The Trident Conspiracy: A Gripping Vigilante Thriller

by KJ Kalis

  Piper struggled against Baker and Alvarez for a second, her face reddening. The men held her firm. Landon saw a couple of tears roll down her face when she realized she couldn’t get away and there was no one there to help her. “All right,” she whispered.

  “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  Landon pulled his phone out of his back pocket and opened the encryption program that would allow him to contact Chase without the call being tracked. There was only one number saved in the program. It was for Chase. A moment later, the call connected. Landon put it on speaker. Two rings went by and Chase answered the phone, “Hello? Abby? Piper?”

  “It’s Piper…”

  “Oh my God, honey, are you okay? Where are you?”

  Landon didn’t give Piper a chance to answer, “We need the ABG in one hour. I’m gonna text you in thirty minutes with the drop off location. Be ready.”

  “You said we’d have until six. That means you wanted it at five!” Chase stammered.

  “Plans change. Be ready.” Landon said.

  “I have to finish prepping the ABG. I need all the time that you gave me. I promise, I’m going to get it for you.”

  “That’s not good enough. Do you want your family to suffer?”

  “No, but…”

  Landon didn’t give Chase a chance to answer. Holding the phone in his left hand, He pulled his pistol out of the holster and gave a curt nod to Alvarez and Baker, leaving Piper to stand by herself. He raised his gun at her face and pulled the trigger before she could register what was about to happen to her. Piper’s body fell backward in a small pile, a single red mark in the center of her forehead. “That was your wife. Don’t make me do the same to your daughter. I’ll be in touch in thirty minutes.”

  Landon ended the call and re-holstered his gun. He looked at Baker and Alvarez, “He was better off without her, believe me,” he shrugged. Nodding toward the dumpster, Landon said, “Throw her in there. I’ll let the cleanup crew know there’s a body.” Landon turned on his heel and walked back into the building.

  20

  Jess sat, stunned. When the call came in from the kidnappers, Chase ran across the hallway from the lab, holding his phone in front of him. This time, the voices weren’t masked with the fake, female AI generated voice. It was clearly a man. And clearly Piper. The call was quick and to the point. They wanted the ABG within the hour. Chase stood in the doorway, staring down at his phone, trying the best he could to negotiate for more time. Jess watched Jamison as he motioned for Chase to keep them on the phone to tell them he needed more time to prepare. When the shot rang out and the call ended, Chase slumped down to the floor against the wall in a pile, not moving.

  Jess glanced around the room. It was just three of them. The muscles in Jamison’s jaw rippled as he shoved his hands in his pockets. From where Jess was standing it looked like the skin had tightened over his entire face, a mask emerging. For a second Jess wondered how many times Jamison had been in this kind of situation, the echo of the single shot ringing in her ears even though it was through the phone. She replayed the conversation again in her mind. The kidnappers tightened the timeline. They heard Piper’s voice. Then they heard the shot. Jess got up out of her chair, the muscles in her jaw tightening, kneeling over Chase, “Chase, we don’t know what happened. Let’s not make any assumptions. It was probably just a warning shot — something to try to get you to move a little faster.”

  Jamison agreed, “She’s right, Chase. We don’t actually know what happened. The best thing you can do is get the ABG ready. We have less than an hour at this point.” He stared down at his phone, “I’m going to go brief my lieutenant.”

  Chase looked up, the rims of his eyes read, “No, Detective. You can’t…”

  “Sorry, Chase. No matter what the kidnappers say, I still have to do my job. And believe it or not, the best thing for you and your family is if I do just that.”

  Jess moved her body so she was sitting next to Chase, both of them leaning against the wall. Neither of them said anything for a moment, the weight of the phone call laying heavy over them. “Do you think Abby’s still alive?” Chase whispered.

  Jess glanced at Chase. The heat of anger filled her chest. Who were these people to think they could take Abby? She swallowed, the memories surfacing of how guilty she felt and how many nights she agonized over losing the relationship with her brother. She closed her eyes for a second. Today wasn’t the day to make the same mistake, and it wasn’t the day to cave in. She had to be strong for the two of them, stronger than she’d ever been. There wasn’t a lot of time left. She looked over her shoulder at him and grabbed his hand giving it a squeeze. When she let it go, she said, “Chase, we have every reason to believe Abby is still alive. For that matter, Jamison is right about Piper. We don’t know what happened. It’s very likely Walker and his crew just let one round fly to scare you. From what I can see, they did a good job. Listen,” she said, turning toward him, putting her hand on his knee as they sat on the floor, “right now we have to work off the information we have. That’s what I have to do in my job. That’s what you have to do in yours. The information we have is they need the ABG. Figuring there’s going to be a little bit of drive time, we need to have it ready in less than half an hour. That’s what we can do to help Abby right now. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Chase took off his glasses and used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe his face. Whether it was sweat or tears from the shock of the phone call, Jess wasn’t sure. He struggled to his feet, offering Jess a hand. She stood up and looked at him, “Are you okay? Ready to move forward?”

  He nodded, letting out a long breath. “Yeah. I just finished coating the inside of the vials when the call came in. They were all set up on the dryer so I can add the ABG. I should be able to load what serum I do have into them in the next few minutes. The thing is,” Chase stopped for a second and stared at the floor, his body angled, ready to walk out of the conference room, “Jess, I’m not sure I have time to figure out why these guys want the ABG. I have to agree with your boss. There’s no way somebody would go to all these lengths, even pretending to kill my wife, just to save lives. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical.”

  Jess nodded and sighed, “I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either.” She glanced back at her computer, trying to be positive even though her gut wasn’t that optimistic, “Don’t worry. I’m sure Charlie is working on that angle right now as we speak. I’m gonna get on my computer while you load up the ABG and see what I can figure out. Either way, if the ABG becomes inert, it won’t matter.” Jess had the beginning of a thought as Chase walked out of the conference room. She called after him, “Chase? What about the formula? They wanted the formula, too!”

  Chase tilted his head to the side, “Don’t worry about that. I have that done already.”

  “Will it work for them if they try to replicate it?”

  A small smile crept over Chase’s face, the first one Jess had seen all day, “Nope. And they’ll never know why.”

  Alone in the conference room, Jess sat down at her computer, opening the lid, waiting for it to warm up again. She was trying to corral her thoughts to get her mind working in the right direction, but it felt like a stampede of wild horses had run over her body in the last few hours. She uncapped her water and took a sip, reaching for the granola bar again and taking another bite. It tasted terrible, but at least she knew it would keep her blood sugar up enough so she wouldn’t pass out.

  Jess stared at the wall in the conference room, her eyes unfocused. She felt so bad, so weak. How could she let Chase down like this? Deep inside her, she’d tried to be rational about Abby’s kidnapping, to know that things were out of her control, but there was still a part of her that felt like the whole day had been her fault. She’d wanted it to be fun for Abby. That was the whole point. But the robbery, the kidnapping, and then having to tell Chase, and then Piper being taken — everything had gotten out of control. No matter what s
he did, Jess felt like it was her fault. She swallowed, balling her hands into small fists. She realized they were clammy, damp from the rush of emotions cycling through her body. “Come on, Jess,” she whispered, trying to derail the thoughts that threatened to get her completely off track. “Chase needs you.” She knew she was putting a lot of pressure on herself, but she knew in her gut that if she didn’t stay strong, they would never see Abby again. It was up to her.

  Jess keyed in her password on her computer and started doing a few random searches on the type of injuries that Chase was trying to prevent. Using the NAII databases, Jess quickly found thousands of reports of military men and women who’d been killed by gunfire that hit them in the neck, the shoulder or the groin. Those were all locations in the body where there were junctions of large arteries, femoral, brachial and carotid. As she read a few of the reports, scanning them for the high-level details, she realized what Chase was trying to accomplish. She found one report of a Marine sniper who was positioned on a hillside in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. He’d been there for forty-eight hours, waiting for a convoy of arms dealers to come through the area. The way the report read, he wasn’t the only sniper there. The arms dealers had positioned their own overwatch security to help the arms dealers get down the road. The way the spotter reported it, the sniper moved his rifle into position and the sun must’ve caught a glint of the scope he was using. A second later, the spotter reported hearing a whoosh and then seeing his partner drop. A round from across the valley had nicked his neck. There was blood gushing out. Jess leaned forward as she read the rest of the report. Although the spotter had medical training and medical supplies, there was no way for the spotter to stop the pumping of blood that drained the life out of the sniper in under two minutes.

  Jess blinked. She had heard Chase explained this to her earlier, but somehow reading a real-life account of what had happened changed things in her mind. She tried to imagine the spotter and how frustrated and scared he must have felt, knowing there was nothing he could do for his friend. If Chase’s product worked the way he said it did, then the spotter could simply have pulled a dose out of his vest, applied it to the wound and called for a medevac. For a moment, Jess’s mind fast forwarded to the Marine chaplain showing up at the sniper’s house, his wife answering the door, knowing what the visit meant. Chase’s product could save lives, that was for sure. Jess had no doubt about that.

  But that didn’t change the fact that Walker and his crew, or whoever they were, couldn’t simply want the ABG to save more lives. It just didn’t make sense. No matter how she looked at it, there was no way they would go to this length in order to get their hands on what Chase had developed. What could they possibly want with the ABG?

  Jess did a few more searches on arterial injuries in the field and found pretty much the same report. It didn’t matter whether it was military or local law enforcement or even construction accidents that involved arterial damage, for that matter. Arterial injuries were something that took a lot of lives every year. Jess stared at the screen for another minute and then got up and started to pace. Her gut told her she was missing something. There was something about the theory Chase was using that wasn’t fully fleshed out. She ran through the details in her mind again. She knew the idea behind the ABG was to quickly close the wound. How did he say that would get done? Clotting, she remembered.

  Jess sat down at her computer and did a few minutes of research on clotting. Millions of articles popped up within just a few seconds. Jess’s eyes got wide. Scanning a few of them, she quickly realized that with the modern-day sedentary lifestyle most people followed, blood clots were becoming more and more prevalent, taking lives in the form of pulmonary embolisms or even devastating strokes. People would get an ache in their leg, assume it was just a pulled muscle or pinched nerve when it was really something called DVT, Deep Vein Thrombosis. If one of those clots broke off and made its way to another area of the body, like the heart, lungs, or brain, it could do devastating damage. Jess’s mind started to put pieces in order. She reached for the granola bar and broke off another bite. As she was thinking, Jamison walked back in the room, “What’s going on here?”

  Jess held up her hand, licking her lips. She was onto something, but she just couldn’t quite figure out what. She heard the chair next to her squeak as Jamison sat down. She scrolled through a couple more of the articles in front of her when she ran across a small excerpt from a graduate student at the University of Wyoming who’d written a piece called, “Clotting Factors in the Human Body: All Good or All Bad?”

  As Jess scanned the article, she saw that the graduate student had provided an overview on the difference between how clotting helped at the surface of the skin versus the damage it did on the inside. It was basic medical knowledge, but it was something Jess needed to hear. “That’s it,” she whispered.

  “What’s it?” Jamison said.

  Jess pushed herself up out of the chair and ran across the hall into Chase’s lab. “Chase! What would happen if ABG got into the inside of the body? Not the outside. I know that you mean it to solve the problem of the arterial wounds. But what if it got inside, like into the bloodstream?”

  Chase was hunched over his workbench, putting teal stoppers on the top of test tubes, small ones filled with a red liquid. He frowned for a second and then glanced at Jess, “Well, it would do exactly the same thing as on the surface of the skin. It would create a clot.” As the words came out of his mouth, he stared at her, his eyes open. “Are you saying…?”

  “I think so. I’m wondering if the kidnappers want to use the ABG as a weapon. I don’t know how they would deliver it, though. But if they could get it inside of someone instead of using the ABG on the surface of the skin, it would kill somebody nearly every time, right?”

  Chase nodded, putting the last teal stopper on the vial. “Yeah, for sure. It’s one of the first concerned I had about the design. This stuff is designed to clot. That’s its entire function. So, yes, if it got inside of the body there would be a problem. On all the tests I’ve run, we’ve only used surface wounds from cadavers. Larger scale testing is the next step. There’s been no internal leaking of the ABG into the body. But, if you delivered it directly inside, or if it had access to blood vessels, there’s no telling where it could go.”

  Jess stared down at the floor. How would someone get the ABG to the inside of the body? How would they do that in a military setting? Her mind began to race, ideas popping up. She looked up at Chase and blinked, “What if someone ingested it? Like in a drink?”

  “The same thing would happen. They would suffer from a massive esophageal clot.”

  Jess chewed her lip. That would work if the kidnappers were targeting individuals for assassination, but that was one body at a time. A thought started to form in her head, “Chase, what about ammunition? What if the ammunition was coated in ABG? What would happen then?”

  Chase was loading the vials into a carrier with a handle when she said the words. He stopped. He stared off for a second and then looked back at Jess. “You’re thinking that if ammunition was coated with ABG and it penetrated the skin instead of being used on the surface? Is that what you’re asking me?”

  Jess nodded, “What would happen?”

  “Well, it’s entirely hypothetical, but the ABG is still designed to clot.”

  Jess shook her head, frustrated. “You aren’t understanding me. If the ABG got inside the body because of a gunshot wound, would it make a clot that could then travel around the body?” As soon as the words came out of Jess’s mouth, she knew she was onto something.

  Chase didn’t answer for a second, his gaze focused on lifting the test tubes in their carrier into a small soft sided bag that looked a lot like what Jess used to carry drinks to a picnic. The tray disappeared inside, Chase zipping the lid closed before turning and looking at her. “That’s exactly what it would do.” He sounded resigned to the fact that on the surface ABG could heal. Inside the body, it c
ould kill.

  Jess didn’t wait for Chase to say anything more. She darted back across the hall, grabbing her phone. She dialed Charlie, “Charlie?”

  “Yes? Do you have an update?”

  “We think the kidnappers may have killed Piper but we’re not sure. I’ll tell you more about that in a minute. I think I figured out why they want the ABG.”

  “Go on…”

  One of the things Jess appreciated about Charlie was that he didn’t interrupt her train of thought. He’d worked with analysts long enough to know that once their brain got chugging along on a problem, it was best to let them keep building their momentum, like a locomotive moving along a railroad track. Stops and starts with too many questions could derail the entire process. “So, we know the ABG is designed to create clots at the surface of the skin, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, I did some research on clots. There’s a big difference between clots on the surface of the skin, which protect us from infection and start the healing process, versus clots that are on the inside of the body, which can be life-threatening, causing things like strokes and pulmonary embolisms.”

  “And you’re thinking…”

  Charlie was doing a good job leading Jess through the conversation, she thought, sitting down in one of the conference room chairs and taking a sip of water, “So, what I’m thinking is if they were able to deliver the ABG to the inside of the body, it would, without fail, create a clot, which could be devastating.”

  “And how would they do that?”