The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1)

by Scott Corlett

  But Lewis remained planted.

  Then the Jag’s brakes screeched; the tires shed their skins in two perfectly straight black streaks; the car’s bumper stopped an inch shy of Lewis.

  The sentry shook his head, as he rounded the hood. “Good afternoon, Dr. Matson. Campus regulations require approaching the perimeter at a safe and reasonable speed—”

  A hand reached from the Jag, holding a plastic badge.

  Lewis took the ID and separated it from an underlying slip of paper. His face went as red as his father’s harvester back home in Iowa, as he looked at the phone number scrawled on the slip. “Uh, ma’am—”

  “You just tuck that away for a rainy day.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lewis hurriedly scanned the ID.

  The driver retrieved her badge. Over the tires’ squealing, a shout of “And don’t call me ‘ma’am!’” trailed from the Jag.

  Moments later, Molly Matson stepped out of the car. A tennis polo and short skirt highlighted a figure good for someone half her age. Her face was naturally smooth and lightly tanned; only her casually sweptback white hair gave any indication of her true years.

  Matson started down a sidewalk cutting though a courtyard surrounded by squat, cement-block buildings on three sides and, ahead, by a strip of sand backstopped by blue-white surf.

  The small campus was located just south of Miami, sandwiched between a two-lane highway and a quiet stretch of Atlantic shore. The modest facilities belied the importance of the Naval Research Laboratories and Institute, or Nar-ly as staff pronounced the acronym. In fact, NRLI was the elite research laboratory of the United States Navy and a crown jewel of the American military establishment.

  NRLI’s mission—like the research arms of the Army and Air Force, and the Defense Department’s ultra-secretive DARPA agency—was protecting the national security of the United States of America in the broadest sense. Not only did NRLI and its sister organizations develop advance weaponry and defensive systems. But their military and civilian scientists researched everything from alternative energy sources to vaccines against bioterror attacks to defenses for the U.S. cyber infrastructure.

  At the last building on the right, simply marked B-38, Matson turned and followed wet footprints approaching from the beach. Inside the building, the tracks led her to the hall’s end. She rapped a half-open door, beside a nameplate: “Sam Quick, Director, Molecular Biology.”

  Dr. Samantha Quick turned from a wall of windows and the Atlantic beyond. Faint lines deepened around eyes cut from pale sky. Full lips parted, revealing a bright-white line of teeth contrasted by golden skin. Dark, glistening wet, shoulder-length hair framed her face. “Hey there, stranger.”

  Matson entered and shook her head. Her friend and colleague Sam Quick was a distinguished molecular biologist, but the younger scientist dressed more like an off-duty lifeguard. As usual, Quick was wearing her tank top and hiking shorts, exposing lightly muscled arms and legs, while flip-flops clad her feet.

  “How was the water?” Matson asked, fully aware, as was everyone at NRLI, that Quick spent lunch hours swimming laps in the Atlantic.

  “Just like those happy hours you keep dragging me to—filled with sharks.”

  Matson grunted, as she stopped beside a long counter covered by laptops with churning screens and elongated trays pegged by tiny vials filled with various-hued liquids, like futuristic cribbage boards. By the window, a potted palm surrounded by a deep mat of dropped leaves offered the room’s only sign of personalization.

  “By chance,” Matson asked, while Quick joined her at the lab bench, “have you noticed the new sentry, the lanky midwesterner with the accent as flat as Kansas and the extremities as long as cornstalks in August?”

  “Actually, Sam”—the women’s heads swiveled toward to the doorway, now blocked by a man standing rigidly upright in naval uniform—“before you answer that question, could you please first advise Dr. Matson to restrict her vehicle’s speed to this side of the sound barrier while on base, lest she risk losing gate privileges.”

  At six-feet-two, with a head devoid a single hair and a heavy set of rear admiral’s bars, Harlan “Harley” Hester was a man accustomed to having his every word heard and obeyed. But NRLI’s director recognized from hard-learned experience that he enjoyed a better chance of dancing in the Bolshoi than getting through to Matson.

  “And Sam,” Matson said, “could you please tell my ex-husband to go screw himself and the horse he rode in on.”

  Quick leaned against the counter. She had seen this routine played out many times during her NRLI tenure, most enjoyably in the presence of uninitiated staff scurrying for cover. She also knew a warm respect underlay the veneer of animosity, even if she could hardly believe the conservative military man and the freewheeling scientist had ever been joined in anything more intimate than an arm-wrestling match.

  “I see my ex-wife’s charm-school lessons are paying ever greater dividends,” Hester countered. “Which is good, because the Sec-Navy just diced up my balls and fried ’em with onions during a video telecon—”

  “Send me the link, if you don’t mind,” Matson cut in.

  Hester ignored her and boomed on, “And you’ll need to muster every available ounce of deportment if you wish to keep your funding.”

  “What is it this time, Harley?” Matson asked. “Did one of your Annapolis amigos order up a new sub and max out the Pentagon’s Amex card?”

  “Don’t scientists ever read the news? By God, the treasury is nearly empty, and Congress is on the verge of cutting spending across the government, putting at jeopardy all of our programs”—Hester looked around the lab—“particularly those that have yet to bear fruit.”

  His voice softened a notch as he turned to Quick. “Here, we all know the Navy’s future depends on the ALCHEMY program. However, certain congress people may not fully appreciate the essentiality of your mission—or its funding.”

  “That sounds like military-speak for saying most congress people wouldn’t know the difference between a bacterium and a backhoe,” Matson said.

  Hester plowed on, “Be that as it may, there’s another issue: my NSA sources report that our overseas friends have made their own progress—”

  Matson held up a hand. “Well then, Harley, let me give you the best news since I signed our divorce papers: you can tell your Washington buddies that we’re on the verge of a major mucho breakthrough.” She turned to Quick. “Right, Sam?”

  “Absolutely, very major breakthrough imminent.” Quick held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  Hester grunted. “Breakthrough or not, as of today, you have only six months of funding left. I can hold off any program review until then. But after that, all bets are off.” Then he nodded at Quick and marched out.

  As the echoes of his retreating footsteps died, Quick leaned toward Matson, “Please tell me we have an actual major breakthrough.”

  “ALCHEMY is indeed why I am here. But ‘major’ may be”—Matson pinched together her thumb and forefinger—“just a tad dramatic.” She ignored Quick’s look and instead nodded at a laptop. “If you would please conjure a map of northwest Africa on this infernal machine.”

  Quick sighed and tapped a few keys; a map filled the screen. Matson’s finger pinned some white pixels floating in the blue off Africa’s western coast. “Zoom in here.”

  More keys were pressed; a boomerang-shaped archipelago expanded and resolved, revealing a small island chain. Matson’s finger swept along the arc to the northwestern-most island and tapped twice.

  “I ran across a crusty geology journal article published during Nixon’s waning days in office—a few years shy of your birth if my math is right—regarding some unusual zinc deposits in a little volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma, 125 miles off the African coast. Some unusually highly concentrated zinc deposits.”

  Quick was quiet for a moment. Then she replied with the nonchalance that Matson knew meant her friend was keenly inte
rested, “The rocks sound promising?”

  “Fit for a queen.” Matson patted a stack of papers lying on the counter. “Given the self-aggrandizing adjectives triple-somersaulting off this top page, these must be résumés for the summer internships. Why don’t you choose a few well-qualified grad students to accompany you and help with the grunt work?”

  Matson started for the door, putting on her sunglasses. “Just feed ’em some cock-and-bull about hunting for the usual bugs, and they’ll fall all over themselves to carry Sam Quick’s water bottle.”

  “I’m fairly sure the NRLI handbook, if not various state and federal sexual harassment statutes, forbid using Molly Matson’s definition of ‘well qualified,’” Quick called after her.

  The older scientist stuck her head back into the doorway and looked over her glasses. “What’s this world coming to when you can’t pick a research team based on bicep circumference?”

  – 3 –

  Monday, 9 July

  Island of La Palma

  BBC World Service, it’s eight o’clock GMT. Concerns grow about radiation detected in central London—

  Sam Quick snapped off the radio and leaned back in the driver’s seat. These few moments were her first downtime since arriving on the island two days ago and the ensuing dawn-to-dusk mission preparations. But Quick was not looking out at the surrounding picturesque village. Not at the brightly painted houses. The dogs sunning alongside the curbs. The tourists meandering the narrow lanes. Or the sea and mountains so close she could practically grab them both.

  Rather the molecular biologist was mentally reviewing the day’s plan. Quick was never one to waste time, but she knew she had to execute perfectly from this point on if she hoped to achieve success on ALCHEMY. And given what they had seen yesterday at the mine, they were closer than ever. Three days collecting samples, then back to the lab in Florida—

  “¡Buenos días, Dr. Quick!”

  Quick turned and found Manuelo Alcanzar striding toward the red Jeep. His face, nearly perfectly round, broke into a golden-olive crackle glaze of a thousand tiny wrinkles, as he raised an arm in greeting.

  Quick returned the smile; she already liked the kindly old guide a great deal. “Buenos días, Manuelo. ¿Estás bien?”

  “Very fine, thank you,” Manuelo answered in good English, as he reached inside the topless Jeep and shook the scientist’s hand. “And where are the young ones this morning?”

  Quick pointed.

  Turning, Manuelo raised his arm again. “Ah, good morning, señorita Kalia and señor Eric.”

  From atop the hotel steps, a woman and man waved in return, then bounded down the stairs, each with a backpack slung over a shoulder.

  They were a mismatched pair, neither of who would be first taken for a graduate student in the hard sciences: Kalia Slater looked like she just shot a Hawaiian tourism commercial, sporting wavy, dark hair, a big aloha smile, and a deep tan consistent with being a volcanology student on Hawaii’s Big Island. While Eric Hunt could easily pass for a personal trainer working in an urban gym: a short and muscular fireplug with a chiseled face, a blond crew cut, a silver eyebrow ring, and a complexion befitting someone who divided his time between his midwestern university’s molecular biology lab and fitness center.

  Slater hugged the Spaniard. Even in the shadow levied by the brim of Manuelo’s hat, the reddening of his cheeks was obvious.

  Manuelo then pumped Hunt’s hand and pointed at the young man’s T-shirt. “What does this mean exactly?”

  “Uh … ,” Hunt started, as Slater and Quick exchanged a smile. The women had already teased Hunt about his T-shirts, each successive one sporting a message even less in keeping with his friendly, geeky demeanor than the last. Today’s shirt was black and imprinted with red skull and crossbones, and the words: “Don’t Rock the Boat. Sink the Fucker.”

  Quick cleared her throat, saving Hunt from further explanation. Manuelo shrugged, while the interns hurried to dump their packs into the Jeep’s cargo space. The grad students scrambled onto the rear bench, and Manuelo took the front passenger seat.

  Above the village, the red Jeep wound through switchback after switchback, as it climbed the steep volcano, with only a narrow gravel ribbon separating it from open air. Below, terraced banana farms followed a mountain crease down to the Atlantic’s blue. On a distant curve, a speeding orange car looked like a flitting ladybug.

  Sam Quick glanced at the Spaniard and then, in the rearview mirror, at her interns. Then her eyes returned to the road. Her right foot doubled its pressure on the pedal. And the Jeep whipped into the next turn.

  ∞

  Quick pointed at a rock formation covered with yellowish stains lying a hundred yards uphill. “I bet you’ll find some interesting mineral deposits up there—be sure to grab some pix and samples.” She patted a walkie-talkie clipped to her work belt and looked from Slater to Manuelo. “And you both know the drill: any problems, radio me pronto.”

  Then Quick nodded at Hunt, and the two stepped into the mouth of La Garganta del Diablo.

  As they disappeared from sight, Manuelo glanced at a sign nailed up beside the mine entrance. The faded red paint read, “¡Peligro! ¡No Entrar!” And beneath the text, an image mirrored the skull and crossbones on Hunt’s T-shirt. He sighed and then shouted into the opening, “Be careful, mis amigos!”

  Inside the shaft, the scientists fell into single-file formation, with Quick on lead, walking down the center of the rail tracks. Bundled wires ran along one wall of the red rock, hanging like garland, tacked up yesterday by the team. Glowing light bulbs dangled from one cable; while every forty feet, plastic discs that relayed radio signals to the surface hung like protective amulets.

  Quick and Hunt continued in silence for the next hundred yards, until reaching a junction where rail spurs from an intersecting shaft merged with the main track. They turned right, following the cables. Hunt looked over his shoulder; the mine’s entrance was now just a circle of sunlight with a diameter no larger than a soccer ball’s.

  The side tunnel was rougher than the main shaft. The air grew hotter; the scientists were now sweating as they walked. Every few yards, they had to climb over rockslides that washed out the tracks. And they soon stopped futilely dodging the muddy water dripping from the stone above and let it simply splatter on them like red rain.

  They passed several pitch-black openings in the tunnel wall, and Manuelo’s repeated warnings flashed through Hunt’s mind: wander into one and death is sure. The blind nooks housed vertical shafts connecting to the mine’s lower levels, some plunging hundreds of feet.

  The tunnel ended at a hexagonal chamber where six shafts converged. As Quick and Hunt entered, their boots clomped against wood. A circular platform bisected by rail track, for redirecting ore cars to any of the tunnels, lay beneath them.

  At the wheel’s center, the scientists paused beside a wave of crushed stone and broken timbers spilling from the remnant of one tunnel, freezing the industrial merry-go-round in place.

  Then Sam Quick pointed at a shaft with lights strung into the distance.

  ∞

  The red eye went dark. The camera stopped rotating. And a short beep sounded. Kalia Slater typed some keys on her laptop and then slowly slid two fingers across the trackpad, biting her lip as she stared at the screen. Then she nodded, tapped one final key, and jumped up.

  “You have your pictures, señorita Kalia? Can I help with the equipment?” Manuelo asked, approaching from the generator shed.

  Crunching gravel and a whining steering mechanism cut off Slater’s response, as a white-and-blue sedan rounded off the entrance road onto the work yard. The car slid to a stop, raising a wave of dust and sending the nearby birds fleeing.

  “Our local policía must be checking in on us,” Manuelo said, with a slamming car door punctuating his assertion. He started toward the dust cloud, while Slater left the camera and followed him.

  As they neared, the haze disgorged a solo man stri
ding toward them. And Slater thought, is this guy for real? With that killer face and those dark-chocolate eyes straight from an Almodóvar movie.

  Manuelo raised a hand in greeting and spoke rapidly in Spanish. To Slater, the men seemed to know each other.

  The two Spaniards continued speaking, with their tones and stances growing progressively stiffer, and the officer occasionally nodding at Slater. Finally Manuelo switched to English, “My apologies, señorita Kalia, but one of our island’s junior policía is questioning the wisdom of your expedition to La Garganta del Diablo.”

  “Really? Why is that?” Slater asked, looking from Manuelo to the officer, who now stared at her with a blank, vaguely aggressive expression. A nanosecond, and dark and studly just went from hot to not.

  “He says the police have received several reports of smuggling activity in this area and that we should not wish becoming entangled in their activities,” Manuelo explained.

  “Sí, exactamente, tenemos muchos informes de actividad ilegal en esta área. Este no es lugar para algunos científico,” the officer said, still staring at her, unsmiling.

  As Manuelo translated, Slater returned the officer’s look, which had crossed the line from awkwardly intense to outright antisocial.

  “Please thank the officer for his visit,” Slater said. “But tell him that we have work to complete, and that some reports of smugglers won’t scare us off. La Palma is an island of great beauty, not some pirate island.” She flashed a smile, evoking a twitch of the officer’s jaw, and pointed at the abandoned electronics. “And now, I must finish packing up our equipment.”

  Slater could feel the officer’s eyes on her, as she returned to the camera and laptop. She did not turn when he called out in passable English, “Be very careful, señorita. Things of great beauty often have sharp edges.”

  Moments later, the police car roared off, throwing gravel across the work yard, while Manuelo returned to Slater’s side. “Please pay him no mind,” he said, as he grabbed the camera case. “He probably just wanted an excuse to see up close los visitantes americanas bellas.”