The Growing Pack
The news that Bulldog and Gears wanted in, stacked on top of Bill's proposal, left my head in a knot. This wasn't just a trucker's problem anymore.
It meant our community was becoming something more than a band of coworkers thrown together by chance.
I called the core of us into my trailer — Dave, Frank, Mike, Gunner, and Tank.
"Bulldog and Gears have formally asked to join our crew."
I opened, and Mike answered without missing a beat.
"I'm for it. I've worked with Gears — the man's handy, and he doesn't slack. As for Bulldog, that stubborn sense of responsibility alone makes him one of us."
Dave and Frank nodded. Neither of them had a reason to object.
"All right. We'll take them both."
Bill's face lit up at that. Bulldog and Gears were in — but the larger union Bill had proposed was a different animal. That one needed care.
"Bill."
"Yeah, boss."
"Let's take the union question slow. Give it time."
"What's that mean?"
"You stand up an organization without a clear sense of responsibility, obligation, and purpose, and you can end up with a real mess on your hands."
"So we need to get that sorted first?"
"Not sorted, exactly. I'd rather we get a clearer read on what the other truckers actually want — what they're really after."
Bill waited.
"Whether they just want paying work, or protection from outside threats — or whether they actually want to follow us wherever we go."
Frank jumped in.
"Here's what I think. The real question is whether they'll actually listen to the boss. Once a group gets big and everybody starts thinking they're the smartest guy in the room, it turns into a headache."
"I hear you. I'll go back and get a straight answer."
With that settled, Gunner quietly asked me to step outside. His face was serious.
"Look… boss."
"Spit it out. Ha."
"Was there a mole in the last convoy? Our family's getting bigger, and it's been sitting wrong with me."
"There wasn't one."
"How can you be that sure?"
"If there had been — and if that mole had fed the Road Warriors the route change from the day before — they would have come at us from the south on Alternate 95."
"Ahh. Right. We'd decided the day before to run north on 95 out of Hawthorne Base, then cut left onto the Alternate toward Yerington. If they'd known, they would have moved early."
"You following now?"
"Damn. So if somebody had leaked the route from the day before, they would have been sitting in Yerington or somewhere close, waiting. But you changed the route again once we were already rolling, so…"
"That's it. If a mole had leaked the previous day's route, the Road Warriors should have started the chase from the south, or been blocking the road at Silver Springs before we ever got there."
"Instead they rolled out of northern Fallon and came after us on Highway 50, so…"
"Right. If they'd known the route we'd set the day before, they had no reason to sit and wait seventy miles out."
"Hell. So the route you put out the day before was a fake — just in case there was a mole."
"Something like that."
"That's brilliant, I'll give you that — but if we'd just stuck to the route from the day before instead of taking the third one, we might've shaken them entirely. Hah."
"Yeah, there's that. But we confirmed there was no mole, and we wiped those bastards out in the bargain. I'll take it. Ha."
"You still could've told me ahead of time."
"I had my hands full keeping us on task."
That was what I told Gunner. The truth was I hadn't wanted to leak the plan early and widen the circle of suspicion. He was a man who could keep his mouth shut — but he might have said something to Bill or Tank, and I couldn't rule out the information traveling from there. Telling someone with no role in the plan this stays between us was just adding another link to the chain of suspicion.
That afternoon, Gears pulled into our camp with a dry van trailer and his family aboard. Bulldog rolled in with his own truck.
The moment Bulldog spotted me, his whole face lit up.
"Thanks, boss. I won't be dead weight."
Gears introduced his wife and son and offered a quiet greeting of his own.
"Polar Bear. Thank you."
Dave, Frank, Sarah, and Raven came over to welcome them both.
Gears's trailer wasn't in the same league as mine, but the steel plate patched along the sides and the gun ports cut into the walls told me he was our kind of people. Inside, there was room enough for his wife and two kids to live, and the stores and gear were laid out with the care of a man who had thought it through.
Bulldog, a bachelor, had no trailer at all. Everything he owned lived in the long sleeper of his truck.
I put him on the wood-boiler dry van that Tank's rig had been pulling. Tank's truck, I had decided, was going to become something closer to a fighting platform.
I called in Mike, Jed, and the newly arrived Gears.
"Can we enlarge the gun shield on top of Tank's sleeper and mount an Mk 19 on it?"
Mike gave Tank's Peterbilt 389 a once-over.
"An automatic grenade launcher?"
"Yes. The ride height's already there. Paired with the M2 heavy machine gun on Gunner's F-550, it should give us a real boost in forward firepower."
"I follow you. It's not a hard job — but if we're going to do it anyway, we ought to put a rotating turret on Tank's truck too. A rig that size doesn't exactly dance."
"All right. I'll have Frank hunt down another turret. It's not urgent."
"Good. I'll talk to him."
Jed, Frank, and Gears threw in together and got to work. With the rotating turret going in at the rear of my own trailer at the same time, the camp filled once more with the racket of steel being cut and welded.
Acting on Mike's request, Frank pressed a few salmon into the hands of the sheriff and Jackson as if he were doing them a favor, and walked away with another turret for Tank's truck. He borrowed an excavator from somewhere and used it to hoist the turret into place.
A few days later, Bill came back. He had a read on the other truckers — the mood, the talk along the industry.
"So? You get anywhere with the others?"
Bill nodded.
"What they want — work, or protection?"
"Both. But not in the same order."
I waited.
"Boss, it wasn't as if any of them had a list of specific demands. What they feel is this: when a job comes in, they need an organization they can trust — one that will share the work and actually see it through."
"See it through?"
"The freight companies are a joke now. Even if a man takes a job on his own, he's got no recourse if the shipper doesn't keep his word."
"Wait — they're stiffing drivers on the freight charges?"
"That happens now and then, yeah. Or they skimp on the escort they promised — or don't send one at all. Point is, in this climate, if you get burned, there's nobody to make it right."
"Hmm."
"So the thinking is: if a union with Polar Bear at the head is the one signing the contracts, who's going to break a deal like that?"
"Hmm."
"And the big jobs pay better as a group than they do one man at a time. Turns out the other truckers on Operation Crossroads got paid peanuts compared to us."
"They did?"
"Yeah. It was decent money by the old standards, but stacked against what we pulled, it doesn't look like much. We sent three trucks, worked one day, and came home with a thousand gallons of diesel and a mountain of weapons. The guys who contracted with the city on their own have every right to feel shortchanged."
"So they need a union that handles the contracts and actually represents their interests."
"That's it. They bring in the jobs, the union writes the contracts, they kick back something like five percent in dues. That's the shape of it, far as I can tell."
"Five percent — just for brokering the contract?"
"Don't look so shocked. Think about it. Insurance companies are a joke right now, and so are the cops and every government office you can name. Five percent for what amounts to insurance? That's cheap. And it gets them a seat at the big jobs besides."
"So never mind the raiders with guns. They want someone to stop the con men in office and the middlemen skimming off the top."
"That's it. And every trucker in Nevada has piled into Carson City and they're sitting idle. State work is actually pouring in — more than before — but the jobs are too big and too dangerous for a man to take on his own, and there's no company left to sign the paper."
I said nothing.
"So the Nevada truckers have been hearing the stories about Polar Bear, and they're waiting for something to get built."
Bill paused, then delivered the part that mattered most.
"And the truckers who ran with us on this last job are starting to wonder how long Tahoe can stay safe. If the day comes when we have to leave, they want a reason to move together — and a leader who can take them."
"All right. It's bigger than I thought. In the old world I wouldn't have thought twice, but now I need to hear from the others."
"I was thinking the same. I started out picturing a handful of guys looking out for each other. After listening to everybody, I figure we ought to be careful."
I called the inner circle back into my trailer, laid out Bill's proposal for a freight union, and looked at Frank.
"That's the shape of it. Frank — what do you think?"
"Well, at the very least, they'll listen to the boss. That's clear. Honestly, if Polar Bear's name and the truckers of the open road came together as one…"
He let that hang.
"It'd be a force nobody could ignore, no matter what comes next. Right now we've got roads and nothing else — freight between cities is dead. If an organization shows up that can punch those routes open, the state government won't be able to look the other way."
He wasn't done.
"And from what I'm hearing, the money this could bring in would make the salmon operation look like pocket change. I'm in. All the way."
Dave was already buzzing.
"So what — we're making Tahoe our real home base now? Tahoe Transport Defense Force, something like that?"
I shook my head.
"No. We're here for now, but tying ourselves to Tahoe — to any one place — is a mistake. We have to be able to leave whenever we need to."
Mike offered his own view.
"With Bulldog and Gears, we're looking at more than five heavy trucks we can actually run. At that size, standing up a real organization wouldn't be the worst idea."
Bill cut in carefully from the side.
"Uh… Mike. Five trucks isn't the whole picture."
"The three from the last operation too? Or are there more rigs in Tahoe?"
"If we form a union, nearly every Nevada trucker sitting in Carson City is going to join."
"How many trucks are we talking?"
"Twenty-seven truckers in Carson City have already said they want in. Add five more counting Gears and Bulldog, plus three out of Tahoe. That's thirty-three truckers, all told."
For a moment, nobody spoke. Thirty-three heavy trucks. Whether I wanted it or not, I was already becoming the head of this enormous pack of steel. I stood quietly and brought the meeting to a close.
I stepped outside and drew in a lungful of cold night air.
Wolf had followed me out. Looking at him, I thought about how I too had once been a lone wolf, running south for no reason except to stay alive — and how that desperate long haul had gathered a pack around me, growing like a snowball.