“Anyway, I knew what I was doing most of the time.”
“I remember that, too. How are we going to manage this?”
“I guess the easiest way is to follow the truck and wait for the drivers to take a rest break. We only need five minutes to plug in the remote and open the back enough for Gobbles to get out.”
“It’s too bad we don’t have ski masks or something. Just in case.”
“I haven’t got any ski masks, but we can put my Calvin briefs over our heads and cut eyeholes in the ass.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll look forward to that.”
I changed into a T-shirt, we shut off the coach lights, loaded Beans into the back of Hooker’s rental SUV, and took off after the number 69 Lube-A-Lot car hauler.
TWO
Traffic wasn’t gridlock, but it wasn’t good either. The track glowed bright white behind us and in front of us was a line of red brake lights stretching clear to Miami. The hauler was out of sight, up the road, but it was in traffic, too. There were two drivers, and they’d most likely drive through the night. With any luck, they’d stop to eat and stretch their legs, and we could accomplish our rescue.
The traffic began to open up as cars peeled off onto side roads. Hard to tell exactly what was in front of us, but there appeared to be a couple trucks ahead, their roof running lights visible above the stream of SUVs and sedans.
An hour later, we’d made enough progress at working our way up to the trucks to see that one of them was the 69 hauler. We were a bunch of cars back, but we had it in sight.
I called Gobbles on his cell.
“We’re a couple cars behind you,” I told him. “We’re going to get you out when they stop to take a break. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m cramped, but I’m okay.”
I disconnected.
“Do you know the hauler driver?” I asked Hooker.
He shook his head. “Only superficially. The Huevo people keep to themselves. Not a real friendly group.”
We were about ten miles north of Miami when the hauler took an exit. My heart did a little tap dance in my chest, and I momentarily stopped breathing. The smart, sane part of my brain had been hoping I’d get a call from Gobbles saying he’d found an unlocked escape hatch in the roof, and he didn’t need our help. The stupid, crazy part of my brain was flirting with the fantasy that I was about to have a James Bond experience and perform a kick-ass rescue. And the chickenshit part of my brain was running down black roads of terror.
The truck stopped at the end of the off-ramp and turned left. A half mile down the road, it pulled into the lot for a large truck-stop-type diner and drove to the truck and bus parking at the rear. Three other haulers were already parked there. Hooker circled the lot and waited at idle toward the front. The two hauler drivers came from behind the building and went into the diner.
The back lot where the trucks were parked was lit by a single overhead halogen. The 69 hauler had running lights on and the engine at idle. Standard procedure. It was a natural assumption that no one would be insane enough to try to steal a
hauler. No point in shutting down the systems. Hooker cut his lights, eased up to the 69, and parked. All haulers have exterior cargo bays that are used for storing cartons of soda, automotive equipment, barbecue grills, and whatever else. The cargo bay closest to the left-rear door usually contains the remote used to operate the back-panel hydraulics. I ran to the hauler and attempted to open the rear-bay door. Locked. Hooker tried the bay on the other side. Also locked. We tried the side door. Locked.
“Find something to jimmie the bay door,” I told Hooker. “We’re going to have to break him out.”
Hooker searched the rental for a tire iron or screwdriver, and I searched the truck cab for a key. We both came up empty.
I glanced at my watch. We’d gone through fifteen minutes. “We can’t get the door open without the remote,” I said to Hooker. “And he’s going to be in there for a long time if we miss this opportunity. I’m at a loss. Do you have any ideas?”
Hooker sucked in some air and blew it out. “Yeah. We could steal the hauler.”
“Get serious.”
“I am serious. It’s all I can come up with. We drive the hauler down the road, park it behind a Wal-Mart or something, buy a can opener, get Gobbles out, and take off. Some of the trucks are equipped with a GPS tracker. If Huevo has a tracker on this hauler, they can find it immediately. If not, we can go to a pay phone and tell them where the hauler is located.”
“This hauler has a tracker. I saw the antenna when I was crawling around, looking for a way to break in. So we wouldn’t really be stealing. It would be more like borrowing.”
“Whatever.”
I gnawed on my lower lip. The very thought of “borrowing” the hauler gave me stomach cramps.