Jack raised his right hand. “Repeat after me. I, state your name…”
I struggled to stand. Sharp pain stabbed my stomach. “I, state your name.” My two hours of sleep had taken their toll. Laughter erupted around me. The agents coughed and panted next to me, their faces flushed and sweaty. Then one by one, each member congratulated us by punching us hard in the center of our one-percenter patch. By the fiftieth hit, I felt nothing but numb. Then one Outlaw surprised me. He bolted from behind and thrust his fist into my solar plexus. The force knocked the wind from my lungs. My eyes watered. When the beatings tapered, celebration began. Congratulatory howls reached a crescendo. I was hugged, backslapped, and baptized in beer. I hobbled around the stage, giddy with pride. Damn, I had patched into one of the most brutal biker gangs in the world. We were the fireworks.
* * *
As full-patches, we had access now to the internal workings of the club. Not only could we openly purchase guns and dope and record every detail for future prosecutions, but we also could listen, without scrutiny, to death plots. The confessions broke like dams as almost immediately we were briefed on the Outlaws’ mission: hunting Hells Angels. They looked like us, smelled like us, were armed and drugged and dirty like us. But they were the “enemy combatant” and they had to be eradicated.
Les put his arm around my shoulder, completely drunk. It was three o’clock in the morning. Bodies fell around us, deep asleep. My foot now resembled a rubber appendage, something unreal and beastlike, a limb from a movie set. The pain kept me sharp. Les’s breath in my face, sweetly rotten, warned if we saw a Hells Angel we had to attack; if we hesitated, he would “pull our one-percenter patch” and “everyone would know we were a coward.” Like a scarlet letter, we would be branded, targets for ridicule. Les’s face turned pepper red, as if the thought of murder aroused him. It was late. We gathered around our clubhouse bar. I poured Les another, hoping he would continue his rant for the cameras. Murder had suddenly become a focal point, and it was no longer a matter of if it would happen, but when and with what device.
* * *
The next morning, we prepared to return to Petersburg. Still incapacitated from my gladiator match, I couldn’t ride my bike back. Instead I traveled in the van with Claw. Milwaukee Jack surprised us and said he would be “honored” to ride home with us. And as he mounted his bike, my heart sank. I didn’t want to ride five hours with Claw. I wanted to be in on the action. They sped in tandem, riding the 220 miles along the freeway, outlaw and agent side by side. Back at our clubhouse, we invited Jack inside our fully wired lair. We sent Claw away, concerned that his mouth would get us in trouble. As the sun set, we clicked on lamps. In the dim haze, Jack offered us “tips” to “get” the Hells Angels, especially the stray who roamed our neighborhood.
“We are at war,” he reminded us and slammed back more beer.
He grew increasingly agitated as we shared with him our problems with the Merciless Souls. Jack had an easy solution: “Just put a cap in them.” He formed his fingers into a gun and pulled the trigger. I hoped the cameras got a close-up.
As he stood to leave, he handed each of us a patch. “Sew it on your cuts when you get a chance,” he said. I stared at mine, at the bold embroidered SNITCHES ARE A DYING BREED.
25
Black Dawn
A month later we returned to North Carolina and the Hickory clubhouse to attend the Copper Region Open Air Meeting, where we again prepared to discuss war plans against the Hells Angels and hear about the gang’s home invasions on neighbors who strayed too close to the Outlaws’ clubhouse. A light drizzle fell. Thunder rumbled across the gray morning, full of foreboding. I whispered good-bye to my sleeping wife and son and strapped on my full-face helmet. I had purchased it only a month before, wary of the novelty caps the others wore. Nothing particularly compelled me to do it; I guess safety was my line in the sand.
I played reckless, but I didn’t want to be reckless. I had a family that needed me alive.
As I gripped my ape hanger handlebars, cold shivered through me. It was early autumn and the leaves changed from green to bloodred to gold. The scenery was my only clue that days ended and new ones began. My breath swirled around me in white vapor. There was nothing extraordinary about the morning. It was just a feeling I had of moving in fast-forward. I had heard that people who experienced trauma—a plane crash, a fire, a death—had strange stirrings moments before the crisis, heightened awareness, warnings. Most wished they had listened. Sounds and smells were more pronounced, colors more vivid. Some called it intuition, energy, inexplicable shifts in tempo. For me it was something deeper, something spiritual.
I should have listened.
The streets, slick with rain and diesel fuel, pulled my tires toward dramatic dips and curves and threatened to spill me over. Bobby kept pace with me. JD and Gringo sped in front in their baggers, so far ahead they formed a red smear against the approaching Blue Ridge Mountains. Claw rode behind in his car, and our cover team picked up the rear. Rain pelted my head. We fit an image, an illusion of freedom with rules. And though I was now a veteran rider, the appeal of biting wind in my face, fog in my headlights, and dark silhouettes in the distance was lost. So, focused on not crashing and keeping my front wheel steady, I had fleeting thoughts of turning around, of stopping. But adrenaline coursed through me. Gringo weaved dangerously ahead as he detoured to a famous falls at the summit.
Soaked and stressed, I protested. At the base of the mountain, a voice in my head warned me: Turn around. “This isn’t a good idea,” I yelled into the wind as rain washed gravel and dirt onto the road. Bobby blurred into the scenery a few paces ahead. Gringo and JD had disappeared around the bend. My bike wobbled. I was going too fast. I cared less about waterfalls and overlooks. I wanted to arrive at our destination intact. Cliffs rushed at me, steep and wet and green. Rain splashed into my eyes. The road curved sharply, vibrated beneath me. My arms ached with tension, and I drifted, my tires sliding into the grass shoulder. The impact was like hitting ice.
Then suddenly I was no longer riding; I separated from my bike, watched it slam into the guardrail at fifty miles an hour. I sailed through the air, weightless, over jagged rocks and edges, over my bike, the handlebars, the chrome. Then, as if the film fast-forwarded, I descended with a thudding impact. I felt no pain, just tightness in my chest as if I were underwater trying to breathe. Then a strange knocking in my head, a flutter of light like a shade being pulled up, then snapped down. The impact had knocked the wind from my lungs.
“Chef?” I heard Bobby’s voice, distorted, hollow like a voice in a dream. “Chef?”
My eyes startled open. Bobby loomed above me, his face stricken, ashen.
“Tell Gringo to slow the fuck down!” I managed, but it didn’t sound like me.
I couldn’t breathe. I felt light-headed. I needed my inhaler. I reached into my front pants pocket.
“Don’t move.” Bobby put a hand on my shoulder and reached for his medic kit. Fear skittered across his eyes. His usually calm face covered with gray beard tensed. Subtle changes in his coloring, a reddish flush on his cheeks, telegraphed what he saw.
Can’t breathe. He must have heard me because he retrieved my inhaler. Remove my helmet.
“Bad idea,” Bobby protested.
My fucking helmet. I was screaming inside; it felt like my head was going to explode. Bobby relented. He removed my helmet, held the inhaler to my mouth, and a rush of air flooded into my lungs. I wanted to vomit. Sharp pain stabbed my knee. Bobby worked methodically and, with a pair of shears, cut away my pants. He inspected my bluish-stained skin. Gringo huddled nearby, tension stiffening his shoulders. He cradled his helmet. Wind flattened his beard and pulled at his cheeks. Worry flickered across his face. I wanted to shout, “I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m intact.” Sirens wailed. An ambulance launched off the road and rumbled toward me. Dull ache hit my shoulder. State troopers arrived and their patrol cars navigated the steep terrain.
“You all right?” JD’s voice came at me in slow motion.
My shoulder throbbed and I had a slight ache in my neck. Medics wrapped me in a collar. Disdain covered their faces. They looked at me and saw a criminal, a biker, an Outlaw. Fleetingly, I worried they might cut through my vest to treat me. Even disoriented, I thought about character and reaction. I was an Outlaw outside, an injured informant inside. I thought about my bike.
The ambulance doors closed. Almost instantly, pain shot through my shoulder and neck. At the hospital, staff injected me with medication through IV drips. The room spun. Smells of bleach assaulted my nostrils. Cold blew across my bare toes. I gripped my vest tightly to my chest. Fight for your colors—the mantra was ingrained in my head even in my medicated state. Only when Gringo appeared did I dare release my cuts. He folded them reverently and tucked them beneath his arm. They were safe. It didn’t matter that I was broken, that I was in a hospital, that pain numbed me. There were no reprieves. Brian’s ordeal still smarted in my thoughts.
I shivered in my thin paper robe. Bruises on my legs darkened and spread. A fresh-faced nurse drew back my curtains and wheeled me down a long hallway toward a drafty room. I needed an X-ray. I might have a broken neck, she said. At first I didn’t register her words. She spoke a foreign language. A broken neck? Not possible. I felt fine. I could still wiggle my fingers. Then fear mixed with panic as visions of my mom resurfaced. She had suffered a broken neck after a fall down a flight of stairs. Screws bolted her together. Fine hair sprouted like tufts of dead grass between bare patches of skull. I worried she might rust and separate.
In the X-ray room, cold shuddered through me.
Pressure pushed against my bladder. I needed to pee.
“You can’t,” the technician cautioned. He was young, early twenties, hunched over a chart. He didn’t look at me. I was Patient, not Outlaw, not Person.
“I have to pee,” I insisted, but none of my muscles worked. I was too doped up. And as the minutes ticked by, I started to hyperventilate. Frustration formed a dull headache. Propped in the wheelchair, my neck in a collar, I panicked. What if I never peed again? What if I never walked again? How was I supposed to live? I hadn’t called my wife. I didn’t want to tell her yet that I was broken.
The technician, maybe sensing my distress, handed me a paper cup.
I wobbled to my feet, afraid I might fall over. I swayed, held the cup in front of me, parted my robe, and tried to pee. Minutes passed and still no progress. The technician stared dully at me, waiting patiently for me to finish. Nothing came. My muscles, too relaxed, could not release urine. I became acutely aware of sounds, the hum of the air conditioner, the click of the technician’s pen. I watched shadows, my giant shape on the wall, suddenly reduced to human bodily functions. This is what I had become. Pee, damn it. The thought that I might pee from a plastic bag terrified me more than any Outlaw raid. After seven long minutes, warm liquid flowed into the cup.
* * *
“Good news,” the doctor said, pulling up a stool an hour later. “Your neck is fractured, but there’s no damage to the spinal cord.”
A fractured neck? How was I supposed to work with no neck?
But my right shoulder had suffered a rotator cuff tear that required immediate surgery. Instead, the doctor prescribed strong pain medication and the hospital released me after four hours. I guessed it was because Chef had no medical insurance. My other identity did, but there was no practical way to clear up the confusion.
* * *
“If we hurry, we can still make the regional meeting.” Gringo eased me into Claw’s car. My mind, so fogged from drugs, barely processed his words. Blinding pain incapacitated my right arm; my neck was immovable and in a brace. I wanted to quit. But I couldn’t. I was a private contractor and I needed the work. I needed the ATF to pay my medical bills. I had a stable fracture. I could do this.
The thought of lying on the floor or in the van repelled me. “I need a hotel,” I mumbled. Plenty of ice and a decent bed. Hotels at least had ice machines. At the regional meeting, members blurred into the walls. Their voices buzzed in my ears like white noise. Bosses discussed war. It was no longer enough to assault and maim Hells Angels; we needed to kill them, earn our SS bolts if we committed “extreme acts” of violence against them. Okay. Got it. Mentally, I had checked out, drifted to a calm place full of bright color and soft sounds.
After two hours in blinding pain, a prospect finally drove me to my hotel. I “slept” awake, my arm packed in ice, propped up, throbbing. When I closed my eyes I saw shadow figures moving against the wall, each lighter than the other, the last practically floating toward the ceiling. They were me, and I was slowly fading out. In some nightmares I couldn’t move at all, my body stretched across the bed like a morgue slab. I couldn’t lift my head, couldn’t feel my limbs, completely dead inside. Then Gringo appeared in the doorway, his eyes overbright, a large grin on his face as he steered in my custom-built bike perfectly designed for paraplegics.
* * *
Claw confided one night over drinks that he “couldn’t take it anymore.” He looked particularly agitated, his face sweaty and flushed. His shoulders shook. My accident had really “fucked him up” and he “just didn’t know anymore” whether he was cut out for this assignment.
“You’re quitting?” I took a pull on my beer. I felt sorry for Claw. I doubted whether he was cut out for any assignment.
Claw shook his head. Fat tears snaked down his cheek. He brushed them away with the back of his hand. In the dim lights he looked even thinner, as if he had been squeezed through a taffy machine.
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
“You can’t quit.” I was incredulous.
“I can’t do this no more.” He ordered another beer, told the bartender to put it on his tab.
“You’re an Outlaw.”
He looked at me, his eyes watery and bloodshot, his breath stinking of alcohol, and said, “You don’t understand, man. I might die doing this.”
After that conversation he disappeared, and it took the agents nearly two months to find him. But it didn’t matter much. Once we were full-patches we no longer needed the requisite five members. We could manage with four.
* * *
One month after the accident, I squeezed in a shoulder surgery. After a six-hour operation, doctors implanted screws into my bone and prescribed pain medication every four hours. Three times a week, in between being an Outlaw, an occupational therapist stretched out my arm, but the pain only increased. I wasn’t getting better. I wasn’t healing.
26
Masks
Halloween lasted three days. The Outlaws rented an old-style western town near Unadilla, Georgia, that resembled a Hollywood movie set: Wooden signs identified brothels, hotels, and saloons. But inside, the buildings were shells: hollow, drafty spaces. The Outlaws planned to party, not play war games, and though the town was situated on acres of property, five miles from the nearest civilians, they arrived armed, with pump-action shotguns, revolvers, chains, bullwhips, crowbars. And children. The bikers pitched tents and parked RVs on the property. Sleeping bags lashed to motorcycle handlebars, girls straddled the little seats looking like twigs snapped from highway debris. Support clubs like the Black Pistons clustered in some of the abandoned buildings. Different chapters rented whole sections for the run.
With my arm still wrapped in a sling, I chose a hotel. The closest one had a crooked floor, warped linoleum, and a toilet that never flushed. The Outlaws stocked the fake saloons with alcohol. Empty six-packs piled high in the dusty center of town. Some blew onto porches like tumbleweed. By day, sunlight and beer had lulled the bikers into a stupefied calm, but as night fell, the camp transformed into a kind of animal pen. Outlaws spooked each other, pretended to wander as ghouls into the mining shaft. They posed behind iron bars in the makeshift jail. One Outlaw swaggered through town as the mock sheriff, drew his weapon, randomly aimed, and pretended to fire. Childr
en dressed in fairy costumes and as superheroes paraded through the fake stores looking like flashbacks of the Outlaws’ former lives. I wanted to rescue them.
Their parents asked for drugs instead of candy. One member strolled through the crowd pretending he was the town medic. He wore readers and carried a leather satchel stuffed with oxycodone and handed out little “treats.” Prostitutes offered “tricks.”
Snuff hit me up for pain pills.
“Sorry, man, it’s my last one and I need it.” The lie was close to the truth. My shoulder throbbed. I still iced it regularly.
Snuff’s lips bent in disapproving commas. “It’s always your last one.”
A few hours later he tried again, and again I put him off. “I don’t have any on me.”
“Why the fuck do you always run out?” Snuff shot me a hard look as he stumbled through the crowd.
Later that night he joined us around a bonfire. Sparks flew from the flame and sizzled by his boot. He stabbed his cane into the dust several times and I had the distinct impression he wanted to smack it across my shins. Snuff didn’t need a Halloween costume; he was already a freak in long leathers and a scraggly beard. And after a handful of oxycodone, his eyes glazed white. He snarled and spit, transformed the way a full moon transformed a werewolf.
In the orange glow, Harleys gleamed at the edge of darkness. Faces obscured, bodies became silhouettes. The women who stayed disappeared into the empty building shells, props themselves. Giggles, groans, and grunts punctuated night sounds. An Outlaw named Bull lit a joint. Even seated, he spread massively wide like a beer barrel. He fit into Halloween with his stringy oriental beard and thick jowls. He personified the Outlaws’ physique, subsisting on a diet of hamburgers, donuts, beer, and pills. Gringo sat cross-legged in a circle. Fire spit between us, flames towering over our heads. Bull inhaled and bragged about his skills as a marijuana dealer. He was a “professional” with over twenty years of experience. He nudged Gringo and confided that his career aspiration was to establish “a large marijuana distribution network from Montana to Maryland.”
Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America's Deadliest Biker Gangs Page 19