The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1)

by Scott Corlett

  As quietly as she could, she jumped off the bottom rung into a crouched position beside Slater.

  “Kalia … Kalia,” she whispered, patting the Hawaiian’s cheeks.

  Slater coughed and sat up, nearly knocking heads with the other woman. Amanda grabbed her and held a finger to Slater’s lip. “We must be quiet.”

  Slater caught her breath. She lifted her arm. Blood was leaking from the long cut. “What happened?”

  “I’ll fill you in later. Right now, we need to climb this ladder and find a phone.” Amanda wrapped her arm under Slater.

  The Hawaiian rose to her knees and sucked in a breath. Holding Amanda’s shoulder, she hoisted herself to her full height. Then her knees buckled, and she nearly went down before Amanda caught her.

  “I’ll only slow you down. You have to go without me. Take the gun. Get help.”

  Amanda shook her head. “Lately I’ve made too many cowardly choices. Now it’s time for some brave ones.” She pointed into the darkness beyond the ladder. “We’ll hide and they’ll think we escaped up the ventilation shaft.”

  Slater smiled at the other woman. Then she took a deep breath, causing her face to contort.

  “And if worse comes to worse …” Amanda patted the Micro UZI still hanging across Slater’s chest. She saw Slater’s face remained scrunched, and the injured woman’s chest, frozen. “Does it hurt to breath?” she whispered.

  Slater shook her head; Amanda’s forehead wrinkled. The dreadlocks spilled their last bits of soil, as Amanda followed Kalia Slater’s gaze and looked over her shoulder.

  All Amanda could see were the four red laser sights glaring at her from the darkness.

  – 58 –

  Monday, 16 July

  Madrid

  Sam Quick and Eric Hunt glanced at each other. Then they both looked down again. The man standing before them wore baggy shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a heavy-metal band, a close-cut dark beard, and a purple Mohawk that split his head in half. And, as Hunt noted to himself, even with the four-inch-high blade of hair, the man barely reached his chest.

  The man nodded at the office window, at the tarmac beyond. “Davies said you need an off-the-books lift to the Canary Islands. I don’t need your names, but you can call me ‘Zero’.” A thumb jacked at a small jet sitting on the runway outside the office. “Shall we?”

  Quick nodded. “By all means.”

  Moments later, as the scientists buckled their seatbelts, the plane started moving. It made a sharp turn. Then it accelerated, pressing Quick and Hunt back into their seats. The fuselage and the runway formed a perfect thirteen-degree angle. The Gulfstream rose only briefly and then leveled. From their respective windows, the scientists watched suburban Madrid’s circuit board of lit streets and dark buildings looming large below the plane.

  “Welcome ladies and gentlemen to flight triple-zero, our service from Madrid to the lovely Canary Islands,” the pilot’s voice boomed from the PA speakers. “Tonight, until we are well clear of the Spanish capital, we’ll cruise at five thousand feet. This altitude will require some sudden maneuvers”—the plane banked hard right—“to avoid certain topographical elements”—it dove hard left—“otherwise called mountains.

  “Because we understand that some passengers have tight connections on La Palma, we’ll travel tonight at our G550’s maximal speed, just a hair shy of Mach 0.89. Now, please sit back and enjoy our two-hour flight.”

  The plane banked hard again, and Quick looked at Hunt. “So, are you ready to scrap your PhD and apply to law school?”

  ∞

  4400 miles away, the young seaman yanked up the handset. He listened for a moment and then offered the phone to his hovering companion.

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, hello, Dr. Matson, I’m calling from the Madrid embassy. We spoke earlier—”

  “Ah yes, the gentleman whose intransigence nearly cost thousands of lives, including that of our nation’s leader. If you’re calling to ask me on a date, I’m afraid my calendar is full.” Matson winked at the officer.

  “Um yes … about earlier, I do apologize. But the actual reason for this call is that we have failed to locate Dr. Quick and Mr. Hunt. They have seemingly disappeared, and we fear they might be lost in the utility tunnels. In any case, we would very much like to debrief them regarding tonight’s events. And”—his voice lowered in tone—“President James would like to personally thank Dr. Quick and Mr. Hunt for their service to the nation. Has Dr. Quick contacted you since she disarmed the bomb?”

  “Sam Quick’s a big girl—she hardly need check in with me.” Matson glanced at the wall clock and wondered how much time she had before Harley’s inevitable arrival. Even that old dog couldn’t sleep through news like this.

  “I haven’t a clue where either Sam Quick or Eric Hunt might be. Perhaps they’re following a lead on Quick’s other intern, the missing Kalia Slater. Or perhaps, after saving your hairless hinny, they simply went to get some well-deserved shuteye,” she said, watching a green dot steadily track to the southwest from Madrid, across Spain, on the computer screen.

  “Well, Dr. Matson, if you do hear from Dr. Quick, please ask her to contact the embassy ASAP.”

  “I’ll put your telephone number right at the top of my speed-dial list—numero uno. Adios.”

  Matson passed the handset back to the seaman. “Now, why in the hell did Sam rush back to La Palma without letting me know?”

  Matson’s tanned hand glowed gold against the starched white fabric covering the young man’s shoulder. “Honey, you might as well make yourself comfortable, because we’re in for a long night. And while you’re at it, pull up everything we’ve got on that damn Devil’s Throat. I’ve a feeling Sam is about to perform a doozy of a Heimlich maneuver.”

  – 59 –

  Monday, 16 July

  Island of La Palma

  The suitcase’s lights winked with the regularity of a used-car salesman. Alongside it, the men pinned Amanda in the center of the tracks, down against the rail ties. The dreadlocked woman twisted and struggled, but the men were stronger.

  Kalia Slater clenched her fists. It killed her. Her head had cleared after the fall; she was ready to fight again. But the red laser dots playing on her chest and forehead, coming from the guns, meant she could do nothing for Amanda—right now anyway.

  Using heavy plastic ties, one of the men bound Amanda’s legs and arms to the rails. At each appendage, he remained in a squat, grabbed the tie’s loose end, and leaned back on his heels. Each time, the application of the man’s full weight tightened and locked the strap. And ripped the plastic’s sharp edges deeper into Amanda’s skin, eliciting a fresh scream.

  After they had fully secured Amanda, with her head three feet from the suitcase, the men pushed Slater onto the tracks and down onto the ground. They forced her prone in the opposite direction from Amanda, leaving the women situated head to shoulder.

  The man repeated the binding procedure. As the plastic sliced into the already torn flesh of her arm, Slater pictured herself riding her board off Pohioki, her favorite beach at home on the Big Island. She remained silent, as she slipped into the tube of a giant wave.

  The man grunted and let go of the last tie. He squatted beside the women’s heads and pulled out two red handkerchiefs from a pocket. Amanda’s head writhed back and forth until he grabbed her dreadlocks and cranked his hand, twisting the stalks; Amanda cried out; and one of the cloth squares filled her mouth. He threaded a plastic strap under and around her head. The tie snapped together into a constricting noose, sinking down to her molars, locking the red gag in place. The procedure was repeated on Slater.

  He rose and joined the other men. To the prone women, they appeared towering giants. A knife slipped from a pocket.

  The man smiled at his companions and said something in their language. Goose pimples rose on Slater’s legs and arms, as he moved for her legs. No mental imagery could protect her from what she knew was coming
.

  His pants squawked. He spoke sharply, scowling at his companions; the knife withdrew; the held air escaped Slater and Amanda’s lungs. He pulled a walkie-talkie from a pocket and pushed a button. The women heard loud and command-like barks issue from the device.

  The man looked down at the women and said something that caused his companions to laugh. Slater and Amanda watched the sneering men circle like vultures.

  Then they were gone.

  The women craned their heads and looked at each other. They could not speak. But their locked eyes affirmed what each woman was thinking: The men would return. It was just a matter of when. But for now, except for the metal suitcase, Kalia Slater and Amanda were alone in the Devil’s Throat.

  – 60 –

  Monday, 16 July

  The Eastern Atlantic

  The cabin of the Gulfstream 550 was silent. From her seat, Sam Quick glanced over at Eric Hunt. Since they had departed Madrid, the grad student had been typing on his smartphone with the intensity of a video-game player about to crest his lifetime high score.

  Quick turned back to her window and stared out again at the predawn sky. The whirling pieces returned to her mind: Kalia Slater. Manuelo Alcanzar. La Garganta del Diablo. The Zanin sisters. Sergei Sokolóv. The dead bodies in the coal tunnel. The old man in the boiler room. The suitcase bomb. The images twisted and swirled like fallen leaves caught in an eddy of air on a warm October day. What are we missing—

  “Sam, you need to see this,” Hunt said. Quick turned and found the grad student pointing at his phone. “Way more than just the Zanins will be waiting for us when we land on La Palma.”

  Quick took the phone and looked at the screen. She read, rapidly swiping her thumb over the glass to keep the text scrolling. “How—”

  “The plane’s satellite Internet connection. I revisited the Sokolóv administrative network, going back over the records to see if I could find a money trail tying Sokolóv to the suitcase bomb. I tried back-tracing all shipments charged to Sokolóv accounts destined for Spain during the previous six months. But I came up with nada. Then I expanded the time range. And still nothing.”

  “So you tried shipments to Prague.”

  “Exactly. That’s when I found an air shipment from Baku that landed in Prague on the same day as Nin Zanin did, before she flew on to Madrid and our first encounter with her.”

  Quick stopped scrolling. “And here it shows charges for a land shipment from Prague to a warehouse in Zaragoza, Spain, which arrived last Thursday.”

  She looked at Hunt. “But this manifest is for a shipment of four crates, each of identical weight. Which means not one but—”

  “Four suitcase bombs,” Hunt completed the sentence.

  “So where are the other three?”

  “Keep scrolling.”

  Quick’s thumb flicked the phone. Then she stopped and stared at the screen.

  “Yeah, you read right. A shipment of three crates left Zaragoza two days ago by plane heading for—”

  “La Palma.” Quick handed Hunt his phone. “We need to call Florida. Now.”

  ∞

  “Molly, Eric and I are less than one hour away from landing on La Palma, and we’ve got a real problem.”

  “I figured you were headed that way,” Matson’s voice replied from the speaker of the phone lying on Quick’s tray table. “What’s happening?”

  Quick swiftly filled in Matson on Hunt’s discovery. She ended, “So Sokolóv and his girls are packing three suitcase nukes on a volcanic island in the eastern Atlantic, an island that is a known catastrophic landslide risk. Are you thinking what I am?”

  The geologist was quiet for a moment. Then she answered. “Well, I’ll be … They’re gonna trigger—”

  “The Red Pearl Effect,” Quick finished.

  Hunt looked at Quick. “The red what?”

  Matson answered for her, “The Red Pearl Effect was a military strategy that the Soviets threatened to use during a nuke attack. They planned to lay down a strand of nuclear bombs just off the port cities of America and her allies, effectively cauterizing the flow of goods and supplies between the U.S. and Europe. They’d starve any American war effort and then roll their tanks across Western Europe—that is if we didn’t nuke ’em to smithereens first.”

  “Yeah, but the suitcase bombs are on La Palma, nowhere near the United States,” Hunt pressed.

  “They’re going to trick Mother Nature into doing the dirty work. Remember La Palma’s eruption of 1949 and the Big Slip?” Matson said.

  “Of course. Why?” Hunt said.

  “Well, if La Palma collapses into the ocean, the half-trillion-ton landslide will generate the granddaddy of all tidal waves. First the wave overruns the Canary Islands. Then it crosses the Atlantic at near supersonic speeds, barely rising a bump while traversing deep water. Then it reaches the North American continental shelf, and the wave rears like an attacking Tyrannosaurus rex. Nearly simultaneously, the hungry monster blasts Miami, Washington D.C., New York, and Boston. By then, the western coasts of northern Africa and Europe are already obliterated. Think Japanese tsunami—only a thousand times worse. And the bombs don’t need to be anywhere near their targets.”

  “And let me guess,” Hunt interjected, “all you need to kick off the landslide is maybe three small nuclear suitcase bombs strategically placed along the Big Slip fault line.”

  “Et voilà,” Matson replied. “Your Red Pearl Effect—the total devastation of the American and European Atlantic coastlines.”

  “Molly, I assume, to maximize the destruction, you would time the wave to hit at high tide?” Quick asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  Quick and Hunt heard Matson say something off the phone and then the immediate sound of typing. A few moments later, the geologist continued, “According to our calculations, the next high tide affecting the greatest area of northern Atlantic shoreline will be at eight A.M. La Palma time. Less than two hours from now. Unless our Navy happens to have a ship in the vicinity—”

  “It’s up to Eric and me,” Sam Quick said. “Molly, I hate to say this: you need to call Harley.”

  ∞

  The hammer smashed against his scalp. He screamed. Blood turned the world red. He raised his hands and tried to stop Dr. Quick. But after the strike and consequent gush of blood, his strength was ebbing like the tide. The blows rained down; his consciousness was a boat on the outflowing sea. Dr. Quick smiled at him and, in preparation for the coup de grâce, raised the hammer high above her naked body. The tiny vessel carrying his consciousness slipped beyond the horizon, and all was dark.

  “¡Idiota!” Señora Reyes smacked her husband’s forehead again. “¡El teléfono! ¡¡El teléfono!!”

  The inspector sat up, pushed away his wife’s meaty hand, and then felt his head to confirm that it was actually intact. The phone on his nightstand continued ringing. He sighed and snapped on a lamp.

  “¿Sí?”

  “Inspector Reyes, it’s Sam Quick. The duty officer at the Tazacorte police station gave me your home telephone number.”

  Reyes made a mental note to assign the man to inspect the eastern guano caves tomorrow for smugglers. “Sí, Dr. Quick, how may I be of assistance at this”—Reyes looked at his alarm clock and sighed—“early hour?”

  “Inspector, Eric Hunt and I will land on La Palma in less than one hour.” Reyes felt the hammer renew its assault on his head, as Quick continued, “We’re trailing the Zanin sisters, who were involved with a now-aborted attack on the ICF meeting in Madrid, and who are flying approximately forty minutes ahead in their own plane. We suspect Kalia Slater is being held somewhere on La Palma, most likely in the Devil’s Throat. And we believe the Zanins plan a horrific attack on the United States and Europe, and, in the process, the destruction of La Palma.”

  “Oh, come now, Dr. Quick—”

  “Inspector, I need you to muster your subordinates and meet us at the mine. And if your arsenal includes any automatic
weapons, I suggest bringing them. We will be there as soon as possible.”

  A click came from the handset. Reyes sighed, put down the receiver, and looked at the blanket-covered mound lying alongside him. His wife’s face scrunched, as a snort broke from her mouth and echoed throughout the bedroom. He checked the time again and shook his head.

  Then, his head throbbing, Inspector Reyes crawled beneath the coverlet and snuggled against his wife’s warm body.

  – 61 –

  Monday, 16 July

  The Eastern Atlantic

  The night predators had had their fill. Before morning’s first light, which can turn the eater into the eaten, the nocturnia had returned to their respective lairs: some to the island’s volcanic caves, some to deep burrows in the malvasia vineyards, and some to the waxy undersides of the banana tree leaves. But one night creature remained on the hunt, lowering its wheels as it glided toward the airport’s 7200 feet of runway.

  Nin Zanin sighed and shoved her Beretta Bobcat into its thigh holster. “Sister, we are so very close: we need only finalize the detonation sequence to maximize the landfall—”

  “The landslide … the landslide … you and Sergei never get this term right,” Solta Zanin corrected.

  “Yes, of course, to maximize the landslide, the suitcases must explode in the proper sequence with the appropriate interval between each detonation. And Dr. Quick can’t interfere this time; she’s probably still running about the coal tunnels looking for her missing intern—three hours away in Madrid.”

  The phone barked. Nin sighed and reached for it. She listened, as the thin lights of La Palma grew outside the window, and the jet glided just faster than stall speed.

  Opposite, Solta watched her sister’s lip curl.

  “Sí. Gracias.” The satellite phone returned to its compartment. Nin looked at her sister. “That was our man on the island police force.” She lifted the cabin phone and spoke in Azerbaijani. The Legacy’s wheels bounced on the tarmac. The plane hung just above the pavement.