“I’m just saying. Do you have any idea what this trucker is capable of? He’ll have no problem at all rescuing me from only two of you.”
“We can take care of ourselves.”
“You’re going to get badly hurt.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine.”
“Personally, I don’t care,” Charlie said. “All I want is to get onto his truck, and it won’t bother me at all about the bloody mess that will be left behind.”
All three men exchanged looks, then broke out laughing.
“OK. Let’s continue,” William said.
He outlined for Charlie the back story she would have to provide to Hugh to make the kidnap scenario look plausible to him. Charlie offered some suggested changes. And then she recited the whole thing from the beginning.
“Perfect,” the leader said. “Let’s pack up here and get on the road.”
Later that morning, in attorney Fishburn’s law office, the attorney had been going over the letter of denial of his settlement demand that had been sent to him by WestAm Trucking’s legal department.
The denial came as no surprise to the attorney. It would have been much quicker and easier if they’d agreed to negotiate terms, but the attorney had already begun to draft a civil complaint. He’d have to get his nuclear verdict the hard way.
He picked up the handset of his desk’s landline phone and dialed the number for Frank at Rico Investigations.
“Hello, Frank,” Fishburn said when the receptionist had patched him through.
“The operation today is definitely on. Proceed as planned,” was all the attorney said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
At the Freightliner repair facility, Hugh had taken care of paperwork to get his repaired truck released. The cost of repairs hadn’t been excessive, only a little over twelve thousand dollars, which had been paid by the insurance, minus Hugh’s five-thousand-dollar deductible.
He’d gotten a ride from the resort in the dealership’s courtesy van. Hugh had remembered to unload his mom’s frozen dinners from the villa’s kitchen freezer. He had tucked them safely away in his truck’s little freezer.
Now in his driver’s seat, Hugh was going over the load order on his Qualcomm for the freight he’d be hauling from Las Vegas to Portland.
The pre-load had him picking up from a high-tech manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas that built circuit boards, semiconductors and other components for the manufacture of computers and other high-tech hardware components. This freight was a multi-unload at several technology companies in the Portland area.
He’d made deliveries there in the past, in what was known by some as Portland’s Silicon Forest. Many of the major tech companies had their main or branch facilities there. The term, Silicon Forest, preceded the one more people are familiar with, known as Silicon Valley in California.
Intel, one of Hugh’s delivery destinations, maintains its headquarter in Santa Clara, California, but it had moved its highest-tech operations to Oregon. Its Portland-area campus is Intel’s largest operation anywhere, where it employs some seventeen thousand high-tech workers.
He had done a walk-around during his pre-trip, paying extra attention to the fenders, hood, bumper and front grill. The repair work was flawless as far as he could tell, because it was mainly a matter of swapping out uni-body parts. He did end up needing a new radiator and cooling fan assembly because those had been damaged during the collision.
Today’s drive would be a straight shot to Las Vegas following in reverse order the same route he had taken a week ago with Jenny coming down to Phoenix from Spokane.
When he pulled out of the dealership and onto I-10 heading north Hugh again felt that deep satisfaction of being behind the wheel of his Freightliner Cascadia truck.
Mile after mile rolled under his eighteen wheels. It was quiet in the cab. Hugh missed having Jenny with him.
Before he had left Phoenix, he had remembered to insert the 32gb micro card into his dash cam. Because of the lesser capacity of that chip, he had set the record-over loop to six hours.
Later that afternoon, he had called Jenny’s cell phone, finally able to use his new Bluetooth headset. He was now completely hands free, as all it took was for him to push a button on his headset and tell it to, “Call Jenny.”
He had waited to call until he’d be sure she was off the airplane. It turned out she had landed, and was already back at the ranch with Hugh’s family.
“Hello,” she answered sweetly, knowing it was Hugh because his photo popped up from her contacts list.
“Hi. I’m on the road almost to Las Vegas for my pickup. Then it’s off to Portland,” he told her. “How is everything there?”
“Everything is fine. The family had to hear all about the accident. And they really wanted to know about the resort we stayed at.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you had a little bit to tell them about that.”
“Not everything, sweetie,” she said, with a little tease.
“Sure sounds good to hear your voice,” Hugh said.
They chatted for a bit more, then Hugh had to let her go so he could pull into the manufacturing plant to get his trailer loaded.
The loading went uneventfully, and Hugh pulled out of the facility for the truck stop on I-15 where he and Jenny had stayed on the way down to Phoenix.
“He’s leaving now,” Kent said into his phone. He followed Hugh out of the facility at a discreet distance. Kent drove a white, non-descript, generic-looking Chevy Caprice. Not anything that would draw undue attention.
“He’s pulling a WestAm Trucking trailer with the big swoosh logo. His tractor is all white, with a small WestAm logo on the door. I’ll be behind him the whole time.” He kept the phone call alive.
A few minutes later, Kent updated William, the leader, with an announcement Hugh had taken the exit for the truck stop.
“He’s making a right turn,
