As soon as the man who may have been Vasilly was out of sight, Ned grabbed Sopho—her hands still slightly greasy from the pizza—and walked in the opposite direction. He walked as quickly as he could without being totally obvious, and checked each stand to see if it was Hawkridge’s. At the very end of the hall, he turned to go down the next aisle and saw—no more than twenty feet in front of him—two very large men in full Sons of Satan colors. Without thinking, he jumped—tugging Sopho off her feet—into the next aisle.
Then he stopped. He simply couldn’t think of what to do next. The Sons were there and they obviously weren’t buying air conditioners. They were in the building with just one purpose, as was Vasilly. Between the two of them, one was sure to succeed. He began to think his plan to grab the heroin-filled coils was stupid, doomed from the start. He should have just delivered the girl and kept on going. He looked at Sopho. She smiled weakly back up at him. He was trying to think of what he could possibly do next when he felt a big hand on his right shoulder. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t. Instead, he turned around.
It was the Swede. He had a grave look on his face. “You should get out of here,” he said.
“You have the wrong coils.”
“I know,” the Swede told him calmly. “And they have been disposed of. But your presence here is compromising us.” The crowd walked past them, carrying on their own conversations and ignoring the scene unfolding in front of them.
“Disposed of?” Ned stammered. “So they’re gone.”
“Yes, they are,” the Swede said. “And I had a talk with Grigori. We have a situation to manage.” Then he gritted his teeth and said, “He told me that Roman is very displeased with you.”
“Yeah,” Ned said and gestured to Sopho.
Andersson sighed. “I had heard such stories about Roman, but did not want to believe them. I can’t tolerate this sort of thing,” he said. “Give me the girl. The authorities will ask me fewer questions.”
“But they saw me come in with her, thousands of people have seen you and me talking.”
“Just go. Here.” Andersson pulled out a handful of business cards and selected one. He handed it to Ned. “This guy owes me a favor. Get in touch with him,” he said. “I can’t guarantee anything, but it’s the best I can do.”
Ned thanked him and said good-bye to Sopho. Her eyes fixed on him; he knew he’d never forget that look.
He scanned the crowd quickly for the two bikers and, failing to see them, walked as inconspicuously as he could toward the main entrance. He had taken just four steps when he heard Vasilly. “Come with me, Macnair,” he said. “We have some things to talk about.”
Ned could feel himself trembling. He turned and looked Vasilly in the eyes. After a long pause, he answered. “Go with you so you can kill me?” he finally said. “I don’t think so.”
Vasilly laughed. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already,” he said and did his best to contort his mouth into an imitation of a smile. “You think I’m afraid of a few stupid security guards?”
“So why do you want me?”
“Grigori wants to talk with you. This issue with Roman is not a big deal,” he said. “Maybe everyone makes a new start.”
Ned knew he had no real options. He nodded and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
Vasilly smiled and started to walk through the building just a step behind him. Ned looked back at the quiet, angry man. “How’s Semyon?” he asked.
Vasilly looked at him and curled the right side of his mouth into a grin. “He’ll be alright,” he said. “The bikers let him go; it seems like there was a mistaken identity. They were looking for a man named Ned Aiken, not Jared Macnair, or even Eric Steadman.”
Ned’s body sank. He thought about the tortured thief in Moscow. Just as Ned was trying to come to terms with that, he was grabbed from behind and spun around. Ned didn’t recognize his face, but saw he was wearing full Sons of Satan colors and could tell from the patches on his jacket that he had killed for the club at least once before. “Fuckhead,” was all the biker said. Then, “You’re coming with us.”
Vasilly glared at the biker and his partner, who was in front of them, blocking their way out. “Get out of our way,” he snarled. “We have important business to attend to.”
“No fuckin’ way,” said the second biker.
“Listen, you are too young to die over such trivial matters,” Vasilly said. “Get out of our way, or you will pay severely.”
The security guard from the entrance, Laderoute, approached the arguing men. “What’s the trouble here?” he asked with as much command as he could muster. Then he looked at Ned. “And you,” he said. “Your fifteen minutes are up. Time to go, buddy.”
All five men stared at one another in stunned silence. Finally, Ned reared back and punched Vasilly as hard as he could in the jaw. The smaller man fell into the two bikers, but was agile enough to pull out a tiny Smith & Wesson handgun and shoot the security guard in the throat.
That was Ned’s cue. He tore out of the room and through a crowd mingling at the entranceway. His feet hit the pavement on 11th Avenue and he kept running.
Defying oncoming cars and trucks, he ran across the six lanes and down 38th Street, stopping only to allow a fire truck to pull out in front of him. He flew over the bridge over 10th Avenue, finally stopping at the corner of 38th and Ninth. Traffic was at a standstill, and Ned spotted an empty cab. He jumped in and told the driver to take him to where he had parked the Indian. “It may take a while,” said the driver. “And this is a one-way going downtown. I’m gonna have to take 11th back uptown.”
“No!” Ned shouted, which startled the driver. “Don’t take 11th,” he said more calmly. “I just came from there—some kind of big ruckus at the Javits, tons of cop cars and everything.”
“Okay, you’re the boss,” said the driver. “I can get you where you want to go, but it’s gonna cost ya.”
Chapter Fourteen
Even with the sun down for two hours now, it was still ridiculously hot. Ned had long since grown tired of the jokes the “coyotes”—professional border crossers—were making about a white guy trying to get into Mexico. They were sitting in a pickup truck in southern Pima County, Arizona, among the sparse brush and occasional saguaro. The thin, goateed guy in the passenger seat was scanning the horizon to the south with night-vision goggles and chatting casually with the driver in Spanish.
The two other “coyotes” were in the bed with Ned. They had grown tired of ribbing him and were biding their time, chatting in Spanish and occasionally playing cards. Both had gray t-shirts advertising American products, bright baseball caps doing the same and faded jeans. Ned had been introduced to the older one, Hilario, a day earlier.
He had driven from New York to Sahuarita, Arizona, just south of Tucson on the Indian. By staying off major highways and staying in dirt-bag, cash-only motels, he evaded police. After hours of riding through nothing but desert, Sahuarita appeared out of nowhere like a giant lushly verdant oasis. As he got closer, he saw that the sea of green was actually a well-manicured grove of broad-leafed pecan trees. Ned knew it was the result of some irrigation scheme, but it still struck him as odd, like a city in the middle of an ocean.
He went to the address on the card Andersson had provided him, passing by a bunch of auto service places and one hipster-style coffee shop. It was a low, faux Spanish-style adobe building in front and a painted metal warehouse behind. The receptionist took him into a back office and asked him to wait. He could hear the hum of the air conditioner and noticed that after riding in 110-degree heat, he felt almost cold inside. After about ten minutes, the man whose name was on the card, Harry Lucas, walked in and sat in the big leather chair behind the big but cheap-looking desk.
Lucas was a small, red-faced and gray-haired curmudgeon who wore jeans, a light-blue cowboy shirt and a huge black cowboy hat. He told Ned that “air conditioning is king” in Arizona, and that he “had outsmarted the Swede” by
making his coils just across the border in Mexico. It was just as cheap as where the Swede got his and was just an hour’s truck ride away.
Lucas listened to Ned’s story. Then he laughed. “How does the Swede think I’m gonna make any money helping some chickenshit biker—no offense intended, of course—run away from the Russians?” he said. “And don’t let him tell you I still owe him for that business up there in Canada—I paid him back plenty for that, too much. Sorry, son, I can’t help you.”
Ned could tell from the way Lucas stared at him that he was just holding out for some kind of payment. He didn’t have a lot of cash left and was afraid to use his debit or credit cards. After some negotiations, Lucas offered to help get him over the border and even set him up at his factory on the other side. “The work is hard, mostly getting the lazy ones to do their jobs,” said Lucas. “But I’ll pay you almost American wages—and you won’t have to worry about taxes. I’ll get you papers and everything.”
All he wanted in return was the Indian. Ned hated to part with it again, but knew that he had no choice. And anyway, he was much better off without a stolen motorcycle or any other key to link him to a previous identity. Lucas knew it was stolen, but said he knew enough people who could put it right again. He hated that Viking on the tank, though. Ned was about to agree and describe the Indian’s original paint scheme and suggest where to buy the proper colors online, but Lucas interjected before he could speak. “That old-timey shit’s no good,” he said, more to himself than Ned. “Needs something natural—like a pronghorn or a sidewinder.”
Ned handed Lucas the keys and warned him there might be a set or two in Delaware. Lucas said he wasn’t worried and offered to take Ned out for dinner to seal the bargain and to introduce him to some friends.
The next evening Ned found himself in the bed of an old pickup truck parked in the scrubland outside the American town of Nogales, across the border from his destination—the huge industrial city of Heroica Nogales in Mexico. While Ned didn’t relish the thought of spending the rest of his life in a Mexican factory, it was abundantly clear that he had worn out his welcome in the United States. Staying in his own country was tantamount to suicide.
The guy in the passenger seat put his goggles down and said something to the guys in back. They stood up and Hilario said “let’s go” to Ned and handed him a backpack. The three jumped out of the pickup and ran, crouched low to avoid detection all the way to the border fence nearly a quarter-mile away. When they arrived, Hilario and his friend, Raul, pulled aside a loose section of mesh and crawled into Mexico. Ned followed.
He was mildly surprised that the other side of the border looked exactly the same as Arizona. The trio sprinted to another waiting pickup—same model, different color—jumped into the bed and held on as the driver started gathering speed over the bumpy dirt road.
Ned looked up. Raul was grinning at him. “What’s with him?” Ned asked Hilario.
Hilario muttered something to Raul in Spanish. Then he turned back to Ned and flashed the same grin. “He says you are not here to run the factory.”
“Oh yeah?” Ned looked at them both.
“Yeah, Raul says you are a bad man,” Hilario said, and then leaned in closer. “You know, there are lots of ways outside of the factory to make money in Mexico.”
Ned laughed to himself. “I’m listening,” he said.
Also from the Author of Outlaw Biker
Biker
by Jerry Langton
The first book in the Ned Aiken series, featuring his life in the criminal biker brotherhood.
You’ll never meet the bikers in this book or visit the mythical rustbelt city of Springfield. But through the eyes of Ned “Crash” Aiken, you will experience the real world of the outlaw biker gang—a world shaped by desperation, casual brutality and fascinating rites of passage. Biker follows the career trajectory of “Crash” from his days as a small-time high school drug dealer to his rapid rise through the ranks of a biker gang that is rapidly and brutally expanding its territory and criminal connections.
Aiken’s story relates how an outlaw biker sees his gang from the inside. It is an experience shaped by seamy and ruthless characters waging a never-ending battle to establish their supremacy. From drug running and gun sales, to prostitution and allegiances forged by violence, this is a struggle played out within biker gangs the world over. And as the reader discovers in this intense docudrama, this is not the romantic freewheeling beer-fest version of the Hells Angels, but a sleazy existence that draws social outcasts like moths to a flame.
Fallen Angel
by Jerry Langton
The unlikely rise of Walter Stadnick in the Canadian Hells Angels.
Walter Stadnick is not an imposing man. At five-foot-four, his face and arms scarred by fire in a motorcycle accident, he would not spring to mind as a leader of Canada’s most notorious biker gang, the Hells Angels. Yet through sheer guts and determination, intelligence and luck, this Hamilton-born youth rose in the Hells Angels ranks to become national president. Not only did he lead the Angels through the violent war with their rivals, the Rock Machine, in Montreal in the Nineties, Stadnick saw opportunity to grow the Hells Angels into a national criminal gang. He was a visionary—and a highly successful one.
As Stadnick’s influence spread, law enforcement took notice of the Angel’s growing presence in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. However, Stadnick’s success did not come without a price. Arrested and charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder, Stadnick beat the murder charges but was convicted of gangsterism and is currently serving time.
Fallen Angel details one man’s improbable rise to power in one of the world’s most violent organizations, while shedding light on how this enigmatic and dangerous biker gang operated and why it remains so powerful.
Showdown
by Jerry Langton
Control of Ontario’s underworld wasn’t decided in a day, a year, or any single event. It was a series of skirmishes, bloodbaths and blunders.
When the old-school Mafia in Hamilton fell apart following the death of Johnny “Pops” Papalia, a frenzy ensued for who would control Ontario’s drug and vice traffic. The leader of the Hells Angels, Walter Stadnick, had had his eye on Canada’s most lucrative drug market for years but had been kept out largely due to the mafia syndicate that only reluctantly employed bikers of any stripe for their dirty work, and Papalia’s refusal to use any Hells Angels.
The war to fill the power vacuum in Ontario would hinge on the broadly supported Stadnick’s Hells Angels, a handful of smaller clubs too proud or too useless to join them, and Mario “The Wop” Parente’s Outlaws, the top motorcycle club in Ontario since the 70s. Other challengers would emerge from the ever-shifting allegiances of the biker world, including the Bandidos from south of the border, whose presence in the province would end in a bloodbath now known as the Shedden Massacre. Against all of these competing interests stood the various law enforcement agencies responsible for keeping the general peace and shutting down as many operations as they could.
Rage
by Jerry Langton
Sibling violence may be as old as time, but this case is particularly disturbing and unsettling.
In a quiet working-class neighborhood in east-end Toronto, on an early winter day in November 2003, Johnathon Madden returned home from school only to be bullied and threatened by his older brother, Kevin; Kevin’s friend Tim Ferriman; and another teenager. The confrontation turned violent and fatal. Johnathon didn’t have the strength or size to protect himself against the frenzied attack of his powerful 250-pound brother.
Kevin Madden had problems. This was not news to his family, teachers, principal, social workers, and psychiatrists. But what drove him to commit murder—and why Johnathon? Why were his friends compelled to take part in the bloodletting? What events were going on behind the scenes that played a part in the tragedy?
Jerry Langton sets out to answer these questions and look for the clu
es that drove Kevin Madden over the edge. His investigation takes him onto the streets of Toronto, where he unearths a disturbing teen subculture, into cyberspace, and into the confidence of neighbors and students who knew the Madden family. Langton reveals shocking testimony from the trials—one of which was declared a mistrial due to the perjury of a witness—and exposes the twisted lives of youth living in a parallel universe where death is met with complacency.
Copyright
Outlaw Biker: The Russian Connection
Copyright © 2011 by Jerry Langton
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Originally published by John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd. in both print and EPub editions: 2011
First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this EPub edition: 2013
First HarperCollins Publishers Ltd EPub Edition JULY 2013 ISBN: 9781443427449
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
DISCLAIMER: What follows is an attempt to describe outlaw motorcycle gang and organized crime life by using composite characters and fictional events that do not represent real people.
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 39