Eighteen Wheel Avenger

Book 3: Rig Warrior

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure

Synopsis

In New Orleans, Barry Rivers fought the mob and exposed traitors inside the U.S. government. Then, when a bomb killed the woman he loved, he started life again under a new identity—with a new mission. Now Rivers travels America's highways in a midnight blue Kenworth with his dog named “Dog,” and a whole lot of guns, bullets, and bombs packed into the cab.
 
An attempted hijacking on a New Mexico highway puts Rivers face to face with an unholy alliance of terrorists—and brings him the able-bodied assistance of a female Air Force Special Ops officer who knows how to shift a truck and shoot to kill. Now Rivers and Lieutenant Meri Cutter are driving a rig loaded with top secret, super-explosive transport coast to coast. They're just waiting for the terrorists to make their next move—so they can strike back hard . . . and hit them where it counts.

Live Free. Read Hard.

 

Release date: May 26, 2020

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 235

Sample

Barry was bored just about out of his gourd.

He was supposed to be out here not only driving a truck, but also fighting crime and injustice and all those other noble causes … doing something besides hauling frozen chicken livers to Denver.

But that was exactly what he was doing. In a truck that carried enough weapons and explosives in hidden compartments to start a major war.

Most of it sitting on top of frozen chicken livers.

After the incident in Kentucky, he had been ordered to cool it. ‘Just keep on trucking, Barry. You and Dog. Haul freight,’ his contact, Jackson, had told him. ‘You’ll run into something.’

A four-wheeler came shooting out of an exit ramp, not looking one way or the other.

Barry could do nothing except stand on his brakes and pray to God he didn’t jackknife.

He couldn’t change lanes. Another four-wheeler had crept up and was staying in his blind spot. But Barry knew the jerk was there.

He got his rig under control and grabbed for his CB mike, spotting a CB antenna on the offending car’s trunk.

“You potatohead!” Barry hollered. “Why in hell don’t you watch where you’re going?”

His Husky, Dog, had been rolled from the bunk and was now sitting in the seat beside Barry, his lip curled up in a snarl. Dog didn’t appreciate being waked up so abruptly.

“Shove it up your butt, driver!” Barry’s CB crackled. “You don’t own the goddamn road.”

“That’s right,” Barry radioed back. “But I would like to have just a small piece of it to run on.”

“I’ll give you a big piece of fist you wanna bring that thing over to the shoulder.”

“You got it, prick! Name your place.”

“Next ramp. Turn to the right. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“You got it.”

Barry knew the other two drivers in their small convoy they’d just put together were listening.

Barry’s Cajun temper was boiling over.

“Might be a setup.” A voice came through the speaker. “You want some company?”

“I’d appreciate it. I’m called the Dog.”

“They call me Ready. Like in ready to go.”

“I’m Frenchy.” Another voice came in. “You boys can deal me in on this, too. I seen it go down. That four-wheeler’s just lookin’ for trouble.”

Barry saw the car’s turn signals flash on. “Then here we go, boys.”

“We sure are a long way from nowhere,” Ready radioed. “I ain’t seen nothing but jackrabbits in an hour.”

The drivers slowed and headed down the ramp. Barry cut to the right, the other rigs following. They drove for several miles. Nothing. Barry grabbed his mike.

“I think he was all mouth, boys. We’re all alone out here.

“Let’s find a place to turn around. Damn, this desert is spooky at night.”

The big rigs moved slowly up the road, Barry leading the way, looking for a place to turn around. He was getting a hard knot of suspicion in the pit of his stomach. He tried to remember just where that car had come from. It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

And the four-wheeler who’d been crowding him on Barry’s blind side—where had it gone?

The more he thought about it, the more he didn’t like it.

It smelled of setup.

But why would anybody go to all that trouble to hijack a load of chicken livers?

Barry grabbed his mike and said, “Don’t roll down your windows, boys. Lock your doors. I got a bad feeling about this.”

“I hear that,” Frenchy radioed back. “What you haulin’, Dog?”

“Frozen chicken livers. You?”

“Disposable diapers. Ready?”

“Tools.” He laughed. “I reckon somebody could use the tools to break open the boxes of chicken livers and the diapers for napkins. That pretty well lets out any thought of hijack, don‘t it.”

“Unless they got us mixed up with somebody else,” Barry radioed.

“And bear in mind whoever set us up is listenin’ to every damn word we’re sayin’,” Frenchy reminded them.

“Buildings up ahead,” Barry told his unknown friends. “Probably be a place to turn around.”

The old road had deteriorated to the point of being nonexistent. The buildings had been long-abandoned; what remained were crumbling ruins, silent reminders of something that had failed.

“See 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 moonlight. “Man, you’re a real hard-ass, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told.” He looked at the men, one at a time. He judged them both to be around his age. “You boys veterans?”

They were. Both of them Army. Served in ’Nam. Grunts.

“Then you’re not cherries when it comes to firearms or seeing dead bodies or pulling a trigger?”

“That was a long time ago, Dog,” Frenchy said.

“What are you gettin’ at, Dog?” Ready asked.

“We’re in trouble, boys, if I’m correctly reading what happened tonight. Obviously, those guys who got away have our truck plates, some permit numbers, home base; enough to track us down. And the IRA doesn’t screw around, boys. Some of their own are dead. And they’ll be looking for revenge.”

Neither man spoke as his words sank in.

“If you want to cut out and try it on your own,” Barry suggested, “I certainly won’t blame you.”

“The damn rumors are true.” Ready was the first to speak.

“What rumors?” Frenchy asked.

“The rumors that many drivers don’t talk about on the air. About that driver with some kind of government protection, or something like that. Runnin’ around like a modern-day Robin Hood. It just come to me. That guy’s handle is supposed to be Dog.”

“I thought all that was just a bunch of crap somebody made up.”

“How many truckers you know carry a machine gun around with them? And God only knows what else.”

Both drivers turned to face Barry.

“How about it, boys?”

“Let’s get the hell out of here, Dog!” Frenchy said. “We’re right behind you.”

They rolled on through the night, crossing into Colorado just at dawn. They pulled over at a truck stop and parked close. After breakfast, they crawled into their sleepers for a few hours’ rest.

Barry was the first one up. He walked Dog and put him back into the truck, then went into the truck stop and put in a call to his Washington contact, Jackson.

“You’re still hot, Dog,” Jackson told him. “So just keep on trucking.”

“Shut up and listen,” Barry said.

He brought the man up to date.

Jackson was silent for a few heartbeats. Barry could hear his sigh over the phone. “Okay. I’ll get with the Department of Energy and tell them what you’ve told me. Frenchy and Ready. What are their last names?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I never asked.”

“Well, ask! You’re all three about to become SST men.”

“Maybe they don’t want to do that.”

“Use your persuasive charm, Dog. And think of three other drivers while you’re at it. And call me from Denver.”

The line went dead.

“I thought all the SSTs hauled was nuclear stuff,” Ready said. “Was when I did a bit of it.”

“They’ve changed some,” Barry told him. “My Kenworth is armored with bulletproof glass. Steel-plated bottom.”

“I know that’s one hell of a nice rig you got,” Frenchy told him.

Barry’s Kenworth was all of that, and more. It was his home. His only home.

He shook away the memories. But they would be back. They always came back.

“You got a funny look on your face, Dog. What is your whole name, anyway?”

“Barry Rivera.”

The Dog.

His name had been Barry Rivers. He had once been a very successful arms dealer and consultant, known worldwide.

All that changed when a bomb meant to kill him instead killed his new wife, Kate. Little Kate. Blue-eyed Kate, with the corn-yellow hair.

Barry spent months in a military hospital. There, the doctors reworked his face, reshaped his eyes, his nose. He spent more weeks rebuilding his hospital-atrophied muscles.

He met with several government men, usually Jackson or Weston. He liked their plan, but he wanted to hear it from The Man himself.

Then one day the President walked into Barry’s hospital room.

“You’re a stubborn man, Mr. Rivera.”

“I’m still Rivers until we can reach an agreement, Mr. President.”

The President smiled. “The only SST rig on the road with only one driver. Dog and Dog. That’s not a very friendly dog, either. He bites.”

“So do I.”

“I hope so.”

“I pick my targets.”

“Most of the time. Agreed.”

“Fine. Whatever I ask for, in the way of weapons or explosives—I get. Immediately.”

“Agreed.”

The Dog and the President talked for more than an hour, firming things up.

The President shook Barry’s hand. “Glad to have you with us, Barry.”

“Call me Dog.”

“Smooth and Mustard is lookin’ for work,” Frenchy suggested. “They can drive anything with wheels on it and they’re both ’Nam vets.”

“Fine. Get in touch with them. Right now. I prefer to go it alone, anyway.”

“Well,” Ready said, standing up and stretching. “It’s steady work.”

“It’s also a good way to get killed,” Barry reminded them both.

“What’s that they say about safety in numbers?” Frenchy smiled.

“Get some sleep,” Barry told them. “I got a hunch we’ll be pulling out early in the morning.”

The phone woke him up at four in the morning. Jackson.

“Don’t you ever sleep, Jackson?”

“Your other drivers are on their way to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. And I picked up a codriver for you. Meet you there. A Lieutenant Cutter, with the Air Force’s U.S. SOCOM.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Special Operations Command. They’re tough and the best in the business in dealing with terrorists. Cutter will be your codriver. Don’t argue. You need one and you know it.”

“Fine. What’s the procedure for Frenchy and Ready to get to Kirtland?”

“Plane. Get them out to Stapleton by eight o’clock. I know how you are about that truck of yours. Just get down there in twenty-four hours. They’ll use that time to familiarize themselves with the regular SST tractors. Orders will be forthcoming. See you.”

The connection was broken.

Frenchy and Barry had to get Ready drunk before he’d even discuss getting on a plane.

“I hate planes. I don’t trust planes. I don’t like planes. And I ain’t gettin’ on no damn airplane!”

Finally Barry put in a call to Jackson. Jackson was out, but Weston was in. Barry explained the situation.

When Weston was through cussing, he said, “IIang on. I’ll get an Air Force plane. Get him drunk as a skunk and pour him in the plane.”

Barry waved bye-bye and got a taxi back to his motel. He paid up, checked out, and hit the road. It was about four hundred and fifty miles to Kirtland.

He looked over at Dog, sitting in the seat. “You ready, boy?”

Dog growled.

Dog and Dog hit the road.

It wasn’t long before Barry realized he’d picked up a tail. And his followers weren’t trying to be secretive about it. They were on his donkey and wanted him to know it.

He was running empty, and the big Kenworth could practically fly if Barry wanted to pedal the metal; but with a smile on his face, he decided to see just what his followers had in mind.

Long before he got to Colorado Springs, Barry had picked up his pace car, and like the car following him, the car in front had three men in it.

From the quick looks he’d gotten, none of the six looked real friendly. Barry decided he’d wait for a particularly desolate stretch of road, between Pueblo and Walsenburg, before making any moves. He wished his followers would open the dance. Then he could slap one off the road with a clear conscience.

As it now stood, he was ten percent unsure the two cars held people who had unkind thoughts toward him. And unlike terrorists, he did not wish to be responsible for the deaths of innocents.

Coming out of Pueblo, rolling south, Barry listened to his CB. No Bears in sight and none had been spotted on the fifty-mile stretch between Pueblo and Walsenburg.

Barry decided to make his move.

He swung over in the left lane and let the big Kenworth howl; the 350 NTC Cummins kicked in hard and Barry blew past the Ford car. Barry caught a quick glimpse of three startled faces.

He also caught a glimpse of what looked to be an M-16 on the rear seat; the lone passenger in the back with a hand on the weapon.

Barry stayed in the left lane and switched on his scanner. The red light danced left and right and back and forth before finally settling on channel 2.

“What the hell’s he doing?” came the excited voice.

“Don’t know. But I think he’s made us.”

“What next?”

“Do we take him out?” a third voice came in.

“Yes. No more talk. Take him.”

The red light again began its frantic racing. Barry clicked off the scanner and got ready.

He didn’t have a long wait. He checked his mirrors. The two dark sedans were all that he could see behind him. Nothing in front of him.

“Come on, assholes!” Barry muttered. “Let’s do it.”

This was the very reason SSTs always carried a three-person crew. Always a codriver and a person in the sleeper. All heavily armed. And usually with a four-wheeler pacing or in the drag. Whether an SST is carrying 2 kilograms of plutonium or the business end of a Minuteman missile, the threat of sabotage or hijack is always there. With terrorism full-blown in America, the possibilities of an SST getting struck were growing daily.

The lead sedan began closing as Barry stayed in the left lane. He could see the rear window, left side, lower. The M-16 was in plain view now.

Now the intentions of his pursuers were known.

Barry p. . .