The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1)

by Scott Corlett

  Slater blushed, as she gently sank the camera into the trunk. “In any case, I should go collect those samples at the rock formation where Sam suggested.”

  “If it’s OK with you”—Manuelo lowered the trunk to the ground—“I will stay here and lay out lunch for Dr. Quick.” He grinned and added, “She is a woman who does not like to wait.”

  Slater laughed. “No woman does, I am afraid, Manuelo.”

  “Indeed, no.” The guide smiled. “Enjoy your hike. You will find a lovely view from up the hillside.”

  Slater grabbed a sampling kit, a walkie-talkie, and her digital SLR camera. Then she waved at Manuelo and hopped onto the rocks beside the mine entrance. She was looking up the lava slope. But all Kalia Slater could see was the Spaniard’s hard stare. And as she clambered over the jagged stone, all she could hear was his warning about sharp edges.

  – 4 –

  Monday, 9 July

  London

  “Earlier today, London Metropolitan Police announced that radiation was detected at an undisclosed location in London SE1.” The crisply dressed newsreader smoothed the papers before him and continued, “Metropolitan Police now confirm that the detected radiation is due to plutonium of an unknown source found dispersed in an SE1 car park.

  “Plutonium is a radioactive element commonly found at nuclear power stations and at atomic research and weapons facilities. Metropolitan Police stress that no reliable evidence yet suggests terrorist involvement. Metropolitan Police further say the hazard is now fully contained and no menace to public welfare presently exists. In response, threat levels for all service branches have been elevated, and the Prime Minister is scheduled to provide a statement at 6 P.M. GMT. Both Scotland Yard’s Hazards Team and MI5 are aiding the inquiry.” The reader turned the page. “Manchester United signed—”

  A gentle warble interrupted from across the room. Utley sighed and pressed a button on the remote control. Behind him, the television went silent. For a moment longer, through the window, he continued watching the office workers holding their cocked umbrellas trudge through the relentless rain as if they were giant black mushrooms riding an endless conveyor belt.

  Despite being at home in his library, Utley was dressed every bit as formally as the business people slogging outside: a charcoal-gray two-piece suit of Scottish wool and English tailoring, and a tie of cerulean silk. His figure remained trim, while his face was gaunt like that of any mature man of fit build, with a narrow nose, and intense, jadeite eyes. Above it all, his hair persisted preternaturally thick and black.

  The ringing continued, and Utley turned from the window and sank into a wingback chair, grabbing a handset from the adjacent side table.

  “Yes?”

  For several minutes, the room was nearly silent, broken only by a soft, uneven rasp of London air navigating the patches of tarry sludge that had accumulated in Utley’s lungs during his seven decades of life.

  Finally Utley said, “I see. Yes, thank you very much.”

  He rested the handset on his shoulder, reached over, and lifted a crystal tumbler sitting beside the phone. The contents swirled into a vortex. He stared down into the drink. But the whirling amber offered no answers. After a long draw, the glass retreated to the table.

  Utley sighed again. This moment was long due. Lately, he had wondered if it would even arrive before his body fully failed him. And now, just like that, it was here.

  Then Utley did what he had done countless times before in his life—what he had to.

  A shaking finger slowly punched a long series of digits on the phone. He returned the handset to his ear and stared at the muted television, at the line jagging inexorably upward across the screen, representing the price of North Sea crude.

  “We need to meet.”

  – 5 –

  Monday, 9 July

  Island of La Palma

  Sam Quick swiped the sweat beading her forehead, leaving a streak of red dirt.

  “Hey, Sam … ” Hunt pointed at the smudge.

  Quick rubbed her forehead, saw the muddy rouge transferred to her wrist, and then groaned and dropped her trowel. “I’m ready to get out of this hole; no wonder the islanders call it the ‘Devil’s Throat.’ Let’s grab lunch topside before we move to the second collection site.”

  “Cool. You’re the boss. And no kidding, this place is like some sci-fi set.” Hunt’s voice deepened and rounded, “They lived underground and surfaced for one thing only—to harvest their human livestock to take below for slaughter.”

  Quick laughed. “If the molecular biology thing doesn’t pan out, you can always fall back on doing voice-over work.”

  “Voice-over? Are you suggesting my looks won’t cut it onscreen?” Hunt asked, grinning, as he capped a small jar filled with bits of dirt and rock. Then he grabbed his smartphone and scanned a barcode on the container’s label. A database on the phone instantly recorded a geo-temporal location tag with the soil sample’s exact time and spatial coordinates.

  Quick watched this activity, still impressed by the app that the grad student had written seemingly overnight for cataloging their specimens. She grabbed her walkie-talkie and pressed the toggle switch.

  “Manuelo … Kalia”—Quick’s voice echoed along the mineshaft, as the nearest of the plastic discs grabbed the signal and relayed it topside—“we’re heading to the surface.”

  A low rumble responded. Small stones scurried down the walls; timbers creaked and groaned; the lights pitched and tossed; shadows raced over the rock.

  Quick remained planted; Hunt scrambled.

  After a few seconds, the noise died.

  Quick took in the sight of Hunt hugging a support timber and chuckled. “You can let go now. Our devil just has a touch of indigestion.”

  The grad student stepped away from the beam and brushed himself off. “Hey, do I look worried? Because what’s to worry about when an earthquake hits and you’re half-a-mile deep inside a volcano?”

  Quick downed the toggle switch again. “Manuelo? Kalia? That shaking you just felt was Eric’s hunger pangs. We’d better get him some lunch ASAP.”

  She released the button. Static issued from the walkie-talkie’s speaker. The toggle went down again. “Hey, amigos—”

  A string of fast metallic pops echoed down the shaft, cutting off Quick, and then tapered to silence.

  “What the—,” Hunt started.

  “Gunfire. The only question is how far away.” Quick immediately recognized the sound that had been as common as dust on the ranch of her New Mexican childhood.

  She slammed down the toggle switch. “Kalia? Manuelo?”

  Only static responded.

  Then the speaker crackled and a voice whispered, “Sam … two men … they—”

  Static cut in.

  Quick hit the toggle. “Kalia, can you hear me? Kalia?”

  “Manuelo is—”

  The speaker reverted to hissing.

  “Kalia? Kalia?”

  Nothing but static issued from the walkie-talkie.

  The transmit button went down again. “Kalia, if you can hear me, get yourself to a safe place. Eric and I are on the way.”

  Quick surveyed the equipment lying on the ground, mainly plastic sample bottles and small digging implements. Her gaze rested on one tool. She reached down and grabbed the small pickax that they had used to smash larger rocks; its wooden handle slid into a loop on her belt.

  Then Sam Quick looked at Eric Hunt. “Ready?”

  The lights answered for the grad student: They all died, leaving the two scientists standing in the pitch black of the abandoned mineshaft, thousands of feet beneath the surface of the volcanic mountain.

  ∞

  Quick and Hunt ran in virtual darkness. They chased their flashlight beams, sprinting as fast as the rail ties, red mud, and fallen rock permitted. The only sounds were the crunch of stone or splash of water beneath their pounding boots. The walkie-talkie remained mute, worthless without the energized plas
tic discs to relay signals to the surface.

  Ahead, the shaft curved hard to the right. Quick caught Hunt’s arm, slowing them both. She whispered, “We’re nearly halfway to the mine’s entrance, which means—”

  “We’re about to meet anyone coming this way.”

  Quick nodded, snagged a rock, and tossed it as far ahead as the arcing shaft permitted. The response was instantaneous. Sparks exploded just to their left; pings of ricocheting bullets filled the tunnel.

  The scientists threw themselves against the wall.

  “Right on time.” Quick whipped her flashlight beam around the tunnel. No side shafts were available to change course. Gunfire continued shattering the air, strafing the tunnel. She pointed behind them, deeper into the mine.

  They spun and, Hunt now leading, sprinted back toward the collection site. The shooter continued blasting; all around them, dull thuds and sharp explosions marked bullet strikes on either dirt or stone.

  They rounded a tight turn. Quick grabbed Hunt’s shirt and pulled him to a stop. Ahead lay a long, dead-straight stretch that would offer no cover when their pursuer caught up.

  But Quick was not looking ahead. Instead, she was inspecting an opening to one of the vertical shafts plunging to the mine’s lower depths.

  Another set of shots rang out, closer.

  Quick sliced her flashlight beam around the opening’s perimeter, tracing a line of thick wooden planks bolted flat around the sides.

  “Elevator shaft. The boards mark where the platform stopped.” Quick pointed the flashlight downward. But the beam pushed back the darkness no more than thirty feet. “It could be forty- or two-hundred-feet deep.”

  The beam locked on the planking. “Shimmy out on this board as far as you can,” Quick ordered.

  “Then what?” Hunt slid his foot onto the old wood.

  More shots ricocheted throughout the tunnel, now painful to the ears.

  “Like I said earlier, you’re the boss.” The grad student shuffled sidewise, his back against the damp rock, blindly reaching for handholds in the uneven stone. His search knocked loose small rocks; after a long count, the stones pounded against something wooden sounding below. “Great,” he muttered, “some jagged boards to cushion my landing.”

  Quick followed him onto the plank. Hunt reached the far corner and stopped. He was perched clinging to wet rock on a three-inch precipice, facing a chasm of unknown depth. Quick crept along the wood only far enough that she was no longer visible from the tunnel.

  Then she killed her flashlight, leaving them in total blackness.

  Seconds later, the tunnel began echoing with the sound of crunching stone.

  “The footsteps suggest only one person approaching. When I say ‘go,’ you draw our visitor’s attention. Then stay exactly where you are,” Quick whispered from the darkness as coolly as if she were ordering a gene analysis in the air-conditioned comfort of her Florida lab.

  “No worries about that,” Hunt whispered back, his teetering boots reconfirming the blind plummet waiting a mere shift in body weight away, as he released his grip with one hand and carefully reached for his pocket.

  Another moment, the approaching footfalls now sounded to the scientists as if they were chewing mouthfuls of gritty cereal. A fan of faint light appeared along the tunnel’s opposite wall.

  The pickax slipped free of Quick’s belt; the molecular biologist recalled a bit of ranch-life wisdom: When gunfire announces a visitor, there’s only one polite greeting.

  The wedge of light grew wider, stretching onto the tunnel’s floor and ceiling, glinting off the rails and puddled water. The crunching footfalls now sounded like rocks in a blender. Hunt held his breath.

  The gun muzzle appeared at waist-level, moving steadily forward.

  Then the flashlight emerged.

  Quick went up on her toes.

  A hand appeared on the weapon. The man’s profile glided into view.

  Quick’s “go” shattered the air.

  Hunt’s smartphone exploded with alternating flashes of patrol-car red and blue. The man’s head jerked toward the vertical shaft, his eyes shooting wide.

  “I’ll take that if you don’t mind.” Quick dove sideways as if trying to reach a long ball on a tennis court.

  The pickax sliced through the air.

  The man’s finger ripped back the trigger; bullets sprayed in a wild arc across the tunnel and into the vertical shaft, at head-height above the perimeter plank, jagging toward Hunt.

  Quick hoped to snag the gun with the ax and rip it from the man’s hands. But the gunman crouched as he fired the weapon. There was no way back now.

  The spike entered the soft skin on his neck’s far side. The point hooked behind the tough cartilage of his esophagus. Quick cemented her hands on the ax handle, and whipped her body forward and around, transferring her momentum to the gunman.

  Locked in a death spiral, the man could only helplessly spin sideways while his body reflexively followed to prevent his windpipe from being ripped from his neck.

  But his finger remained clamped on the trigger; gunfire strafed wildly into the vertical shaft; stroboscopic flashes slowed the motion to a crawl.

  Keeping one hand locked on the ax handle, Quick reached around the man with her other arm, trying to grab the gun. Bullets blasted straight into the vertical shaft toward Hunt. In a desperate attempt to regain control, the man slammed Quick back into the rock wall. The blow dazed Quick. The man shoved her toward the open shaft.

  Then Hunt rammed his shoulder into the assailant.

  The man fell backward; his arms and the gun pinwheeled as he fought to regain his balance.

  Quick immediately released her grip on the ax. The loss of her counterweight flung the gunman over the edge.

  Fire flashes lit the shaft for several seconds. Then they died with a loud crash below.

  The flashlight clicked on. Both scientists were panting, bent forward, hands on their knees.

  Hunt looked at Quick. “You handled that guy pretty cool.”

  Quick shrugged. “It was the only logical course of action. You, on the other hand, were supposed to stay put—not that I’m ungrateful you lent a shoulder.”

  “Yeah, lying low’s not really my style—you learn real fast when you’re the geeky kid on the playground.”

  “In any case, I believe you’re my first intern to simultaneously disregard my instructions and to earn your letter of recommendation.”

  Sam Quick pointed her beam toward the surface. “Now, let’s find Kalia and Manuelo.”

  – 6 –

  Monday, 9 July

  Buffalo, New York

  The shout echoed throughout the cavernous space, bouncing off the brick walls, the neat rows of metal girders, and the patchwork of old pipes and conduits running near the high ceiling. Once the clatter and strum of massive factory machines had filled the room. Now it was nothing more than a hot, dusty shell, hollowed of its mechanical innards and smelling faintly of its past labors.

  Centered amid the decay, three desks formed a semicircle, all topped by shiny aluminum computers, paper-thin monitors, and various devices with flashing lights. The source of the outburst sat before one screen, staring at an image of London’s Big Ben overlaid by a trefoil yellow-and-black radiation symbol.

  “That’s the signal. Just like they said it would be. Plutonium found in London. That’s exactly it,” Gabriel said, poking the monitor with enough force to set it rocking on its base.

  He was sitting ramrod upright, shirtless, with heavily tattooed shoulders and arms, and white-blond hair floating high above his seatback. An array of metal studs, collars, and rings that looked more appropriate for industrial plumbing lined his ears top to lobe.

  He raised his hands. “We’re a go.”

  From behind the desks on either side of him, a second man and a woman each slapped an upheld hand. Jacob was short and heavyset, with a soft, somehow friendly face, and black, wiry hair. Amanda wore dreadlocked hair bundl
ed like a sheaf of thick-stalked, golden wheat; below this crown, her eyes were brown and large. And like Gabriel, outsized metal weighed down their ears.

  “Super excellent, man, I can’t believe it’s finally going to happen,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah, super excellent,” Amanda repeated.

  Gabriel scrolled his screen and nodded his head. “Yes, just like they said. The Brits are already putting all their heat on the Jihadies.”

  Jacob splayed in his chair and spun around. “It’s perfect. When it’s all done, the blame goes their way.”

  Amanda nodded. “Yeah, perfect … maybe a little too perfect, I still say.”

  “We have been over this shit too many times already,” Jacob said. “It’s happening like they said it would. What, do you think the CIA is gonna spread some scary plutonium shit all over London just to try and set us up? No way. Not happening.”

  “I’m not saying it is a setup … but what if it is?” Amanda said. “The news story—”

  “Shut”—Gabriel jumped up and grabbed a beer bottle from his desk; a second later, the brown glass crashed against a brick wall—“up.” A dark stain spread wide and then ran down the masonry, narrowing to a point like an exclamation mark to his command.

  Amanda’s mouth snapped closed. She and Jacob glanced at each other, as Gabriel stalked toward the stain, his combat boots crushing little arcs of freshly broken glass.

  He stopped at a window adjacent to the impact, and leaned forward and pressed his hands flat against the dirty panes. His shirtless back was surrealistic canvas: an American flag lay tattooed just above his waistband, with a mushroom cloud exploding up from its center, and dollar signs raining down in place of nuclear fallout.

  He stared out at the building’s surround of crumbling asphalt. His gaze traveled over the razor-wire fence, to the dock and the canal. The mighty Erie Canal, he thought with a snort. Not even so much as a friggin’ rowboat floating by.