Vengeance

Trident Deception Series Book 8

Rick Campbell

St. Martin’s Press

December 2025

Vengeance by Rick Campbell might be the last in The Trident Deception series. The story blends geo-political events within a personal revenge plot.

The story begins with the assassination of the Secretary of Defense. Jake Harrison, a now AWOL Navy SEAL, is lured back into action by his former partner Christine O’Connor to find and stop the freelance assassin, a man who has long been Harrison’s nemesis, Mixell. He agrees to help find the killer. 

Because Mixell is nowhere to be seen, Jake and his partner Khalila are sent on a mission to Iran to stop them from getting nuclear weapons. With that accomplished they head back to America where they take up their search for Mixell. 

At the same time, the U.S. has placed sanctions on Russian oil and gas after their invasion of Ukraine. Russia, with Iran’s help, decides to retaliate by sending a sophisticated submarine into the Strait of Hormuz to sink oil tankers leaving the region. Readers are riveted as a thrilling battle takes place between the Russian sub and the USS Michigan. 

In this book the plotlines involve covert and overt action. The conflict goes back and forth between the race to kill Mixell and the submarine showdown, making for a gripping read. 

Elise Cooper: Why that title:  It seems there are many characters that can fit into the revenge mode? Including Mixell, Brenda, Russians, Iranians, Harrison

Rick Campbell: Vengeance is tied primarily to Brenda’s motive in the book—obtaining revenge for the president forcing her to resign as Secretary of the Navy in the previous book. As you point out, other characters, such as Mixell, are also motivated by vengeance, but Mixell’s motive is present in the last three books, not just this one. So, from a title perspective, Vengeance is tied to Brenda.

EC: Many thriller writers must worry about the quick changing world events.  Can you discuss this regarding the book Vengeance?

RC: I don’t worry too much about quickly changing world events, since there’s not much I can do about them. But I worry sometimes about how some readers will perceive recent events in relation to my books. For example, in Vengeance, I have a plot thread that involves a U.S. strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The scenario is reasonably similar to what happened last June when the U.S. struck several Iranian nuclear weapon facilities, and since Vengeance released several months later, some readers will assume that I incorporated what happened into Vengeance, essentially being a copy-cat.  However, most readers aren’t aware of the long lead times between manuscript completion and release. Vengeance was written in 2024, with the finished manuscript submitted to my editor in October of that year, but it released 14 months later, after the U.S. strike. In this case, I got lucky, writing a scene that could realistically happen, and it did, but some readers will conclude otherwise—that I just copied a recent real-world event.

On the other side of the coin, I have inaccurately predicted future events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is a central plot element in Blackmail and Treason. I got lucky again, in that what was predicted in those books actually happened—Russia invaded Ukraine—but I got the outcome of the war wrong.  In Blackmail and Treason, the Russian military steamrolled Ukraine and kept going. Never in my wildest assessment would I have predicted that Ukraine would have been able to halt the Russian offensive to the stalemate we’re seeing today. So, the plots of Blackmail and Treason are fundamentally flawed at this point, since what happens in those books does not reflect what we’re seeing in real life. 

EC: Can you speak about the relationship between Christine and Jake?

RC: The relationship between Christine and Jake is a topic that comes up frequently with readers of the Trident Deception series. Although there are some who don’t like Christine at all (I’ve had requests to kill her off), she is overwhelmingly the series favorite character, which I find surprising since the Trident Deception novels are primarily submarine / military thrillers. Captain Murray Wilson is the next favorite character, which makes sense, since he’s often the central character in the submarine or naval plot threads, followed by Jake.

EC:  How did the character Jake get developed?

RC: Jake Harrison’s character was an afterthought. He wasn’t a character until the second book. The reason is that I never intended to write a series. The Trident Deception was a “bucket-list” project—write a book and get it published—a one-and-done endeavor. However, when St. Martin’s Press became interested in the book, the first question they asked was whether I was writing a sequel. After conferring with my agent, the correct answer became apparent—Of course!

At that point, I realized that The Trident Deception didn’t have the right characters for a military thriller series. Those series typically have the experienced special ops-type character serving as the lead. But I had only Christine and Wilson. Both of those characters were problematic:  Wilson was tied to submarine platforms (despite what you might read in other submarine-related novels, the submarine’s commanding officer does not go ashore on dangerous land-based missions—that’s what SEALs are for), and Christine was a standard White House staffer with no special training. If she got involved in a simple scuffle with your average man, she’d get the snot kicked out of her.

So, I decided to create Navy SEAL Jake Harrison, which gave me a character who was adequately trained and could also move around and engage in different types of missions. I also thought it would be interesting for Christine and Jake to have a backstory—a relationship that didn’t work out. That turned out to be a good idea, because I’ve lost count of how many readers have asked me—“When are Christine and Jake going to get back together?”

EC: How would you describe Mixell?

RC: Well, Lonnie Mixell is an actual person. During book release parties, I have prizes for attendees, with one of them being the opportunity to be a main character in one of my upcoming books. Lonnie Mixell won one of those prizes, and I was about to begin writing the three-book arc in books 6 through 8. The character who became named Mixell played a large role, but was on the fairly evil side of things. I explained the character to Lonnie and asked him if he’d be okay with that, and he said – “As long as I’m not a rapist or child-molester, I’m in.” (I sometimes I get the question from readers—“Where did you get the funky name of Lonnie Mixell?”  Well, Lonnie won the prize.) On a related note, Brenda Verbeck is also a real person, but much nicer in real life.  She won the “you-can-be-a-character” prize at another release party.

EC: Can you describe the ups and downs of the relationship in this book between Christina and Jake?

RC: The biggest challenge with Christine and Jake’s relationship was getting them together again. As I mentioned earlier, Jake was a late addition to the series, and at that point, I was on deadline for the second novel and I didn’t stop to think their relationship all the way through. I gave them the backstory of a previous relationship and moved on. However, it quickly became clear that the Christine-and-Jake’s relationship was something that a lot of readers enjoyed, and that they wanted Christine and Jake to get together again. Unfortunately, I had painted myself into a corner when I introduced Jake—he was happily married.

I had a problem, in that Jake is portrayed as an honorable character—not someone who would cheat on his wife or leave her for another woman, and Christine is also not someone who would have an affair with a married man. I had to figure out how to get out of this jam. The two options were a divorce or an unfortunate turn of events for Jake’s wife. Since I write thrillers and not courtroom drama, the choice became clear—Jake’s wife would meet her demise. At whose hands would it be? Mixell’s, of course.

EC: What is the role of Khalila in this book and future books?

RC: Khalila’s character was added in book 6 and continued through book 8 because I decided to make Christine the CIA director. I moved Christine from the White House to the CIA to take her out of harm’s way, since I had pushed the envelope as far as I was comfortable in the area of — “How much trouble can an ordinary White House staffer get into?” So, Khalila is essentially a surrogate for Christine, except I gave her the training and skills necessary to be a credible character in dangerous scenarios.

Khalila turned out to be a character a lot of readers liked, and my editor considered creating a spinoff series featuring her as the main character. However, he eventually decided against it because he thought there wasn’t enough there for Khalila to carry a series.

EC: What about the confrontation between the US and Russian subs where they appear to be playing possum with the circular run interlock?

RC: I try to ensure each submarine scenario throughout the series is different from everything that came before it, so readers don’t get bored with repetitive scenes. I also use real weapons and tactics, although I can’t get too specific and the tactics are sometimes altered due to classification issues. However, the circular run issue is one that dates back to when USS Tang was sunk in WWII by one of its own torpedoes. The weapon had a steering malfunction and circled back and sank the submarine that fired it. (Whether or not there’s an actual interlock in torpedo logic, I cannot say.)

EC: Next book?

RC: There are no additional releases planned in The Trident Deception series. One of the challenges is that the novels are designed around a credible near-peer competitor to the U.S. military, and I’ve exhausted that list of potential adversaries.  I do have rough outlines for two other books, which would revisit the U.S.-China scenario explored in Empire Rising, but for now I’m focused on my new Military Science Fiction series, which I like to think of as military thrillers in a Sci-Fi skin.  

Readers who like The Trident Deception novels and are open to some science fiction elements will probably like the Colonial Fleet / Nexus House novels as well. The first 6 books are finished, releasing at 3-month intervals starting last April, with the entire story arc taking 24 books. I’m trying to stay on a 3-book-per-year schedule, but even a pace that fast will take me six more years to complete.

THANK YOU!!

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