by Mick Norman
So, the race was to be run.
During that long, hot, hazy, summer day, final plans were made. While the mamas and old ladies lazed around on the soft turf, Vincent, Gerry, and the top brothers held their last meeting before the run the next day.
Sides had been drawn up. Gerry had the easiest of it He was to take most of the Angels up with him in the vans and cars. They would travel openly, mainly driven by the women. No bunching, leaving by different roads, some to go up the M1, some on the old A5, driving off at irregular periods. There shouldn’t be any problems. They would rendezvous at their agreed meeting-point during the evening of the Second July.
‘Now, you’re sure you can find the meeting place?’ The question came from Gerry, the planner and strategist. He’d questioned the brother from the Jokers at great length. He’d wanted somewhere that they could all get, somewhere quiet.
He’d even travelled up to the concrete, soul-less Midlands, scouting out the land. Finally, he’d found exactly what he’d been looking for; a deserted sand quarry, north of the city itself. Close to the M6 where it ran round near to Great Barr. The quarry had been a haunt of kids years ago, but had gradually become more dangerous and had finally been wired off by a local council. They had only taken action after a young brother and sister had drowned there. Now it was deserted. A place of stagnant pools and shells of an iron works. There was even the bones of an old air-raid shelter. It was perfect
Gerry had been careful not to let on to anyone exactly where he planned to hole up for that night. He had told Rupert and had taken him up to see it. Strangely enough, he had developed a liking for the little film man, and trusted him more than anyone in the chapter. Rupert had been ecstatic and had raved over the old iron works. ‘So menacing, don’t you think, love?’ The rest of the Angels had been told earlier that afternoon, and most of them had found his instructions easy to follow. Rut, there were always exceptions.
Vincent had used his old power to lift the numbers of those going on the run. It was almost exactly half and half, with many of the older Angels taking the chance of a run. Those who were going with Gerry, called by Vincent the ‘Ladies’ Outing’, included all of the women of the chapter. It was one of the men who were going to drive that was his biggest problem. Cochise, for all his name, was hopeless at reading a map and just couldn’t remember the instructions. When they ran through the details, he was still vague.
‘Look. Don’t worry, Wolf. A tracker like me could find his way in a snow storm. I’ll be there. Me and my old lady.’ Cochise’s old lady lived up to the name. She was nearly forty and had the biggest breasts of any old lady. Or mama, come to that. She, her name was ‘Forty’, had a strange relationship with Cochise. In a world where odd relationships are the rule rather than the exception, theirs really was odd. They had never been seen having if off with each other. While other couples screwed all round them, they would simply lie quietly in each other’s arms. He would open the zip at the front of her leather jacket, tear down her stained tee-shirt and tug out her breasts. Despite their size, Forty never wore a bra. Then, for hours on end he would simply apply his mouth to one of the nipples and suck happily on it while she ran her fingers through his long hair.
The only clue that anyone ever got to Cochise and Forty was when he once got spaced out of his head on acid and began to mumble about her. ‘Best old lady in the whole fucking chapter.’ The he laughed, almost choking, ‘I’m the luckiest Angel in the whole bleeding world. My old lady really is my old lady. In fact she’s a real mean mother.’
Other brothers put two and two together and made only three. But, what if she was ... It was their business.
Gerry shook his head at Cochise. ‘Listen. Here’s a piece of paper. That’s where to go and that’s how to get there. Right?’
‘Don’t worry about us, Wolf, baby. We’ve got more chance of being there than Vincent and his nutters.’
The basic plan was simple. Vincent and his brothers would leave together at about four in the morning, before it was light. They would rely purely on speed and surprise to get them through. The police on previous runs had tried to hassle them but their superior speed and mobility had always got them through. Now, though, there was a depth of feeling in the country that there had never been before. The straights were out against them as never before. Since the brutal, casual killing of the blind boy down in South London, hatred was high. The bank robbery had brought the briefest of changes, with the Englishman’s traditional love of the clever and slightly romantic criminal. When details of the brutality used came out, coupled with news of the girl’s rape and her father’s subsequent suicide, opinion hardened still further.
So, speed. Speed and discipline. Common sense said that they should make the run completely at night. Pride, prompted by the nagging tongue of Gerry had resulted in an uneasy compromise. A night start with a dawn finish.
While girls dozed in corners, all the men had been up all night, making last-minutes adjustments to the bikes and to the vans. Almost without anyone noticing, it was suddenly four o’clock. Departure time.
Vincent swaggered out, his colours making a dull splash of blue in the shadowy room. His good ear sported a gold ring, and his hair was tied back with a silk band. The rest of the Angels who were going on the run all wore their colours. Priest had a patch over his damaged eye to protect if from the night wind. Atlas had ribbons knotted in his beard.
Gerry stood watching with Brenda as they straddled their polished machines. At the last minute, Vincent walked over to him. ‘Okay, Wolf. This is, like, it. Sorry you didn’t have the guts to come with it, but someone has to look after the women. See you in Brum. Bye.’
Gerry said nothing. There wasn’t any point. Not now. The dice were down. He looked across at Priest, studiously rubbing at a mark on his shiny ape hanger bars. ‘See you, mate.’ Priest looked up at the shout and half-smiled, his eye glinting in the light. ‘See you. Hey, Gerry. This is great. Honest Like old times.’
A gloved hand lifted high in salute. Engines revving deafeningly under the arched roof. Screaming of tyres and they were gone. No lights. Not till they were through the village and well round the 414. Single file.
The big room, smoke from the engines lingering, the roaring hanging in the air. An air of unease and anti-climax.
Gerry broke the silence. ‘All right brothers. Let’s start getting things into the vans.’
Brakenham Parva was sleeping as the convoy of Angels rolled through at a sedate forty miles an hour. Few citizens did more than turn in their sleep and roll back into dreams, strangely coloured now with shadows and night-shapes. Only one man saw them at this stage. A night-worker, strolling home from his shift, heard the crackle of their exhausts, snarling from the other side of Brakenham. He stopped still in the shadow of some elms at the side of the road and watched. When he saw the Angels from Hell ride past him, faces turned forwards, arms draped on the bars, lying back at rest, he felt a choking mixture of fear, drowned by anger.
The first telephone that he ran to was shattered, the black plastic scorched and twisted. It took him nearly ten minutes to reach the next phone. It wasn’t wrecked.
By the time he got through to the police to give them the warning that the Angels were loose and riding free, the run was near to the motorway. Through Hertford, Cole Green and Hatfield. The still, warm air trembled at their passing and was still. An occasional lorry driver saw them ghost past him, a raggle-taggle band of outlaw riders.
Then they were rolling on the motorway, heading for the M1. Speed building up, hair streaming, eyes squinting against the pressure of the summer slipstream. Far behind them and far ahead of them, the police cars were beginning to roll. Straps tightening under firm, law-abiding chins and fingers ramming shotgun shells into the breeches of ‘Law Officer’ sawn-off, pump-action guns. Stroking the polished walnut stocks with a sick kind of near-sexuality. The police were ready. And waiting. It would soon be time for outlaw bride and police groom to consummat
e their union. Far-fetched? Think of all the hate that lies in love. Think of all the love that underlies hate. Without Hell’s Angels, the police would have no super-enemy, If the police and their civilian bastard offshoot, the Vigilantes, did not exist, who would the Angels have to hate and fear?
So they travel through the ending night.
The run is on. Well on. Twenty or so mind-blowing monsters, double lining at ninety-plus up and onto the biggest of the motorways. Number One. If you’d had a helicopter that July night, you could have ridden low over them and seen all.
Leading, Vincent, slightly ahead of Dylan. Both riding the Angel’s elite hogs – Harley-Davidsons. Since the clamp-down in the early seventies, motorbikes had almost gone out of production, even for legal citizens. This meant that all the chopped bikes ridden by the Angels dated from about 1972.
Vincent straddled an Electra Glide, a six hundredweight monster with 1200 cc. thrusting it on. All the trim that made it a Rolls-Royce bike had been cut off, and more chrome added. When pushed it could carry Vincent along at over one hundred miles per hour. Dylan rode the slightly smaller and lighter Super Glide, painted in day-glow colours with a flake-finish. The frame and seat had been lowered and the front forks raked and extended by about twelve inches. The mudguards had been peeled back to the minimum, with footrests and control pedals pushed right forward. High-rise ape hanger bars had been added, gleaming in polished chrome. The exhaust pipes had also been chromed and dragged up high on either side of Dylan’s broad shoulders. It was a thing of supreme beauty and a joy to Dylan’s dark soul.
He and his President talked – or, rather, screamed, at each other as they tore along. Confirming plans for the imminent departure of one of their brothers.
For Priest it was an up-trip. His head cleared to bursting with a charge of coke, he was reliving all the good days. Rolling along with the boys ’neath blue suburban skies. Head high, girls waiting, miles to go before sleep. His black-gloved knuckles clenched round the throttle, forcing a mile or two more out of his rare Dunstall 750 Mark 2. The headlight reflected off the shining back of Vincent’s machine. A tear caught at the corner of Priest’s one good eye. Nothing else mattered to him but the run and his brothers. He muttered to himself, the gospel of Freewheelin’ Frank, Angel hero: ‘All on one and one on all. Our scene is forever. We know it. We don’t need to believe, we know.’ He was going all the way home.
Others behind him and around him. Crasher and Moron, Rat and Mealy, Atlas on his beaten-up Norton from the early sixties, Riddler and Harlequin, Dick the Hat. An assortment of faces, beards, long hair streaming. Shouting and cursing each other. Drinking and stoned to the wide-world of night wonder. Bikes, an assortment from the past – a Bultaco-Metralla Mark II, a 650 Yamaha, a big MV Augusta, a B.M.W. and Triumphs and Nortons. All big powerful bikes. Nothing under a ‘ton’.
No incident till Junction 13, the B557 Woburn Sands turnoff. Then a heavy lorry, lumbering along at sixty-five in the slow-lane. The first streaks of morning light peering over the trees to the right. A driver, more stupid than brave, seeing the Angel convoy unbelievably in his mirror. A chance to kill an Angel for Christ, swinging the wheel, snaking into the middle lane, the trailer missing Atlas by less than a foot. A huge juggernaut of death. Crushing out the dying past with forty tons of glazed sanitary ware, and steel tubing.
The driver chuckled to himself as he saw the pack scatter. High and secure in his heated cab, he watched with amusement when he saw them drop back. He confused withdrawal with defeat. They had dropped back, slowed down to take off chain belts, and ease tyre spanners from brackets under the frames. Then they accelerated, led by Atlas.
The driver saw them coming, smiled. Drifted to the right to block them, whipping the trailer to the right, hoping to flick at least one of them into the centre railing. It had been so long since the Angels rode like this, so long since people saw bikes out in force. Everyone, and that includes the driver, had forgotten just how quick and easy to handle a hog is.
Atlas eased back a little, behind the trailer, waiting for the driver to make another move. Harlequin came forward at his wave and feinted with Dick the Hat on the left. The driver responded and Atlas and the rest were past him on the outside, chains swinging. The first blow clanged on the panel of the driver’s door, then the second Angel was alongside. A bottle broke on the side window, starring the thick safety glass.
He hung to the right, trying again to wipe them off. No smile now. Just fear and rage. As he moved, foot hard down on the accelerator, a backhand chain blow from the skinny figure of Dick the Hat broke the windscreen. His fist pushed through the splintered glass, cutting him high up on the wrist. Blood splattered onto his overalls and he knew that they were going to try and kill him.
Just before a blow with a tyre lever took off his near-side mirror, he caught a flash of headlights, double-beam, coming over the crest of the hill, about two miles behind him. Light – and hope.
Blinking blood from his eyes, where fragments of the windscreen had cut his face open, he started to snake the long lorry, making it as difficult as possible for the Angels to get at him. Then, as they fell back and ranged either side, ready for the last run at him, he hit the vacuum brakes as hard as he could. The force of gravity dragged him forward out of the bucket seat, and the tyres shrieked in protest at the violent deceleration.
The move threw the Angles into temporary confusion. Half screamed past on one side, while the other half got tangled up near the central crash barrier. The trailer snaked off to the right, delicate and lethal, with a load of polished steel tube. One batch of the tube protruded out beyond the end of the lorry by just six feet. Harlequin had been about to move up on that side and was further forward than any of the brothers. When the brakes went on, he was winding his chain around his wrist, ready for another attack at the bastard in the high cab. For a second or so he wasn’t concentrating. The very last thing he saw was the gleaming tube scything at his head. The last thing he felt was that tube tearing open his skull and driving into his dying brain. His last thought was a small one. He was glad he was wearing his colours. That was all.
Harlequin’s hands relaxed on the bars and the weight of the steel tube, embedded in his head, swung him off his Triumph, high and wide into the air, then flinging him far over the other side of the motorway, into bushes and trees.
It was three days before his body was found. Rats had taken what was left of his brains. His eyes were also eaten. His precious chopper was wrapped round the heavy girders that made up the central barrier. He was the first Hell’s Angel to die in a road accident for nearly three years.
The driver had no idea of the success of his trick, for his mirror was smashed. He was too busy to look back. The rest of the Angels were rapidly regrouping only fifty yards ahead on the motorway, waiting to see what his next move might be. He reached down to the floor of the cab, his hand closing warmly over the walnut butt of a sawn-off shotgun. With that in his hand he risked a glance back up the motorway, and saw salvation. The Seventh Cavalry of the Highways – the Motorway Patrol Police, barrelling along at eighty with headlights full on.
Safe and secure, he leaned forward and blasted off both cartridges at the Angel band, ignoring the fact that they were too far off to be at any hazard. It made him feel better. The Angels had also seen the police and turned, ready to make their move. As the gang revved up, ready to move, one small figure detached itself and ran – an odd, slinking, crippled, sideways shuffle – on foot towards the lorry. Behind it, the patrol car was slowing down, ready to squeeze past the monster that blocked almost the whole highway.
Suddenly scared again, the driver grabbed for the spare cartridges he kept in the glove compartment. Fumbled to try and break the gun and slide them into the breeches. The little, rat-like figure was only about twenty feet away. Had stopped. Thought better of it? No. Was holding a ball? Something like a large cricket ball. Pulled something from it. Stood there. Frozen. Hands lifting the gun. Too slowly.
Like a petrified nightmare. The police car, right alongside. The ball bouncing heavily under the cab. The Angel scrabbling back to his hog. Away.
When the hand-grenade exploded directly under the driver, reflex tightened his fingers and the shotgun blasted high into the sky. The burst of flame tore through the cab and ripped him apart. The cab was flung into the air and smashed down onto the police car alongside. The tank of the car caught fire and all four policemen perished within seconds. Their patrol, radio was live at the moment of their deaths so the whole police force was alerted within minutes of the outrage perpetrated by the outlaws. The net began to close!
Back at the headquarters, most of the loading of the vans was completed and everyone was resting. Cochise was sucking peacefully on a breast and Gerry and Brenda lay together. Half-dozing, barely moving to keep the rhythm of love intact, they hugged each other and waited. Waited for news and waited for time to move.
The run neared the M45 turn-off. Vincent had intended to cut through the Coventry by-pass and run round Birmingham on quieter minor roads. Sanders, the brainy fuzz, had managed to second-guess him. The turn-off was completely blocked with cars and a couple of lorries, hastily commandeered. It had to be straight on.
Light! Dawn peering through the eastern mist like a leper through a church window. The road, dew shining in that first grey light. The run, together, tension high. Knowing that after the first death there would be others.
Vincent and Dylan. Together. Another heavy articulated way ahead. Dylan dropping back. Signalling Priest up in front of him. Smiling. Priest high and happy. Throttle round another notch. Inside Vincent. Being called up closer. Dylan very close just outside his rear wheel. A chain dangling loose in his left hand. Low and unseen.