The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1)

by Scott Corlett

  Slater stood and slipped the UZI’s strap over her head, while Amanda just stared at the suitcase. Slater took Amanda’s hand. The women resumed running against the incoming air.

  But because Slater led, she failed to see Amanda looking back every few seconds at the suitcase—and continuing to do so long after the glistening of the luggage’s innards had died.

  – 52 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Madrid

  “If mobile cannot go to the signal, the signal must come to mobile.”

  “Huh?” Hunt said.

  He watched Quick began scraping the cellphone against the boiler’s rough metal face as if it were a hunk of hard cheese on a grater. He looked at the suitcase display, which now read 22:47, and then again at the phone, which Quick was whipping up and down.

  Hunt squinted for a moment; then his forehead smoothed. The echo of slapped metal reverberated throughout the chamber. “Yeah, they sure don’t call you Sam Quick for nothing.”

  “Let’s just hope whoever retrofitted the Prado’s heating system and entombed these old boilers down here also failed to uproot the old chimneys,” Quick said. “And that their metal liners remain contiguous to the building’s roofline. If so, we should be able to expose the phone’s metallic antenna by wearing down its plastic casing and then holding it against the iron boiler, creating one massive cellphone antenna.”

  Her arm continued cranking up and down; the only sounds were the gritty scrape of plastic on metal and the suitcase’s periodic soft beeps. After thirty seconds, the scraping sound changed in tone, and Quick yanked the phone from the boiler, exposing a tiny coppery star glinting along its edge.

  “Here goes nothing.” Quick pressed the exposed phone antenna against the boiler where the phone had scraped the old metal free of rust.

  For ten seconds, Quick and Hunt held their respective breaths.

  Then the mobile beeped, and four graphical bars blossomed on the display, indicating signal strength.

  “YES!” Hunt yelled.

  Maintaining the phone’s contact with the boiler, Quick started tapping the touchpad.

  Moments later, a familiar cackle issued from the speaker. “Sam, out of nowhere, your GPS signal popped back up on the tracking monitor, and my new boyfriend nearly fell off his chair. Are you really on the roof of the Prado? And did you find Kalia Slater?”

  “Not exactly, Molly. Eric and I are in some subbasement under the Prado. And someone left his or her luggage behind down here, and we ain’t talking Louis Vuitton. We’re sitting on a Soviet suitcase bomb. And the countdown timer reads 18:32 until a thermonuclear detonation. We need some assistance with stopping the clock and finding this bag’s rightful owner.”

  The news silenced even Matson for a moment, before she recovered and said, “Some people are so damn careless with their belongings. But I bet south Florida’s videogame champion here can hack up a manual for that thing in the CIA’s digital bowels.”

  Quick and Hunt heard Matson issue instructions and a stampede of keystrokes.

  Matson continued, “I just got off the horn with the folks at our Madrid embassy. They were about as helpful as a burger-joint cashier who’s just learned she’s won the lottery. The gentleman to whom I spoke said that with the ‘big guy in town,’ they couldn’t spare anyone to crawl through old coal tunnels to help look for lost graduate students. But with this latest development, I suspect they’ll agree that el hombre grande would appreciate a heads-up. Hold the line, Sam, I’m going to set up one of those fancy three-way calls.”

  Quick and Hunt heard Matson say something and then a short series of clicks and finally a weary voice. “As I told you during our previous call, Dr. Matson, we really can’t help with—”

  Quick cut in, “Listen, my name is Sam Quick. Right now, I’m in a subbasement below the Prado, where, I understand, the president is due imminently. And I’m staring down into a suitcase packed with a black cylinder marked with that cute, little radiation symbol, which you may recall from your ninth-grade science class, and a timer with less than seventeen minutes on its clock. Now, I strongly suggest you scoop your balls off the floor and activate the president’s evacuation protocol.”

  The respondent silence lasted but a second. Then they heard a thunk and shouting—first one voice, and then many. The man’s voice returned to phone. “Dr. Quick, I need your exact position. A special ops team is en route to the Prado. Their ETA to the museum plaza is two minutes.”

  “Your special ops won’t cut it,” Hunt said. “By the time they arrive, the only thing your team will accomplish is its thermonuclear vaporization.”

  “Then God help us all. We’ve alerted the president’s security detail. There’s no time to began an evacuation of Madrid—”

  “Molly, we really need some how-to from your end,” Quick cut him off.

  “I know, sweetie. My young man is typing faster than a secretary on Dexedrine. Just hold tight.”

  ∞

  Less than half a mile from the suitcase, steel-toed dress shoes smashed gas pedals. The trio of 403-hp Vortec V-8 engines roared as gasoline, air freighted from the American Gulf Coast, flooded their combustion chambers. Tires squealed, and the three Cadillac SUVs veered hard onto a narrow side street, sending several Spanish escort motorcycles careening into each other.

  Ten miles away, at Barajas International Airport, Colonel Edwards immediately began reciting the sequence that she knew better than her daughter’s smile.

  In the adjacent seats, the copilots flipped switches, stabbed buttons, and checked gauges in a tightly choreographed call-and-response exchange with the commander. In the main cabin, the attendants ran through the plane, prepping the seats and the situation room. On the tarmac surrounding the plane, the Marines raised their weapons and began widening the exclusion perimeter around Air Force One.

  In the middle Cadillac, the hard turn had smashed President James against the agent sitting beside him. The SUV straightened out. The agent repositioned himself and tried to right the president.

  But James brushed off his hands and barked, “What the hell is going on?”

  The president listened silently, as his chief of staff replied from the front seat, while the SUVs whipped onto an expressway ramp, and their speedometer needles swept past the 100 mark.

  When the man finished speaking, the car was dead quiet except for the muffled road noise and the dull whoosh of the run-flat tires.

  Then President James spoke loudly and without hesitation: “Open ’em. Open every one of them. Open the silos—and make damn sure all our enemies know it.”

  – 53 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Island of La Palma

  The women continued running for another five minutes. Then Slater looked over her shoulder and then forward again. “Did we get turned around somehow?”

  Amanda followed the trajectory of Slater’s finger and whispered, “WTF?”

  The women ran forward and then slid to a stop.

  Amanda’s dreadlocks whipped back and forth. “It can’t be.”

  Slater’s finger traveled over the wall as if it were deciphering Braille rather than tracing dried yellow paint. “These are different geo coordinates. Which means that El Diablo is choking on not one, but at least two of these crazy suitcases.” Slater looked at Amanda. “And that our reasons for getting the hell out of here have doubled—”

  Guttural shouts echoed in the tunnel behind.

  “Make that increased exponentially—move!” Slater whispered, pushing Amanda onward. The women started running as fast as they could.

  Behind them, the muzzles of four Micro UZIs jagged and weaved, following the women’s footprints in the red mud. Two of the four gunmen clenched smoldering cigarettes between their lips. In all the men, thanks to adrenaline and the hormones of aggression, pulses raced, and blood was shunted to the muscles of predation. The only sounds were their rough breaths and their combat boots slapping mud. No words were needed: each man
knew exactly what his companions thought. Their brother’s death was an assault that would not go answered. But these women would not meet as fast an end. No, before drawing their last breaths, these Americans would first discover what evil really lies in a devil’s stomach.

  Slater and Amanda sprinted for another hundred yards. Then the tracks and the lighting ended at a pile of rotting wooden ties. Slater jerked out a flashlight taken from the fallen guard.

  She scrambled onto the woodpile and climbed up the ties on her hands and feet, with Amanda following right behind her. At the top, Slater flattened herself and shimmied on her stomach between the highest tier of wood and the tunnel’s rock ceiling; Amanda followed with her hands at Slater’s feet. After crawling ten feet, they reached the pile’s far side. They jumped down and resumed their run, now completely in the dark other than the flashlight beam.

  They ran several dozen more yards. Amanda yelped. Slater whipped the beam over the other woman. Amanda was holding a hand to her head; blood dripped from between her fingers. Slater shined the light higher. Blood spotted a half-fallen timber cutting diagonally across the passage.

  They had to keep moving. But what now motivated Slater was not the men chasing them, but rather what she felt on her own brow. She put an arm around Amanda’s shoulders and guided the woman under the timber.

  On the far side, Kalia Slater stood tall and inhaled a deep breath of the fresh air now moving fast enough to lift the dark hair framing her sweaty face. We’re going to make it.

  – 54 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Madrid

  Rivulets of sweat cut flesh-colored lines in the coal dust coating Eric Hunt’s face. Sam Quick looked away from her intern and swallowed, as a beep from the suitcase marked a red flash: 5:00.

  “Molly, if for some reason we don’t make it—,” Quick started.

  “You just hush now, sweetie. No need to turn all sentimental—”

  Shouting interrupted Matson. Quick and Hunt heard the geologist bark, “Send out that file, pronto!” Then Matson said, “Sam, my little friend finally hacked Langley’s database and located the disarmament instructions. No doubt, the spooks have already launched a drone squadron to take us out. But assuming these protocols are fresh, you should be in like Flynn.”

  The line was silent for a moment. Then Matson added, “Good luck, kiddos.”

  Quick replied, “Thanks a million, Molly.”

  “Anytime, honey. OK, here comes the file.”

  Quick and Hunt’s eyes locked on the phone. An amoeba could have outswam the lengthening download indicator bar. While the suitcase flashed seemingly ever faster, hitting 3:19.

  ∞

  Two stories above the scientists, in the Prado’s main gallery, the clip of heels against marble echoed so loudly that conversations halted as everyone turned to watch the French attaché cross the room like a power-walker in an American mall.

  He stopped beside his ambassador. An instant later, the champagne flute delivered by the overly friendly Spanish server crashed against the marble floor. A murmur swept the gallery. The ambassador looked wildly around, spotted his wife, and violently gesticulated toward an exit, as he began sprinting with the attaché trailing at his heels.

  “I guess you won’t be doing any French kissing tonight—,” Delgado started to say to the other waiter when a new cascade of fast-moving heels interrupted. The Italian contingent was now racing for the exits.

  Then cellphones started shrilling throughout the gallery.

  “There must be rumors of better food at another reception,” the other waiter said.

  “Either that or—”

  People began running in every direction.

  A scream rang out. Then another.

  Stemware crashed to the floor. Serving platters clattered against marble and bronze.

  The German finance minister slipped on some fallen canapés. A chain reaction ensued, with diplomats skating and falling on colorful piles of dropped food.

  A Chinese official slammed into an enormous El Greco; the wall-sized painting crashed down onto him, trapping him and several Canadians under the old canvas.

  The two waiters each grabbed a champagne flute from Delgado’s tray and moved against a wall. A stream of Spanish profanity caught their attention.

  They looked around and found its source: their supervisor—her face papered with squares of smoked salmon, and her uniform pissed with red wine—struggling to rise from the slick marble.

  – 55 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Island of La Palma

  Countless times during childhood, Kalia Slater had heard her grandmother tell the story of the star that had guided their ancestors thousands of miles across the Pacific to settle the remotest archipelago on earth—the Hawaiian Islands. During the summer months, Arcturus, the Hawaiian zenith star, lay directly overhead at the latitude of the Big Island of Hawaii, lighting the ancient explorers’ eastward path. Its glimmer always brought Slater comfort, as if she were hearing her grandmother’s voice.

  And tonight was no different. Slater gazed up the narrow ventilation shaft at the rectangular opening. And the photons of light that had exploded from Arcturus nearly thirty-seven years earlier reached their final destinations—the retinas of her eyes—as if on a journey ordained more than a decade before her birth.

  The descending breeze was strong on her face. She smelled the island trees’ piney nocturnal exhalations and almost allowed herself to smile.

  Slater turned to Amanda and tapped the lowest rung of the old metal ladder running up the shaft. “OK, we’re almost there, you first.”

  Amanda nodded and scrambled onto the first rung. The shaft was barely large enough to accommodate a small adult; her dreadlocks pushed upward like a chimneysweep’s brush, knocking free dirt from the unlined sides. After Amanda had cleared the first few rungs, Slater clambered after her, and the women climbed in unison.

  Then they heard the low rumble of an approaching freight train. The ladder jerked hard; Amanda almost lost her footing. The metal shook. Amanda screamed, as pebbles and dirt crashed down onto her dreadlocks from above.

  Slater shouted, “A tremor. Hold on.”

  To wedge herself more tightly against Amanda, Slater stepped up another rung. But in her haste, her shoe landed on the thinnest, middle section of the rusted bar.

  Her foot crashed through the rung, as the shaking stopped. Slater shot downward. The broken rung snagged her falling arm. She screamed; her cry echoed up the ventilation shaft and broke free into the night air.

  Slater landed on the tunnel floor; her head cracked against rock; the flashlight jumped from her hand.

  Amanda hugged the ladder and looked downward. The stone and dirt topping her dreadlocks poured down onto Slater like soil into a fresh grave.

  In the dim light of the thrown flashlight, from her position, Amanda could only see an unmoving forearm sliced from wrist to elbow.

  Amanda looked upward. The star centered in the rectangle of night sky appeared brighter than ever. Amanda listened for any hint of the approaching predators and chewed her lip.

  – 56 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Moscow

  The jewel glowed. But Sergei Sokolóv ignored the flashing red light on the phone and instead continued staring at the monitor. Except for the people trailing from the main building, the pixilated image of the Prado remained unchanged. Every few seconds, his eyes flicked to the screen’s lower-right corner, where the timestamp ticked relentlessly onward. After a final check, a guttural roar broke from his mouth.

  He lifted the handset and waited for no words from the other end. Staring at the wall map, at the circled X obliterating Washington D.C., he said, “Punish the Americans—hobble the animals so that they may never again stand tall. Russia will rise again to greatness—and with it, you and I. This changes nothing. The decapitation strike failed. But the real event happens tomorrow. This is the key to Russia’s future. Now go, darlin
g, go with the greatest of care.”

  The disconnect button went down slowly and evenly.

  Then Sergei Sokolóv ripped up the phone; it smashed into the wall map. He spun his chair and gazed out the window. The stars teased him with their twinkling hints of thermonuclear conflagration.

  ∞

  2120 miles away, the Beretta Bobcat landed on the tabletop lying between the sisters. The glossy wood reflected the name carved on the whalebone grip: “Nin.”

  Its owner snatched up a handset and growled into the mouthpiece, “Proceed to the island at maximal speed.” And the Legacy 600 banked hard to the southwest.

  ∞

  Seven miles beneath the Legacy, Sam Quick and Eric Hunt slapped hands.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Quick said, kneeling beside the dead man. “Because as we used to say in New Mexico: with sheep to range and coyotes howling, your night has just begun.”

  She coaxed out the Walther P99 peering from Utley’s pocket; the gun slid under her waistband at the small of her back. Then Quick squeezed the hand that had trembled for so many years, and that had ended its exertions on this boiler-room floor, alongside its final act, scrawling the word “island” in its master’s blood.

  I don’t know who you are, she thought. But thank you.

  She turned to Hunt. “Does your map show a back way out of this tomb?”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the special ops team?”

  “I’m afraid we’ve no time to hang around.” Sam Quick pointed at the ramp. “We need to get back to La Palma. Kalia is waiting.”

  – 57 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Island of La Palma

  For a moment longer, Amanda searched the rectangle of star-filled sky for the answer. Then, carefully negotiating the rung that had failed Kalia Slater, she scrambled down the ladder.