Rig Warrior Read online

  “How much does twenty-five or so bodies weight?” Kate asked. “I sure would like to know what’s in those other boxes.”

  “We’ll find out. I didn’t see anything other than the body bags. What did the boxes look like?”

  “Kind of square. Looked heavy. And I saw them bringing in bags of ice.”

  Barry didn’t even like to think what might be contained in the boxes. He forced his imagination to stop conjuring up ghoulish images.

  They drove as far as their orders permitted. That put them in the Reno/Sparks area. They fueled, ate, and slept for six hours, pulling out at four the next morning. By daybreak they were some fifty-odd miles southwest of Winnemucca. Kate swung off on a state road and drove for a few miles, pulling off onto a dirt road and stopping.

  “Let’s try it here,” she suggested.

  They climbed down and stretched, breathing deeply of the clean, cool air. They walked around to get the kinks out of their muscles, then Kate got a punch set and began knocking out a new seal, one number at a time.

  Barry walked to the rear of the reefer and popped the seal. He looked at Kate. “You ready for this?”

  “You’re the boss, boss.”

  He swung open the doors. The cold air hit them both, carrying with it the sickly sweet odor of death.

  No dignity here, Barry thought, looking at the strapped-down body bags. He swung up and stepped inside the trailer, walking to a body bag. He looked at the tag.

  CHESSMAN DONALD R. USMC. A service number followed, then a date and time. Barry had to assume that was the time and date of death. But how did he die? He mentally steeled himself, then slowly unzipped the bag. Death’s odor struck him hard. Barry forced himself, to look at the man’s face. Chessman was about forty, he guessed. But what held his gaze was the scar that ran all around the man’s head, the incision just above the eyes, and very crudely stitched.

  Barry didn’t like to think—No! The doctors wouldn’t have removed his—

  He shook that away and opened another bag. Another man about forty. Same hideous scar running all around the head.

  “What is it, Barry?”

  “You’d better see this, Kate. But brace yourself. It isn’t pretty.”

  “I don’t wanna look.”

  “Then don’t.”

  She cussed, then climbed into the coldness of the reefer. She walked up to the first open bag, looked in, then ran to the rear and threw up. “Damn, Barry. That looks like something out of a Frankenstein movie.” She wiped her mouth, coughed, and returned to Barry’s side.

  She followed him from bag to bag, gagging as he opened them one by one, and looking inside.

  “Wanna make a bet as to what’s inside those ice chests, Kate?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re looking at, I’d bet, what’s left of experiments. And I’ll make a bet that compound back in California houses an asylum. That’s why the guy at the gate warned us not to stop or pick up anybody. All these men are servicemen, and I’ll bet they’re Vietnam vets. No families to care for them; or families who don’t give a shit. No one is going to miss them. Human guinea pigs, Kate. Post Vietnam Syndrome. I’d bet a thousand bucks on that. It’s a big issue now.”

  “That scar, Barry.” She pointed. “They all have the same scar. What’s that mean?”

  “That’s what’s in those ice chests, Kate. How many chests did you see?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Twenty, twenty-five, I guess.”

  “We’re hauling twenty-five bodies. One ice chest to a body.”

  “What’s in the chests?”

  “One brain to a chest. These men have had their brains removed for study.”

  Kate passed out.

  “Oh, Christ!” Kate said, sitting up on the bunk. “Where are we?”

  “Coming up to Winnemucca. I put you in the sleeper and let you sleep. How do you feel?”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  She slid into the seat beside him and rubbed her face.

  “Barry? Is what we’re haulin’ legal?”

  “I seriously doubt it. Bill of lading says we’re pulling delicate equipment for NASA. That answer your question?”

  “Then … ?”

  He shrugged. “That place wasn’t just built, Kate. It’s been there for several years. So this has been going on for a while.”

  “And you’re planning on doing what?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I can do.”

  The officer who met them at the highly secret testing facility in Utah told them the others had been sent south, to Arizona. Some sort of hurry-up trip. They would all meet back in New Orleans to await orders for their next trip. Barry and Kate were to take the load on to Minnesota.

  Barry nodded his understanding and walked back to his rig, pointing the nose of the Kenworth straight north.

  Back on the road, after a time of silence, during which Kate studied his angry face, she said, “Kinda going the wrong way to get to Minnesota, aren’t we?”

  “We’ll get there.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m not going to follow the preplanned route, Kate.”

  “I sorta had that figured out. For a government project, with SSTs, this thing seems kind of thrown-together to me.”

  Barry was again silent for a time, thinking hard. Finally he said, “Linda somehow found out about the experiment station. I’ll call it that for want of its proper name. She was already working on the cocaine angle. She’d done a lot of work setting up Fabrello and Bulgari.” He shook his head. “It seems to be all connected, but I can’t find a way to tie it all together.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing. If we have to go back to that place, I’d bet that’s where they’re doing whatever you have to do with nose candy. Process it, maybe.”

  “That might be where the stuff is cut. But it’s processed out of the country. Yeah. You might have hit on it. But I still can’t tie it all together.” He jerked his thumb toward the sleeper. “In my bag, Kate, there’s a roll of film I took of the bodies while you were out. I’ve got to get it to my attorney in D.C.”

  “That Ralph fellow you were talkin’ to the other night?”

  “Yes. This thing is so confused and twisted. When I got into it, I thought I was fighting the mob. Now I firmly believe that Fabrello is being used, manipulated—like somebody, and I’m not even sure it’s Linda, is attempting to do to me. I think Bulgari is a vain, silly, selfish person; for sure, he’s being used. By Linda? Maybe. It points that way. But I can’t be sure. Maybe she’s being used by someone. Who? I don’t know. Maybe Fabrello was wrong in his assessment of what’s happening. Goddammit, Kate, I can’t find the bottom line.”

  He cut his eyes to his left-side mirror. That car was still hanging back behind them. It had been there for some time, and it was beginning to annoy him.

  “Does that look like a cop back there to you?” he asked.

  “I been watchin’ it. I don’t know, Barry. No. Look hard. Four guys in that car. See them?”

  “Yeah.”

  They were heading straight north, Salt Lake City just behind them. Barry planned to stay on Interstate 15 until they reached Butte, then cut straight east on 90, finally picking up Interstate 94, taking that into Minnesota.

  “You plannin’ on goin’ into the high country, Barry?” Kate asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You ever driven it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Stay on the interstate and it isn’t bad. You get on those two-lanes, boy, it can get some kind of hairy up in the mountains.”

  “I’ve driven the Smokies a couple of times.”

  “The Rockies make the Smokies look like pimples. Believe it. That car’s about to make a move, Barry.”

  “I can’t believe they’re going to try anything. It’s too populated here.”

  The car accelerated past them.

  “Hard-lookin’ ol’ boys,” Kate observed.

  “M-16 laying on the
floorboards of the back seat,” Barry told her. “Or an AR-15. I couldn’t quite tell.”

  “That lets out a bunch of businessmen, don’t it?”

  Barry watched the car pull back into the right lane. He checked his mirrors. Another car had pulled in behind them.

  Four men sitting in it.

  “Yeah,” he said softly, just loud enough for her to hear. “Unless their business is murder.”

  16

  “Barry,” Kate said, looking at him. “If we are carryin’ dope, we’re gonna deliver it. Why would anyone risk bringin’ the government down on them by attackin’ an SST when the dope is gonna be delivered anyway?”

  “I can’t answer that, Kate. This whole thing is crazy. Look at that sky. We’re about to hit some crappy weather.”

  The sky had abruptly darkened; this close to dusk, night suddenly settled her skirts over the land. The first fat drops of rain splattered on the windshield. Barry cut on his lights and wipers. The car that had passed them now had slowed, staying just ahead of the eighteen-wheeler. The second car was staying behind them.

  “Surely they don’t think they’re going to box us in with any degree of success?” Barry said aloud.

  “You’d be surprised, or maybe you wouldn’t, what a lot of four-wheelers think, Barry.”

  Barry signaled and swung out into the left lane. The car behind him stayed in the right lane. “If I knew for sure that guy was going to pull something, I’d slap his ass off the side.”

  “You can’t be sure of that!” Kate said, just a bit too swiftly for Barry’s liking.

  His eyes narrowed, but he kept his mouth shut. Kate? No … that didn’t make sense. But hell, he thought, what has made any sense so far?

  “I didn’t mean for it to sound like that, Barry,” she said. “A load of dead bodies is not worth killing some innocent people.”

  “Sure. Forget it, Kate. I’m going to shake one of these cars. How far to the 84 loop back to 80 east?”

  She looked at her truckers’ atlas. “ ’Bout ten miles. Get off on 89 right up here. It’s thirty-one miles to 80. But then what?”

  Barry risked a glance at the atlas. “We give them their chance in Wyoming. You game?”

  “You’re drivin’,” she said flatly. Too flatly. “Where in Wyoming?”

  “We’ll take 189 north.”

  “I run it a couple of times. It’s a damn good place for an ambush. I run up to Jackson half a dozen times. It’s a son of a bitch in the winter.”

  Barry took a chance. “What’s on your mind, Kate?”

  She shook her head.

  “Come on, Kate. You’re going to make me paranoid and I won’t be able to trust you.”

  “Barry, Big Joe is all right. You put the fire back under his butt and steel in his backbone. Nobody is gonna take his line from him. Right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “You could stop right now, and your lady friend up in Washington couldn’t do a damn thing to you. Right?”

  “That’s correct. I suppose. What are you getting at, Kate?”

  “What’s the government payin’ you to risk your ass, Barry?”

  “Nothing. You know that.”

  “You’re a millionaire arms dealer, ain’t you, Barry?” she asked softly, as softly as the rumble and roar of an eighteen-wheeler would allow, that is.

  “Yes. I’ve hinted at that to you. It shouldn’t come as any surprise.”

  “A millionaire. Yet you’re assin’ around with a poor truck-driver lady. Why, Barry?”

  Barry smiled. He got it then. “Y’ all think I’m a-triflin’ with your affections, ma’am?” he drawled.

  “How would you like to get slapped, boy?”

  “You’ll wreck us both, girl.”

  “Barry, don’t you know of anybody up there in Washington you could turn all this … mess over to? Let them handle it?”

  Well, he halfway had it. She was worried about him.

  Something very soft and gentle and somehow sad touched him inwardly. It had been a long time since he had felt anything like it. He looked at the blonde looking at him. There were tears in her eyes.

  “I think I’ll just keep you around, girl. Providing that’s all right with you.”

  “I’ll think about it some, boy. Let you know later on.”

  “Fine. Now listen for a minute. After we get on 80, you and I are going to change seats; but we’re not going to stop rolling to do it. OK?”

  “That’s no problem. But why?”

  “Because, Kate, my girl, you are a better driver than I am.”

  She burst into tears.

  “Now what did I do?” Barry asked.

  “That’s the nicest thing any man ever said to me, Barry Rivers!”

  Barry threw back his head and roared with laughter. Yep—she was definitely a keeper.

  The gentle shower turned into a full-blown storm, the rain lashing down in sometimes-near-blinding sheets. Barry slowed his speed and changed seats with Kate; not something he wanted to do again in a blinding rainstorm. Thirty minutes later she had exited off on Interstate 80 and was rolling east. The intersection with Highway 189 was about forty-five miles up the road.

  They pulled over just inside Wyoming to weigh, but the scales were closed. Ten miles later, Kate swung the rig onto 189.

  “This will be where they hit us, Barry. It’s almost forty miles to the next town. And this road can get tight.”

  Barry busied himself checking first his Uzi, then Kate’s shotgun. “Let them make the first move, Kate. Let’s hope they hit us on a flat so you can swing into the left lane. If not, you’re going to have to slap the car off the road. Can you do that?”

  Her face tightened. “One time there was this ol’ boy over in Alabama. He come up to me in a truck stop and wouldn’t leave me alone. Said some pretty rough things to me. I made him mad and he come after me on the road. Started firin’ at me; him and the ol’ boy with him. I slapped that damned four-wheeler off the road and into the Tallapoosa River. Never did know what became of them.”

  Barry didn’t doubt the story for a bit. “Check your mirrors, Kate.”

  “Two cars behind us. I can’t tell if they’re the same ones as before.”

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  The rain had tapered off into no more than an annoying drizzle; that type of drizzle that kept a driver turning the wipers off and on—and kept a driver cussing.

  Kate drove and Barry rode in silence. Kate concentrated on driving the slick highway, and Barry was still attempting to tie all the pieces of the complicated puzzle together. It came as no surprise to him when, after his ruminations, he was no closer to fully understanding what was going on.

  With a sigh that Kate could hear he gave it up and brought all his attentions back to the present.

  They were in the middle of a curve, blind front and back, when suddenly the lights of a car, on high-beam, came flashing around them.

  “Crazy son of a bitch!” Kate yelled. “Jesus Christ!”

  “That’s them, Kate. They’ve started their move.”

  Bright sparks flashed in the night as the men in the back seat of the lead car began firing at the Kenworth. Slugs began whining off the cab.

  “That’s it!” Barry yelled. “Goddammit!” he roared. He lowered his window, leaned out, and gave the sedan a full clip from his Uzi.

  The back window of the sedan exploded in a splintering shower of glass.

  With the lights of the Kenworth on bright, both Barry and Kate could see the carnage the Uzi created in the sedan. They watched the blood splatter as the two men in the rear were thrown forward by the impacting slugs.

  The rear end of the sedan slewed around as the driver fought to maintain control. He almost lost it, then corrected the slide and began slowing down, the sedan in the middle of the road, attempting to force the Kenworth to stop.

  “Ram him!” Barry yelled.

  Kate shifted and plowed into the rear of the car. Sparks flew as the rea
r tires of the sedan blew out and the frame and bumper began dragging the concrete. As they entered another curve, Kate let up on the pedal and the car broke free, sliding to the right. The sedan spun crazily in the road and then went over the side, busting through the guardrail, plunging downward into a ravine. Both Kate and Barry thought they could hear the screams of the men still inside the doomed vehicle.

  The car turned end over end and was soon lost from sight in the misty night.

  “One down,” Barry muttered. “Now let’s see what these other clowns want to do.”

  “Little Muddy bridge just up ahead,” Kate informed him.

  “Good a place as any,” Barry replied, inserting a fresh clip into the belly of the Uzi.

  “Barry? Why are they doing this to us?”

  He was honest in his reply. “I don’t know, Kate. But somehow, someway, I’m going to find out.”

  But it was not to be that night. When Kate again checked her mirrors, the second car had vanished, falling back into the misty night.

  “Keep going,” Barry told her. “But just to be on the safe side,”—he checked the atlas—“When we get up here to Diamondville, I think it is, take 30 back to the interstate. Just in case those in the second car call the state police. With any kind of luck, they’ll think we’re heading north, not east.”

  “You think they might do that?”

  “They might. It’ll be their word against ours, and you know how a lot of people feel about truckers.”

  “Tell me,” she replied, with more than a touch of bitterness in her voice.

  They stopped once for fuel and food and coffee, and once to weigh, before leaving Wyoming. They had rolled on through the night. Alternately driving and sleeping, violating all the rules of their government contract, they rolled on, always angling toward the north whenever they could, always on two-lane highways. They were on schedule when they pulled into northern Minnesota, but their log-book was a shambles. As it so often happens with long-haulers, neither one of them really knew what day it was.

  Barry had remembered to express-mail the film to Ralph, with a brief note attached, telling him to be very careful with the film and that Barry would call him in a few days.