The Fort Black Thrillers will be my first attempt at a straight take on a genre: Thrillers. Specifically, the vigilante justice subgenre.

It isn’t a genre I ever planned to write. I have an eclectic backlist. Fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, science fiction, horror. I don’t play favorites. I just love a good story.

As a former government investigator, I steered clear of anything resembling my past life. An abundance of caution was one reason.

But, really, I didn’t want to be a literary cliché. There are so many books out there about former soldiers or government agents who travel the country righting wrongs, do we really need another?

Then, one day, in Lubbock Texas, somebody stole our Jeep Grand Cherokee.

We’d bought the used SUV only months before in Montana. We’d been towing a little Mazda hatchback behind us since the start of our nomad journeys. A great little car, we kept pushing the limits of where it could go.

A trip to the Desert Bar outside Earp, California was the first indication. There’s no road only something resembling a moonscape and a dirt ATV trail. With a four inch ground clearance, taking the Mazda was a terrible idea.

We did it anyway.

In Montana we crept along forest roads. We took twice as much time to circle Hungry Horse reservoir as we should’ve, risking the potholed dirt roads in early spring before they’d had a chance to be regraded after the winter snows.

I was reattaching the plastic skid plate for like the sixth time when we decided another vehicle was in our future.

We did tons of research. We wanted to flat tow behind the motorhome. Meaning no tow dolly or trailer. There’s a surprisingly limited list of vehicles capable of this. And a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee is one.

We quickly located a used one in amazing shape, traded in the Mazda, and hit the trails.

The off road capability offered the exact freedom we wanted. The posh interior great for touring. After a long weekend of removing the Jeep’s front fascia, replacing the tow hooks with towing anchors, stringing electrical to tie in the rear lights, and running a line through the front firewall to couple with the motorhome’s air brakes, we finally had a vehicle we could flat tow too.

So when the Jeep of our dreams came up missing months later in the dusty, caliche strewn city of Lubbock, Texas, I knew I had to find it.

The story about how this happened begins back in Montana. In a rush to leave, I took the Jeep in for an oil change.

If there’s one flaw to the Jeep it’s the odd oil filter setup. A simple insert in a plastic housing on the top of the engine. Easy to access, little mess. Sounds like a maintenance dream, right?

Wrong. It’s plastic.

The tech at the fast change oil shop, unknown to me, cracked the filter housing. Probably snugged it with an air tool or something stupid.

By New Mexico, we knew we had a leak. A mechanic there cleaned it up but couldn’t do anything about it. Our best chance was to find a dealer. So we called ahead on the road to a Jeep dealer in Lubbock.

As it turned out, the whole oil cooler needed to be replaced. A $1200 oil change.

We dropped it off and I swung by a public park in the loaner on the way back to our campsite. A public space marking a vicious battle between settlers and Native Americans, now home to a prairie dog metropolis.

The next morning, I received a call.

“Mr. Linton, we’ve got some bad news.” Here I was thinking they’d found other problems, more repairs. Nope. “Your Jeep was stolen.”

I drove straight there in the loaner.

Thieves had kicked in the showroom glass. They’d gone right to the repair bays where my Jeep had been left with the keys inside. They stole it and one other customers’ ride.

I was livid. The chain events not making sense. Their alarm didn’t go off. Their cameras recorded nothing. The security patrol wasn’t around…

The more questions I asked, the more it became clear this was not a first time problem.

They’d been hit before. Learned to lock up the keys for their new cars. Not so much for the old.

They also weren’t properly insured. Probably lost their coverage during one of the many previous break ins. When the manager told me I’d have to make a claim on my insurance, I told him that wasn’t happening. I’d camp out right there in his office until he made it right if I had to.

When I spoke to the police, it wasn’t promising. They’d keep an eye out, they said. Usually the cars turned up. Joyriding kids. If not, it was probably being chopped up in Mexico.

I spent the next several mornings hounding the dealer. My afternoons I devoted to canvassing the city. I’d stop at pawn shops looking for any of the items we’d had inside. Cruise neighborhoods and empty lots.

An industrial park not far from the dealer caught my eye. I crept through there nice and slow. Plenty of garages, warehouses, and tight alleys to hide things. No Jeep.

A few days later, I heard the other owner’s stolen vehicle had been recovered in a neighborhood a few blocks from the dealership. That sparked new life into my investigation. My ride was likely still around.

I’d done some research. Per capita, Lubbock was (maybe still is) the car theft capital of Texas and has one of the highest rates in the entire U.S. 1300 a year or 400 for every 100,000 people, nearly double the national average.

Kids joyriding was one way to put it. These were often gangs. Homeowners using firearms to defend their property had received return fire.

Not a great neighborhood.

But the idea somebody was cruising around in my Jeep struck a nerve. The tow install hadn’t been easy. Required drilling into the frame and hunting down the best place to pierce the firewall. Stringing electrical from one end to the other.

A pain in the ass full of specialized, expensive parts I didn’t want to repeat.

I wasn’t going to repeat.

My search turned into an obsession. All writing, all other work stopped. I was either harassing the dealer, their insurance company, or prowling the streets, researching patterns. I was locking in on every dark colored Jeep I spotted, chasing down a few to check the plates. It’s a popular model.

By the end of the week, my wife had had enough.

“You need to stop. Let’s just go out to dinner. Forget about it for a while.”

It sounded good. I’d seen a burger joint…over by the industrial park.

As we pulled up to a red light under an overpass, I caught sight of a Jeep two cars up.

“That’s it.”

My wife didn’t want to believe it at first. She couldn’t see the full plate but spotted the plate frame. The one from the Montana dealer where we’d bought it.

“Call 9-11,” I told her, and we were in pursuit.

I don’t talk much about my past job with the government. There are classifications. There are details I can’t reveal and things I’d rather not get into on the internet.

But I will say that one of my specialties was vehicular surveillance.

I was about to become a nightmare for people like them… (:eyeroll:)

9-11 didn’t answer right away. She had to leave a message. But the dispatcher called back, breathless.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“We’re following our stolen car,” my wife replied.

The Jeep got on the expressway then immediately exited. When tailing a surveillance conscious suspect, that’s a quick red flag. More savvy operators will do things exactly like that to draw you out.

Kids stealing cars? Tough call. Criminals of all ages develop situational awareness for anything that seems remotely like law enforcement.

I let them have the next turn. Circled back and got on the accelerator to follow. Meanwhile, my wife was reporting our location. The dispatcher assured us an officer was on the way. And, as an added bonus,

“Circling vultures are en route.”

She’d sent a helicopter. The little college town of Lubbock was going all out.

We entered a section of town near the industrial park, but veered away onto a poorly marked thoroughfare. Still, I knew their direction of travel right away. The road swept through town right toward the park I’d visited.

A lot about successfully tailing a vehicle involves Alpha Kilo – area knowledge. If you know where the roads go, you don’t even need to follow, you can predict where they’ll end up. Give them their space.

I gunned it through an intersection, forgetting I was sans badge. Not a sworn anything, just a private citizen. But the skills were all rushing back. The decade or more since my job, erased. I kept right on the edge of losing the Jeep again, always back far enough with enough cover they never knew I was there.

When we reached the park, I recalled the road swung around a single curve. One way in, one way out. We passed up our Jeep parked at the bottom of a retaining wall by the pond.

I had no intention of confronting them. We’d seen three heads inside. Young adult or adult males. With the cavalry en route, the best thing to do was keep them in pocket.

We took up the eye, a static observation position, on the outward bound side of the loop. Three young men got out. They were messing around on the retaining wall, taking selfies when the cop pulled up.

They tried to casually walk away from the scene.

“That’s them! On the retaining wall!” my wife said to the dispatcher.

The officer rushed toward them and they went full on track star. Like the local relay team of car thieves. New kicks pumping, they were running straight toward us at impressive speeds.

I jumped out. They veered off toward a maintenance road. Shoulder to shoulder, all the same blistering pace. Hoodies up, covid masks on, there was little to identify them by. I raced after them beside the officer, not in front, wanting to give him a clear line of sight in case things went bad.

The utility road was a dead end. A scrubby wash and a sharp embankment into the woods.

Yep, the park had woods. Probably the only really dense collection of trees for miles. Where their Alpha Kilo would come out ahead.

I could see the officer loaded down with gear, his vest, and sprinting in the desert heat was completely gassed. And I wasn’t about to follow them in there alone. So I turned around and sprinted to the Jeep.

I’d walked the park trail. Knew if they cut through, it hooked right back around to where they’d left the Jeep. If we weren’t going to catch the criminals, I was damn sure going to secure my property.

The promised helicopters soon thrummed in the dusk. More officers surged into the area. They blasted down the trails in trucks. Set loose search dogs. A full court press to try and nab these thieves.

And we never saw them again.

We were there for hours as the search wrapped up. We let the responding officer process our vehicle on scene. Prints, thorough search, whatever he needed. We were starving but I was happy to have our dream vehicle back.

“Not often we have the owner recover his own car,” one of the officers said.

“I might’ve done something like this before.”

A fun night on the town and this time I got to include my wife. The old skills got dusted off, but not perfectly.

I messed up several things. All the time sitting on the eye, I didn’t take a single picture. No idea why. I mean, I didn’t have my trusty telephoto, just a phone. The photos would’ve sucked. When they ran toward us would’ve been best time to capture video or photos. But the adrenaline got the best of me and I jumped out instead.

I’m maybe not as quick as I used to be.

But all was well, mostly. Despite law enforcement converging on the park, they never caught the criminals. Wasn’t for a lack of trying. FLIR systems on their helicopter, dogs in the woods, and SUVs patrolling the trail, I have no idea how they managed to get away.

They did manage to leave a backpack in the front seat. That and trace amounts of marijuana in the console. No idea if they ever came up with any identifying information.

The Jeep wasn’t without damage. They’d stripped out everything inside, even the jack and the owner’s manual. Managed to bend a tie rod and crack the front fascia too.

So it was back to being a pain in the ass for the dealer. I gave them a list with monetary values of the items lost. Told them all repairs were on them. Sat up there until they cut a check and made it whole.

And they did. Eventually.

My next move would’ve been to break out my equally dangerous writerly skills. We had a compelling story. One the local news stations might’ve picked up. Lovely PR for a dealership.

On their way to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends, a Texas couple finds themselves stranded. Their car stolen hundreds of miles from home, they must take on a local gang to get back on the road before the turkey’s cold. But it isn’t the couple who’s in trouble. It’s the thieves. Because they have no idea who they’ve taken the car from and what they’ll do to get it back…

Or something. All the elements of a genre I kept avoiding.

But after all these years, I realized I didn’t have a good reason to avoid it. A good story is a good story. And, as I’ve proved with my own writing, they can be in any genre and follow even well-known formulas.

So, I’m officially a cliché. A meme. Like the rest of life, you’ve got to just roll with it sometimes.

And yes, the new series is pure fiction. It’s inspired by my travels. The beauty, the history, the struggles of everyday people across the country.

I am in no way my protagonist, Kade Black. A former FBI Agent traveling the country in a deathtrap RV he lovingly calls Hindy (short for Hindenburg) searching for wrongs to right and mysteries to solve.

Or am I…

The Fort Black Thrillers launch August 1st! Sign up to the mailing list to be notified as soon as they’re live!

Categories: Blog

Tags: action adventure, book series, books, car theft, devils churn, fiction, fort black, new release, nomad, novel, rv, rving, taken, thriller, travel, Writing