Dime Detective Magazine, August 1951 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Publisher: Dime Detective Magazine
Published: 1951-08-08T05:00:00+00:00

Doom Ahead

Stuart Friedman

Joe roared down the highway to exact his own vengeance—for a hijacked truck and his kidnapped wife.

“Cut them lights and hop down outta there!”

JOE BRADLEY shifted from fifth gear to fourth as the grade cut the tractor-trailer’s speed to forty. As he climbed, the fog in the wooded hollow of this devil’s washboard country thinned, unleashing the white and yellow headlight beams. Joe’s hands, resting high and relaxed on the wheel, tightened involuntarily as he saw the black sedan parked with lights out on the ridge above. Marti, his wife, sat forward on the seat beside him and peered intently.

“Joe, you think that’s the same car?”

“No,” he lied, shifting into third. Shortly after leaving Junction Truck Stop a half hour ago, a black sedan had begun to tail them. When it had passed, it had stayed abreast of the tractor, as if looking him over, for several hundred yards. Then, about a mile back, the same sedan had been parked on a ridge like this one. At that time there had been traffic coming in both directions. Now there wasn’t a glimmer of headlights and at four in the morning there wasn’t likely to be.

Joe could feel without checking the speedometer that his speed was down to twenty and shifted into second. His eyes, dark with anger and apprehension, stared steadily at the sedan. If its occupants meant trouble they were in the spot for it, because Joe’s sixty-three thousand pounds of gross weight would be moving at a crawl on the crest.

He wished now that he hadn’t taken this secondary road, but he’d got word back at Junction Truck Stop that the state police were weighing every big truck on the main highways. He was loaded above this state’s legal limit, but he’d figured he could be across the state line in a couple of hours on this route. Taking the main highway would have meant a tough fine—maybe as much as two-hundred-and-fifty bucks.

Marti fished nervously in the slant pockets of her mackinaw, put two cigarettes in her mouth and scuffed a match aflame. Under a pert, white-knit stocking cap her round, babyish face puckered earnestly as she lighted. She put one of the cigarettes in his mouth.

“It was all a gamble anyway, wasn’t it, Joe?” she said.

They were thirty yards from the crest, moving in first gear at ten miles an hour and losing speed every second. Her voice was nearly lost in the roar of the powerful engine and the heavy whine of the transmission.

“Becoming an independent contractor was a gamble and risking carrying an overload for Mr. Elton—so he’d appreciate it and give you that swell contract—was a gamble and taking this route was a gamble, and…”

“Don’t be scared, baby,” Joe broke in. She sounded as if she were rallying to a battle cry. And dammit, Joe thought, the kid has something better than a battle coming to her on this trip of trips.

Marti had never come with him before. They’d postponed her first ride till it could be a victory run in their own rig.

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