Road Test

by David Wickenhauser

  “I’ve already taken care of that,” Joe said. “The mother has signed a paper appointing her husband as legal guardian of her children in the event of her death. She doesn’t even know what she signed. I gave her a bunch of papers to sign telling her they were for the upcoming insurance settlement, and for her agreement with you.”

  “Fine. Good thinking,” the attorney said.

  “But it won’t come to that,” Joe added. “I can assure you by the way it’s being set up, there will be no survivors.”

  “Let me know how the run-through goes tomorrow, and that we are good to go the next day.” The attorney hung up.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At the truck center near Twin Falls later than evening, Hugh and Jenny were getting ready to bed down for the night.

  There was no awkwardness between them. The discussion they’d had in the restaurant over dinner a little while ago had ended amicably. Understandings were had. Agreements were reached.

  In a sense, revisiting that restaurant had been like a return to the scene of the aftermath of one of their hijacking episodes. It was where they had sat down with Trooper Donovan right after the events that had been featured so heavily in the reporter’s newspaper article.

  The location on the highway where Hugh had been handcuffed and had broken out of the trooper’s cruiser to save Jenny and the trooper was down Highway 93 a few miles from where they were now.

  The surviving, but seriously injured, hijackers had collected their dead buddy and had taken off. Donovan had wanted to go someplace to interview Hugh and Jenny for the record, and that’s how they had ended up in a booth two booths away from where Hugh and Jenny had sat just a little while ago having their dinner.

  From what Hugh and Jenny had told him, Donovan had enough for the official record of that failed hijacking event. He had closed his notebook and had said thank you.

  But the trooper had also been able to piece together an unofficial story explaining Jenny’s presence in the truck, and her relationship to the hijackers. It was clear to Donovan that Jenny at first had been a willing accomplice. But it was also clear after her uncle had held a gun to her head that she’d had no more intention of helping the hijackers.

  Hugh, Jenny and Trooper Donovan had left the restaurant that day with the understanding that because Donovan would surely have been a dead man at the hands of the hijackers and, but for Hugh’s heroics he would not have survived the day, that extra, unofficial information about Jenny would forever remain between those three.

  “You remember this place?” Hugh asked, as he and Jenny sat themselves down in the diner earlier that evening.

  “Oh, yeah. How could I forget. What a day. What a nightmare that was.”

  “What I appreciate is from what I could gather from Charlie’s statement about Donovan he’s kept his word about keeping a lid on the full extent of what happened that day.”

  “Thank goodness for that, Hugh.”

  Meals ordered, Hugh told Jenny he’d like to talk to her about last night.

  “OK.”

  Hugh explained he’d had quite a few girlfriends. Nothing serious. Nothing long-lasting. And that’s what the problem was. It had reached a point where he’d figured those empty relationships, based exclusively on sex, were getting him nowhere.

  He told Jenny that about a year and a half ago he had decided to avoid all relationships until he met the one he could be committed to without the interference of a sexual, but shallow, attraction.

  “Jenny, you’ve got to believe that because of the way we first met and didn’t get along I am as surprised as anybody that you are the one. But, you are. You are definitely the one I’ve been waiting for.”

  He could see Jenny’s eyes glistening as he spoke.

  “But, here’s the thing,” he said. “This relationship with you, because of my past background in relationships, could be broken in an instant if I slipped back into my old ways.”

  “It’s not you,” he went on to say. “It’s all on me. If we gave in to temptation now I would never be absolutely sure if it was the old Hugh or the new Hugh who was marrying you. If it turned out to be the old Hugh, then I’m afraid our relationship could be doomed to failure.”

  Jenny was leaning forward, elbows on the table, her hands cupped in front of her face, with only her eyes showing. Eyes that were now openly flowing with tears.

  “Is this making any sense?”

  “Oh, yes, Hugh. I was so afraid something was wrong with me. That you didn’t want me. Especially knowing I’ve never done that before. You know? … what I mean?”

  Hugh chuckled, startling Jenny.

  “Darling. Not a day goes by, sometimes not even hours or minutes, when I don’t think about that,” Hugh said.

  They heard a loud throat clearing and broke out of their reverie to see a waitress standing at their table with their plates of food. She was red-faced, and obviously uncomfortable.

  “Oops. Sorry,” Hugh said to the waitress. “Go ahead.”

  On their way back to the truck, Jenny told Hugh she was glad he had explained himself.

  “It takes a lot of the pressure off. I do understand, and I agree it’s for the best.”

  “Thank you, sweetie.”

  “You mentioned your background, but you should remember my background, growing up mostly with biker gang friends.”

  She reminded Hugh what a rough crowd they were. Sexual favors were granted easily among themselves.

  Hugh definitely remembered Jenny’s biker friends, and subconsciously rubbed the spots on his chest, arms and shoulders where he had endured a painful initiation when he had first met them. Hugh was an honorary Bakers Town Bad Ass biker gang member, and Jenny was his official Old Lady.

  The gang had adopted Jenny as their “little sister.” They were very protective of her. That’s why at twenty-three years of age Jenny had never had a serious, intimate relationship. Nobody before Hugh could pass muster with her protectors.

  “Believe me,” Jenny said. “Gentlemen like you don’t come around very often.”

  In the morning, before leaving the truck center in Twin Falls, Hugh decided to top off with fuel before the long haul down to Las Vegas that day. It was a straight shot south down Highway 93, but it was through some of the most sparsely populated landscapes that could be found anywhere in the United States.

  They would be retracing much of the route he had been on the first day he had picked up Jenny on Highway 6 out of Tonopah, Nevada.

  Hugh pulled up to the fuel island and got out to insert his card to start the pumps. Jenny jumped out on her side and, with her fueling gloves on, stood by the satellite pump to begin fueling the tank on that side.

  “OK. Go,” Hugh said over the catwalk behind the cab.

  Jenny inserted her nozzle and started the diesel fuel going. With the high-speed fuel pumps at these truck stops, hundreds of gallons would flow in the same time it would take to fill a small car’s gas tank. Hugh was only topping off his tanks, however, so they were finished in less than a minute.

  They both hung up their nozzles, and got back into the truck.

  “Good. We got a little over fifty gallons. That means at least one of us gets a free shower.”

  Jenny pointed at Hugh.

  “Ah. I see how it is,” he said.

  Both laughing, Hugh pulled onto 93 with the nose of his Freightliner Cascadia pointing south.

  He told Jenny they were looking at a good eight hours of driving, more or less, allowing for headwinds, which can be strong in the desert. They’d had coffee and a couple of hard-boiled eggs for breakfast before heading out. Hugh planned to stop about halfway for sandwiches and a pit stop.

  Coincidentally, that halfway point would put them right at the truck stop in Ely where Hugh had first attempted to ditch Jenny.

  “Are you OK with stopping for a bite to eat at the truck stop in Ely?” Hugh asked.

  “Oh, yeah. No problem. That first day was actually kind of fun. At
least compared to some of the things we had to go through since then.”

  Toward the end of the drive that day after they had left Highway 93 and had caught I-15, they were close to Las Vegas. He decided to pull into the truck stop north of the city and call it a night.

  “We’re stopping here?” Jenny asked.

  “Yeah,” Hugh explained his reasoning.

  Tomorrow was going to be an easy six hours or so until their 4 p.m. delivery in Mesa, so there would be no point in pushing through Las Vegas this evening during commuter traffic time.

  They could take their time getting started in the morning, miss commuter traffic and still make it to their delivery in plenty of time.

  The Interstate 11 bypass of Hoover Dam cut a considerable amount of time off of the exit from Las Vegas to points south. Good thing, too, Hugh had told Jenny, because truck traffic is absolutely prohibited over the dam since the events of September 11, 2001.

  A couple of Hugh’s mom’s frozen homemade meals were on the menu for dinner. Hugh liked to ration them out so he could enjoy them for as long as possible, but he was in the mood for something home-cooked this evening.

  Bedtime routines were being established, and there was no awkwardness about who would be sleeping where.

  On Interstate 10, driving into the setting sun through West Phoenix, Joe and the women were in their cars like before. Joe was looking for a likely target, a semi-truck, to get one more practice in before the real thing tomorrow.

  “Remember,” Joe said into the speakerphone of his burner phone, “this is only practice. Do everything but hit your brakes. We aren’t ready for the trucker to tap your rear bumper. That’s tomorrow.”

  “OK,” Joe heard the mother say.

  Joe spotted a truck driving along in the middle lane, like yesterday, keeping a good following distance. He pulled up beside the truck on the left and, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the mother’s car do the same thing on the right.

  Joe sped up, and timed it so he could pull into the truck’s lane a little ahead of the truck, leaving only enough room for the mother’s car to squeeze in.

  “OK …” Joe started to say on the phone to let the mother know to make her move. But, before he could finish saying it he could see in his rear-view mirror the mother had made a perfect maneuver, and was jammed in tightly between Joe and the truck, effectively cutting the truck driver’s following distance down to zero.

  “Careful,” Joe said while he sped up a bit to ease the pressure on the mother and the truck driver. “Be very careful to keep your foot away from your brake pedal. That was cutting it close.”

  Joe sent the mother on her way with instructions to meet at her house early the next day to get set up for the real fake-crash later in the afternoon.

  He glanced around to make sure no highway patrol cruisers were nearby then dialed the attorney. No hands-free setup on the burner phone.

  “Hello,” Fishburn’s voice came over the speaker.

  “It’s Joe. We finished a practice, and it went real good. We’re good to go for tomorrow.”

  “That’s good news. Call me tomorrow to let me know when you are set up and ready to do it.” Then the attorney hung up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hugh and Jenny took their time with their morning activities.

  One of the projects Hugh wanted to do was install his new dashcam. It wasn’t a complicated procedure. It consisted of a camera, a suction cup to attach it to the windshield, and a cable to plug it into a twelve-volt receptacle.

  Jenny helped him tuck the cable underneath the edge of the headliner and bring it down the window frame and under the dash, leaving no unsightly cable hanging down the middle of the windshield. She was a great help because of her small size and agility.

  It was a Bluetooth model dashcam, so Jenny installed the app on her phone and got it set up. It recorded continuously on a loop that could be set to six, eight or ten hours depending on the size of the microchip. Hugh had purchased a 64gb chip, and a 32gb second one, so he put in the larger chip and chose the ten-hour loop setting.

  Important to Hugh, it had a feature that if a major event occurred it would save the event along with thirty seconds before the event and two minutes afterward, and not record over it.

  It also had a built-in GPS feature that recorded road speed and G forces on three axes. It recorded those on the same continuous loop with the camera.

  Hugh navigated out of Las Vegas. Past Hoover Dam, it was a straight shot down 93 to Kingman, Arizona, a jog over on I-40 east, then 93 again going south all the way to Wickenburg.

  A lot of 93 south from I-40 was four-lane highway, but much of it was two lanes. County planners had decided that intersections on the approach to Wickenburg, and the one major intersection in town, should be roundabouts.

  The problem is American drivers do not like roundabouts and are not comfortable using them. Place a seventy-five-foot-long truck and semi-trailer into the mix in a too-small roundabout and there’s bound to be trouble. Hugh’s experience on these particular roundabouts is it was impossible for him to get through them without taking up all the lanes, and sometimes even part of the truck apron around the circumference of the center circle of the roundabout.

  These Wickenburg roundabouts had seen some notable accidents – confrontations between trucks that needed the extra space to make the turns, and cars not willing to grant them that space. Hugh had personally witnessed just that kind of incident.

  South of Wickenburg, at one of the roundabouts, Highway 93 ended and Hugh picked up Highway 60, which had come in from the west.

  Then it was Highway 60 all the way to Interstate 10 in Phoenix via the new Interstate 303 bypass.

  They had left the truck stop north of Las Vegas around mid-morning, so it was early afternoon as they were approaching Phoenix.

  “This 303 bypass is an incredible time-saver,” Hugh said. He was taking a right off of Highway 60 onto the on-ramp for the 303 in the northwest corner of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

  “Before this went in it could take an extra hour to get onto the 10, depending on time of day and traffic. Now, we’ll take the 303 around the city and dump out onto the 10 without any stop signs or traffic lights.”

  On Interstate 10 Hugh drove east until it turned into the Interstate 202 Loop on the other side of the tunnel. The Boeing plant where they were delivering was off of the portion of 202 called the Red Mountain Freeway.

  The Boeing manufacturing complex was huge, consisting of numerous large buildings and other operations spread out over two-hundred and fifty acres in north Mesa. Hugh had to search on his phone’s map app in satellite view to locate shipping and receiving. His pre-load order had instructions as well, but Hugh believed in redundancy when it came to piloting his rig in unfamiliar locations.

  It turned out his delivery was at the northwest corner of the largest square-shaped building in the compound. He had made it in plenty of time. It was about a half-hour before his 4 p.m. scheduled delivery.

  He parked, and walked through the doorway labeled “Receiving” to get his door assignment.

  Walking back to the truck he could see Apache helicopters lined up on the tarmac north of where he was parked. What beautiful birds.

  “They’re ready for us. We’ve got a door,” Hugh told Jenny as he climbed back into the driver’s seat.

  He got set up for making the back, remembering to get out and open the trailer’s big double doors before backing up to the dock.

  When he returned to the truck’s cab he said, “I wish I could say that forgetting to do that was purely a rookie’s mistake. But even old hands like me forget it on the rare occasion.”

  He bumped the dock, pulled the air brakes, and got out and chocked two of the trailer tires, one on each side of the trailer.

  As he was climbing back into the truck to wait to be unloaded he heard the chirp indicating a message coming across his Qualcomm.

  “I hope that’s a pr
e-load out of here,” he said.

  “Yep. We’ve got a pickup first thing tomorrow morning at PepsiCo in Tolleson on the west of Phoenix with a load for the big Costco DC in Tracy, California. We’ll deadhead over to the Tolleson truck stop that’s off of I-10 to spend the night.”

  “Whew. Right away,” Jenny said.

  “That’s the life of a trucker. We have to get the miles because we don’t get paid for sitting still.”

  “OK, girls. Let’s get a move on.” Joe was nervous. This was the big day, and he wanted to get it over with.

  He was at the mother’s house. The mother’s car was parked next to her house in her narrow driveway, and Joe had pulled in off the street and had parked behind her car. The mother lived in a neighborhood older than the one Joe lived in. Her single-wide driveway was hemmed in on both sides by sizeable shrubbery.

  Unknown to the mother, when Joe had first driven into her driveway he had loaded two five-gallon plastic cans full of gasoline into the trunk of her car.

  It was now time to get settled into their vehicles.

  “Here, let me get that,” Joe said, offering to load the kids into their car seats. Joe could tell the mother and her sister were nervous too, and they murmured appreciation for his help.

  He was satisfied the kids’ seat belt mechanisms holding their car seats didn’t click in solidly, but did hold enough to not come loose on their own. When he gave a good tug, the upper part of the latch pulled loose in his hands. Perfect.

  “Phone charged up and working?” Joe asked the mother.

  She nodded yes. Looking very nervous.

  Joe backed out of the driveway and started driving slowly down the street to give the mother a chance to catch up.

  Unknown to Joe, in the few seconds he was gone and had his view of the mother’s car blocked by the tall bushes, a neighbor lady and her teenage daughter came from next door, opened the car’s back doors and removed the kids from their car seats.