“Would I need to scale this load?” Hugh asked, experience telling him that beer loads were usually quite heavy, often requiring the heavy-haul fleet to take them on.
“Nah, you’re single-stacked, only about three-quarters full,” the shipping clerk said. “You’re good to go.”
“Thanks,” Hugh replied, then walked back out to the truck.
As he opened the door, and stepped up ready to swing into his driver’s seat, he nearly fell back down onto the pavement in surprise.
“Holy cow! You scared the crap out of me!” he shouted at Jenny, who was sitting calmly in the passenger seat.
“What on earth are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I need to use the restroom. Is there one in there?” Jenny said sweetly, pointing to where Hugh had exited from the shipping office.
“For crying out loud, you know what I mean,” Hugh exclaimed heatedly. “What are you doing in my truck?”
“Can we have this conversation after I visit the restroom? I’ve been in your truck since two o’clock this morning. And I really gotta go,” Jenny said, with strong emphasis on the “gotta go.”
“Go,” Hugh said, waving her out.
Jenny opened the door, and started to climb down, then hesitated, and looked up at Hugh.
“Go. I’ll wait for you. I promise.”
When Jenny returned, and climbed back up into her seat, Hugh remarked, with exasperation, “Just like the old days.”
“I’m sorry, Hugh. I knew you were going to leave without me.”
“How did you know? Who told you?”
“You did, Hugh. You really are quite transparent, you know,” Jenny replied, waving her cell phone at Hugh. “And I know you would have liked some wine at that restaurant. There’s only one reason why you didn’t have any. Right?”
Hugh gave in to her logic. “Yeah, you’re a pretty smart cookie.”
Then something occurred to him. “Wait a minute. Why didn’t someone from the ranch call to tell me that you had gone missing?”
“I’m sure they did,” Jenny answered. “Check your phone.”
Sure enough, there was a message from his mom earlier this morning. Hugh hadn’t heard the call, however, because he had muted his ringer just in case a call or a text message had come in while he had been sneaking out of the house.
“So, my mom knew?” Hugh asked Jenny.
Jenny shook her head. “Not until she saw my note after we were long gone. She didn’t know my plans.”
Hugh cranked up the engine, and pulled out of the micro-brewery onto the surface roads that would take him to 395/90 out of town.
He remained silent, brooding on this new development.
“I’ve got good ears,” Jenny said, after several minutes of Hugh’s silence.
“Yeah, so?” Hugh replied.
“I heard you.”
“Wha…? Oh, yeah, that,” Hugh said, fighting to keep down a blush.
“Thank you, Hugh. Me to,” Jenny said.
Hugh drove on in silence for awhile longer. The minutes became an hour, and Hugh realized that he hadn’t had any breakfast. He supposed that Jenny hadn’t either.
“We’ll pull off at the truck stop in Ritzville for a bite to eat,” he told Jenny. “Sound good to you?”
“Oh, thanks, I’m starved,” Jenny said.
Once they were seated at the truck stop diner, Hugh remarked, “This sure isn’t the Trilogy lake-side restaurant. Is it.”
“No, Hugh. But, this is more like us. Don’t you think?” Jenny said.
Noting the “us,” Hugh replied, “Jenny, it’s the kind of life I’ve chosen. It suits me. It’s all I know to do. But, I’m not sure how you’d fit into this lifestyle.”
Taken aback a little by Hugh’s brusqueness, Jenny said, “I don’t know either, Hugh. Let’s just take it one day at a time for awhile, and see what happens.”
“OK. I can do that,” Hugh said.
They finished their meal, and got back into the truck. Hugh pulled out onto the highway.
During a periodic sweep of his mirrors he noticed something wrong. It appeared that one of the trailer doors had become unlatched, and was swinging open on the curves.
“Uh-oh. Gotta stop and fix something,” Hugh said, regretting that he hadn’t done a quick pre-trip at the truck stop before pulling out. “Looks like someone has tampered with the trailer.”
He scanned ahead for a place to pull over. This was an area of wide-open rolling hills and wheat fields, so it wasn’t too much longer before he found a spot on the shoulder wide enough to accompany his truck.
He turned off the engine, and set the brake, then climbed down to see what the problem was with the door. Jenny climbed down to accompany him.
They both rounded the tail end of the trailer at the same time. Hugh immediately spotted the broken seal, and saw that the right-hand trailer door had been deliberately unlatched.
Not again.
“I’ve got to check out the load. Make sure it hasn’t been tampered with,” he told Jenny, then climbed up into the back of the trailer. Jenny followed, hopping up adroitly. Hugh looked at her disapprovingly.
Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “I’m curious what it’s like inside one of these things,” she said.
While Hugh and Jenny were looking over the load, they had failed to hear a car pull off of the highway onto the same shoulder where they had parked.
Suddenly, the bright sun that was pouring in and illuminating the inside of the trailer got cut off as the trailer door swung shut. Hugh heard the latch slamming into locked position. Now, the only illumination was a dim light from the translucent plastic roof.
“Hey! What’s going on!” Hugh shouted, as he ran to the trailer door and began pounding on it.
“That’s not funny! Let us out!” Jenny screamed at whomever had shut them in.
Then they heard, “Your ass is mine.” And cold chills ran up and down Hugh’s spine. Jenny’s uncle. But how?
Hugh looked at Jenny. “How on earth?”
Jenny merely shrugged.
So far, the truck hadn’t moved. Hugh asked Jenny if any of the hijackers knew how to drive a big rig.
“A couple of them do … did,” she answered, remembering that there were only two left. “Some of them had to know, so they could drive away the rigs that they had hijacked.”
Hugh’s shoulders sagged in defeat. Chances were that at least one of the remaining hijackers was a driver.
“What are we going to do now?” Jenny asked Hugh. “Can we get out of here?”
“I don’t think so. Those latches and door hinges are made to take punishment. There’s no way we can just push that door open against the locks.”
Then he had a thought. “Wait a minute! Do you have that cell phone I gave you?”
Jenny brightened at that, and then immediately sagged. “I did bring it, but I left it on the dash before I went to use the restroom.”
“Great,” Hugh exclaimed.
Then they heard the truck’s engine come to life.
“Uh-oh,” they both said at the same time.
“Here we go,” Hugh said, as the rig started forward, and pulled onto the highway. Hugh grimaced as the inexperienced driver ground his gears getting the truck up to highway speed.
“How many do you think there are?” Hugh asked Jenny.
“I’m not sure. I know they are down to my uncle and one friend left. But, they could have picked up others somewhere.”
“I wish we could see outside,” Hugh said, then added, “Listen, Jenny, just thinking out loud here, but we need to consider what’s going to happen when we get to wherever they are taking us.”
Jenny looked at him to go on.
“There’s a very strong possibility they are going somewhere where they, and a bunch of accomplices, could open the trailer door and charge in at us, or …” Hugh held his thought, because he was afraid to say what he was thinking.
“Or what? Hugh.”
> “They know what I am capable of. And I believe they are afraid of me. What I think they will do—what I’m positive they will do, in fact—is open the trailer door, and spray this whole area with gunfire until they know we are both dead. Your uncle definitely indicated he has no concern for you anymore. So, your being here won’t stop them.”
“Can’t we protect ourselves? Somehow?” Jenny asked.
“You got an Uzi in your pocket?” Hugh asked her, not expecting an answer. “No, we’ve got to get out of here—and before they get to where they are going,” he added.
Jenny looked around. “How?”
“I don’t know yet. But, I’m sure there is a way.”
Hugh looked around the inside of the trailer to see what might be available. Glancing up, he considered the plastic roof. The ceiling was about five feet above the top of the pallets of beer.
He hopped onto one of the pallets and put his shoulder to the ceiling. It gave slightly, bowing with the flexibility of the plastic, but he knew that no amount of pressure he could bear on it would cause it to break. As strong as he was—and he was stronger than the average guy—he just simply could not get enough leverage.
Then he thought of his knife. He struck at the plastic, but the quarter-inch thickness could not be penetrated by the blade. And, again, he couldn’t find the leverage to give it a real good whack.
Hopping down off of the pallet, he looked at Jenny. “Have you got any ideas?”
Jenny looked around again.
“What’s this?” she asked Hugh, pointing to a bar that was stretched horizontally from one wall to the other about three feet from the floor to keep the last set of pallets from shifting toward the back of the trailer.
“Brilliant!” Hugh exclaimed.
He removed the load lock, which was a ratchet jack about eight feet long that fit the width of the eight-foot-wide trailer. He stood it on end and, with one end on the floor and the other end pointed at the nine-foot-high ceiling, began to ratchet it up, hoping he could jack up the plastic ceiling until it broke.
The ceiling began to bow up under the pressure. Then, “Darn!” he exclaimed, as the jack ran out of travel before it could break through the ceiling.
Then, thinking he could use the jack at its shortest setting, he placed one end on top of one of the pallets of beer and attempted to bring the other end to the ceiling. “Darn,” he exclaimed again, as he realized that the jack was too long, at even its shortest length, to fit between the pallet of beer and the ceiling.
“Now what?” he asked, looking at Jenny.
They sat down on the floor with their backs against the last pallets of beer, their legs stretched out in front of them, pointing toward the locked trailer doors.
“At least we won’t die of thirst,” Hugh said.
Then he noticed that his legs covered half the distance from the pallets to the doors, which gave him an idea. He jumped up in excitement.
“What?” Jenny exclaimed, surprised by his action.
“I’ve got it!” Hugh shouted. “We’re getting out of here.”
He took the load lock, and extended it out again, then laid it down on the floor with one end snug against one of the last pallets, and the other end tight against the bottom edge of the right-side trailer door. It was a perfect fit.
He began to crank the load lock handle.
Seeing what he was doing, and that the handle was getting harder to crank as the load lock began to build pressure against the door, Jenny leaned in to help Hugh.
Hugh feared they were going to run out of extension as they had before, but then he heard a loud “crack” as one of the door lock welds gave way.
“Keep cranking,” Hugh yelled.
Eventually, the mounting pressure broke the last weld holding the bottom part of the door latch, and the load lock leveraged a small opening. But that was as far as the jack would travel. They were finished.
Hugh looked at what they had accomplished, realizing that the opening was too small for him to get through. He also realized that they couldn’t break the top part of the door latch, either, because the load lock was too short to get purchase on the pallet on the bottom and reach at a diagonal all the way to the top of the trailer door.
“Dammit,” Hugh exclaimed.
“I can fit through that opening,” Jenny said, looking at the opening, and then looking at Hugh.
Hugh considered her offer, weighing the possibility of the success of her mission against the consequences of failure—meaning, a drop to the pavement at sixty miles an hour, which was certain to be fatal.
“OK,” he said. “This is what you’ll have to do.” And then he told her the sequence of events she would have to carefully and successfully accomplish. Hugh was confident that if she followed his instructions exactly, she’d be safe.
“Can you do it?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding for emphasis.
“Alright, let’s do it,” Hugh said.
He helped Jenny snake out through the small opening at the bottom of the trailer door. As her head and shoulders began to show outside, she rotated onto her back, and reached up to the vertical bar that connected the bottom latch of the left-side door to the top latch.
She carefully continued to climb out through the opening, all the while shinnying up the vertical bar. When she was almost out all the way, she followed Hugh’s instructions and put one foot, and then the other, onto the horizontal member of the DOT bumper that all trailers are required to have.
Now, she was completely out of the trailer, which, incidentally was still traveling at sixty miles an hour down the highway. She yelled at Hugh, “Go ahead!”
At her signal, Hugh released the load lock’s pressure against the bottom of the door. And it sprung back, nearly into its original shape. This, in effect locked Jenny out of the trailer. But that had to be done for her to perform the next maneuver.
Jenny held on to the left-side door’s vertical bar with her left hand, and then leaned over to grab the handle of the right-side door latch. She was able to swing the latch handle up out of its cradle and toward her, which unlatched the top latch. Remembering Hugh’s instruction, she held on to the door so that it wouldn’t swing open and alert the hijackers of what they had managed to do.
Hugh’s strong arms then pulled Jenny back in through the partially open door. Once she was inside the trailer again, she let go of the door, and Hugh took over holding it mostly closed.
“That was beautiful, honey, just beautiful,” Hugh exclaimed, and kissed her.
“OK. Now what?” Jenny asked.
“Do you remember those western movies where the good guy climbs over the top of the stagecoach to fight the bad guys?” Hugh said.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Jenny exclaimed.
“Nope. It’s gotta be done. We are going way too fast to just jump out. And, I’m not giving up my truck to those guys, anyway. Not no way.”
He told her what his plan was.
“Wish me luck,” he said.
She did more than that. She took his face in both her hands and gave him a big kiss. “I love you, Hugh. Don’t die on me.”
He grinned at her. “OK, sweetie. Just because you said that, I won’t.”
With Jenny holding the door partially open to keep it from flying open all the way, Hugh edged out through the narrow opening. He then began to climb up the vertical bar that still held the left-side door in place. Using whatever hand and footholds that were available, he inched up to the roof of the trailer and hoisted himself up until he was lying on his belly on the roof from the waist up, with his legs still dangling down the back side of the trailer.
Here’s where it gets dicey, Hugh figured, seeing that there would be no foot or handholds once he got onto the smooth roof surface.
With one huge effort, he scrambled up onto the roof, and lay there for a minute to settle his nerves. He knew that it was not possible for the occupants of the truck cab to see him in their mirrors, so he
took a moment to compose himself.
He also noticed that there was no car following them or preceding them down the road. So, Hugh figured that the hijackers must have been in a stolen car, and had abandoned it on the shoulder where they had hijacked his truck. Good, that means there might be only two of them in the cab.
Then, slowly, he began to creep his way forward on his elbows, like a soldier’s crawl. He kept his profile low to prevent the sixty-mile-an-hour wind from blowing him off the roof.
The trailer pitched and yawed like a boat in choppy water, causing Hugh to stop his forward progress a couple of times and lie spread-eagled to keep from being bounced off the roof.
Once at the front of the trailer, he realized that there would be nothing for it but to remain on his belly, to swing his legs around with his feet facing the front, and to drop down in a reverse of how he had climbed up in the first place. The main difference was that there were no hand holds on the face of the front of the trailer. He’d have a straight drop right down to the catwalk.
"OK, here goes," he said to nobody, and started over the edge.
He got to where he could briefly hang from the top rim of the trailer’s roof, and he then launched himself away from the face of the trailer, hoping beyond reason that he could land on the catwalk without breaking a leg, and that he could keep his balance without getting pitched over the side of the swaying truck.
He managed to plant his feet firmly on the catwalk, but lost his balance as the truck banged over a pothole in the road. He saved himself by grabbing one of the coiled airlines that led from the back of the truck cab to the front of the trailer.
So far, so good. Now for the dangerous part.
He had managed to do all this undetected. But, he realized now that as soon as he stepped off the catwalk, rounded the back corner of the truck cab, and got on the steps on the side of the cab he’d be in sight of anybody looking through the side mirrors.
Considering this, he decided on his course of action. He’d go after the passenger side first, thinking to gain entrance there. He hoped against hope that there wasn’t a passenger there, and that the door wouldn’t be locked. Then, he planned on subduing the driver from inside the cab, remembering how badly it had worked out for those others who had tried to get at Hugh from the outside.
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