The Trident Conspiracy: A Gripping Vigilante Thriller

by KJ Kalis

  “Ammunition.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Jess stopped for a second, collecting her thoughts. The ideas were coming faster than she could get them out, “Well, it’s just a theory at this point. It’s nothing Chase had even considered until just a few minutes ago, but it is possible, according to Chase, that if somehow ammunition was coated with the ABG, if it managed to connect with a person and got inside the body, it would clot whatever it hit. That clot could cause devastating damage.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. From working with Charlie for so many years, she knew he was thinking. A second later, he said, “All right, I’m with you so far. Can you flesh that out a little bit?”

  Jess shook her head, “I don’t know, Charlie. It’s just the beginnings of a hypothesis.”

  “But if you and Chase had to guess, what do you think?”

  “If you take what we know about Colonel Foster and Zeta Tactical Consulting — the things you’ve told me about how you think they have ulterior motives, and the company does more than just executive protection and asset transportation — then I think there’s a very high probability they might want the ABG for nefarious purposes. If that’s the case, and if they somehow found out that Chase was developing the ABG and figured out another application for it, say assassinations, that would be big business. There are plenty of bad actors across the globe that would be more than happy to pay Colonel Foster and his team to take care of people that are causing them trouble.”

  “I’m on board with that. From what we know about Harrison Foster, he’s a bad actor all unto himself. Go on. Tell me how you think this might work.”

  “If Foster’s team got a hold of the ABG and they were somehow able to harness it and get it inside of people’s bodies, it would kill them. Blood clots kill. We know that the science backs it up. Let’s say they were able to coat around with the ABG, they shoot someone in the gut, and then the ABG gets inside the body…”

  “… then instead of the ABG saving their life it would kill them.”

  “And even worse,” Jess said, starting to pace, “what if they coated a knife with it or put it in someone’s drink? Or, what if their target was in a prison and they were able to get a shiv to someone that was coated with ABG? Instead of the person simply getting stitched up and spending a couple days in the hospital, they’d be dead within a couple minutes, a clot heading to their heart or lungs. Charlie, we have to find a way to stop them. They can’t get the ABG. They just can’t!”

  Charlie whistled, “This is worse than I thought. Was Chase able to package up the ABG samples in a way that would make them inert?”

  As Jess was talking, she saw Chase come out of the lab. He must have heard Charlie’s question. As Jess looked at him, he nodded. “Yeah. He took your idea and made it work. We’ve got the twelve samples and the formula ready for them. Chase somehow altered the formula so it won’t ever work for them, but they won’t know that on the face of it.”

  “So, what’s the next step?”

  “We have to wait for the kidnappers to get a hold of us.” Jess checked the time on her cell phone. It looked like fourteen minutes until they would text them the information on where to meet to do the trade. “We’ve got a few minutes left before they’re supposed to call. And Charlie, there’s one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They have Piper. A little while ago, they called Chase and he heard her voice. That’s when they updated the timing on everything. But then, we heard a gunshot. We didn’t hear Piper’s voice after that.” The words trailed off as they came out of Jess’s mouth. She swallowed, feeling the bile rise in the back of her throat. While there was certainly no love lost between her and Piper, seeing how devastated Chase was at the thought of his wife being murdered tightened her heart into a tiny knot. She pushed back thoughts of Piper laying on the ground somewhere and Chase and Abby trying to go on without her.

  Charlie’s voice lowered, “Jess, do we have any evidence that it was anything more than a warning shot?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s not borrow trouble, okay? One step at a time. I know you have a lot of experience on the analytical side, but not as much in operations. I know this is your family, but you’ve got to stay clear headed right now. I need you to do exactly what you do in an analysis, which is one step at a time. There is no way for you to process this thing as a whole. All you can do is take the next step.”

  “And the next step is to wait for contact from the kidnappers.”

  “Correct.”

  Jess hung up with Charlie with the promise that as soon as the kidnappers relayed the details for the meet she’d pass them along. She wasn’t sure exactly what Charlie could do to help, but she now knew Charlie had his fingers in a lot more than she ever suspected.

  Jess sat down in one of the conference room chairs and closed her eyes for a second, steeling herself for what was coming. Her gut told her they would be on their own. Chase was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, staring down at the floor. Jess heard a rustling at the door. She opened her eyes. Jamison was back. “I’ve updated my Lieutenant on exactly what’s going on. Once you get the details for the meet, he’s gonna roll our SWAT team. We aren’t going to use any of the normal road guys for this. The SWAT team is highly trained in covert operations.”

  Chase glanced up, his eyes wide, “I’ll bet they aren’t trained as well as this crew. They could get all of us killed!”

  Jess licked her lips and glanced between the two men. Chase was about to break, the stress of the day taking its toll on him, but he was right. She glanced at Jamison, a frown forming on her face, “What about the FBI? Have they gotten wind of this?”

  Jamison shook his head, “No. Ferguson isn’t too fond of the FBI. They’ve made his life pretty difficult at times. When I asked him to keep it quiet, he was all about that. He said he’d brief the SWAT commander and get them ramped up and ready to go. He’s always said our local guys are better than the FBI anyway. They have a better sense of the terrain.”

  Jess wasn’t sure exactly how true any of that was, but just knowing that Jamison had managed to convince his lieutenant not to get the FBI involved made her feel better. It was bad enough that the police were involved at all, not to mention how much of a disaster things could become if the feds showed up. Hopefully, the FBI would stay at the bank and take their time to process the scene while they were handling the trade to get Abby back.

  “What do we do now?” Chase said.

  Jamison glanced his direction, taking up a spot leaning against the wall, “We wait.”

  21

  Landon was getting antsy. Normally, operations involved a lot of moving around. There were planes and boats and trucks in order to get to the destination to access their target. They usually spent an hour, maybe two or three, on target and then they left, leaving nothing more than their shadows passing across the ground. It hadn’t been that way with this operation. Spending all day sitting in a dark warehouse had put him on edge. Landon got up from the command center where Baker was still watching the video feeds from the Montgomery’s house, the outside of Trident Labs and the outside of the warehouse. Landon started to pace. He folded his arms across his chest, staring at the ground, counting his steps. Five one way and then a quick pivot and then five the other. He scratched the side of his face and looked at Baker, “Are we ready to send them the coordinates for the trade, Baker?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The trade location had been predetermined by Foster and the planning team as they worked with Landon. It was a park near an entrance to a freeway. They’d chosen Hacienda Park for a few reasons. Landon ran over them in his mind as he kept pacing. There were still a few minutes left before they would send the information to Chase Montgomery’s phone.

  Running through the plan in his head, Landon remembered sitting in the ops center at Zeta Tactical Consulting, the room mostly dark, except fo
r a bank of screens against one wall and work lights over the table where they were sitting. The team had just finished lunch and Foster wiped his mouth before starting the meeting again. That afternoon they had talked about three or four possible exfil plans, ways to get the team out of the area after getting what they wanted from the Montgomery family. One of the first options put forth was to have the team hop on the freeway and go over the Mexican border. Foster had a lot of contacts in Mexico, especially with the cartels. They would be more than happy to help one of Foster’s groups get away from the Arizona police and the border patrol. “I don’t like that idea,” Walker had said at the time. “Too many variables. Too many people involved.”

  The team spent the rest of the afternoon wrestling with options and finally had settled upon a little park that was five miles from the warehouse where he was standing right now. Hacienda Park was hardly ever used, based on the surveillance information they had from a satellite cruising overhead. The good thing about it was that there were five different entrances and exits. That made it just difficult enough for any prying eyes to figure out which way they were coming in or going out. Better yet, it was only a half-mile from the closest freeway entrance. They would use that as a red herring. Most local law enforcement, and Landon had to assume at this point that even though the Montgomery’s had been told not to involve the police, that their interaction with the Tucson police officer in front of the Trident Labs building had resulted in them knowing exactly what was happening, weren’t skilled enough to stop the exfil of an experienced team like Walker’s. There were also three small airports in the desert within twenty miles of the park. Foster already had planes stationed at all three of them, flight plans filed as if they were moving legitimate travelers to different places in the country. One of them was scheduled to fly to California, another one to Wyoming, and a third one to Texas. Once Landon and his team made the trade, they would go directly to the closest airport, unless they were being tailed, in which case they would substitute one of the other airports, knowing that would give them enough time to escape whoever was chasing them. Foster and his team had also pre-positioned substitute vehicles in a couple parking garages nearby. It would be easy enough to dart in, jump out of the vehicle they were driving and grab a different one, quickly pulling out onto the street and resuming their journey, shaking whoever was following them.

  As Landon ran through the details, he had to give Foster credit. Somehow, the man always came up with newer and more clever ways to get his teams in and out of difficult situations. And he had no issue spending the money to do it. Checking his watch again, Landon tried to calculate how much an operation like this would cost. It had to be in the millions of dollars, Landon realized. By the time Foster paid for their salaries, plus all of the needs they had for the operation — everything from weapons and tactical gear to the mechanic’s garage Foster bought in order to give them access to the bank — Landon knew the cost was steep. And it wasn’t like Foster was paying Landon and his guys the same rate they got paid in the military. They were all in the multiple six figures, with bonuses for their effectiveness and efficiency based on the number of successful operations they were able to complete. The flipside was that failure to perform could be deadly. If they didn’t deliver the ABG, they were all as good as dead. The people that wanted the ABG wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Landon checked his watch again. It was time. “Baker, send it.”

  “Copy that, sir.”

  A moment later, Baker gave Landon a curt nod. The message was on its way. Landon and his team wouldn’t need the full thirty minutes to get themselves and Abby out of the building and to the location. Their goal was to arrive approximately three to five minutes after the stated time, and it was close by. All they needed was enough leeway to make sure that the Montgomery’s were already there waiting for them. Landon didn’t like standing around and waiting for his targets, especially in a case like this. In and out. That was the goal. With any luck, the trade should take less than three minutes. Foster had set them up with the testing kit that would give them the information they needed in order to make sure that Chase hadn’t substituted something else for the ABG. Foster even had a chemist standing by to quickly check the formula Chase was supposed to provide. If everything went well, they’d hand over Abby and be on their way. At least, that was the hope.

  22

  Charlie picked up the phone on his desk, starting a secure line, realizing his hands were clammy. There was someone he needed to update, someone who had the resources to help. Charlie wasn’t sure if he would, but based on what Jess had said, this was an issue of national security.

  A voice answered after just a few seconds “Dumont.”

  “Admiral, Charlie Burns from NAII. Sorry to bother you on Saturday, sir.”

  “That’s no problem, Charlie. I was just outside tending to my basil plants. What can I do you for?”

  Charlie had gotten to know Admiral Dumont as part of the work NAII had done for the military. Charlie wasn’t sure if he’d actually call them friends, but they were on their way to being so. They discovered a mutual love of great Italian food and even better bourbon. “I have a little bit of a situation I wanted to bring you up to speed on. See if there are any options you’d like me to explore.”

  “And, since this is a Saturday, this is in regard to national security?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Charlie took two minutes to give the admiral a quick overview of exactly what was going on — the carefully planned bank robbery that morning at South Ridge Bank, the way the Montgomery family had been targeted, the fact that the kidnappers had Abby and possibly killed Piper already, and the demand for the ABG and the formula.

  The Admiral cleared his throat, “And you believe that whoever has taken this young lady, and you believe it to be that retired colonel — what did you say his name was?”

  “Foster.”

  “And you believe he and his goons are the ones that are doing this? He is the one that wants the ABG for his own use?”

  “Yes, sir. Based on some recent information I got, he’s been in talks with some of our favorite characters from Yemen, Turkey and some other countries on the top hits list.”

  The Admiral grunted, “Sounds like my basil might have to wait.”

  “I’m sorry about that, sir. What would you like me to do?”

  “Stay by your phone.”

  * * *

  Charlie was doing exactly what Admiral Dumont said and staring at his computer screen at the same time when one of the analysts burst into his office, “Boss, I think I’ve got something on the Montgomery kidnapping.”

  The analyst, a young woman wearing torn jeans with her hair up in a ponytail approached his desk, pointing at the computer, “May I?” she said.

  Charlie got up, giving her room to work. Carla hadn’t worked for Charlie for very long. They’d brought her in from a program that tried to recruit some of the best black hat hackers in the country into white hats, giving them legitimate jobs where they could use their skills instead of working as cybercriminals. It had been a rough three months. She and Charlie had some harsh words every couple of weeks as he tried to help her adapt to a new way of life. Breaking her of her lone wolf habits had been tough, but if she’d found something about Abby, then in one moment, she’d prove herself to be an important part of the team. “What did you find?”

  “The information you sent over to me; I checked this girl's school records. Seems she’s quite the soccer player. I hacked into the sports team information and then followed the trail over to her coach.”

  Charlie frowned, “You hacked the soccer coach?”

  Carla nodded. “You wanted information, right? You’ll see why in a second. Anyway, it turns out the soccer coach is really into analytics. Even for middle schoolers. Can’t say I really understand that, but this woman, she keeps detailed notes on everything. She just had the team run their forty times.�
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  “What does that have to do with finding Abby?” Charlie was losing his patience.

  “Give me one sec and I’ll show you.” Carla’s fingers flew over the keyboard and an array of screens popped up all at once. Charlie blinked, surprised at the way his computer reacted.

  Carla pointed at the screen as she pulled one of the documents forward, “See here? The coach used the same type of RFID trackers they use for cross-country runners to track the girls forty-yard dash times. The girls must have them attached to their running shoes.”

  Charlie shook his head a little bit. He wasn’t a runner, but he knew people that were. Even for local races, the runners would be issued a little plastic chip that attached to their laces. It tracked when they crossed the starting line and when they crossed the finish line, instantly recording their times down to the hundredth of a second. “So, what are you saying here?”

  “I’m saying that with any luck Abby has that pair of tennis shoes on this morning. Let’s take a look. If she does, I can probably figure out where she is.” As soon as the words came out of Carla’s mouth, she pulled up another screen and typed in a long code plus a whole string of numbers. “This will take just a second.”

  Charlie watched as she worked. A map of the United States pulled up on Charlie’s screen. Within a second it had started to narrow down the location, zooming in on Arizona and then Tucson. “Hold on, it’s searching. Let’s just hope she didn’t leave this pair of shoes at home,” Carla muttered, tapping her finger on the desk, her long purple nails making a clicking noise while they waited.

  “There!” Carla pointed. She zoomed in a little bit closer. “That doesn’t look like the Montgomery’s home address to me.” The RFID chip pointed to an area just outside of Tucson proper, an area Charlie wasn’t familiar with, but then again, he was in Washington.

  “What is that place? How far out is it from the lab where Chase works?” Charlie’s heart was beating fast in his chest. Knowing where Abby was meant they finally might have the upper hand. Now, if they could only get to her in time. He checked his watch. If Jess and Chase hadn’t already gotten the trade-off information, they would soon. That was, if there was a trade-off actually planned. Charlie hoped they weren’t being played, but if they knew where Abby was, that was better intel than them heading over to some remote location where Walker and his crew had the advantage. What they knew for sure was that Walker and his team wanted the ABG. There was never any guarantee of the Montgomery family -- any of them -- walking away alive.