The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1) Read online

  THE

  RED PEARL

  EFFECT

  A Sam Quick Adventure™

  BY

  SCOTT CORLETT

  THE RED PEARL EFFECT

  Copyright © 2014 by Scott Corlett

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9905364-1-3

  Contact: scottcorlett.com

  Cover design by ZielCreative

  Interior design and layout by 52 Novels LLC

  Author photo by John Nieto

  For Peter

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Part I

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

  Part II

  21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43

  Part III

  44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68

  Alchemy

  Acknowledgments

  About Scott Corlett

  Coming Soon

  INTRODUCTION

  My torment began more than a decade ago, after seeing a television documentary about the potentially catastrophic threat posed by a tiny volcanic island lying off the African coast.

  That’s when those nagging “what if … ” questions hijacked my daydreams and held them captive for the next ten years, propelling me 6000 miles to the top of an active volcano in the eastern Atlantic, and giving life to the adventures of Sam Quick.

  This first book of the series introduces us to Dr. Samantha “Sam” Quick and her team at NRLI, the Navy’s elite research lab. In her mid-thirties, Quick is a brilliant researcher governed by cold facts, observable phenomena, and the laws of science. Quick’s mentor, the hilarious Molly Matson, is a sexagenarian geologist who likes her words sharp and men young. Two grad students on summer internships—the geeky, muscle-headed midwesterner Eric Hunt, and Kalia Slater, a budding volcanologist straight from Hawaii’s Big Island—round out the crew.

  Sam Quick may start out the book governed by her scientific training (a little too much so, the freewheeling Matson would say). But by the end, events force Quick to confront the raw and primal drives within her that she has so methodically buried under logic and reason until now.

  And in between, Sam Quick takes us on one hell of a roll-coaster adventure thriller, from the abandoned mineshafts of a volcanic island to the capitals of Europe to the rustbelt of America. While the threats to Quick, to those she cares about, and to the very country she loves escalate with each new turn.

  The adventure changes them all, but most of all Quick. This highest-stakes experiment yields an unexpected result for the scientist: she is human like everyone else.

  We don’t yet know how this discovery will play out in the next book in the series. But you can be sure that Sam Quick is already hunting for the next adventure.

  I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed the journey.

  SC

  – PROLOGUE –

  June 1949

  La Garganta del Diablo Mine

  Island of La Palma, the Eastern Atlantic

  Today would decide if he lived or died. But for a few moments longer, he could believe the day was like any other: his bones echoing with the constant crash of metal against rock, dirt and sweat caking his face and upper body, and his hair and dungarees drenched as if he had walked into the ocean.

  Digging was not the life that Poncio Díaz had dreamed of. As a boy, he had imagined farming a small banana plot on the island’s steep slopes or fishing the rich waters of the surrounding sea. But he had dutifully followed his father and brothers down into the mine.

  Now, a few weeks shy of his thirtieth birthday, Díaz had spent half his life underground chasing the red ore deep into the old volcano, entombed in hellish burrows just like this one: a few makeshift ribs of thick timber fighting the mountain’s weight; a steep footpath for hauling out excavations; and everywhere, trickling water roaming the rock walls and dripping from the stone overhead.

  Díaz slammed his pickax head into the rock. Stone and soil collapsed to the ground. And by the time the metal claw broke free of the dirt, Díaz understood that today was nothing like any other before.

  Not anything at all.

  Nada.

  First the delicate hairs in his ears vibrated. Then the reverberations washed down his body like a gulp of hot coffee, sliding into his gut and spreading out to his extremities, onto his ax and boots, and the surrounding timber and rock.

  Then the first rock fell from the tunnel ceiling. The massive support timbers groaned and whined under the pressure. Men behind him shouted.

  Díaz threw down his ax, grabbed the two young miners working alongside him, and shoved them up the shaft, all the while calling on San Gabriel to keep watch over his family at home.

  Miners slid left and right, madly grabbing for any handhold to propel themselves forward. Rocks and clumps of dirt rained down. Diaz’s boots slipped in the red muck as if it were ice. The noise was deafening.

  But Díaz saw the timbers were holding.

  Just maybe we live.

  Then the rock wall exploded five feet ahead. Steam blasted from the breach. The superheated gas stripped the skin and muscle from the passing miner’s face—one of the men that Díaz had pushed up the shaft—before the man could even scream. When his body hit the ground, his skull was as clean and shiny as a classroom skeleton.

  A boiling gusher chased the steam flash, shooting straight across the narrow tunnel, scouring away the opposite wall’s dirt and rock like a hydraulic drill.

  Díaz slammed himself against the shaft wall; the torrent roared past. The scalding rapids crashed into the tunnel’s dead end, forming a roiling, bloody whirlpool.

  Then just as suddenly as the earth started moving, the ground settled. But Díaz and the other miners hardly noticed: they could only watch in horror, as the water spewing from the rock doubled in force.

  The miners uphill of the breach yelled back at Díaz. Their words were lost to the thunder. But he knew what they were shouting: “¡El agua del Diablo!”—the miners’ name for the water superheated by the volcanic rock.

  The only man trapped below the gusher, Díaz waved on his coworkers without hesitation. He would let no one else die for him.

  The men watched him for a moment longer. Then the older miners nodded gravely, crossed themselves, and started dragging the younger men up the shaft. The attacking water could collapse the tunnel at any moment. And the miners’ creed—safety then rescue—mandated their continued ascent despite their coworker’s plight.

  Díaz watched the last man disappear from sight.

  He looked from the searing water spraying from the shaft wall to the deadly lake already climbing from the tunnel’s end. Utterly alone, he faced only two options now, both equally terrifying: hope the deluge abated before the rising waters boiled him alive—or run through the blistering cascade in a bid for escape.

  In Tazacorte, the town on the harbor below the mine, the bells of San Gabriel Arcángel wildly tolled as if worn by pan
icked cows. The ground had stopped moving. But Ana Díaz, clutching her son, ran for the old church, along with the other villagers.

  As they entered, el campanero took the bell rope and steadied the tolling into the regular call of alarm. Ana Díaz settled her child on a pew. Then she crumpled in prayer and clasped her hands into a knurled chunk of icy blue-white flesh, wringing all blood and life from them.

  Despite the tolling bells, she heard only one thing now, the chanting in her head: Algo está terriblemente mal … Algo está terriblemente mal … Something is terribly wrong … Something is terribly wrong …

  In the mine, scalding water roared from the breach. Steam and aerosolized mud choked the air. And pinned against the stone, Poncio Díaz was about to lose one of his two terrible options: only a small patch of dirt remained before the water reached his boots.

  Then the boiling water took a first, tentative lick of muddy shoe leather.

  It was now or never.

  Díaz crossed himself and pictured his wife and son for what he knew might be the last time. He crouched down and leveraged as firm a foothold as possible.

  Díaz sprang forward. First hurdling the faceless corpse. Then entering the boiling gusher. The geyser pounded his right flank, nearly sweeping him off his feet. Ana’s voice urged him on. He broke free of the scalding water. His side felt afire. He almost collapsed from shock.

  But he staggered onward.

  Díaz nearly reached the main tunnel. Then he heard it. Fleetingly, he thought the water’s roar was multiplying. Then the mountain violently contorted. Timbers screamed and cracked like gunfire. Shaft walls began sliding as if they were made of sand.

  He forgot the fire in his side and scrambled on, begging God to keep safe his wife and son.

  But they were not.

  The church began bucking like a fishing boat in rough waters. The bells clamored wildly. Mothers pulled children to their chests. Men threw themselves over their families. Ana Díaz screamed for her husband and covered her son.

  In the village houses, clay pots and stacks of brightly glazed tableware danced and then fell from open shelves, shattering on colorful tile floors. As the shaking intensified, the floors cracked as if they were nothing more than dried mud puddles. Ceilings crashed down. Walls crumbled.

  On the summit above the mine, a geyser of molten rock shot high into the cloudless June sky like an orange flare deployed by the island in a last, desperate appeal to the neighboring atolls.

  Moments later, not far from La Garganta del Diablo, soil and rocks started disappearing into the hillside.

  At first, the sinkhole was roughly circular, with dirt, stone, and small brush falling into the void. Then it broke along a line parallel to the mountain ridge, growing faster than the distance between two horses galloping in opposite directions, racing across the island.

  In San Gabriel Arcángel, the villagers looked heavenward. The frescoed ceiling was cracking like a mirror breaking in slow motion. Clumps of plaster rained down. In last desperation, mothers shoved away their clinging children, stuffing them under the heavy pews.

  On the mountain, the sinkhole now ripped north-to-south for seven miles, cleaving the island in two. Then the half-trillion-ton flank supporting Tazacorte began sliding into the Atlantic.

  The village fishing docks sank beneath the waves.

  The sea rushed the town’s lower reaches.

  In the mine, Díaz pulled himself into the main tunnel. He fought to keep moving, but the earth felt as if it were falling from beneath him. He grabbed the side of an ore cart and went to his knees.

  His heart furiously convulsed, frantically trying to gird his plummeting blood pressure. Shock set in. He lay curled on the red dirt. Not even his wife’s pleading could raise him. Seconds later, Poncio Díaz was dead, his scalded flesh hanging like strips of wet, ragged paper.

  In the old church, stone hailed in earnest. Support timbers crashed down. But amid the chaos, one figure returned to calm: Ana Díaz, her son tucked beneath the pew, relaxed back against the old polished wood, looked up, and reached out her arms. She saw her Poncio. He was smiling at her, his head cocked and his eyes as loving as ever. But instead of reaching for her hands, he gently shook his head and pointed to their son. She saw his lip move: “Te quiero.” Then, he disappeared, and her soul quaked a thousand times more strongly than the crumbling island.

  Of course, her husband was right: it must be this way. She threw herself to the stone floor and crawled under the heavy pew, wrapping her body around her son. A final cacophonous clang of bells drowned out the last dying prayers as San Gabriel Arcángel, defeated, folded in on itself.

  Then for reasons known only to the gods of rock and earth, the landslide stopped. The tremors decreased in severity. Less than ten minutes after Poncio Díaz had swung his pickax a final time, the dust began to settle over La Palma.

  – Part I –

  – 1 –

  November 1989

  The Soviet Embassy, East Berlin

  The crowd’s cheers might crack open the embassy’s walls. Good, he thought, let them.

  Since morning, Senior Warrant Officer Dmitry Petrov had watched the mob thicken in the street outside. Now, for as far as he could see, people jammed every inch of ground, sharing bottles and hugging in ever-shifting combinations, all as they sang their German songs.

  Petrov turned from the window and looked into the mirror hanging over the bureau. The face staring back at him was drawn, but the eyes, lively, two blue oases amid drifting, pale sand. He straightened his jacket and brushed the red epaulettes covering each shoulder.

  Then he grabbed his Makarov PM off the dresser and slipped it into its holster. Air picked up speed between his front teeth, pulsing and twisting into the tune of “God Bless America.” My chance comes soon. Anything can happen now.

  ∞

  Each strike of wooden heel on concrete step ricocheted like a gunshot. The crowd’s noise died halfway down the stairs. Petrov was alone, still softly whistling as he descended into the embassy basement.

  At the bottom, now silent, he walked a dozen yards along the gray corridor, until he reached a nondescript door sandwiched by two soldiers, each young man standing in full salute.

  Petrov nodded; one of the guards knocked on the door.

  It opened. Petrov did not blink at the muzzle aimed at his face. His analog grunted from inside the room and lowered his gun.

  Petrov entered the small, windowless chamber. His colleague holstered his weapon and left without saying a word. Petrov turned the lock and then slid onto the chair.

  He glanced at the table lying along the opposite wall. He never knew how many he would find sitting there when he reported for duty. Sometimes, ten of the metal suitcases sat aligned in a neat row, sometimes, none.

  No one had ever told him what the suitcases held; no words were ever needed. Petrov knew these were the deadly pawns in the forty-year game of atomic chess between his country and the West, the miniaturized nuclear weapons or so-called suitcase bombs that the Soviet Union freely moved via diplomatic shipments to its embassies deep within the enemy’s territory. Bombs that could, without the slightest warning, decapitate the governments based in the cities home to those embassies.

  He counted. Four.

  Petrov wondered what would happen to them now. Not my concern, he ultimately figured. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes.

  An hour later, a knock broke his nap. Petrov sighed, stood up, and then grabbed the lock. His Makarov leveled at the door, as was protocol. He opened the door prepared to lower his weapon from the scowl of a KGB agent.

  Instead, a bullet shattered his front teeth.

  Petrov fell to the ground, his eyes wide, a signal in his brain wildly ricocheting but never quite finding the path to his trigger finger. He could see the guards lying in the corridor with blood seeping from their throats.

  Two men wearing Soviet military dress stepped over him. A shoe slammed the Makarov from his hand. Petro
v watched the attackers move directly for the suitcases.

  One man whistled, as he stopped at the table. “I’ve never seen one in person.”

  “Not much to look at,” the other man said, patting one of the bombs.

  Petrov’s eyes widened—they were speaking Russian, but their accents were wrong. Central Asian maybe. He struggled to clear his airway; foamy blood spilled from his mouth, dripping onto his uniform.

  One of the intruders glanced at Petrov. “No loose ends, remember.”

  The other man nodded.

  Their muzzles swung toward Petrov’s chest, and their voices said in perfect unison, “Thank you, comrade, for your exemplary service to Mother Russia.”

  His body seemed to collapse. I was so close—

  The bullets tore through his uniform and savagely chewed Petrov’s heart. And the shooters grabbed the suitcases.

  – 2 –

  Present Day

  South Florida

  The frost-blue roadster hooked a right, whipping past a sign that simply read, “NRLI.” The Jag’s engine roared; the car accelerated as if it were eating an onramp to a German autobahn rather than trundling up a sleepy service road.

  Inside the guardhouse, the snarl of the British engine tore Petty Officer Eddie Lewis’s gaze from the duty log. His hand shot for the red slap button. Activating the anti-intrusion system would launch super-hardened titanium bollards capable of cold stopping an explosive-laden Mack truck traveling at 75 mph, from silos set in the roadway to waist height in less than 1.5 seconds.

  Then Lewis saw the onrushing wedge of familiar blue metal, and his hand stopped a quarter-inch above the red button.

  He grabbed a handheld scanner and jumped off the stool. In the entry lane, Lewis faced the oncoming vehicle, rose to his full height, and raised an arm over his head.

  The gap between Lewis and the Jag now closed at 60 mph; only a dozen palm trees marked the distance from the car to the sentry. The pouncing chrome cat on the hood’s leading edge locked on the seaman.