The Trident Conspiracy: A Gripping Vigilante Thriller

by KJ Kalis

  Desert Springs apparently had several LPR’s already installed. Zooming in on the area, Jess could see that all of the data that had been collected was downtown, or at least as much of Desert Springs you could call downtown. Jess looked up at the ceiling for a second, remembering the one time she’d been there. She’d gone with a girlfriend for the day. They’d walked up and down the streets, wandering in and out of boutiques and bakeries, stopping for a little lunch in the area. Desert Springs was nice. A little touristy, but a fun place to visit. Jess tried to picture Piper walking through the town. Was she alone? With a couple of girlfriends? Jess frowned. It seemed like it was too many trips over the last thirty days. Ten trips put her at a little bit more than two per week. That was a lot, given the fact that it was forty-five minutes from home. Maybe Piper had gotten a job Jess didn’t know about? Jess shook her head, realizing how unlikely that was given how much she loved to be seen as a woman with status. Jess pushed the thought away and then enlarged the area on her screen again. All of the dots were in basically the same area, the most populated section of Desert Springs. Piper clearly hadn’t gone very far out of the area. It was like she’d driven directly to Desert Springs and stopped there. But what was there?

  Jess enlarged the view a little bit more, enough so that the buildings had labels on them on the map outline of the license plate readers. Jess quickly spotted the restaurant where she and her girlfriend had gone while visiting, Cactus Trio, and then a few of the boutiques. She studied what was on the street. There were a couple of clothing stores, a bookstore, another store that looked to be upscale home goods, and several restaurants. On the edge of the screen there was a larger building. Jess moved the view on her computer so she could see what it was. A hotel. The Whispering Sands Hotel.

  A sinking feeling passed over Jess. A hotel? Was it possible Piper was having an affair? Jess sniffed, picked up her pen and quickly jotted down the dates and times the LPR reader had flagged Piper’s car on the piece of paper next to her. Jess needed to know what Piper was doing in Desert Springs. Why was she there? Who was she there with? It might have nothing to do with Abby’s disappearance, but something told Jess Piper’s stay in Desert Springs might be the key that unlocked who had taken Abby and why.

  Jess opened another application on her computer, this one with access to video surveillance. It was a program that came in very handy in her work. If she had concerns about a particular target, or members of a particular group, she could access all of the public cameras that were available all in one program. It was something that was used by the FBI, local law enforcement and certain organizations with classified status, like NAII. She had to give credit to Charlie, Jess thought, keying in the ZIP code for Desert Springs to bring the videos online. He always found a way to get his team the very best tools to do their job. For a moment, Jess thought about the presentation she was supposed to be working on. She pushed the thought away. Nothing was more important at this moment than getting Abby back. She’d have to tell Charlie at some point, but now wasn’t the time. She couldn’t afford to get distracted. Knowing he was going to be disappointed weighed heavy on her. She’d worked way too hard to let him down, to build trust between the two of them and to prove herself, but family was family. Even if Piper didn’t like her, Jess loved Abby. Inside, Jess knew Charlie would understand – he’d probably even offer to help – but she could do this on her own. She needed to.

  Sifting through all of the video of what had gone on in Desert Springs over the last month could take weeks. Jess knew she didn’t have that much time. She rechecked her notes on the exact locations and times Piper’s car had pinged on the license plate readers and keyed in a few parameters, hoping it would narrow the video search enough for her to find something, just a quick view of Piper darting into a boutique with a friend, or something. Anything that would tell Jess why Piper was in Desert Springs so many times in the last month.

  Staring at the screen, Jess tried to catch a glimpse of Piper’s blonde hair. The program gave her six different views all at one time, all of them from up and down the main street in town. What was the street called? Palmdale Avenue. A few minutes of searching gave her nothing. It was like Piper arrived and somehow disappeared off the grid. I’m gonna give it just a couple more minutes, Jess thought, then I’ll go check on Chase and see if he’s come up with anything.

  Just as Jess was about to give up, she saw a blonde braid walk by on the screen. Piper wore her hair like that sometimes, she thought. Jess paused the video and then reviewed it again, going half speed. She leaned near the screen, trying to see better, enlarging the single view. In front of the store that was next to the hotel, she saw Piper. She was smiling, wearing a short sundress and flats. It looked like she was dressed up. Next to her was a man. It wasn’t Chase.

  Jess swallowed. She went back to the multiscreen view and watched as Piper and whoever the man she was with moved from one camera angle to the next. Piper was laughing and smiling, holding the man’s hand. He was smiling back. This wasn't a platonic visit to Desert Springs. Jess froze the video and took a screenshot of the man’s face. He was a little bit taller than Chase and well-built. It looked like he spent time at the gym, with square shoulders and short, cropped hair that was nearly the same color as his tanned skin. He had on a short sleeved, button down shirt that was hanging out of his shorts. He and Piper looked like they were having a good time. He moved with purpose, like a man who knew where he was going.

  Her stomach clenching, Jess used one of the NAII databases to send the man’s picture to facial recognition. The database had driver’s license pictures of everyone who was a registered driver in the United States. Hopefully, the guy was in the system. Was Piper’s affair somehow connected to Abby’s disappearance? Questions swirled through Jess’s head. Chase was a good husband. Jess had seen him with his family. And he’d given Piper everything she could possibly want — she had a nice house, a nice car and they had a beautiful daughter together.

  By the time Jess walked back and forth in front of the conference room table a couple of times, her hands clenched together, the identification program pinged. She had a hit. Jess’s heart skipped a beat. Who was this guy? Jess clicked on the results. The program pulled up the screenshot Jess had provided alongside a driver’s license. The information read Landon Walker of Catalina. Jess squinted at the image. It definitely looked like him, not that she was going to argue with the program. The technology they used pinpointed almost one hundred pieces of data on someone’s face to match it up to at least ninety nine percent accuracy. So, according to the program, the man that Piper was with was definitely Landon Walker.

  Jess stared at the door to the conference room for a moment, catching a glance of the lab door behind where Chase was working to get a solution for Abby’s kidnappers. Jess felt the pull to tell him about Piper and about Landon, but she hesitated. What did she really know about this Landon anyway? If Piper was just having a fling, then this might not be the best time to tell him. On the other hand, if Landon Walker was somehow tied to Abby’s disappearance, then she did need to tell Chase, but not without more information. She stared at the lab door for a moment, thinking through her options. She turned and sat back down at her computer, pulling up the NAII background check programs. Her chest tightened a little bit. Using the think tanks resources for personal use was something that could get her fired, if not prosecuted. People that worked for Charlie were only given access to the information to use on official, approved projects. Figuring out who Landon Walker was didn’t exactly qualify, but Jess hoped Charlie would understand.

  Jess typed in the information she had from Landon’s driver’s license including his name, address and driver’s license number. The results came back just a minute later. Jess scanned the screen, raising her eyebrows. Landon was former military, dishonorably discharged from the Army. He was one of their high-level operators but had gotten kicked out three years before. The background information didn’t say why. Jess kne
w that information would be housed in the Army’s database, but she didn’t have access to it. Her belly cramped. The guys that had robbed the bank that morning, they were clearly military. They had to be, by the way they moved, by the way they spoke, not to mention their planning. Was Piper somehow involved in all of this? Jess blinked a couple times, finding it hard to believe that a mom would do that to her child. Her heart sank a little.

  Reading a further down on the page, Jess saw that Landon was divorced, with no kids. A brief financial overview showed that he was currently employed by Zeta Tactical Consultants. That struck Jess as strange. How was someone who was dishonorably discharged doing tactical consulting?

  Jess flipped over to an Internet search engine and pulled up the website for the company. On the homepage, there was a picture of a grim looking man. The caption below it read “ZTC’s CEO, Retired Colonel Harrison Foster.” Jess scanned the rest of the information on the page. She’d looked at websites like these before, hundreds of them. After the Blackwater scandal, it seemed like off-the-books operators hiding behind what looked to be legitimate companies had popped up all over the globe. While most people thought they only operated outside of American borders, they couldn’t be more wrong. Everything operators did overseas, they also did right here at home. Some of the time, it was sanctioned work by the FBI or another government agency that simply didn’t have the expertise or the manpower to handle a threat, but sometimes it wasn’t. There had been a few cases, Jess remembered, of companies and their leaders that had been taken down for things they couldn’t be prosecuted for, sins against the government that couldn’t be tolerated and needed to stay hidden, away from the public’s eye.

  Jess shook her head and went back to the video of Piper and Landon. She ran it back and forward over and over again, watching them walk down the street, hand in hand, smiling at each other. She picked up another camera angle, this time one from across the street from the hotel at a bank and saw them walk back in, probably going upstairs to spend more time together. How was this possible? She felt her jaw clench. Piper was cheating on her brother.

  Before Jess could wrestle with any more of the information, her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen. It was Charlie. She glanced up at the ceiling for a second, closing her eyes. She knew she needed to talk to him, but she didn’t want to. Not now. She couldn’t very well ignore his calls though. “Charlie?”

  “Hey Jess, how’s the presentation coming?” Charlie’s voice sounded more quiet than usual, like he was being careful what he said.

  As she answered, Jess’s voice cracked. She cleared her throat. “Well, it’s coming along. I’m taking a little break right now, but I will be back at it here in a couple hours, I think. I’ll be sure to have it over to you later on tonight.” The words tumbled out of Jess’s mouth. As they did, she wondered whether they were the truth or a lie.

  “That sounds good. Did you have any specific questions you need me to answer? Any sticking points in the presentation? I know you had some concerns about waterway security in Guam, right?”

  Jess stood up and started pacing, the phone pressed to her ear, staring at the floor. “No, I think I’ve got those handled. Like I said, I should have something back to you in the next few hours, I’m hoping. You know, just doing the final run through -- that kind of thing…” The words drifted off.

  There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. “Jess, is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

  She stopped walking and stared ahead of her, “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. Everything’s fine.” As the words came out of her mouth, Jess realized they sounded a little too happy, too chipper.

  “Okay. Would you like to tell me why you’re accessing classified information on Zeta Tactical Consulting?”

  Jess’s heart sank. She knew that Charlie got notified whenever the team was working in one of the classified databases, but she always assumed he didn’t really pay much attention to it. After all, he had dozens of analysts that were constantly accessing the databases that NAII had access to. “I, ah, I’m doing some background research for another part of the report.” Jess felt heat rise in her face, like she’d been called to the principal’s office after cutting class, only the principal was on the phone, not in front of her.

  “Jess, let’s try this again. Zeta Tactical Consulting has nothing to do with your presentation. What’s going on? This isn’t like you.”

  Jess sighed and slumped down in one of the conference room chairs, “I don’t know what to say, Charlie.”

  “How about the truth, Jess?”

  She could tell he was losing his patience. “Okay. Listen, I picked up Abby this morning to take her to breakfast. I got some weird paperwork from the bank I needed to drop off across the street. When I did, there was a bank robbery. Abby and I were stuck in the middle of it…”

  “Oh my God! Are you guys okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, but Abby... Charlie, they took her. We don’t know where she is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Over the next couple of minutes, Jess told Charlie the story, starting at the beginning, giving him all of the details about that morning — the way the kidnappers had come into the bank, the hoods over the hostage’s heads, the tape over their faces, the tunnel that ran out of the back of the bank and her interactions with Detective Saunders. She paused for a second, a wave of relief coming over her. It was nice to tell someone, someone who was on her side. “I was using the databases to try to figure out where the surveillance had come from. You know, the LPR database?”

  “Yeah, what did you come up with?”

  For a second, Jess was surprised Charlie didn’t chastise her for taking advantage of the information she’d be trusted to manage. She got up and started to pace again, “Well, Chase looks clean. Honestly, I love my brother, but he’s so up in his head with all of his science stuff that you could probably follow him around the city, and he’d have no idea. But then I pinged his wife’s car. She’s made a lot of trips out to Desert Springs with a guy named Landon Walker. I ran his background and found out he was dishonorably discharged from the Army and now works for Zeta Tactical Consulting.”

  “That explains why you were in the databases then.”

  Jess couldn’t tell if Charlie was mad or not. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I didn’t know what else to do. The kidnappers, they are demanding part of Chase’s research and if they don’t get it, they’re going to kill Abby. We can’t go to the police for exactly the same reason. Honestly, I have no idea what we’re up against, but I’m afraid. These guys seem really serious. It wouldn’t surprise me if we lose her, and time is running out. I’m not sure I can bear that.” Her stomach sank a little. She wasn’t trying to hide anything from him, not really. Jess just wanted to try to handle her personal problems on her own, like she always had.

  When Charlie spoke again, his voice was lower. Jess had seen him in this mode before, when other analysts were upset by information they’d found, or they’d had a disaster in their own families. “Jess, I understand the actions you’ve taken. And it’s okay. Can you tell me what the kidnappers are demanding?”

  Jess swallowed. If she did, she wondered if she would put Chase in harm’s way. After all, no one was supposed to know about the ABG. Not her. Not Charlie. A wave of emotion passed over her. She’d been strong up until that point, but hearing Charlie’s voice and the way he was speaking to her it was like he could see inside of her, see how afraid and sad she was. He reminded her of her dad. She bit her lip, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. There was nowhere to hide. She wiped a couple of tears from underneath her eyes as her voice cracked, “I don’t know, Charlie. It’s some classified medical treatment. Chase said it’s called ABG. I guess he’s been developing it for the last few years. It’s something the military medics can use out in the field to stop arterial bleeds. He said there’s no downside to it, no way to weaponize it.” The words cam
e out in a tumble. The tears did, too. The robbery. Losing Abby. Crawling through the dark, terrifying tunnel with Saunders behind her, knowing that Abby had to do the same with a hood over her head was shattering what was left of Jess’s strength. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. He said it’s so classified that if it got out, he’d go to jail.”

  “Okay, now we have something to work with. At least they’ve made a demand. That’s a good sign.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, in cases like these, if the kidnappers never make contact, that’s not a good sign. That means that whoever they took will likely be killed, is already dead, or they have other plans for the person. But the fact they made contact means they want to give you guys a chance to buy Abby’s life back with the ABG.”

  Jess shook her head a little bit, feeling the tension in her chest ease enough that she felt like she could breathe again. Charlie was able to look at the case clearly, even a little dispassionately. It was something Jess hadn’t been able to do over the last few hours. It was like someone was blowing the cobwebs out of her mind. “What do we do now? I’ve got Chase in the lab across the hall from me. He’s trying to fabricate some samples or something we can give to them as a trade.”

  Jess heard typing in the background. It sounded like Charlie was on his computer. “You said this stuff is called ABG? Does that stand for Arterial Blood Glue? Can you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlie sucked in a breath, “Jess, you really need to listen to me very carefully. Under no circumstances are you to give the ABG to the kidnappers. You can pretend to do so, have Chase work up some sort of other samples or something else, but you can’t give it to them.”

  “Why? I mean, according to Chase, all it does is stop arterial bleeds. And anyway, how do you know all of this?”