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

set of pallets from shifting toward the back of the trailer.

“Brilliant!” Hugh exclaimed.

He removed the load lock, which was a ratchet jack about eight feet long that fit the width of the eight-foot-wide trailer. He stood it on end and, with one end on the floor and the other end pointed at the nine-foot-high ceiling, began to ratchet it up, hoping he could jack up the plastic ceiling until it broke.

The ceiling began to bow up under the pressure. Then, “Darn!” he exclaimed, as the jack ran out of travel before it could break through the ceiling.

Then, thinking he could use the jack at its shortest setting, he placed one end on top of one of the pallets of beer and attempted to bring the other end to the ceiling. “Darn,” he exclaimed again, as he realized that the jack was too long, at even its shortest length, to fit between the pallet of beer and the ceiling.

“Now what?” he asked, looking at Jenny.

They sat down on the floor with their backs against the last pallets of beer, their legs stretched out in front of them, pointing toward the locked trailer doors.

“At least we won’t die of thirst,” Hugh said.

Then he noticed that his legs covered half the distance from the pallets to the doors, which gave him an idea. He jumped up in excitement.

“What?” Jenny exclaimed, surprised by his action.

“I’ve got it!” Hugh shouted. “We’re getting out of here.”

He took the load lock, and extended it out again, then laid it down on the floor with one end snug against one of the last pallets, and the other end tight against the bottom edge of the right-side trailer door. It was a perfect fit.

He began to crank the load lock handle.

Seeing what he was doing, and that the handle was getting harder to crank as the load lock began to build pressure against the door, Jenny leaned in to help Hugh.

Hugh feared they were going to run out of extension as they had before, but then he heard a loud “crack” as one of the door lock welds gave way.

“Keep cranking,” Hugh yelled.

Eventually, the mounting pressure broke the last weld holding the bottom part of the door latch, and the load lock leveraged a small opening. But that was as far as the jack would travel. They were finished.

Hugh looked at what they had accomplished, realizing that the opening was too small for him to get through. He also realized that they couldn’t break the top part of the door latch, either, because the load lock was too short to get purchase on the pallet on the bottom and reach at a diagonal all the way to the top of the trailer door.

“Dammit,” Hugh exclaimed.

“I can fit through that opening,” Jenny said, looking at the opening, and then looking at Hugh.

Hugh considered her offer, weighing the possibility of the success of her mission against the consequences of failure—meaning, a drop to the pavement at sixty miles an hour, which was certain to be fatal.

“OK,” he said. “This is what you’ll have to do.” And then he told her the sequence of events she would have to carefully and successfully accomplish. Hugh was confident that if she followed his instructions exactly, she’d be safe.

“Can you do it?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding for emphasis.

“Alright, let’s do it,” Hugh said.

He helped Jenny snake out through the small opening at the bottom of the trailer door. As her head and shoulders began to show outside, she rotated onto her back, and reached up to the vertical bar that connected the bottom latch of the left-side door to the top latch.

She carefully continued to climb out through the opening, all the while shinnying up the vertical bar. When she was almost out all the way, she followed Hugh’s instructions and put one foot, and then the other, onto the horizontal member of the DOT bumper that all trailers are required to have.

Now, she was completely out of the trailer, which, incidentally was still traveling at sixty miles an hour down the highway. She yelled at Hugh, “Go ahead!”

At her signal, Hugh released the load lock’s pressure against the bottom of the door. And it sprung back, nearly into its original shape. This, in effect locked Jenny out of the trailer. But that had to be done for her to perform the next maneuver.

Jenny held on to the left-side door’s vertical bar with her left hand, and then leaned over to grab the handle of the right-side door latch. She was able to swing the latch handle up out of its cradle and toward her, which unlatched the top latch. Remembering Hugh’s instruction, she held on to the door so that it wouldn’t swing open and alert the hijackers of what they had managed to do.

Hugh’s strong arms then pulled Jenny back in through the partially open door. Once she was inside the trailer again, she let go of the door, and Hugh took over holding it mostly closed.

“That was beautiful, honey, just beautiful,” Hugh exclaimed, and kissed her.

“OK. Now what?” Jenny asked.

“Do you remember those western movies where the good guy climbs over the top of the stagecoach to fight the bad guys?” Hugh said.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Jenny exclaimed.

“Nope. It’s gotta be done. We are going way too fast to just jump out. And, I’m not giving up my truck to those guys, anyway. Not no way.”

He told her what his plan was.

“Wish me luck,” he said.

She did more than that. She took his face in both her hands and gave him a big kiss. “I love you, Hugh. Don’t die on me.”

He grinned at her. “OK, sweetie. Just because you said that, I won’t.”

With Jenny holding the door partially open to keep