He didn’t get to finish his sentiment.
Instead, Guinevere struck him in the throat in a sharp, jabbing motion with her fingers rigid. The force was strong enough to crush his windpipe.
The man gasped for air.
Guinevere launched herself at his Uzi.
The man squeezed the trigger, in a desperate attempt to gain control, despite being unable to breathe and having no more than a few minutes to live without immediate medical interventions. The Uzi fired wildly, raking the side of the helicopter with peppered bullet holes.
Guinevere gripped his forearm with both hands and slammed the arm down on her knee, shattering his elbow, and introducing him to two new, and very unnatural, ranges of motion in his arm.
The second captor responded quickly, turning his 9mm Jericho 941 pistol from Genevieve’s head to Guinevere’s.
But then Tom, seeing a solution, threw his entire 240-pound weight into the man.
The 9mm Jericho 941 pistol fell and Genevieve, Tom, and their captor all dived to get it. Against all odds, their captor was the first to reach the trigger. Genevieve hit him in the face, and then stuffed her fingers into his eye sockets.
The man screamed in agony, and began firing wildly.
A rogue shot hit the pilot in the head.
Guinevere grabbed the now flaccid arm of her captor in her hand, and turned the Uzi on her captor — putting several bullets in his head before he realized she was twisting his arm backward.
With the pilot dead and no one at the controls, the helicopter started to spin wildly. The blinded captor was thrown out of the AH-1 Cobra.
Genevieve and Tom pulled the pilot out of the seat, and together regained control of the helicopter.
Guinevere unceremoniously dropped the dead pilot and the captor who was in charge out the helicopter’s open side door.
Tom looked back over his shoulder and said, “Now where do you want to go?”
Sam grinned. “To find Merlin’s Cave so we can forge this sword back together and kill Excalibur.”
“Great. Any idea where that is?”
“Not really. But I’ve been told to look within the Dragon Breath Cave, in Majorca.”
Chapter Seventy-Four
Majorca was one of Spain's Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean.
Having landed at the Palma de Mallorca Airport with a budget airline commercial carrier, and driven east along the Ma-15 in a rental to Manacor, Sam felt his two most recent locations couldn’t be in any more of a direct contrast to one another. Where Jerusalem was a melting pot of religion and culture, forced together out of necessity, and guarded with a not so small army, Majorca was a resort location, where vacationers could ease out of their stress filled lives and into the careful, Spanish, resort world, known for its beaches, sheltered coves, limestone mountains, and some historic Roman and Moorish remains.
They arrived at the caves shortly after six p.m. when the security guards were securing the gates. In keeping with their counterparts in Jerusalem, the guards who locked the entrance to the Dragon Caves in Manacor, happily took the bribes they were offered, so that Sam, Tom, Genevieve, Guinevere, and Caliburn could take a private tour of the cave system in a little wooden rowboat.
The Dragon Caves were four majestic caves, interconnected. Discovered in medieval times, they are located in Manacor, near the locality of Porto Cristo. The caves extend to a depth of eighty-two feet and reach approximately two and a half miles in length. The four caves are called Black Cave, White Cave, Cave of Luis Salvador, and Cave of the French, and are all connected to each other.
The caves were formed by water being forced through the entrance from the Mediterranean Sea, and some researchers think the formation may date back to the Miocene Epoch. There is an underground lake situated in the caves called Martel Lake, which is about 377 feet in length and 100 wide, with an average depth of twelve to forty feet. It was named after the French explorer and scientist Édouard-Alfred Martel, who is considered the founding father of speleology. He was invited to explore the cave in 1896. A German cave explorer, M.F. Will, had mapped the White and Black cave in 1880. Martel found two more caves, as well as the underground lake.
The Dragon Caves have been known since the medieval times. Legends were passed around for long times about pirates and Templars hiding their treasures here and how a dragon guarded them. In 1339 some soldiers were sent into the caves to retrieve the treasures and this marks the beginning of the exploration of the caves.
They headed down the boardwalk descending into the limestone cave system. Spectacular stalactite formations and intricate canopies drip dramatically from the vaulted ceilings while descended nearly a hundred feet below the surface through four enormous interconnected chambers. Sam glanced at the Lakes of Diana, a crystalline blue lake that looked magical. If Merlin really did cast SPELLs in an underground divine grotto, this certainly looked like the place to do it.
The temperature remained a constant 70 degrees Fahrenheit all year round.
At the fourth chamber, a large wooden rowboat had been pulled up alongside the boardwalk next to Lake Martel, one of the largest subterranean lakes in Europe. During normal visiting hours, tourists are guided through the lake with a floodlit, floating violin concert at the end of the chamber.
Caliburn leaned into the edge of the lake and began licking and drinking the salty water.
Sam grimaced and pulled the dog back from the water’s edge. “What is wrong with you? That’s saltwater. It will make you sick!”
Caliburn tilted his head, and made an apologetic groan, his eyes staring up at him, somber and forlorn.
Sam gave him a good pat. “It’s okay, Caliburn. I just want you to stay safe, that’s all.”
The dog barked in acknowledgement, like a child who knew that he had been scolded out of love by a parent.
Tom climbed onto the boat first and Sam held it steady. The two girls climbed in next, carrying two large backpacks with an array of floating bathymetric surveying equipment. Sam stepped on board, and Caliburn jumped in after.
Sam carefully set up the array of floating sonar transducers and his laptop. The system worked by taking multiple images of the lakebed from a variety of angles in order to determine the depths and detailed delineations of the chamber.
Tom picked up the oars. “Is everyone ready?”
Sam and the girls said, “Ready.”
Caliburn barked.
And Tom rowed.
It took nearly two hours to row across the two-and-a-half-mile lake, while the computer took in the sonar data and developed a detailed bathymetric map of the surface below the water. Caliburn didn’t show any sign of interest, never barking, or looking eagerly toward some distant, or hidden vault, where Merlin’s forge might have once burned with magical fire.
They extracted their equipment and came out the other side of the chamber.
Sam paid the security guards an additional tip — if there is such a thing as tipping with a bribe — and climbed back into their hire car.
He said, “I don’t get it. I was certain this was the right place.”
Tom said, “I didn’t see any hidden passages, or even locations which might have once been the entrance to a secret tunnel.”
“All right. We’ll talk to some local guides in the morning and see if they know of any other nearby caves or grottos.”
Guinevere said, “Until then, we have another problem to deal with.”
Sam frowned. “What?”
Caliburn whimpered.
And Guinevere said, “Caliburn’s sick.”
Chapter Seventy-Five