The Trident Conspiracy: A Gripping Vigilante Thriller

by KJ Kalis

  “There’s nothing we can do, Jess. I told you that.”

  Jess got up and stared at him, “Chase Montgomery. Are you seriously gonna let someone kill your daughter? What’s wrong with you? You’re not even going to try to save her?”

  Jess stared at the floor and licked her lips, wondering if she’d gone too far, “Where is the ABG or whatever it’s called?”

  “It’s at the lab.”

  “Where are your research notes with the formula?”

  “At the lab, but Jess, I told you…”

  “Shut up!” Jess was surprised at the force with which the words came out of her mouth. She was angry. The last thing she wanted to do was yell at her brother, but someone needed to snap him back into reality. “We’re not going to give up on Abby! You won’t be able to live with yourself, and neither can I. We're going back to the lab. Right now.”

  Chase stared towards the back of the house, “What about Piper? What if they come after her?”

  “Bring her or not. Either way, we’re going.”

  Chase shook his head and picked up his car keys, “She’s probably better off here.”

  Jess didn’t say anything. She followed Chase out to the garage and got into the passenger side of his car. As he pulled it out, Chase sent a quick text to Piper saying they were going to the lab. There was no response.

  As they got on the freeway, Jess knew in her gut there were options, options that Chase just wasn’t willing to explore. Chase had always been a rules follower, very binary. There were only two options for nearly everything in his life — on or off. Jess’s work as an intelligence analyst had grown in her a need to be more flexible in her thinking, to look for things that were hidden, things that were secret unwritten motives. Chase wasn’t tuned up that way. “Tell me what ABG is,” Jess whispered as the car merged into traffic, headed north to the Trident Labs building.

  Chase stared straight ahead, his two hands on the steering wheel, giving a slight shake to his head. “I can’t.”

  “Chase, you have to. You have to let me help you. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. Can you imagine the guilt I’m gonna have if we can’t get her back?”

  Another second went by, “It’s glue.”

  “What?”

  “Glue. Arterial Blood Glue. ABG. It’s for the military. It’s to save lives.”

  “Glue? What does it do?”

  Chase cleared his throat, passing a truck and trailer that looked like they were hauling four horses north to Phoenix, “One of the biggest problems the military has is loss of blood. All the soldiers wear Kevlar, but they can’t cover their entire body with it. The body has joints, you know, knees and elbows and such. They can’t cover every inch of the body with Kevlar because it doesn’t bend. You’d basically mummify a soldier. They’d never be able to move. What terrorists have gotten very good at is aiming for the neck and the exposed area on the shoulders and the sides of our soldiers overseas. If a bullet nicks an artery a soldier can bleed out in two minutes. Even the best trauma surgeon at the most world-class hospital here probably wouldn’t be able to save their life. ABG, or Arterial Blood Glue, fixes that problem.”

  Jess stared at her brother for a second, amazed at what he’d been able to accomplish. “And you developed this all by yourself?”

  Chase nodded, “Yeah, for the most part. I had a lab assistant that was helping me for a little bit five years ago when I started the project, but he’s long gone. He moved on to another company or something. I don’t know.”

  “Exactly how does ABG work?”

  “It’s a thick liquid, just like the consistency of glue. That’s how I got the idea. I figured if there was a way that you could glue the injured area closed under pressure, the body would build and maintain enough blood flow so soldiers could be tended to and then taken for proper medical care. If someone in the field gets shot and it clips their carotid, all they need to do is open the tube and pour the ABG on the area. Basically, what the ABG does is rapidly coagulates the blood, just like it normally would except for the fact that it deals with arterial injuries. They are a little different than a scrape on your knee, for instance. If you cut your finger or your knee, there isn’t a ton of blood flow. It more seeps out than anything else, the purpose being to clean the wound and seal it and start the healing process. With an arterial injury, the pressure of the blood being pumped by the heart sends the blood out in a spurt, not in a seep. Do you see what I mean?”

  Jess nodded.

  “So, ABG seals up the hole like if you were in a leaky boat and there was water coming in. Except this time, we’re trying to keep the blood in the body, not keep water out. ABG thickens up the blood super-fast and then seals it. It’s not a permanent fix — as I said, someone with that kind of injury, whether it’s a femoral artery or carotid or something like that, they would still have to seek proper medical attention in short order, but it extends the window. Instead of having two minutes to live, they would have several hours to get treatment.”

  Talking about Chase’s work was a nice distraction from the fact they were racing back to the lab with no real plan, Jess thought. If nothing else, at least she had a better idea of what Chase spent his hours doing. Did Piper know? Jess wondered how much Chase told his wife. Knowing her personality, probably nothing. She seemed to be only concerned about how much money Chase made and what he was going to buy her next. Jess pushed the thought away. True or not, it wasn’t going to help them get Abby back.

  Pulling into the lab complex, Chase glanced at Jess, “Obviously, you can’t tell anyone anything about this. You know that, right?”

  “Of course. But somehow someone heard about ABG. How could that be?”

  Chase pulled his car into a parking spot and turned off the engine. “I don’t know. Only a handful of people know about the project, or at least that’s my impression. The thing is, it’s not a weapon or anything. Why would someone take Abby over this?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Jess sat in the car with Chase for a minute, the engine running, a cool breeze from the air conditioning pouring out of the vents. Chase had chosen a parking spot under a tree which gave them at least a little bit of shade. It was the first chance Jess had to catch her breath since the robbery that morning. At that moment, it seemed like a faraway memory, like something that had never happened and yet, she was sitting in the parking lot of her brother's lab knowing that her niece was somewhere with people they didn’t know who clearly had an evil intent. It was almost more than her mind could process. Jess bit her lip for a second, wishing she was home, staring at her computer screen, rifling through documents and chatter, getting ready for her next presentation. All of it seemed so simple and easy compared to the way the day had been so far. And time was ticking.

  Chase glanced at Jess, his hands resting on the steering wheel, “Now what?”

  “I have no idea…”

  7

  The metal bench bolted to the floor at the back of the cage was beginning to give her a backache, Abby thought. There was no cushion. She shifted, trying to get comfortable, but she felt like her bones were poking into the metal no matter how she sat. How long she’d been locked up in the cage, she wasn’t sure. Her memory was coming back in pieces. Breakfast with Aunt Jess and then a stop at the bank, then the gunmen, then…

  Abby pressed her thumbnail into her index finger, giving it a little pinch, trying to distract herself. Every time she started to think about what happened that morning, she got to the part when the gunmen told everyone to stand up. She’d done that. She’d done exactly what they asked her to do. Abby remembered turning, hoping that Aunt Jess was right in front of her until she felt someone grab her wrist and yank her out of line. It was so sudden that she nearly lost her balance, tripping on what she guessed was the transition between the tile in front of the teller’s counter and the carpet that covered the rest of the bank. The hood over her face made it impossible to see and her heart was beating so loud in h
er chest that she could barely think clearly. All she wanted to do was go home, see her family and climb into bed.

  Abby swallowed and stared at the concrete floor trying to remember more of what happened after she’d been dragged from the bank. There were two sets of strong hands that lifted her up and then pushed her down onto a bench, the plastic from the cable ties eating into the skin on her wrists. It kind of hurt at the moment, their fingers pinching her, the plastic from the cables rubbing her skin raw.

  Distracted by the pain, Abby didn’t even realize she was in a vehicle until it started to move, a wave of nausea passing over her. She wasn’t used to traveling inside of a car and not being able to see anything. A second later, she remembered the hood yanked off her head, foam being stuffed in her ears and then the blackness of the hood again. While the hood was off, she noticed they were in a van. There were two men in the front of it and two men in the back with her, frowns on their faces.

  Time passed. She didn’t know if she sat in the van for a long time or just a few minutes. It was hard to tell which.

  Then she remembered the motion stopped.

  Abby didn’t have any idea where they were when the van stopped. All she knew was she felt two sets of hands pull her, half carrying her, out of the van and drag her over ground her feet couldn’t quite find. A second later, she’d felt another bench underneath her, the glaring lights of the cage constricting her pupils so quickly it gave her a headache as they pulled the hood off. The men in front of her worked quickly to remove the earplugs and unclip her cable ties.

  And that’s where she was now.

  It had only been in the last few minutes she’d worked up the courage to look up from the floor. She seemed to be in some sort of a warehouse, but the lights above her cage were so bright that it made it difficult to see into the murky darkness beyond where she was sitting. It was as if the cage was draped in light. Everything else outside of it seemed to be murky or black. As she waited for her eyes to adjust, she looked around the cage. There was nothing in it -- no water, no food, nothing. The floor was concrete, but she noticed it had a layer of dust or dirt on top of it. Which, she couldn’t tell. Abby dragged her toe, still in its tennis shoe across the floor, a small cinder catching under the tread making the slightest grating noise.

  As her eyes adjusted to the warehouse, she noticed what looked to be a bank of computers off to her right. They were set up in a semi-circle, kind of like a gaming room, she thought. Two of the men were looking at what was on the screens, pointing and murmuring under their breath. She was too far away to see what they were looking at. Another man, still in his black gear from the bank, was standing by the doorway just past the white van they must have ridden in to get to the warehouse. The last man was sitting on a folding chair just outside of the spotlights of her cage. It looked like he was watching her, but his head was down.

  Abby chewed the inside of her lip and wondered if it was okay for her to stand up. The only thing the men had told her was that she couldn’t give them any trouble. Was standing up giving them trouble? She eased the palms of her hands to the edge of the bench and pushed herself up to standing, waiting to see what might happen, butterflies forming in her stomach. The man watching the cage glanced up at her but didn’t move. Abby took that as a good sign. Walking closer to the edge of the cage, she glanced at the man again. He wasn’t looking at her. He sat leaning against the back of the folding chair, one of his legs crossed over the other, tossing something on the ground after chewing it a little bit. Sunflower seeds. Abby could hear the shells dropping every few seconds, a little pile of what looked like leftover birdseed sitting on the floor next to him. Abby remembered being at the grocery store and asking her mom for a package of them from the checkout line, “Oh no, honey. You don’t want to eat those. Too much salt and you have to spit the shells out. Disgusting.” Just thinking about her mom made Abby want to cry, but she swallowed. She hadn’t cried so far. She didn’t want to start now.

  Watching the man eat the sunflower seeds made her realize how thirsty she was. “Could I have some water, please?” she whispered, looking at the man through the chain-link fence that separated them, her fingers knotted around the wire. She held her breath. What would he do? Would he open the door and beat her because she asked a question?

  The man stood up, abandoning the package of sunflower seeds on the seat of the chair where he’d been seated. He walked over to the two men who were staring at the computer screen, talking to one of them. The man glanced back toward Abby, his hands resting on the desk as he looked over his shoulder at her. He gave a slight nod. The sunflower seed man disappeared farther into the darkness, where Abby couldn’t see him. Why had he left? Were they going to do something to her? Her heart started to pound in her chest, the whoosh of blood in her ears again. Abby sat down on the bench, closing her eyes. She’d never felt this nervous before, not even before a soccer game. She tried to remember what her coach said about nerves, but the words wouldn’t form in her memory. All she could do was try to breathe in and breathe out.

  A minute later, Abby heard a rattle at the gate of her cage. The sunflower seed man was back with a bottle of water in his hands, “Here you go. If you need to use the bathroom, let us know.” As he turned away from her, Abby could smell something like sweat, kind of like her dad smelled after he came in from cutting the lawn on a hot summer day. Taking the water in her hands, she turned the cap, the click of the seal breaking. She took a couple of sips. Would they really let her use the bathroom if she needed to? Maybe it was a trap, like something she’d seen on television in one of the movies they watched on the weekends.

  After another sip, Abby looked up and glanced around, noticing one of the men had come out from behind the computers. He was walking straight towards her. She felt her palms get sweaty. He stopped outside of the cage, not opening up the door, his voice low and gravelly, “Abby. I know you’re scared. No need to be. Everything is going to work out fine as long as your dad does what we need him to do. Do you believe me?”

  Abby nodded, not sure if she did or didn’t, a wave of fear running through her when he used her name. She looked at the man a little bit more closely but tried not to stare. How did he know her? He wasn’t as tall as the man with the sunflower seeds and his hair was cut almost down to the scalp with a square jaw. From where she was sitting, she couldn’t see what color his eyes were, but his skin was tan and there were lines under his eyes. Why had he taken his mask off? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Uncertainty left a lump in Abby’s throat.

  “I’m sure you have a lot of questions about what happened today, but none of those are important. What’s important is that you listen to instruction and do exactly as we say. Understand?”

  Abby nodded again, silent. Inside of her, she wanted to jump up and charge the gate, shaking it off its hinges and scream at the men to let her go, but something inside of her held her back. She didn’t know if it was the guns, or the way they talked to her, or the way they were dressed, but the words wouldn’t form in her mouth. She pressed her lips together and looked down again.

  “Good,” she heard the man say as he walked away.

  8

  After sitting in the parking lot for a couple minutes, Jess followed Chase back up into the lab. They each gave a wave to Sully as they passed through the lobby, Chase using his key card to get into the elevators. “We’ve got to figure out what to do,” Jess said as the elevator doors slid closed.

  Chase didn’t say anything, his jaw set. Jess stared straight forward, listening to the cables above them pull the elevator car to the second floor where Chase’s lab was. A second later, the doors slid open, and she and Chase stepped out onto the polished white linoleum floor that led down the hallway to Chase’s lab. Without saying anything, Chase used his key card to buzz open the lab door.

  Inside, nothing looked any different than when they’d been there earlier. Chase flipped on the lights and a few of the machines, as if on cue, started to
whir. Jess stepped inside, feeling a wash of cool air over her. “It’s cold in here,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

  “Negative pressure system,” Chase mumbled, sitting down at his lab stool and opening his laptop.

  Jess had read about those systems before in her intelligence analysis. Frequently, people who were working with dangerous chemicals — everyone including drug traffickers, bomb makers, and especially those who were building bioweapons — generally commandeered a lab or space that had a negative pressure ventilation system. The process was pretty simple, really. The system would suck toxins out of the air to a filtration unit as opposed to just circulating them around the room, like a traditional furnace or air conditioner would.

  “What are you looking for?” she sighed, walking up behind Chase.

  “I’m trying to see if there’s anything I can give these people that won’t compromise the research, anything at all.”

  Jess turned away for a second, feeling her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out, looking at the screen. It was a text from Charlie, her boss. “Ready for your presentation?”

  Jess knew she was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on a presentation she was due to give to the top brass at Naval intelligence on Monday. It was on her schedule to finish the presentation today, Saturday, and fly out on Sunday to be ready for Monday. She hated doing the presentations, but her boss, Charlie Burns, the Executive Director of the North American intelligence Institute, insisted. “It’s the only way we keep our contracts and get more, Jess,” he’d said to her earlier that week. “I know you hate doing these, but it’s the way we all stay employed.”

  Jess gritted her teeth together. There was no doubt in her mind that work was on the back burner, but how was she supposed to tell Charlie it didn’t look like she was going to make her presentation? Should she tell him about Abby? Wait it out and hope she could get back in time?