Chapter Two

Traffic wasn't gridlock, but it wasn't good either. The track glowed bright white behind us and in front of us was a line of red brake lights stretching clear to Miami. The hauler was out of sight, up the road, but it was in traffic too. There were two drivers, and they'd most likely drive through the night. With any luck, they'd stop to eat and stretch their legs, and we could accomplish our rescue.

The traffic began to open up as cars peeled off onto side roads. Hard to tell exactly what was in front of us, but there appeared to be a couple trucks ahead, their roof running lights visible above the stream of SUVs and sedans.

An hour later, we'd made enough progress at working our way up to the trucks to see that one of them was the 69 hauler. We were a bunch of cars back, but we had it in sight.

I called Gobbles on his cell.

"We're a couple cars behind you," I told him. "We're going to get you out when they stop to take a break. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm cramped, but I'm okay."

I disconnected.

"Do you know the hauler driver?" I asked Hooker.

He shook his head. "Only superficially. The Huevo people keep to themselves. Not a real friendly group."

We were about ten miles north of Miami when the hauler took an exit. My heart did a little tap dance in my chest, and I momentarily stopped breathing. The smart, sane part of my brain had been hoping I'd get a call from Gobbles saying he'd found an unlocked escape hatch in the roof, and he didn't need our help. The stupid, crazy part of my brain was flirting with the fantasy that I was about to have a James Bond experience and perform a kick-ass rescue. And the chicken shit part of my brain was running down black roads of terror.

The truck stopped at the end of the off ramp and turned left. A half-mile down the road it pulled into the lot for a large truck stop type diner and drove to the truck and bus parking at the rear. Three other haulers were already parked there. Hooker circled the lot and waited at idle toward the front. The two hauler drivers came from behind the building and went into the diner.

The back lot where the trucks were parked was lit by a single overhead halogen. The 69 hauler had running lights on and the engine at idle. Standard procedure. It was a natural assumption that no one would be insane enough to try to steal a hauler. No point shutting the systems down.

Hooker cut his lights, eased up to the 69 and parked. All haulers have exterior cargo bays that are used for storing cartons of soda, automotive equipment, barbecue grills, and whatever else. The cargo bay closest to the left rear door usually contains the remote used to operate the back panel hydraulics. I ran to the hauler and attempted to open the rear bay door. Locked. Hooker tried the bay on the other side. Also locked. We tried the side door. Locked.

"Find something to jimmie the bay door," I told Hooker. "We're going to have to break him out."

Hooker searched the rental for a tire iron or screwdriver, and I searched the truck cab for a key. We both came up empty.

I glanced at my watch. We'd gone through fifteen minutes. "We can't get the door open without the remote," I said to Hooker. "And he's going to be in there for a long time if we miss this opportunity. I'm at a loss. Do you have any ideas?"

Hooker sucked in some air and blew it out. "Yeah. We could steal the hauler."

"Get serious."

"I am serious. It's all I can come up with. We drive the hauler down the road, park it behind a Wal*mart or something, buy a can opener, get Gobbles out and take off. Some of the trucks are equipped with a GPS tracker. If Huevo has a tracker on this hauler they can find it immediately. If not, we can go to a pay phone and tell them where the hauler is located."

"This hauler has a tracker. I saw the antennae when I was crawling around, looking for a way to break in. So we wouldn't really be stealing it. It would be more like borrowing."

"Whatever."

I gnawed on my lower lip. The very thought of "borrowing" the hauler gave me stomach cramps. "We're running out of time," Hooker said. "What's it going to be? Are we doing this?" I punched Gobbles' number into my cell. "Are you still okay?"

"It's really stuffy in here. Are you going to get me out soon? I'm not feeling good."

"We can't get the door open. We're going to drive you down the road and get some tools. Hang in there."

Hooker hauled himself up into the truck cab and angled behind the wheel.

"Hey, wait a minute," I said. "Why do you get to drive the big truck?"

"I'm the driver. I always drive. It's what I do. Anyway, have you ever driven an eighteen wheeler?"

"Yes. Have you?" I asked him.

"Yep," Hooker said.

"Liar, liar, pants on fire."

"You don't know that for sure."

"I do. Your mouth gets this little crook in it when you lie."

"Give me a break here. I'm a testosterone-crazed race car driver. I've gotta drive the boat."

"This is a truck."

"Truck, boat ...it's all the same. Look at it. It's big. It's a guy toy."

"You know about the air brakes, right?" I asked Hooker.

"Yeah. Air brakes."

"And you know how to turn the headlights on? You've only got running lights right now."

"Yeah. Lights."

"This truck has approximately 550 horses and an eighteen-speed transmission."

"Yep."

"The trailer's fifty-three feet long, so you have to watch the turning radius..."

"I've got it under control," Hooker said. "Get in the car and follow me out."

Beans was sitting up, looking out the window at me when I returned to the SUV. He was doing heavy-duty panting and his forehead was wrinkled.

"Don't worry," I said to him. "He'll be fine. He knows what he's doing."

Beans looked like that registered a seven on his bullshit-o-meter. I'd actually placed it a couple points higher on mine. I buckled myself in, cranked the engine over and waited for Hooker to roll. I gripped the wheel and whispered under my breath to him. "Take it slow." When the hauler crept forward, my grip went white knuckled, and my breath caught in my chest.

Hooker was smoothly moving the truck across the back lot, toward the front of the building, inching along without lights. He eased the hauler into the exit lane, and I fell in line behind him. This was the moment of no return. In minutes he'd be on the highway in a hijacked truck. Time for honesty. If we got caught we'd be out of NASCAR and into Florida Penal.

My heart was pounding so hard it was blurring my vision. Even Beans was instinctively alert, no longer panting. I checked him out in my rear-view mirror to make sure he was okay and we locked eyes. Probably it was my spooked imagination, but I swear he looked as terrified as I felt.

Hooker left turned the hauler off the diner property and his rear tires ran over the curb and took out a four foot tall pygmy date palm and an entire flower bed. I looked around in panic, but didn't see anyone rushing out of the diner after him.

"I didn't see that," I said to Beans. "You didn't see it either, right?"

Hooker maneuvered the truck out of the flowerbed, onto the feeder road and then onto the highway, heading south. He turned his lights on, brought the rig up to speed, and we both went into cruising mode. After a few minutes I realized cars were pulling up to the truck to get a better look. Every inch of a car hauler is a rolling advertisement for the car and the sponsor. They're works of art. The 69 was decorated in Spanky's colors with a bigger-than-life-sized picture of Spanky and his race car.

I called Hooker on his cell phone. "We have a problem," I told him. "Everyone's interested in the hauler. Some people are taking pictures. You should have brought the briefs to put over your head."

"Hard to feel righteous when you've got your underwear on your head," Hooker said. "Anyway, I'm taking the next exit. I saw a sign for services. I'll find a dark place to hide, and you can go to a gas station and steal something helpful."

Hooker crawled off the exit, turned right and rolled down the road. After about a half mile he came to a small strip mall that was lights off for the night. His turn signal went on, he slipped into the lot, and he disappeared behind the buildings. I made a u-turn and drove back to a gas station and convenience store.

Ten minutes later, I pulled around the end of the strip mall and caught Hooker in my headlights. The hauler was at idle. The headlights and running lights were off. Hooker was lounging against the hauler.

I parked and ran over with a small screwdriver I'd bought at the convenience store. I ripped the packaging apart and gave Hooker the screwdriver.

"This was the best I could do. The garage was closed."

Hooker rammed the screwdriver between the bay door and the outside rim of the truck and leaned into it. The metal bent and the lock gave. We searched the bay. No remote.

"Try forcing the side door," I said to Hooker. "We can't get to the ceiling hatch or the back door because the aisle will be filled with the tool carts, but I can get to the lounge and maybe find a key for the other locker. Or maybe they left the remote in the lounge."

Hooker popped the side door, and I jumped inside and flipped a light on. I rapped on the ceiling and yelled up to Gobbles. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Gobbles yelled back, his voice muffled by the sheet metal slab under him. "What's going on?"

"We can't find the remote to open the back door."

I searched all the drawers and cabinets. No remote. No key. No helpful crowbars lying around. No power equipment that would slice through metal.

Hooker appeared in the doorway. "I broke the screwdriver trying to get the second bay open. Did you find anything in here?"

"No."

Hooker looked at his watch. "The drivers are probably out of the diner by now, calling the police." "They won't call the police," Gobbles yelled down. "There's something in here that's worth a billion dollars, and they don't want anyone to find it."

Hooker looked up at the ceiling. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I wish," Gobbles said. "I heard them talking outside the hauler. They were taking this truck to Mexico. You've got to get me out. They'll kill me if they find me in here."

"We need a little more time and a lot bigger screwdriver," Hooker said.

"Okay, let's not panic. We need time and tools and a better place to hide this thing," I said. "Who do we know?"

"Has to be someone we trust," Hooker said. "Someone close. Someone with a garage or an airplane hanger or an empty warehouse. It would be good to go undercover for a couple minutes in case we have to cut Gobbles out."

"Felicia Ibarra," I said. "We can use that abandoned warehouse behind her fruit stand."

Felicia Ibarra was a chunky little Cuban immigrant lady who was in her early sixties. She was surprisingly wealthy, owning an entire block of real estate in Little Havana that was just short of prime. And she was frighteningly kick-ass, having once shot a guy on my behalf.

Hooker locked eyes with me for a beat. "Our motives might be good, but no matter how you spin it, this is grand theft auto, big time. If I get caught on the road in this rig my career will be over."

"If you get caught you'll be dead," Gobbles yelled down.

Hooker was hands on hips. "That makes me feel a lot better."

"Let me drive," I said to Hooker. "I could do grand theft auto better than you. You'd just have to promise to come visit me once in a while."

"Yeah, right. I could almost live with that. See if you can disable the GPS. I'm going to try to rip some of this shrink wrap off the outside so we're not so recognizable."

I was able to squeeze my arm in far enough to reach a roll of aluminum foil sitting on the kitchenette counter. I ripped a couple chunks off the roll, swung out of the hauler and climbed onto the back of the cab. The antenna had been placed in the usual location, between the exhaust pipes. I wrapped the antenna in aluminum foil and jumped off. Turns out it's pretty easy to screw up a GPS system.

Ten minutes later we'd done enough slash and peel that we were able to get rolling.

I followed Hooker back out to the highway and trailed behind him. The truck was for the most part white now and didn't attract a lot of attention. We took 95 south to Flagler and went straight into Little Havana. We passed the Ibarras' fruit stand, turned left at the next street and rolled to a stop in front of the warehouse.

I'd called Felicia, and she said the warehouse was ours to use, and she'd leave one of the garage doors open. Hooker lined himself up in front of the open door, pulled the truck into the dark warehouse, and I scooted in around him. I got out of the SUV, ran back to the warehouse door and pushed the button to close it. When the door shut, I hit the button for the lights and overhead fluorescents flickered on.

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