The Holy Grail (Sam Reilly Book 13)

by Christopher Cartwright

  That thought reminded him of his unwanted companion.

  “Ben?”

  No response.

  The place was eerily silent.

  A hidden river, an ancient passage of icy water through the subterranean depths of an alpine mountain. No light and almost no movement.

  Was this to be his final resting tomb?

  “Ben Gellie!” Sam shouted.

  The words echoed, revealing the chasm was much larger than he’d first expected.

  Still no response.

  He gently swam to the edge of the cavern. There was no bank. Only a vertical stone wall. Sam turned, and mentally tried to begin drawing a map of his surroundings. The only light he could muster was the backlight of his dive watch, which did little in the way of allowing him to visualize his new surroundings.

  The dive watch showed that he was still at an elevation of 3,723 feet. He recollected from his younger days hiking the Appalachian Trail that most areas of the Shenandoah Valley were roughly 3,000 feet above sea level. That meant that despite falling some distance from the mountain’s original peak of 4,397 feet, they were still high up in the mountain range.

  He continued swimming across the water until he reached the edge of the river. This section also led to a vertical wall of stone, impossible for him to climb. Sam marked the location in the mental diagram that he’d formed, and turned ninety degrees. It took him a couple minutes to the next wall. This time, it was less of a vertical wall and more of a narrowing tunnel, where the roof seemed to progressively shrink to the height of the river, before disappearing completely.

  He swallowed as he imagined this could possibly lead to the only way out.

  There was a chance that he might be able to hold his breath and dive through it, but there was no certainty that it didn’t lead to a submerged body of water that lasted hundreds of feet. In the dark, it would be impossible to make such a dive.

  Sam marked the location and turned to commence his swim to the opposite end of the subterranean cavern.

  “Ben!” Sam shouted. “You alive?”

  Again, no response.

  The only sound in the cave was the gentle lapping of water as he swam across the stilled river.

  This was the longest swim he’d had to do so far.

  The longer it lasted the more his gut twisted with fear and hope – that deadly combination. If it went far enough, he might be able to swim his way out of there to freedom. If not, he was just swimming farther away from all hope.

  Already, his body no longer felt cold.

  That wasn’t a good sign. It meant he was entering the early stages of hypothermia. If he wasn’t going in the right direction, there was a good chance he wouldn’t have enough energy to turn around and make it back again.

  Up ahead he heard the sound of water splashing.

  “Sam!” came Ben’s voice in the dark. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here! Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” came Ben’s cheerful reply. “But you’ve got to get over here quick; you’re never going to believe what I’ve found!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sam kicked his legs, swimming toward Ben’s voice.

  He opened his eyes and spotted a faint light coming from a narrow choke point up ahead. Two broken rock pieces leaned on each other to form a natural arch no more than a foot above the waterline, through which a pale glow was radiating, at the edge of which was the distinct outline of Ben’s face.

  For a split-second Sam thought he could just make out Ben’s grin.

  “What did you find?” he asked. “An opening?”

  “No,” Ben replied. “But I think we’ve found a guide to show us the way.”

  Sam was too tired to ask any more questions. “Show me!”

  Ben nodded. “Through here.”

  Ben ducked under the narrow rock arch, dipping his head underwater and disappearing below. Sam took a couple deep breaths and followed after.

  The slender opening was no more than a foot wide and Sam had to swim through with his hands held far ahead until they gripped the edge of the rock wall, allowing him to pull the rest of his body through.

  On the other side of the choke point he found his arms able to reach freely into an open body of water. He kicked his legs and swam toward the surface.

  Surfacing in the new cavern, Sam wiped his face to clear the moisture from his eyes. The new grotto was somehow larger than the previous one, only narrower and much longer. A blue haze shined down and reflected on the crystal-clear water. Sam’s gaze traced its way along the vertical granite walls toward the cathedral vault high above – settling on more than a thousand stars.

  Only they weren’t stars.

  They were moving with purpose and at a speed much too fast.

  Their scientific name was Lampyridae, a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They were winged beetles, commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous use of bioluminescence during twilight to attract mates or prey. The little beetles produced a cold light, with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies, by using chemicals to produce light from the lower abdomen often yellow, green, or pale red, with wavelengths from 510 to 670 nanometers. Sam recalled from his early science classes that the Eastern US was home to the species Phausis reticulata, which emits a steady blue light.

  Massed in the thousands, this group of beetles formed the image of an artificial river of blue in the cathedral vault high above, steadily flowing outward – to their freedom.

  Sam said, “Follow them!”

  “Sounds good,” Ben replied, starting to stroke arm over arm across the surface of the water, following their flying guides on their way out of the grotto. “I’m freezing!”

  The width of the vaulted cavern alternated as they progressed through the subterranean river, sometimes getting bigger and other times getting smaller.

  In the darkness of the first cavern it was impossible to tell whether or not the water was flowing, but with the radiant blue light of the fireflies, Sam noticed for the first time there was a small drift in the same direction as the glowing creatures.

  He smiled at his good fortune.

  They were all going the same way.

  Sam continued swimming for several minutes before having to pause for a beat to regather his strength. The icy cold water was stripping him of his stamina. Stretching out on his back to increase buoyancy and conserve his energy, he realized the flow of the river started to noticeably pick up its speed.

  The cavern was coming to another choke point up ahead and all the water was being squeezed through a narrow gap. He ran his eyes across the swarm of fireflies. They were branching out at the narrow section and bulging like a torrent of flood water churning and overflowing an obstacle in its path. Their wings whipped together to create a high pitched whir that resonated throughout the cavern like a diesel engine under strain. It was a deafening sound that seemed almost impossible to have originated from any number of beetles.

  Sam dropped his gaze until it reached the empty void between the surface of the water and the swelling banks of the artificial, glowing blue river of bioluminescence. There was a new color mixed in together, too. It was a deep orange, the sort of color one would see reflected from a full moon through dense smoke. Wind howled through this section.

  His pulse quickened.

  With it, so did the speed of the river.

  They were about to reach the opening to the outside world. The question was, where did the water come out?

  Twenty feet ahead of him, Ben tried to turn around and swim backward. Something had frightened him. But there was nothing Ben could do about it. The man was now fully trapped in the powerful current. The walls of the crevasse were slippery and the tug of the flowing water too powerful. Despite Ben’s best effort, he continued to progress toward the pinch point at the opening.

  And a moment later, he was sucked through and disappeared.

  Sam felt the uneasy
rise of fear in his throat.

  He toyed with the idea of trying his luck at out-swimming the current, but dismissed the idea immediately. He was a strong swimmer, but it was unlikely he’d be able to beat it, and besides, where else would he go? Sam knew he had to get out of the water soon or hypothermia would kill him as surely as any disaster that could be waiting for him on the other side.

  Sam relaxed and drifted, letting the current take him to greet whatever had startled Ben Gellie so much. There was a sort of peace that comes with a decision that is a certainty. There were no other options left for him, which meant that he needed to work with the decision to travel through the opening, and deal with whatever might be waiting for him.

  The current dropped him down a shallow cataract before whipping him toward the opening.

  Sam held his breath and opened his eyes.

  An instant later, he felt his heart lurch with impending doom. He gritted his teeth and readied himself for death, because in that moment, he realized that he was wrong about the fireflies making the roaring sound. He had been wrong all along. Even a thousand flying beetles wouldn’t make that sort of sound. As soon as he spotted it, he knew where the vibrating sound originated – a giant waterfall!

  Sam felt the water beneath him disappear.

  He was free falling, more than a hundred feet off the ground.

  Game over…

  There was nothing he could do to save himself!

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Time moved slowly.

  They say it does when you see your own death race toward you. Like some type of primal part of the brain recognizes a threat that can’t be beaten and therefore decides to plaster the dying images, frame-by-frame, across the visual cortex.

  Adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol rushed through his body at infinitesimal speeds and Sam Reilly’s internal video recorder started to feed him each image of his impending death, in that frame-by-frame manner.

  He was no longer frightened. No reason to be. There was nothing more he could do about it. He’d played every last card he’d been dealt and lost.

  But there was something someone else could do about it.

  The recorder inside his brain stopped running.

  A firm hand gripped his wrist hard. His descent stopped with a jarring force in his right shoulder that threatened to rip his arm from its socket. The motion swung him toward the side of the mountain, beneath the waterfall.

  His wet shoes were the first to hit the rock wall with a thud.

  Sam’s lips curled with incredulity as his eyes leveled at Ben Gellie, who was hanging precariously by one arm from the branch of an oak tree that appeared to be holding onto the edge of the mountain with even less likelihood.

  Ben pulled his arm backward and Sam reached the rock face of the mountain.

  “Thank you,” Sam said, “for saving my life.”

  “You’re welcome. Without you I would have never jumped from the helicopter and I’d still be sitting inside its charred remains.”

  Sam shrugged. “Forget about it. The question now is, where do we go from here?”

  Ben pointed to a dilapidated iron chain, bolted into the side of the mountain a few feet above them, leading to the entrance of the subterranean river. “Over there! It looks like someone’s previously tried to explore that waterway.”

  Sam ran his gaze over the rocky climb to the chain. It was difficult, but not impossible. His wet shoes would make things more dangerous, but it could be done. Everything seemed possible now that he’d survived what should have been his certain death.

  “Okay,” he nodded. His vision turned to the valley below. “The question is, where is here?”

  “The Shenandoah Valley,” Ben replied without hesitation.

  Sam studied the valley in the gray light of predawn.

  Surrounded by ancient mountains, the Shenandoah River cut a gentle and incredibly flat valley into the landscape. From memory, he recalled that part of the valley was a National Park, and the pastoral scenes are framed by a lush deciduous forest growing on the hills.

  “All right, that’s something,” Sam said. “At least we know where we are. Let’s try and reach that chain. If we don’t get warm soon, hypothermia will properly set in and we’ll die.”

  “Agreed.”

  Ben scrambled up the short crack in the rock to reach the permanent chain above. Despite the cold, he moved with the agility of a seasoned rock climber.

  Sam gritted his teeth, focused on each individual hold, trying to forget he was still a couple hundred feet off the ground, and scrambled to the chain. His left hand reached it first, followed an instant later by his right – both hands locking with the strength of fear.

  Ben didn’t wait to discuss their next plan. Instead, he followed the chain as it led across the rockface, before finally ending at a narrow ledge approximately two feet wide. It wasn’t much, but Sam noticed it was enough for someone like Ben, who appeared to have no fear of heights, to walk freely.

  Sam on the other hand, who had a pathological fear of heights, knew it would cause trouble. Such an experience would ordinarily render him to a crawl, but he was driven to walk across the ledge – driven by the thrill of a second chance at life and a need to get warm.

  The ledge terminated at a steam track leading along the mountain in a gentle decline, before reaching the lush deciduous forest at the base of the hills.

  Sam and Ben continued in silence.

  At the tree line, Ben stopped and faced Sam. “We should light a fire and get warm.”

  “Agreed,” Sam replied. “I saw a log house down along the river. We should head there.”

  “It might be occupied.”

  Sam shrugged. “Even better. They might already have a fire going.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed. “They might tell someone about two strangers who wandered out of the woods…”

  “It’s a risk we’re going to have to take.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  Sam said, “Do you have a lighter?”

  “No.”

  “Then, I’m sure. We’ll freeze to death before long if we don’t start a fire and get warm and dry.”

  “All right. Let’s go check out the log house.”

  Twenty minutes later and after a brisk walk, Sam and Ben reached the bank of the Shenandoah River, upon which a large wooden building had been constructed. The place was a vacation camp, servicing adventurous youth.

  A wire fence ran around the entire place and the gate at the front was secured with a heavy steel chain and padlock.

  “It appears we’ve arrived too early in the season for the camp to be open,” Sam said, picking up a small river stone.

  “It would appear so,” Ben agreed. His eyes drifted toward the stone Sam was carrying and Ben’s lips curled into a wry grin. “What are you hoping to achieve with that?”

  “We need to break the lock. Unless you want to wait around until summer camp starts?”

  “You won’t have a hope in hell of doing so with that. A padlock like that will take any amount of hammering you’re prepared to give it with that stone.”

  Sam leveled his eyes on Ben. “You got a better idea?”

  Ben removed two small metal picks from his wallet. “We could just open the lock.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Ben ignored his skepticism, silently inserting the twin picks in the keyhole of the padlock and working them with the delicate and fastidious movements of an expert locksmith or a thief. It took him exactly twenty-two seconds to unlock it.

  “Ta dah! What do you think of that?”

  Sam looked him directly in the eye and said, “I’d like to know how a lawyer with the State Department became so proficient at breaking and entering.”

  Ben grinned. “Technically, it’s just entering. The lock will still work once we leave.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The campfire was burning within ten minutes.

  Sam cupped
his hands, warming them by the delectable radiant heat. Having borrowed some blankets from the camp supplies, he and Ben stripped from their wet clothes and placed them by the fire to dry.

  He stared out the window.

  Red and blue lights flickered across the moonlit water of the large river from the opposite bank of the river to the one that the summer camp was based. It was the second wave of fire trucks and emergency workers preparing to defend the small township that resided within the Shenandoah Valley.

  Sam asked, “Any idea the name of that river?”

  Ben nodded. “It’s called the Shenandoah and it runs a farther fifty-six miles south of here before reaching the Potomac at Harpers Ferry.”

  “Could you be any more specific?”

  Ben pointed palms skyward. “Hey, you asked, I give the answers.”

  “Really?” Sam met his eye. “How could you be that certain?”

  Ben removed his cell phone from a zipped pocket. “Because I checked a few minutes ago.”

  Sam blurted out, “You still have your cell phone!”

  Ben shrugged. “Yeah, why? Did you think I threw it out after we crashed? It’s coming in quite handy, you know.”

  Sam snatched the cell phone out of Ben’s hands and threw it into the fire.

  Ben grabbed the stoker and tried to retrieve his cell, but within seconds the fire had already done its irrevocable damage. “Hey! What the hell did you do that for?”

  “We’re supposed to be dead! Killed in a helicopter crash nearly five miles from here…”

  “Yeah, so?”

  Sam sighed heavily. Perhaps intelligence wasn’t a genetic trait passed on to Ben. “So, don’t you think it might seem strange that a dead guy’s phone kept walking after being killed?”

  Ben avoided Sam’s penetrating gaze, as his flashed with fear and shame. “What difference does it make to you?”

  “I don’t want to get caught any more than you do.”

  Ben asked, “You’re staying with me?”