Wet Drive Read online

  Charlie’s smile turned to a stoic mask then shock then terror. Once the Camaro was elevated enough the butler began removing the lug nuts with his bare hands. The first nut came off and the butler placed it on the hood of the Camaro. In procession he removed the other four. The butler gingerly removed the tire and inspected it. He appeared to find the offending object and pluck it from between the treads. The butler walked back in the direction of the jack’s origin and returned with the tire. He then replaced the tire began replacing the lug nuts by hand.

  Charlie stood stunned. He had changed a hundred tires in his time and no lug nuts could be removed or tightened to security without a tire tool. Given the things he had seen and been through in the last few days this should have been minor. What struck Charlie as he tried to operate the remote for the TV and log on to the internet at the same time was that he had no doubt that those bolts were on as tight as they would have been using a tire tool.

  He found the BBC on the television and waited for the local news segment to come into rotation.

  On the two computer screens he began his search for any roadblock related stories hoping that Darryl had made it through without incident. It didn’t take long online because the roadblock was still a marquee story on Univision.com. Charlie was certain he had reached the limit of his anxiety. He was over ten thousand dollars ahead but he was still in Mexico. This was second to the fact that he had possibly been involved in an infant massacre at a Mexican hospital and a cartel shoot-out while transporting creatures thought only to exist in the nightmares of children.

  One Tecate simply wasn’t doing the job. At this moment a freakishly strong butler was catering to him and was hoping some drug kingpin wasn’t issuing fat rewards for his head. All of these were just elements in the cluster-fuck this wet drive had become and to really seal the deal, he couldn’t do anything about any of it. His life was in the hands of a stranger, a well-funded stranger but a stranger nonetheless.

  He focused on the one hundred thousand dollars.

  He looked around and found a decanter of brown liquid on the credenza. He poured himself a half glass and began to sip while he studied the monitors.

  The next in the procession of traumas came as Charlie – bleary-eyed from whatever panther piss he was drinking – saw a photo of the roadblock victims. Some of the bodies were in uniforms and armed with standard M-16’s. Others were in street clothes armed with the latest European sub-machine guns, the uniform of cartel soldiers. The one thing all of the bodies had in common was signs of predation according to the dye-jobbed Mexican journalist on the scene. His eyes wandered to the people standing instead of the multiple corpses.

  Standing between two corpses, holding a satellite phone to one ear with her one remaining arm was Machete Mamma. How had they tracked him, he wondered. No. The Federales were looking for any truck that met the specifications. Machete Mamma and her Mr. Phone were looking for him. Of course most Federales would turn him over to the cartel, so it was six one way and half a dozen the other.

  Hopefully the truck was miles away by now. Charlie fell asleep in the comfortable chair leaving the television and computer on. He heard the clatter of metal and started. His head hurt and his mouth was dry. “Good morning sir. Breakfast is served,” said the sad butler standing in front of the computer desk.

  The butler still looked sad to Charlie but he noticed the he was what looked to Charlie like formal attire. Tails on the jacket, bow-tie, cufflinks, gloves, ‘the whole shiteree’ as his father used to say. Charlie had never had breakfast on a silver platter before. He lifted the dome cover eagerly and inhaled the aroma of chorizo and eggs. Orange juice, milk and coffee were also there… Charlie stopped and thought about the gloves and the silver tray and the lug nuts. He slammed the lid down and wasn’t hungry.

  “I have to go,” Charlie said standing up. His muscles ached from dehydration.

  “The phone has rung several times sir. Shall I...?”the butler stopped talking under Charlie’s glare.

  “No!” Charlie said with more emphasis than he planned.

  Charlie was in the Camaro and out of the courtyard by a hundred yards before he thought to return the missed call.

  “Good morning. How was your stay” Mr. Phone asked.

  “I need the final instructions to get back to the real world and my money. After I get paid I want no further dealings with you…people…if you even call yourselves that,” Charlie sad flatly.

  “I understand this has been trying for you Charlie” Mr. Phone said. A less than subtle reminder of their respective roles, Charlie thought. They know my name, they know I’m wanted, they know the route to get me out of here.

  “Did Darryl make it?” Charlie asked.

  “He completed the job he agreed to perform. His whereabouts are unknown to me,” pause “is this of concern to you?” Mr. Phone asked.

  “No.” Charlie lied.

  “The first vehicle was destroyed conspicuously and a body matching your build was left at the scene but was beyond identification. The search – for all intents and purposes – is over,” Mr. Phone paused again.

  Charlie was relieved that it wasn’t Darryl’s body in the vehicle and whoever was still looking for the truck or Charlie was no longer considered a threat. Charlie did wonder where they had gotten a body to match his build on such short notice. Of course this is Mexico and life has a different value down here.

  “Where to?” Charlie asked for what he hoped was the last time in his life.

  “Another truck awaits you a few miles up the road. We advise you to get there in a reasonable time frame. You are just two hours from the border and one hundred thousand dollars. Safe travels.” Then the phone indicated that no one was on the other end.

  The butler still looked sad to Charlie but he noticed the he was in formal attire or what looked like formal attire to Charlie. Tails on the jacket, bow tie, cufflinks, gloves, ‘the whole shiteree’ as his father used to say.

  Charlie had never had breakfast on a silver platter before. He lifted the dome cover and eagerly inhaled the aroma of chorizo and eggs. Orange juice, milk and coffee were also there… Charlie stopped and thought about the gloves and the silver tray and the lug nuts. He slammed the lid down and wasn’t hungry.

  “I have to go,” Charlie said standing up. His muscles ached from dehydration.

  “The phone has rung several times sir. Shall I...?”the butler stopped talking under Charlie’s glare.

  “No!” Charlie said with more emphasis than he planned.

  Charlie was in the Camaro and out of the courtyard by a hundred yards before he thought to return the missed call.

  “Good morning. How was your stay” Mr. Phone asked.

  “I need the final instructions to get back to the real world and my money. After I get paid I want no further dealings with you…people…if you even call yourselves that,” Charlie sad flatly.

  “I understand this has been trying for you Charlie” Mr. Phone said. A less than subtle reminder of their respective roles, Charlie thought.

  “Did Darryl make it?” Charlie asked.

  “He completed the job he agreed to perform. His whereabouts are unknown to me,” pause “is this of concern to you?” Mr. Phone asked.

  “No.” Charlie lied. He wasn’t about to give them another way to manage him so he pretended not to care about Darryl.

  “The first vehicle was destroyed conspicuously and a body matching your build was left at the scene but was beyond identification. The search – for all intents and purposes – is over,” the phone paused again.

  Charlie understood that at least it wasn’t Darryl’s body in the vehicle and whoever was still looking for the truck or Charlie was no longer considered a threat. Charlie did wonder where they had gotten a body to match his build on demand. Of course this was Mexico and life was just another commodity down here.

  “Where to?” Charlie asked for what he hoped was the last time in his life.

  “Anothe
r truck awaits you a few miles up the road. We advise you to get there in a reasonable time frame. You are just two hours from the border and one hundred thousand dollars. Safe travels.” The phone indicated that no one was on the other end.

  Charlie texted the other number in the phone hoping to get a response from Darryl. Fifteen minutes later Charlie got a return text:

  - AT THE 501. ONE DOLLAR WELLS ON ME TONIGHT. SAFE TRAVELS –

  ‘The 501’ is the familiar term for the Salvation Army in Austin. It had a bed-bug problem worse than any shelter Charlie may have crashed in but Darryl was safe.

  Charlie followed the GPS to the one good surprise of this trip.

  There was a short list of ideal vehicles for border runs. Third on that list was the Mexican ambulance going north. You could wrap one guys face and throw him on the gurney with some tubes in him. Dress two more like EMTs and claim emergency status if you had the right papers. Of course then you were only transporting three people and unless they were rich you couldn’t make money that way.

  Second was the southbound church bus. Clean-cut, white kids barely merited a glance from border patrols. The mission to save the heathens from eternal damnation was given a wide berth and you could get almost sixty passengers if you had that many who wanted to get into Mexico. The main thing was that the luggage compartment below seldom drew any attention with all those young people singing hymns.

  However nothing compared to the Holy Grail of smugglers world-wide. It offered maximum cargo space with crates to hide goods in and even had a refrigerated fore section. It represented the most trusted name in shipping and virtually never got searched. It was the full sized FedEx semi-tractor and trailer. That is what Charlie saw when he arrived at the coordinates.

  Finally! Charlie thought, his road luck was back and somebody had done something right.

  The cab was luxurious. As Charlie looked at all of the displays and monitoring equipment he remembered why this was the unobtanium of border drivers.

  Each FedEx truck had three tracking devices in the tractor. One was hard-wired into the ignition, which also allowed for remote start-up and starter kill via satellite. The second tracker was wired to the fuel injection system and even a good mechanic would take an hour to remove it. The third tracker was directly connected to the rest of the vehicle’s electrical diagnostic system. As long as the diagnostics showed green the circuit powering it would remain open. However if the other systems were tampered with it would close the circuit, engage and give away the vehicle’s location.

  It made sense that a company that specialized in the logistics of time and distance would use that expertise to stymie potential hijackers. Hijackers wouldn’t have the time to disable the trackers before the authorities showed up or wouldn’t be able to get far if they made a run for it. Either way you were pretty much fucked if you tried to take one of their trucks. That’s why they could guarantee their deliveries…and on time no less.

  The one weakness was the trailer. It of course would have a couple of location devices as well. However the only way to keep them operational was to piggy-back on the electrical system used to run the brake and signal lights. Connecting them to the refrigeration unit forced the designers to deal with cold and humidity. The designers opted to go around the refrigeration unit for this reason. These two factors made the tracking devices located in the trailer easy to find.

  The only theory Charlie had ever heard to steal one was wildly impractical. The first step was to detach the tractor from the trailer and drive it the hell away losing the cargo. Then you would need a ‘whisk’. A ‘whisk’ was a device that was just as likely to overheat as work within the first fifteen minutes if you got a cheap one. If you had one of the hundred thousand dollar models then you had all the time in the world – theoretically. The whisk – using the trailers electrical system - would scramble the tracking devices signal so that the satellites tracking the trailer would see multiple signals. Of course one of the signals would be correct and you were simply playing the odds. And sometimes the Feds got lucky. Charlie had first learned of the whisk back at the Pit.

  However the simplest but most expensive way to steal a FedEx truck was to just pay off an employee to adjust the system to not read that particular vehicle at FedEx’s monitoring center. Given the cavalier manner in which his employers doled out money the suspected that that was exactly what had happened.

  I am going home in style and comfort, Charlie thought, only a couple of hours to civilization and the real world. The big hybrid diesel engine gave off a quiet rumble when he used the push-to-start button. The truck was backed up to the loading dock of an abandoned warehouse. Charlie shook his head at the stereotypical location as he began to check all of the dashboard readouts.

  Charlie took his time adjusting the seat and electric side view mirrors. He set the ac to as cold as it would go because it was getting on about noon. Charlie was ready to not be in Mexico. He pulled away from the warehouse, skirted the main part of the town and headed for the highway.

  He left the hamlet and drove through a small grove of trees. According, the GPS built into the dash when he crested the next hill he would have a good view of highway Eighty-five. He saw it up ahead. Traffic was moving fast for Mexico and he did not have to bully his way onto the highway.

  CROSSING

  Charlie was about thirty miles closer to civilization when he topped a hill and saw it. Stretching as far as he could see into the distance were cars and trucks of every make and model sitting still.

  Charlie raged; Fuck Darryl for getting him into this! Fuck the Attorney General of Texas! Fuck his retard, crying wife! Fuck Mr. Phone, the Federales and the cartels! And most of all fuck werewol… he realized he was screaming. He was screaming in the cab.

  He had forgotten about Easter Sunday traffic. Shit, he thought, he had forgotten about Easter entirely. He told himself that he wasn’t some whiney-ass daily commuter, road raging, punk-ass bitch. He was a border runner and he resolved that this load was getting delivered ‘come hell or high water’ as his sainted grandmother used to say. Charlie also reminded himself that his job was to sit in air-conditioned comfort for a few hours longer than he had anticipated and earn one hundred thousand dollars, plus the twelve grand he still had, his rage subsided.

  Charlie took his place in line behind a convertible Mustang and put the truck in park. After studying the cab some more he put on the BBC. The BBC journalist was mid sentence when he tuned in and Charlie would have sworn before god that it was the same reporter relaying this new horror story.

  “… school is the latest in a series of attacks that have left authorities baffled. The level of brutality and malicious carnage has cartel members disavowing the actions of the group now known to authorities as ‘the hell dogs’. Whatever the purpose or message behind the attacks both official and unofficial sources are in agreement that the perpetrators will be dealt with harshly. Mexicos citizens are simply asking why this is happening,” the reporter concluded.

  The story began to replay and Charlie learned that it was a private school for the children of some of Mexico’s wealthiest local citizens. The victims were mostly between the ages of six and twelve years of age.

  Charlie found an igloo mini-cooler loaded with snacks. Although he hated Mexico and its people he did love the food. His employers had really thought this part of the journey through, he thought.

  Once he had crossed over to the real world he had planned to lay low in a weekly hotel. Charlie, lost in his thoughts of Texas, realized he had been sitting for about an hour. He felt a twinge of pity for the folks who were running low on fuel or coolant. He cracked his window about an inch so he could hear the horns and voices outside and started to doze as a helicopter flew over-head. Probably one of the Mexican news networks, he thought.

  He opened his eyes what he thought were just moments later. The sounds of horns and cheers as traffic began to flow energized him. Apparently what Charlie thought was a few minutes w
as in reality two and a half hours. As alert as he was, he was still exhausted. Mentally he was running on fumes. Not the ideal condition for someone in command of an eighty-thousand pound vehicle. He drank a Mexican Coca-Cola.

  As it got closer to five o’clock the truck’s running lights engaged and Charlie could see them reflected in the roof of the cars passing him as traffic picked up speed. The sign said sixty-five miles to Texas, speed limit seventy miles per hour. His lane opened up and Charlie put the hammer down.

  Charlie could just make out the fifteen-lane wide border crossing in the distance when the phone rang.

  “Driver.” Charlie said.

  “We do not have control of the check-point. Get off of the highway if you can and then get as far away from the truck as you can,” Mr. Phone instructed.

  “Fuck you! You are paying for…” Charlie was cut off.

  “We will honor our agreement. You have completed the task you were assigned. Get the truck off the road and get away from it.” Eldon said.

  “I just passed my last exit before the border plus I’m way over in the trucking lane. Stopping now will get the attention of every Federales within five states,” Charlie countered.

  “Your choice,” Mr. Phone said.

  “What about the cargo?” Charlie asked.

  “The cargo is of no concern of yours,” Mr. Phone said.

  “I’m at the border, there are hundreds of people waiting to cross. What happens if someone finally figures out to just take a power cutter to one of the side panels?” Charlie asked.

  “You’re correct, someone will eventually open the truck, so unless you have at least half of the contents of the blue thermos left, I suggest you focus on the part about getting far away,” Mr. Phone said.