government hit squads."
The guy smiled a frightening smile. "Indeed," he
said. "Yes, poor Henri. He was quite mad. But I assure
you I am Gregory Townsend, and as you can
see, I'm alive."
"You got any proof you're Townsend?"
"Ah. Proof." The Brit reached into a coat pocket
and Bennie thought, Oh, shit, here's where he drills
me. But he pulled a photograph out of his pocket. "I
show you this only because I so greatly desire your
services, Mr. Reynolds." He flipped the photograph
at Bennie. Bennie snatched it in midair, keeping the
Brit and his cover guy in sight. Then he glanced at
the picture and froze.
It was a photograph of Townsend kneeling in
what looked like a garbage dump and supporting a
corpse. The corpse's head was partially blown apart
at the forehead so the face was unrecognizable, but
the upper torso had been stripped bare, revealing a
large multicolored tattoo surrounded by bullet
holes. The tattoo was that of the Belgian First Para,
the "Red Berets," Belgium's elite fighting unit, of
which Cazaux had once been a member.
The shot was familiar to Bennie. It was almost
identical to the one that had been published in several
tabloids and magazines, announcing the discovery
of Henri Cazaux's bullet-riddled body, though
Townsend didn't appear in the published photos.
The gun that he held in this one was a 9-millimeter
Browning Hi-Power, which was what the FBI had
identified as the murder weapon.
"Poor Henri," Townsend said again. "We could
have been quite wealthy back then, but he was obsessed
with attacking the American government.
Insane."
"Jee-sus," Bennie exclaimed. "You dusted Henri
Cazaux . . ."
"Ven Cazaux died, of course, his grip of terror
on his business associates died as well," Townsend
said matter-of-factly, plucking the photo out of Bennie's
frozen fingers and slipping it back into his
pocket. "But our bloody accountant spilled his guts
to the FBI and Interpol-just before I blew him to
hell-so all of our numbered bank accounts were
immediately confiscated. I am now attempting to
reassemble the best of what remains of his organization
, and I am recruiting new members as well. This
is why I am here today. I would like to offer you a
top position in my organization."
Christ Almighty, Bennie realized, the new king
of the international crime trade was asking him to
join him! Bennie didn't know if this was a con or
the opportunity of a lifetime, so experience told
him to treat it like a con. "You're into guns, right?"
Bennie asked. "I don't know nuthin' about the gunrunning
business."
Townsend waved a hand dismissively. "Guns are
not quite as lucrative as before, Mr. Reynolds," he
said. "There are so many of them out there now.
Even automatic weapons, heavy military artillery,
and high-performance aircraft and battle vehicles
are commonplace on the open market. No, not
guns, Mr. Reynolds. At least not our main stock in
trade.
"I'm talking about methamphetamines, Mr.
Reynolds. The state of California estimates meth
sales are in excess of two hundred million dollars a
year in this state alone, almost all pure profit, and
with no importation problems. With the right combination
of production, distribution, and enforcement
, meth sales can easily top a half a billion
dollars a year nationwide.
"You are Benjamin Reynolds, known as Bennie
the Chef by the Satan's Brotherhood Motorcycle
Club. You have been convicted of manufacturing illicit
drugs and possessing a controlled substance
only once, and received a four-year sentence, that
over eight years ago. But you have been cooking
meth and instructing the Brotherhood on how to do
it for about twenty years. You are obviously highly
intelligent and resourceful, and worth far more than
would like you to supervise the setup of a thousand
of your portable meth labs. We will become the McDonald's
of the meth world. What do you say, Mr.
Reynolds?"
"A thousand meth labs?" Bennie exclaimed. "A
thousand portable meth labs? You've gotta be joking
!//
"A thousand labs such as that one is only the
beginning, my dear sir," said Townsend, motioning
toward Bennie's portable hydrogenator setup. "I envision
a meth lab in every county and province'in
every country of the civilized world. You shall supervise
their construction. I shall . . ."
"It can't be done, Townsend, or whoever the hell
you are," Bennie interrupted. "You want war with
the Brotherhood? just try to horn in on their meth
business. There will be a bloodbath-probably all
yours."
"I am proposing a merger with the Satan's Brotherhood
, Mr. Reynolds," Townsend said confidently.
"The northern California chapters of the Brotherhood
control four-fifths of the meth production in
the United States, most of it generated by you. The
problem is that the Brotherhood is disorganized,
splintered into factions. I propose to unite them.
The Brotherhood will produce methamphetamine,
methcathinone, and crack cocaine, and will oversee
distribution; I and our new allies will oversee collections
, security, and enforcement. The Brotherhood
needs you to supervise their meth operations.
If you agree to join me, I believe the motorcycle
gangs will follow."
"They might--or they might want to blow your
shit away," Bennie said. "No Brotherls going to
work with an outsider, especially a foreigner.
They'll be fighting you as much as you'll be fighting
the feds. Who's gonna stop the Brotherhood from
squashing you and your operation? Who's going to
keep all the players together? You? You and what
army, man?"
"Myself-and some former members of the
German army," Townsend replied. He motioned
toward the man standing behind him. "Meet Major
Bruno Reingruber. He has assembled a hundred of
his finest officers and soldiers and has agreed to join
-my operation. Major Reingruber, meet Benjamin
Reynolds,,Bennie the Chef."
The German snapped to attention, gave Reynolds
a straight-arm Hider salute, clicking his heels together
with military precision, and resumed his onguard
stance, scanning the entire area around them.
The guy was enormous, Bennie noted, at least six
four, pushing three hundred pounds but as solid as a
tree. As for the Nazi salute-that was nothing new.
Most of the Satan's Brotherhood were hard-core
neo-Nazis. It was part of the "outlaw biker" mystique
, the gypsy thing, being wild and free. Biker
; gangs were big in Holland, England, Germany, even
Australia, and a lot of them were neo-Nazi.
But of all the gangs, the Satan's Brotherhood had
the biggest, most dangerous reputation. If you survived
the initiation process and became a full member
of the Brotherhood, you were set for life. All the
drugs, buddies, guns, and whores you wanted. All
you had to do was ride, hang out with the Brotherhood
, and of course kill, intimidate, cook meth, sell
drugs, run whorehouses, and maintain the extreme
level of fear that was the Satan's Brotherhood tradition
.
"Major Reingruber and his men share in the Satan's
Brotherhood's belief that racial impurity has
infected and diseased society, and they believe in
all-out war between the races and with the infected
governments," Townsend said, as if he felt compelled
to explain the Heil Hitler salute. "Many Nazi
sympathizers existed after the Cold War ended.
They've been repressed by the West German government
but the neo-Nazi movement is flourishing,
there as well as here. And Major Reingruber and his
men are very good at enforcement and security."
"Then he'll fit in real well with the Brotherhood-if
they don't stomp you first," Bennie said.
"Major Reingruber believes that even the Satan's
Brotherhood and the other Aryan groups in the
United States have been weakened and divided by
the government, victims of the racial-impurity disease
they were sworn to eradicate," Townsend went
on. "We are not offering to help-we intend to take
over. We have formed an army. We call ourselves
the Aryan Brigade. We are the soldiers of the new
antigovernment order. The key to our success is the
northern California chapters of the Brotherhood.
When that is in place, the Aryan Brigade will demand
obedience from all the chapters."
"Oh yeah? Well, that'll be fun to watch," Bennie
said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as the notorious
terrorist before him. "What about you, Townsend
? You a Nazi too?"
"I'm a soldier, an officer," Townsend said after a
moment's uncomfortable pause. "My job is to lead
armies and plan campaigns. Major Reingruber and
his men are my new army. Before long the Satan's
Brotherhood and the other Aryan armies in the
United States and then the world will be part of my
army--or they will be eliminated. So. What do you
say, Mr. Reynolds? Can I count on your support?"
Since these guys couldn't be intimidated, Bennie
decided to try reasoning. "Look, Townsend, or whoever
you are, there are two very big, very mean leg-
breakers over there whose job it is to keep trespassers
off this property, and they take their job real
serious. So I suggest you . . .
"Hey! What the fuck?" came a warning shout behind
them. Bennie's two Satan's Brotherhood enforcers
had finally woken up. He didn't give these
Brothers any credit for brainpower, but they loved
to fight and they loved guns. He hoped to hell there
wasn't going to be a gunfight around his hydrogenation
reactor-the tiniest spark could blow them all
sky-high.
The bikers scrambled for their weapons and
started to move toward them. The German made a
motion toward his coat opening, but Townsend held
up his hand. "Nicht, " Townsend said in a low voice.
"Tell those bloody bastards to stay where they are,"
he warned Bennie. "Major Reingruber will not allow
them to come near us. We will leave, but I need
your answer. Yes or no-will you join me?"
"Or else what-I get blown away by you or your
Nazi buddy?"
"If you say no, you'll be on the losing end of an
inevitable war between the Aryan Brigade and whoever
stands in our way, including the Satan's Brotherhood
," Townsend said. "I'll let you live for now as
a sign of good faith if you say no. But if you are not
with me in this war, Mr. Reynolds, you are against
me, and I guarantee that you will die. Do you have
an answer for me? 'I
Bennie had no assurance that anything this guy
said was for real, but he did know that his chances
of getting shot in the face by either the Brit or the
German were better than good. Better to pledge allegiance
to whatever flag was put right in front of his
nose, Bennie thought, and work out the details
later . . .
"All right, all right, I'm in. I don't know how in
hell you expect you and a hundred hired guns to go
up against five thousand Brothers, but I'm in." Bennie
turned toward the biker leg-breakers: "Hey, you
guys, put 'ern down. These guys are , . ."
It lasted only a few seconds, but Bennie saw it all
as if in slow motion:
Sure as shit, the bikers pulled their weapons, one
a shotgun, the other a pistol. Never mind that Bennie
was standing in their line of fire, the assholes!
And they were pretty far away for a gunfight, well
over thirty yards. If they thought at all, they were
probably thinking that they could scare the intruders
off with a shotgun blast into the ground or a few
pistol rounds over their heads.
The German had the bikers zeroed in long before
they leveled their guns. He withdrew a small machine
pistol from his coat and pulled the trigger
three times. The first three-round burst missed, but
it caused both guys to freeze-not flee, not run for
cover, not dive for the ground, just freeze. They
made easy targets then, and the next two bursts did
not miss. The biker with the shotgun pulled the
trigger on his weapon seconds before his lifeless
body pitched over backward and hit the ground.
The echoes of the brief gun battle were still ringing
in Bennie's ears when he opened his eyes and
saw Reingruber trot over to the bikers to check
whether they were still breathing. Apparently one
still was; he was dispatched with a single bullet to
the brain. Then the German put a single round into
the other one just for insurance. "Sie sind tot, Herr
Oberst," Reingruber said.
"Sehr gut, Major," Townsend said wearily. "I
hoped that could be avoided." He had never reached
for his own weapon, Bennie noticed. "Now, then,
Mr. Reynolds, I suggest we get our fat friends there
out of sight before any curious spectators arrive." A
stunned Bennie didn't say a word as he was led over
to the gruesome sight. Reingruber's rounds were all
neatly centered in each biker's torso, the spread no
more than three or four inches. "I have some men
on patrol in the woods," said Townsend, withdrawing
a walkie-talkie from his jacket. "I'll send them
in to . . ."
"Wait!" Bennie yelled. He whirled toward his
trailer hydrogenator unit, his eyes bugging out, and
grabbed Townsend's left arm. "Gas! I
smell gas!
That shotgun blast must've put a hole in the hydrogenator
! Run for your goddamn lives!"
The three men ran upwind of the meth cooker
until Bennie could run no more. He collapsed behind
a tree some two hundred yards away from the
hydrogenator. Townsend and Reingruber weren't
even winded.
Townsend spat an order in German into his
walkie-talkie, warning his other men to stay away
from the hydrogenator and take cover, but to keep it
in sight at all times. Then he turned back to Bennie.
"That was quite a little jog, Mr. Reynolds. What in
bloody hell was it all about?"
All three of them were behind sturdy oak trees,
but the blast still knocked them off their feet. They
felt the searing heat as the hydrogen fireball swept
above them. Then they looked up. The grass and the
trees around them had been blackened by the intense
heat and the fireball-even the hair on the
back of Reingruber's head was singed. The truck,
the hydrogenator unit, and the two bikers were indistinguishable
black lumps in the middle of the
charred field. Every standing object for two hundred
feet around the hydrogenator had been leveled, even
trees with trunks up to three inches in diameter.
"Well then," said Townsend as he picked himself
up off the ground and surveyed the blast area. "This
will be a good place for the helicopter to pick us
up.
"Jeez, my cooker!" Bennie shouted. "That was
my best portable fucking lab, man! That was fifty,
sixty grand, up in smoke! My truck, my chemicals,
the product! . . ."
"We will have to get you some more working
capital, won't we, Mr. ReynoldsV' Townsend said,
as if he had decided to order a nice bottle of wine.
"We should start with at least one million dollars.
That should get you under. way building the first ten
reactors we need, plus provide us with sufficient operating
funds."
"How in hell are you gonna get a million dollars,
Townsend?" Bennie shouted. This was crazy. "You
gonna cook up enough speed to raise that kind of
cash? it'll take you years, man."
A helicopter appeared out of nowhere over the
trees, swooping down over the blast area in front of
them. Townsend waited until the racket died down.