“I appreciate it even more now,” Hugh said.
“You should,” James remarked, “because if you had crashed my truck and gotten me killed I would have figured out a way to come back and put an extremely unpleasant end to your life.”
Hugh didn’t say anything. Watching James, he waited for the smile to come that would indicate that he was joking.
No smile. Not joking. Then, feeling reckless, Hugh said with an edge of temper, “You could give it your best shot, Pal. I can handle myself.”
Now James did smile. Hugh couldn’t decipher just what meaning was behind that enigmatic expression. But it did serve to help cool his own temper somewhat.
Silence then ensued for awhile as the miles of pavement rolled under their eighteen-wheeler. They traversed the Los Angeles basin, and headed up the hill over the infamous Grapevine.
“Marines?” James broke into Hugh’s silent reverie.
“Where?” Hugh asked, looking around outside the windshield.
“You,” James explained. “You were in the Marines?”
“Just got out,” Hugh said.
“Figured as much.”
“You?” Hugh asked. James looked like he might have been in the military. He looked fit and confident in the manner of someone who maybe at one time had “been there and done that.”
“Navy.”
“Where did you see duty?” Hugh asked.
“Here and there.”
“You must have started at Great Lakes,” Hugh said, knowing that the Navy’s only location for enlisted basic training was at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center on the western shore of Lake Michigan. He wondered why James was being so evasive. “Where did you go from there?”
“You hear of Coronado Island?” James asked.
“Of course,” Hugh said. “I mustered out at San Diego. Some buddies and I went to the beaches and partied at the hotel there. Blew most of my cash.”
James remained silent.
“Oh.” Hugh felt stupid. He now recalled that Coronado Island was the location of the training center for the Navy Seals. The famous BUD/S school was held there. BUD/S stood for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL. The Coronado Island facility’s official name is Naval Special Warfare Center at Naval Base Coronado-Naval Amphibious Base.
No public tours are allowed there so, obviously, Hugh only knew about it. Even as a Marine he had never seen it.
“Would you care to elaborate?” Hugh asked.
“No.”
Something else that Hugh now knew was that this James guy was no light-weight. Whatever Hugh had been through in his short career with the Marines, during boot camp, advanced training after that, and his deployment, it was probably nothing compared with the extreme physical and mental hardships that James must have gone through just to be called a SEAL, much less what he had likely been through in his tours of duty with them.
He needed to re-evaluate this guy who he had chosen to ride with. If James was in his mid 40s and he had been driving truck for about 15 years, that means he couldn’t have been a SEAL for very long. Hugh wondered what took place in James’ past to cause such an early exit from something that undoubtedly took such a huge effort to get into in the first place.
James again broke into Hugh’s thoughts. “Where’d you see duty?” he asked.
“No place interesting,” Hugh answered, only being partially truthful. “Mostly right here in California. Marine Logistics Base just outside of Barstow.”
Hugh had hated duty there. It was warehouse duty in a desolate God-forgotten desert … the setting was too much like another desert, another time. While there, he’d had some exposure to the Marines’ logistics vehicles, the strange-looking hybrid MK48s and MK16s, but he’d never driven either one.
Mostly, he was the grunt who loaded the trailers. Only thing going for it was the extremely well-equipped physical fitness center, and the fact that nobody was shooting at him anymore.
They coasted down the long six percent downgrade on the Bakersfield side of the Grapevine. The Jakes were on their maximum setting to help keep the truck slowed down to the thirty-five-mile-an-hour truck speed limit.
Once on the level, James had the truck up to cruising speed for only a short time before pulling into the truck stop where they would park for the night.
Little did Hugh realize that a fateful encounter on this night with five hijackers would have lasting implications that would dramatically change his life fifteen years later.
Chapter 14
Present Day
Again, Hugh had gotten so wrapped up in telling his story that he had forgotten to edit out any clues as to what had happened fifteen years ago at that Wheeler Ridge truck stop.
But, Jenny, as usual, didn’t miss a thing.
“Wheeler Ridge? You were at Wheeler Ridge fifteen years ago?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Hugh answered noncommittally, hoping her questioning would end there.
“When you were there, did you hear about the fight that my uncle and dad had with those truck drivers?”
“Hear about it? No,” Hugh answered truthfully.
“Oh, well. I was just curious,” she said.
Then, to Hugh’s relief, Jenny dropped that, and continued the conversation in a different vein. “So, you took quite a chance letting an inexperienced driver do that hot seat swap with you, huh,” she said. “If I’d’a crashed and gotten you killed, would you have found a way to come back and ‘put an unpleasant end to my life?’” she asked.
“Nah, that was just male chest-thumping when James said that,” he answered. “I’m just glad it didn’t come to that … in either case. So, what did you think of your brief driving experience?”
“I was scared to death,” she said. “Both from those guys attacking us, and from having to drive while you took care of the other guy. You realize, don’t you, that you didn’t have a chance to explain to me how to do it, like James did with you?”
“Yeah, it
