly.
 
He stood
frozen, completely stunned by what had just transpired.
 

“Drop
the weapon, Mr. Schultz.
 
I may
still have need of you, so don’t do anything stupid.”

Sean
was crouching down on his perch, now, looking at the scene below.
 
Joe was still down, wet crimson soaking
his shirt.