“Whoa, that’s a story I want to hear!”
“See if Roly can drive you over. I know it’s asking a lot, but I’m sure he’ll understand. I’ll text you the location where we’ll be parking tonight. It’s a large truck stop in north Portland. You should be able to get there in a little under seven hours. Even quicker, the way Roly drives.”
“OK. It’s mid-morning now. It will take me a few minutes to leave here. But I should be there late evening.”
“Good, honey. I can’t wait to see you. I’ve got other calls to make. Got to go. Bye.”
Hugh pushed the button once to hang up, then pushed it again to make another call. “Call dispatch.”
“Hey, Gloria.” Hugh got right to it as soon as she answered. “I need a favor. I need a load ASAP out of Portland in the morning to anywhere south on I-5. I need to be near Redding tomorrow night.”
As Hugh expected, Gloria didn’t question or argue. Hugh was her favorite driver because he stayed on the road longer than any of her other drivers. He never complained, and he had helped her out of a bind many times when she had needed a driver on short notice.
“That shouldn’t be a problem. That’s a high-volume corridor. I’m sure we can get you something. I’ll be in touch.”
“Wow.” Hugh said, when all the phone calls were finished. They had hit Susanville while he was talking, and they were now on Highway 139 headed toward Klamath Falls, and then Portland.
“I’m glad that’s all taken care of,” he said.
Charlie had heard Hugh’s end of the conversations, so she had picked up on the gist of what’s supposed to happen the rest of today and tomorrow.
“That sounds like a good plan,” Charlie said. “My being on the truck with James will draw them off of you, and James is more than capable of handling the thugs if they come after me.”
“Speaking of thugs, maybe you should check in with them again,” Hugh said.
“Good idea. What do I tell them?”
Hugh thought for a minute.
“I suppose we’re going to be good for another day of you saying there’s nothing to report. After that, we’ll have to come up with something to make them think you’ve got something on me.”
Then he suggested: “Go into the sleeper, and speak softly into the phone. Tell them I can’t hear your phone call over the engine and road noise.”
“Better yet, maybe I can text them,” Charlie suggested.
“That’s a good idea. Do that.”
When Charlie had finished sending the text, Hugh told her about the Susanville hijacking incident. Driving through the town a little while ago had reminded him of it.
“It wasn’t one of my hijackings, but it was one involving Jenny’s uncle.”
“Sounds interesting. I already know about all of their other hijackings, but I don’t remember a Susanville one.”
“You wouldn’t. The police were never able to make the connection to Jenny’s uncle. But Jenny had told me about it.”
He explained he had unknowingly played a part in the aftermath of the hijacking as he was coming south on Highway 395. It was late at night. It had been snowing, and the roads were icy, with snow piled up on the shoulder and in the ditches.
He had come upon a truck and trailer flipped onto their sides spanning the width of the road. The cab was in the ditch on one side of the road, and the tail end of the trailer was in the ditch on the other side.
Hugh said the accident must have just happened because he was first on the scene. He had gotten out to check on the driver, who he had found standing near his overturned cab talking on his phone.
Eventually, law enforcement personnel had arrived, and a couple of tow trucks had come out of Susanville. Unfortunately, they were on the wrong side of the truck to pull it over onto its wheels, so they’d had to drive around the end of the truck into the snow-filled ditch.
The first tow truck driver had tried, and had gotten stuck halfway around.
“I was watching this from the warmth of my cab. Next thing I knew, the tow truck driver had come to my truck to ask me if I could pull him out of the ditch.”
Hugh told Charlie he agreed to do it, of course. The tow truck driver hooked a cable up to Hugh’s tow hooks, and Hugh slowly backed up, pulling the tow truck onto pavement.
Once on the right side of the flipped truck, the tow truck driver helped the other tow truck come across, and together they flipped the big rig onto its wheels.
Hugh told Charlie it all took a lot of time, and he was out of hours. He couldn’t legally drive from there to find someplace to park. But a highway patrol officer wrote a note on his business card explaining the situation, and he drove on to Susanville to park at the Walmart he had told Charlie about earlier.
“It wasn’t until long afterward, and I was telling Jenny the story like I am telling you, that I learned the truck had flipped while trying to fight off hijackers. Jenny told me it was her uncle and his gang of hijackers who had tried to pull that one off. They were never caught, so nobody but the hijackers and Jenny knew it was them who had done it.”
“Hugh, that’s fascinating. I wish it had worked out for me to hear this during our first interview. What an interesting article that would have been.”
“I’m sure, from your point of view,” Hugh replied. “But you can understand why Jenny and I don’t want to make some of these things public. We’re still off the record. Right?”
“No problem.
