Crimson Highway by David Wickenhauser (i can read with my eyes shut txt) 📕

The truck and its escort car trudged up the steep grades, and finally made the Donner Summit. Hugh loved this part of the ride … in the summer. Winters on Donner could be quite treacherous, however, with chaining always a possibility. Hugh has had to chain more times than he could count, but he hated having to do it. However, a spinout on ice with an eighty-thousand-pound, seventy-five-foot-long truck and semi-trailer rig was no picnic either.

They picked up speed, and headed down the grade that would take them to the Nevada border, and on to Reno.

Right after crossing the Nevada border Hugh’s phone chirped again, which reminded Hugh that they hadn’t made their usual periodic call checks. But, he figured everything had been going well so far, so no harm done.

“Yeah?” Hugh answered, seeing the caller ID for Manny’s phone.

“Pull over at the next wide spot on the shoulder,” Manny told Hugh. The cell phone reception wasn’t good on this side of the mountain, so Hugh could barely make out what he was saying.

“What?” Hugh asked.

“Pull over, and then meet us outside the truck. We need to check something,” he said.

“OK,” Hugh replied.

A few more miles down the road, Hugh spotted one of the turnouts that were provided for trucks. He signaled to let the escort car know he was turning in, and pulled over into the parking space. It was a small turnout, with space for only about four trucks, and they were the only truck there. The escort car pulled in behind Hugh’s truck.

He turned off the engine, set the parking brake, and stepped out of the truck to find out what Manny and Joe needed to check. As he did so, he barely registered in the back of his mind that another car had pulled into the turnout as well, and had parked in front of Hugh’s truck. Hugh’s attention was fully on the escort car.

That turned out to be a costly mistake.

As Hugh began to walk the length of the fifty-three-foot trailer to meet Manny and Joe halfway, he became alarmed—because it was neither Manny nor Joe who were walking toward him from the escort car. These guys were wearing the blue jackets for sure, and it was the escort car that they were leaving, yet alarm bells began ringing loudly in Hugh’s ear.

Before Hugh’s fight or flight reflex could kick in, he felt an intense pain at the back of his head, and then … nothing.

His throbbing head and the jolting of a moving car brought Hugh back to consciousness. It was dark, and it took Hugh a few moments to place himself in the right time and place, and to remember what he was doing just before being knocked unconscious.

His struggles to free himself were fruitless, as he discovered that his hands and feet were secured with strong cable ties. And he had a tight gag over his mouth. His cursory investigation told him that he must be on the floor in the back seat of a car, tied and gagged, with a heavy blanket thrown over on top of him.

“He awakes,” Hugh heard a voice say, but heard no reply.

Then Hugh heard, “I guess the big, tough Marine guy ain’t so tough after all. He folded pretty quickly when I tapped him on the back of his head with my baseball bat.” Then he added with a derisive, smirking expression, “Well, it might have been a little more than a tap.”

Again, Hugh heard no reply from whomever the man was talking to.

Then the man said something that sent chills down his spine.

“Serves him right after what he did to us so many years ago, and lately too.”

Jenny’s uncle? Can’t be. Impossible. Impossible! Hugh shouted in his mind, causing his throbbing head to pound even worse.

Hugh heard an indistinct murmur in reply to the man’s comment. Then the man said, “What are we going to do with him? Let’s just say that Mr. Marine Kung-Fu guy won’t be doing any of that anymore. Or driving truck either, or anything, for that matter.”

Hugh heard another murmur in reply, one that had a questioning rise in inflection to it. Hugh could tell nothing about the speaker because of his quiet voice over the road noise, the motor noise of the car, and through the pounding of his throbbing head.

The man answered, “Well, you know, there is a lot of desert out here, and a lot of places where a body could be buried and never found … if you know what I mean.”

Hugh struggled even harder to try to free himself, but there was just no escaping cable ties. Hugh had used them as a Marine to bind prisoners, so he knew how effective they were.

“Hey, our sleeping beauty must not be liking what he just heard,” the man said. “Oh well. Too bad for him,” he mocked.

Hugh now knew that unless a miracle happened, he was going to end up shot to death, and cast into a shallow desert grave, perhaps searched for, but eventually forgotten. Not the kind of end I had figured for my life.

Hugh then sensed the car slowing down, and heard, of all things, the sound of his own truck’s Jakes, as they pulled off the road onto a bumpy, badly paved side road.

My truck! I’m still with my truck. Hugh was wildly jubilant at the thought.

What Hugh thought were several more miles of travel on this bumpy road passed, and the car slowed, then stopped. Hugh listened intently as he heard car doors slamming, men talking, and tools rattling.

Then cursing.

Hugh had to laugh to himself. They were probably finding that titanium lock to be stronger than their little, hardware-store bolt cutters could handle.

Hugh felt movement at the edge of the blanket