Road Test

by David Wickenhauser

  Jason nodded toward Charlie. Jason was the third member of the team that would be helping Charlie get aboard Hugh’s truck.

  “Charlie, you’ll have a bag over your head, and have your hands tied behind your back. As the trucker rounds the corner and starts coming toward us we’ll all be out of the van struggling with you.”

  Charlie didn’t care for the “bag over the head” bit, but so far she was intrigued by the plan.

  “The trucker will see what looks like two guys trying to kidnap a woman, and trying to get her into the van. From what you have told us about this guy, he’s a sucker for helping women in trouble,” William said.

  Charlie nodded.

  “We’re counting on that. We’re sure he will stop his truck and try to rescue the kidnap victim. The important thing is we have to make sure he succeeds. We’ll have to pull our punches, so to speak,” William said.

  Charlie raised her hand. “I have a question.”

  “Go ahead,” the leader said.

  “Are there going to be only the two of you guys kidnapping me?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just saying. Do you have any idea what this trucker is capable of? He’ll have no problem at all rescuing me from only two of you.”

  “We can take care of ourselves.”

  “You’re going to get badly hurt.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine.”

  “Personally, I don’t care,” Charlie said. “All I want is to get onto his truck, and it won’t bother me at all about the bloody mess that will be left behind.”

  All three men exchanged looks, then broke out laughing.

  “OK. Let’s continue,” William said.

  He outlined for Charlie the back story she would have to provide to Hugh to make the kidnap scenario look plausible to him. Charlie offered some suggested changes. And then she recited the whole thing from the beginning.

  “Perfect,” the leader said. “Let’s pack up here and get on the road.”

  Later that morning, in attorney Fishburn’s law office, the attorney had been going over the letter of denial of his settlement demand that had been sent to him by WestAm Trucking’s legal department.

  The denial came as no surprise to the attorney. It would have been much quicker and easier if they’d agreed to negotiate terms, but the attorney had already begun to draft a civil complaint. He’d have to get his nuclear verdict the hard way.

  He picked up the handset of his desk’s landline phone and dialed the number for Frank at Rico Investigations.

  “Hello, Frank,” Fishburn said when the receptionist had patched him through.

  “The operation today is definitely on. Proceed as planned,” was all the attorney said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  At the Freightliner repair facility, Hugh had taken care of paperwork to get his repaired truck released. The cost of repairs hadn’t been excessive, only a little over twelve thousand dollars, which had been paid by the insurance, minus Hugh’s five-thousand-dollar deductible.

  He’d gotten a ride from the resort in the dealership’s courtesy van. Hugh had remembered to unload his mom’s frozen dinners from the villa’s kitchen freezer. He had tucked them safely away in his truck’s little freezer.

  Now in his driver’s seat, Hugh was going over the load order on his Qualcomm for the freight he’d be hauling from Las Vegas to Portland.

  The pre-load had him picking up from a high-tech manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas that built circuit boards, semiconductors and other components for the manufacture of computers and other high-tech hardware components. This freight was a multi-unload at several technology companies in the Portland area.

  He’d made deliveries there in the past, in what was known by some as Portland’s Silicon Forest. Many of the major tech companies had their main or branch facilities there. The term, Silicon Forest, preceded the one more people are familiar with, known as Silicon Valley in California.

  Intel, one of Hugh’s delivery destinations, maintains its headquarter in Santa Clara, California, but it had moved its highest-tech operations to Oregon. Its Portland-area campus is Intel’s largest operation anywhere, where it employs some seventeen thousand high-tech workers.

  He had done a walk-around during his pre-trip, paying extra attention to the fenders, hood, bumper and front grill. The repair work was flawless as far as he could tell, because it was mainly a matter of swapping out uni-body parts. He did end up needing a new radiator and cooling fan assembly because those had been damaged during the collision.

  Today’s drive would be a straight shot to Las Vegas following in reverse order the same route he had taken a week ago with Jenny coming down to Phoenix from Spokane.

  When he pulled out of the dealership and onto I-10 heading north Hugh again felt that deep satisfaction of being behind the wheel of his Freightliner Cascadia truck.

  Mile after mile rolled under his eighteen wheels. It was quiet in the cab. Hugh missed having Jenny with him.

  Before he had left Phoenix, he had remembered to insert the 32gb micro card into his dash cam. Because of the lesser capacity of that chip, he had set the record-over loop to six hours.

  Later that afternoon, he had called Jenny’s cell phone, finally able to use his new Bluetooth headset. He was now completely hands free, as all it took was for him to push a button on his headset and tell it to, “Call Jenny.”

  He had waited to call until he’d be sure she was off the airplane. It turned out she had landed, and was already back at the ranch with Hugh’s family.

  “Hello,” she answered sweetly, knowing it was Hugh because his photo popped up from her contacts list.

  “Hi. I’m on the road almost to Las Vegas for my pickup. Then it’s off to Portland,” he told her. “How is everything there?”

  “Everything is fine. The family had to hear all about the accident. And they really wanted to know about the resort we stayed at.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you had a little bit to tell them about that.”

  “Not everything, sweetie,” she said, with a little tease.

  “Sure sounds good to hear your voice,” Hugh said.

  They chatted for a bit more, then Hugh had to let her go so he could pull into the manufacturing plant to get his trailer loaded.

  The loading went uneventfully, and Hugh pulled out of the facility for the truck stop on I-15 where he and Jenny had stayed on the way down to Phoenix.

  “He’s leaving now,” Kent said into his phone. He followed Hugh out of the facility at a discreet distance. Kent drove a white, non-descript, generic-looking Chevy Caprice. Not anything that would draw undue attention.

  “He’s pulling a WestAm Trucking trailer with the big swoosh logo. His tractor is all white, with a small WestAm logo on the door. I’ll be behind him the whole time.” He kept the phone call alive.

  A few minutes later, Kent updated William, the leader, with an announcement Hugh had taken the exit for the truck stop.

  “He’s making a right turn, and signaling for another right turn. You should be able to see him in a few seconds. Be ready.”

  William, Jason and Charlie had been sitting in the van on the wide dirt shoulder a couple hundred yards before the truck stop entrance, waiting for the right time to begin their act. The timing was critical. They needed to start their fake-kidnap drama at the right time. Too early, and someone other than Hugh might feel compelled to stop to help. Too late, and Hugh might drive past without noticing.

  With Kent’s announcement that Hugh was about ready to round the turn, they got set up to play their parts. Charlie’s hands had already been tied loosely behind her back, but William now placed the cloth bag over her head.

  “Don’t forget, Charlie, you’ve got to give it a good struggle. Make it look real. And we’re going to put up a fight when he gets here to make it look good.”

  The bag nodded.

  They exited the van, and got into place. William kept an eye on the
road in the direction Hugh would be coming from. He could see the truck as Kent had described it rounding the last turn.

  Then closer.

  “Now?” Jason asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Now!”

  Hugh made the right turn for the final leg of about a quarter mile before the truck stop entrance. Ahead, he saw a van parked on the shoulder. Next to the van were three people, and he saw a lot of activity going on.

  As he got closer he saw one of them, a large guy, who was grappling with someone dressed in women’s slacks and a sleeveless top. Another guy was struggling to control the woman’s legs. She kicked violently, fighting to resist being forced by the men into the van through the side door.

  The woman’s hands were tied behind her back, and she had a bag over her head. She was losing the fight with those guys, overwhelmed by their superior strength and size.

  “Not today, fellows,” Hugh yelled, and brought his truck to a stop on the shoulder right behind the van.

  He jumped out of his cab and ran toward the group. As he got closer, the two guys saw him and momentarily stopped trying to drag the struggling woman into their vehicle.

  The guy holding the woman’s legs released her and stood to one side. The other kept a hold on her arms as she continued to struggle.

  “Stop right there, mister,” the one holding the struggling kidnap victim said. “This has nothing to do with you. Get back into your truck and drive away, and you won’t get hurt.”

  Up close, the speaker looked like a type Hugh had known in the military. Solid, capable, competent. His buddy looked to be the same.

  “No can do. How about if you let go of the lady and get back into your van and drive away.” All the while he was speaking, Hugh was inching closer toward the men and the struggling woman.

  Neither of the two moved.

  “It’s up to you how you play this. But the wise thing for you is to drive away. If you don’t, one or both of you are going to get hurt,” Hugh warned the men.

  “You’re kidding, right?” the one holding the woman, who Hugh assumed was the leader, said. “We’re two against one.

  The other one looked to the leader. His expression spoke volumes of doubt.

  Perfect. Sniff out the weakest one, and in this case, the stronger one had his hands full, occupied trying to hold on to the still-struggling woman.

  OK. He’d open the fight by dropping the doubting one first.

  Hugh was almost on top of them. He feigned a lunge at the one holding the women, but pivoted into the other guy. His sudden movement caught the guy unguarded, and Hugh drove a punishing, big-fisted, hard left into his solar plexus. Hugh knew that’s where a lot of the central body’s nerves and ganglia come together, the ones that play a part in the functioning of the stomach, kidneys, liver and adrenal glands. Hit it just right with enough force and it takes the fight right out of a guy.

  It’s exactly where someone wouldn’t want to receive a sledge hammer blow delivered by a determined, six-two, two-hundred-twenty-pound truck driver.

  The guy doubled over, his ability to breathe temporarily suspended. Hugh then caught the guy’s neck in the V between his right hand’s forefinger and thumb, heaved up with all his strength and drove the guy’s head back against the van’s open door frame. The guy dropped like a rock with his torso into the van, and his legs hanging out.

  Finished with that one, Hugh turned to see the one holding the woman had dragged her away from the van, had thrown her roughly down onto the dirt shoulder, and was making his way over to the other side of the vehicle away from Hugh.

  That guy, the one Hugh had assumed was the leader, then pulled his buddy all the way into the van, slammed the door shut, and gunned the engine out of there. His tires spun on the shoulder, and spewed dirt and small rocks all over Hugh and the woman.

  He’s not such a tough guy now. Hugh let him go.

  Hugh leaned over the woman who was struggling to sit up in the dirt. Her clothes were torn, and she had scrapes on her bare arms. Her struggles were only making it worse.

  “Stop struggling,” Hugh said. “I’m here to help.”

  When she stopped fighting him, Hugh kneeled down beside her and gently sat her up, cradling her in his arms. Then he removed the cloth bag that covered her head.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Face to face with each other, they sat on the dirt of the shoulder, both stunned into silence. Both staring at each other in disbelief.

  Hugh wouldn’t find out until later, but Charlie’s look of disbelief at seeing Hugh had been feigned. He’d eventually learn all about this subterfuge, and credit Charlie with doing a fine job of acting.

  For Hugh’s part, the shock at recognizing this kidnap victim had momentarily paralyzed his ability to think. The synapses in his brain that connected and registered a semblance of continuity between one event and another simply weren’t firing properly. Because there was no logical continuity. This couldn’t be happening. Impossible.

  “Hugh?” Charlie said. “How? What?”

  The sound of her voice started some of the synapses firing and connecting again. Hugh said, “Charlie?”

  Hugh was still holding Charlie in his arms, and he quickly released her and sat back on his heels. Charlie remained sitting in the dirt.

  “Thank you, Hugh, for saving me.”

  Hugh had finally found enough composure to ask, “What are you doing here? Here, like this?”

  “It’s a long story. But same question.”

  “I’m parking for the night. I’ve got a load out of Las Vegas. I’m supposed to be here. But let’s have your story first.”

  “Can we get out of this dirt, please?”

  Hugh helped Charlie stand up, and untied her hands.

  “Let’s go to my truck. I can call the cops for you.”

  Hugh saw panic in Charlie’s eyes, and she stiffened at his words.

  “No. No. Please don’t. Let me explain first!”

  They walked back to the truck. Hugh opened the passenger door for her, and motioned for her to climb in.

  When Hugh climbed in on the driver’s side he saw Charlie looking around. He noticed she held her gaze for a moment on the sleeper berth.

  “You OK?” Hugh asked.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ve never been inside one of these things,” she replied.

  Hugh started the engine. “I’ve got to get off the shoulder. Buckle up, and we’ll go to the truck stop.”

  Parked, and signed off for the day, Hugh suggested they go into the travel plaza to use restrooms and clean up. “We’ll talk about this when we get back.”

  “OK. But please promise me you won’t call the police.”

  “I promise.”

  Hugh and Charlie walked over together. After doing his business, Hugh waited for her outside. Massive surges of déjà vu flooded over him. Only, it was in an alternate universe Bizarro World kind of way.

  Back at the truck, the first thing Hugh did was save the last thirty minutes of so of the dash cam footage to a folder on the dash cam, with a backup to his cell phone.

  “What are you doing that for?” Charlie asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Hugh said. “The first one is, where’s your car? How are you going to get back to Boise?”

  “That’s the problem,” Charlie explained. “They’ve got my car, and all my stuff. I have nothing. No phone. No nothing. Just a few dollars in my pocket.”

  “OK. Let’s start with that. Who are they?”

  “Mafia. The mob.”

  “Yeah, right.” Hugh didn’t believe her. “Try again.”

  Charlie told Hugh she had gone down to Las Vegas to research an investigative story she had been working on for the newspaper. A consortium of Las Vegas casino owners – in other words, the mob – was attempting to make a move into Idaho, specifically Coeur d’Alene.

  They had believed the jewel city of Idaho was ripe for a major casino investment,
like Las Vegas and Atlantic City had been. Nobody would talk of it openly, but Charlie suspected organized crime ran underneath and throughout the whole process. She believed Idaho politicians were bought off not to acknowledge the underworld connections of those who were proposing the project.

  So she had come to Las Vegas to prove the mob connection, and to expose the crooked Idaho politicians.

  “That still doesn’t explain how you ended up here,” Hugh said.

  “I’m getting to that.”

  She told Hugh it hadn’t taken long for mob enforcers to discover what she had been doing in Las Vegas. She had collected damaging information on them she knew they wouldn’t want her to publish. So she had decided to get out of town. She had gotten as far as this truck stop before they had closed in on her, and had forced her to the side of the road.

  “I think they are still out there watching me. Watching us in this truck. The minute you let me go, they’ll be on me again.”

  “Then why don’t we call the cops?”

  “No way. The mob owns the cops here. I’d be a dead person the next minute after they put me into a cruiser.”

  Hugh’s survival instinct and natural skepticism told him Charlie was reciting her story from rote memory. Too pat. He’d go along with her story, and let her play it out to see where she planned to go with it.

  “All right, so what do you propose we do about you? You’re a danger to me and my truck. Been there. Done that. Don’t want to do it again.”

  Charlie told Hugh she though it would be OK for her to stay with him for awhile. Only three of them were trying to kidnap her. One guy took off with her car. He’d probably ditch it somewhere and hook back up with the other guys.

  “One of those guys won’t be in any shape to do much of anything,” Hugh said.

  “So there will be two of them. Enough to grab me again, but I can see they’d have a hard time getting past you. Besides, they’ve got all my stuff. My notes, my recordings of interviews. I think after a few days of me riding with you if they see I’m not going to the cops they’ll be done with me.”