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  As he expected, everyone got a laugh out of that.

  “You really think these weapons are hot?” Snake asked.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Barry told him. “Like I said, and you all agreed, we’re being set up for a fall. And it could come at any time.”

  “Real nice people behind all this crap,” Beaver Buster said.

  “Yeah,” Barry said. “Just peachy.”

  Barry had requested some information about SSTs from a local library. He couldn’t get very much about it, and that also came as no surprise. But what he did get made him realize all the more how much they were being set up for a hard fall.

  About a year back, there were fewer than sixty SSTs rolling in America. Barry thought he could accurately add ten more to that number. The “Suicide Jockeys,” as they are called by other truckers, log about five million miles per year, calling on more than 130 destinations within the continental U.S.

  Their rigs are designed to look like other rigs. They obey all the speed limits and traffic laws. They want no undue attention brought to their top-secret shipments.

  They work for the U.S. Department of Energy, Transportation Safeguards Division.

  Well, Barry thought about the IDs issued them—so far, so good.

  The Suicide Jockeys may be pulling inactivated atomic or hydrogen bombs, nuclear cannon shells, weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, top-secret trigger parts for hydrogen bombs. They might be hauling ammunition, grenades, nerve gas, tear gas … anything that’s dangerous and deadly.

  The SSTs are heavily armored and manned by what the Energy Department calls “couriers.” The drivers, or couriers, are described as civilian Green Berets; the most ready-for-combat contingent in the nation. Sometimes they ride three to a cab: two up front, one in the sleeper. If it is a long-haul run, there are usually four or five other couriers rolling along with them in unmarked cars or pickups.

  The men—and they are almost always men—are always U.S. armed forces vets. They have what is known as a Q clearance, the Energy Department’s highest security clearance.

  With the exception of Barry’s drivers, they are tested and trained rigorously for anywhere from eight to sixteen weeks. They are trained to cope with everything from helicopter attacks or light-armored vehicle assaults to a nut in a ditch with a rocket launcher, hijackers, or blockades.

  It is the most expensive trucking line—for its size—in the world. Its operating budget the year the article was written reached fifty million dollars. To replace an SST would cost nearly a million dollars.

  What Barry read next chilled him and brought home just how vulnerable he and his drivers were going to be. And how dangerous was the setup.

  Supposedly, the tractors have beefed-up safety features. Their windshields are bulletproof; the added armor plating is three-inch-thick slab steel. Walls, ceilings, and floors are steel-armored, insulated, and fireproof. If a rig is attacked during transport, a button can be pushed, locking the axles so that only a cutting torch can free them.

  Naturally, none of the Rivers’s rigs had any of that.

  The shipping containers of the SSTs have been designed for the worst type of accident. They have been tested through fire, immersion, and free fall. The shipping containers must emerge tied down and in place and intact after simulated sixty mph head-on crashes.

  Barry glanced at his watch just as Kate was walking into the terminal office. Six a.m. Monday morning.

  “You’re early,” he said with a smile. “I thought I left you sleeping.”

  “I got up right after you did,” the petite blonde said. “The bed got lonesome.”

  He handed her the report he’d been reading.

  She quickly read the brief report and tossed it back on his desk. “Well, I damn sure don’t have none of that on my rig.”

  “Nor do I on Dad’s. I wish you’d—”

  “Forget it!” she cut him off, guessing what he was going to say. “I’m a truck driver. I’ll take my chances just like the rest.”

  No surprise. “Hungry?”

  “I could eat an armadillo!”

  “I think we can come up with something a bit more appetizing than that.”

  The two men who met the drivers at the railroad pickup point handed Barry a thick sealed envelope. Barry signed for the packet and the men turned around and walked off. Not one word had been exchanged.

  “Friendly types, ain’t they?” Beaver Buster remarked.

  “You ought to feel right at home with them,” Cottonmouth said. “Seein’ as how that’s the way your mother-in-law treats you all the time.”

  “Looks about like that ol’ boy, too,” Beaver Buster observed.

  “I know them things ain’t loaded,” Bullwhip said. “So where do we pick up the shipments?”

  “It’s all in here,” Barry said, holding up the thick envelope. “Let’s get those piggybacks off and hooked up.”

  Kate looked up at him. “Deadhead all the way to Arizona?” she whispered, remembering Big Joe’s words about the shipments. “That don’t make sense, Barry. This train could have dropped the trailers off there.”

  “I know. Maybe we’re wrong, Kate. Maybe the dope is already hidden and we’re taking it out of there. But that doesn’t make sense either. We’ll just have to play it by ear.”

  Back in his office, Barry looked over the contents of the packet. Instructions, bills of lading, bonds of indemnity, certificates of insurance … all the necessary documents; and they were legitimate. At least they appeared so. He let the other drivers scan the documents. They all verified the papers’ authenticity.

  For all their butchering of the English language, sounding as though their education had stopped at kindergarten, Barry knew a lot of that was deliberate on the part of the drivers. He knew that Beer Butt had a degree in business from the University of Alabama; Chuck was a former school teacher; Cajun had been a jet pilot in Vietnam, flying C-130s … and so on down the line.

  “We roll out at six in the morning,” Barry said. “Five units. Kate and me, Chuck and Snake, Cottonmouth and Snatcher, Beaver Buster and Lou, Beer Butt and Swamp Wolf. The rest of you will be in cars and pickups. Jim, you and Cajun will drive my pickup. The rest of you will be in the car provided by the government. We don’t have a choice in the route; that’s been preset by someone else. I don’t even like to think who. We’ll be heading to Fort Huachuca, Arizona. We’ll pick up a load, and take it to Nevada. Before you ask, I don’t know where in Nevada. We’ll be told that at Huachuca. Right now, let’s all take a look inside those trailers.”

  None of them had ever seen anything like it. Barry sensed the moment he swung open the doors and stepped inside that this was the genuine article: a government SST.

  “Look at these walls,” Grits exclaimed. “You couldn’t punch through them with a fifty-caliber machine gun.”

  Each trailer was slightly different from the others. Each designed for a certain type of cargo.

  “At least there ain’t no tanker,” Lou said. “That’s a relief.”

  They all knew what she meant and silently agreed with her.

  Barry had stepped outside and was going over the route. Every mile of the way was spelled out. There would be no detours or deviations allowed. Every stop was clearly marked.

  Why? he thought. When we’re deadheading? He could understand that when pulling a load. He shrugged it off.

  The small convoy would follow Interstate 10 all the way, leaving the interstate just a few miles north of the military base and taking a two-lane down to the base.

  About thirteen hundred miles. And there would not be a mile that went by without wondering what is around the next curve? What’s over that next hill? How will they do whatever it is they are going to do?

  And when?

  11

  The convoy pulled out at dawn on Tuesday morning. With Barry and Kate in the front door, followed by Chuck and Snake, Cottonmouth and Snatcher, Jim and Cajun in Barry’s pickup, Beaver Buster
and Lou, Saltmeat and Mustang and Cornbread and Grits in a four-door Mercury, then Beer Butt and Swamp Wolf, with Bullwhip and Coyote filling the back door in a second pickup truck.

  All the vehicles were CB-equiped, with the government car and pickup’s two-way high-bands equipped with scrambler on both ends. Those radios were in addition to CBs. The high-band-equipped vehicles would not stay in any assumed position within the convoy. They would be ranging, from time to time, far out in front and far back in the drag. They would use the high-band radios to warn each other in case of trouble. Not that they were really needed. With illegal wattage boosters on each CB, kicking the CBs up from four watts to one hundred watts of power, the truckers could very nearly communicate with a goat herder in Greece. Providing the goat herder had a CB.

  The convoy pulled off at Lake Charles for food and fuel. Barry had taken the first trick at the wheel; Kate would take it from Lake Charles to just outside of San Antonio. The convoy had been running at a steady rate of sixty mph; in most states they were safe at that speed, and even at that, nearly everyone was passing them.

  After eating and fueling, the latter something that is required by law, they checked in at the local weight-watcher’s rip-off and rolled on into Texas.

  “Now it’s about to get boring,” Kate said.

  Barry looked at her.

  “Miles and miles of nothin’ but miles and miles,” she said with a smile. “It’s not so bad around here. But just wait until we get past San Antonio.”

  The hours and miles rolled on. Light melted into dusk and twilight drifted into night, split only by the beams of headlights. The convoy kept chatter on the CB to a minimum.

  All in all, Barry thought, it’s a boring run. Then he remembered something. “Kate, is there a punch set in this rig?”

  She smiled. “Oh, I imagine we could come up with one. Why?”

  “I want to search these containers. And we’re not going to be able to do that on the bases.”

  “True. But what you’re thinking is risky, Barry.”

  “Sure. But do we have a choice?”

  “No. I got a bunch of blank seals.”

  “My, my!”

  They made the run in just over thirty hours; no record by anyone’s count. The guards at the front gate checked their papers, then gave them instructions to the warehouse row—with an armed escort.

  “Relax,” a lieutenant told Barry after the SSTs had been backed up to the docks. “Coffee in there,” he pointed. “We’ll load it up and seal it for you.”

  “You load ’em up,” Barry said. “We’ll check it and witness the seal.”

  The lieutenant gave him a strange look. “Whatever you say, driver.”

  “Where are we taking this load?”

  “This your first run with SSTs?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. Come on, we’ll go over your route.”

  In his office, the officer pulled out a map. “Short run this time,” he said, punching a spot on the map. “Right here. Yuma Proving Grounds. Go back the way you came and take 10 West. Take Interstate 8 to Yuma, then cut north on 95. As soon as you get within the perimeter of the grounds, you’ll be met. Password is Gold Star. Your response is Poppyseed. You got that?”

  “I got it. And if they don’t know the right password?”

  The officer’s gaze was bleak. “Shoot them and get the hell out of that area. Get on your radios and start hollering.”

  So it had all been changed since Big Joe was contacted. Barry wondered about that, but decided to keep his mouth shut. He had no way of knowing if this officer was part of whatever was going down, or whether he was straight.

  But what if this was a test of some sort? Barry looked at the young lieutenant.

  “Something on your mind, driver?”

  “I thought we were taking this load to Nevada?”

  “Yeah? Well, so did I. Word came down the line yesterday. You got a change in plans. Don’t worry, I’ve got all the papers you’ll need. Everything is in order.” He grinned. “You’ll get used to this. It happens all the time. That should tell you right off that you’re not hauling anything hazardous. Anything hazardous and your route would be spelled out tight.”

  “What are we hauling?”

  The lieutenant shrugged. “Partner, I don’t have any idea.”

  Whatever they were hauling was going to remain a mystery to the truckers, and they all knew it as soon as the complicated seals were in place.

  Kate whispered to Barry, “No way we can pop those seals and replace them.”

  “Yeah.” But an idea was forming in his mind.

  When they were clear of the base and heading north toward Interstate 10, Barry said, “I think those seals just kicked the drug-smuggling idea in the head, Kate.”

  “At least as far as blaming it on us,” she replied.

  “So, now what? Give me your thoughts.”

  “I don’t have any—wait a minute. How do we know all the seals are going to be the same? I’ve never pulled SSTs before. Each base may have their own type of seal, depending on the cargo.”

  “So we keep on truckin’ and hope for the best, right?” he said with a smile.

  “You got any better ideas?”

  “Not a one.”

  The convoy stopped just outside of Yuma for food and fuel and to wait for the dawn. They could not deliver at night. Too risky, the lieutenant said. Too much of a chance for a screwup.

  Barry walked around the rigs in the predawn darkness, deep in thought. He squatted down, his back to a wheel, and reviewed the fast-paced events in his mind.

  Had Fabrello been telling the truth? The capo had indeed put guards around his father’s house … very discreetly. He had even met with Big Joe and apologized for the behavior of Bulgari. No, Barry felt Fabrello was telling the truth.

  After speaking with Fabrello, Barry had called his attorney in D.C. and asked him to put the detective agency on Linda; see what they could come up with. From a truck stop in Texas, Barry had called Ralph. Again, Fabrello had been speaking the truth. Linda was very quietly seeing Bobby Bulgari whenever the two of them could chance it. Most recently, she had spent a weekend with him at his condo in Biloxi, flying down to meet him in a private Lear jet.

  Who owned the jet?

  The agency was working on that.

  But she had sure been sneaky about it, traveling in disguise. Wig, dark glasses, different style of dress, different makeup.

  Barry had to wonder if she could be doing this in order to gain more evidence against Bulgari and the mob.

  He rejected that and so did the detective agency and his attorney.

  Linda O’Day was up to her ass in something big and dirty and illegal. Or was she?

  And everybody Barry had spoken with seemed to think it was dope. They also thought Barry was being set up to take the heat and the fall at some point along the line.

  When?

  No one knew.

  Barry stood up and stretched. He leaned against the trailer, the side of his face against the dew-coolness of metal. A little door in his mind opened, allowing more light to shine on the mystery he’d pondered over.

  Not the trailer. Not the contents. That would require too many people to make it work. Linda would have to have two or more people at every pickup point for it to jell. More than two, probably. And Barry doubted that many servicemen and women—who had been checked out by several security agencies—could be bought.

  Not the trailer. Not the contents.

  Then … where?

  In the tractors, probably. Maybe in the storage areas. In the mattress, the trim, the upholstery, the vents, the padding. A dozen different places.

  And if it was dope, it did not have to be placed at the SST’s pickup points—not really. Rigs are not that difficult to break into. Any moderately competent lock man could easily slip into one of the tractors, plant the stuff, and be gone, all in the time it took the driver to eat a meal. Or, for that matter, the dope
could have been planted while the rigs were back at the terminal.

  Shit.

  Now what to do?

  When everyone had awakened, Barry called them off to one side and told them of his suspicions.

  “I should have thought of that when I saw those seals back at the base,” Cottonmouth said.

  “I been kickin’ this around in my head,” Lou said. “And now that you’ve come up with your idea, hear mine. I think this proximity to Mexico is just another ruse to cover another trail.”

  Beaver Buster looked at her. “You wanna explain that?”

  “If you’ll shut your trap. Look here, New Orleans is one hell of a big port. And it was stupid, to my way of thinking, to hook up in New Orleans and deadhead all the way out to the base. I think the dope was planted back at the terminal and we’ve still got it with us. And 95, from Yuma to the Proving Grounds, is one hell of a desolate stretch. Right?”

  “What you’re saying about New Orleans is that the dope comes in through there?” Barry asked.

  “Right. And how do we know the people who are supposed to meet us are on the up-and-up? This whole thing could be set up back in Washington and these Army types completely innocent. Whoever set this up is gonna have access to the code words.”

  All agreed with that. This was no longer Barry’s show alone. They were all involved, and all had a right to his or her say.

  “All right, people,” Barry said, when no more opinions or suggestions were forthcoming. “Let’s get some breakfast and hit it. When we turn off on 95, heads up. We may just be making a run to drop off cargo. And then again …”

  He trailed it off. He did not have to say more. SST drivers don’t carry guns for show.

  12

  The convoy headed straight north on 95. From Interstate 8 to Interstate 10, it was eighty-one miles of near desolation. And the old gut feelings that Barry used to experience in ’Nam had returned like a long-lost love reentering his life.

  The small convoy was surrounded by the desert’s mountains. To their left, the west, lay the Trigo and Chocolate mountains. To their right, the east, lay the Castle Dome, the Palomas, and a bit to the north and east, the Kofa Mountains. And all around them, no signs of life.