Eighteen Wheel Avenger. William W. Johnstone

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СКАЧАТЬ them tire tracks off to the west?” Frenchy asked. “A lot of them. I don’t like this, boys.”

      “Trucks left those tracks,” Ready said. “A lot of trucks. I think, boys, we got ourselves into something that we don’t want to be in.”

      Barry glanced in his mirrors. He cursed. “Lights coming up fast behind us.”

      “We try to turn around in that sand and we’re gonna be here for the duration,” Ready hollered.

      “You boys are about to see something,” Barry radioed. “And for your sake, you better forget you ever saw it.”

      Barry reached behind him, into a cargo bag, and lifted out an Uzi SMG.

      The three-rig convoy had stopped on the broken and rutted old road.

      “What are you talkin’ about, Dog?” Frenchy called.

      Barry jacked a round into the Uzi and stuck several full clips behind his belt just as the two pickup trucks behind them came to a sliding stop, men pouring out of the cabs.

      The men were all armed with shotguns and pistols.

      “Get out of them trucks and keep your hands in sight!” a man yelled. He held in his hands what looked to Barry to be a 9mm pistol.

      Barry lowered his window and gave the man a short burst from the Uzi. The 9mm slugs knocked the man spinning around in the New Mexico sand. When his macabre death-dance had concluded, he fell sprawling to the sand.

      Still sitting in the cab of his Kenworth, Barry steadied the Uzi and emptied the clip into the line of armed men, knocking most of them sprawling. While he was sliding in a fresh clip, two men ran to a pickup truck and spun away, heading up the broken old road, away from the Interstate.

      Barry climbed down from his cab and cautiously walked over to the staggered row of dead and dying and seriously hurt would-be hijackers.

      Ready and Frenchy climbed down, both of them wearing shocked looks, and joined Barry.

      “Holy bejesus, Dog!” Ready blurted. “You play for keeps don’t you?”

      “Better them than us, wouldn’t you say?” He looked at the man under the full hunter’s moon that illuminated the desert

      “The man does have a point,” Frenchy summed it up.

      “Tell y’all what,” Ready drawled. “We better start making plans to haul out of here. ’Fore the cops come.”

      “There won’t be any cops,” Barry told him, kneeling down beside one of the men who was still breathing. “Not until daylight and this scene is spotted from the air.”

      He rolled the man over onto his back. His stomach and chest were bloody from the 9mm slugs. He didn’t have a whole lot of time left him.

      “You bastard!” the dying man spat at Barry. “The boss said you was with us. You goddamn traitors!”

      “The boss?”

      “Fuck you!”

      “Funny name for a man,” Ready said. “How come y’all wanted chicken livers and diapers and tools?”

      “What?” the grounded man gasped.

      “You heard him,” Frenchy urged. “Are you guys crazy or something?”

      “Either that, or they got a lot of kids and old cars to work on,” Ready suggested.

      “You’re all dead meat,” the dying man told him. “We’ll get you. Somebody will. You goddamn SST haulers have made your last run.”

      The highjacker was just seconds away from taking his last run.

      “I ain’t never pulled no safe secure transport,” Frenchy said. He looked at Ready. “You?”

      “Long time ago. But that was some years back.”

      “All SST drivers are armed,” Barry said. “And usually run with armed escorts.”

      The dying man spoke his last words. “All three of you are independents. We got your names and numbers. You’re dead meat.”

      He closed his eyes and double-clutched his way across the dark river.

      “Let’s find a common denominator,” Barry suggested, pulling out the dead man’s wallet. He checked the driver’s license. “O’Brian.”

      Frenchy, with a grimace on his face, removed the wallet of another. “Kelly’s this guy’s last name.”

      Ready said, “Kildare.”

      The last driver’s license was in the name of Fitzgerald.

      “All right.” Frenchy stood up, looking at Barry. “So what the hell does this prove?”

      “Irish.” Barry pocketed the driver’s licenses. “They’re all Irish names.”

      “I don’t make the connection,” Ready admitted.

      “Maybe there isn’t one,” Barry thought aloud. “But I’d make a bet there is.”

      “And that is…?” Frenchy asked.

      “They got us confused with a three-truck SST convoy. One that was going to cooperate and hand over their cargoes. Weapons, more than likely.”

      “Weapons!” Ready looked puzzled. “I don’t get it, Dog.”

      “For the IRA.”

      “Ahhh!” Ready got it then. “Those terrorists over in Ireland who’re always blowing things up and killin’ civilians?”

      “To many people in Ireland, Ready, they’re not terrorists. They’re heroes. Fighting for a free Ireland.” He looked at his new friends. “Get yourselves armed. Plenty of weapons on the ground. Get a pistol and a shotgun. Take whatever ammo you can find. Go on, do it.”

      Reluctantly, Ready and Frenchy obeyed, picking through the gore of the recently departed.

      They faced Barry, Frenchy asking, “Now what?”

      “Where are you boys heading?”

      All three of them were heading for Denver.

      “You heard the man.” Barry pointed to the hijacker who’d warned them they were dead meat. “We stick close together ’cause there’s gonna be people looking for us. We drop off our loads in Denver, we’ll sit down and talk this thing out.”

      “We just leave the bodies?” Frenchy asked.

      “What do you want to do with them?”

      “Well, ah, hell! I don’t know.”

      Ready looked at Barry in the СКАЧАТЬ