David Putnam - The Replacements

Mack wore the tactical vest with the FBI letters. He again pulled over to the curb in front of a house. At the rate we were going, we were never going to get there.

“Put the cuffs on him,” Mack said. “We have to make this look real.”

Drago put his catcher’s mitts up on the top edge of the backseat. I tried to put the cuffs on, but his wrists were too thick for the cuffs to ratchet closed. “Hold them like this, so it looks like you’re cuffed,” I said.

“It’s better this way,” he said. “I don’t wanna be cuffed, not now, not while walking into this greasy snake pit full of those back-stabbing assholes. Hey, gimme a gun, would ya?”

“Are you outta your mind,” asked Mack. “Because we aren’t outta ours. You forget, we’re the sane ones.”

“You might want to rethink that position,” I said. “With what we’re about to do, I’m no longer entirely sure that’s true.”

While I spoke, I slipped Drago the dirk I’d taken off Jonas. He nodded just enough for me to notice. The razor-sharp, doubled-edged knife disappeared, hidden somewhere in his bulk. I had the derringer I’d taken from him shoved down in my crotch. Physically uncomfortable, but it created a modicum of solace, no matter how meager. The discomfort was a constant reminder. Whenever I made the slightest move, the vest gun snagged and pinched delicate skin.

Mack grunted at me and took his foot off the brake. “Here we go.” He drove the last few yards to our destination. “Look at it this way, we get into trouble, all we have to do is get out to the front yard and wave to the cops. They’ll send in backup.”

He’d read my mind. “Yeah, and then what?” I asked. “It’ll take them five, ten minutes to get here. It only takes a second to pull a trigger, and about two minutes to beat a man to death.”

“Nice talk,” Mack said. “Don’t jinx us.”

“Hey, look, the gate’s open,” Drago said. “Those prospects’ll get their asses kicked up between their shoulders, Clay finds out.”

Mack pulled through an eight-foot, wrought-iron fence with spear-shaped, pointed tops, and right into the Sons of Satan clubhouse yard. The bikers didn’t need a fence of any sort. No crook in his right mind would even think about pulling a burglary where he might end up in prison with a bunch of SSs already doing time for murder. Loyal and dedicated SSs with nothing else to lose.

The clubhouse was exactly that, a large single-story house built at least fifty years ago, with painted gray stucco and a tar composition roof. All the wooden window frames were neatly painted with a contrasting white, and the glass panes covered in foil on the inside. The front exterior was immaculate and could have passed as a parking lot for a popular urban dentist. The shrubs were trimmed and the small patch of green grass was mowed to perfection. The SS kept a flagpole with a Sons of Satan flag on top and the American flag underneath, a violation of flag protocol, a subtle statement of biker values. To the side of the front door hung a huge Sons of Satan winged ‘death head’ plaque carved in hardwood with a high-gloss varnish. The death head, a perfect omen.

Mack pulled right up to the front of the clubhouse and parked. We got out. I expected something more, anything really, than the vacant parking lot. No one rushed out brandishing weapons to tell us to get the hell off the property. Mack turned and looked across the parking lot, through the bars of the eight-foot fence, and down the street as he tried to pick out the utility pole camera to let the sheriff’s Intel boys see him, let them know we had arrived.

Drago, bold and without shame, walked toward the front door as if he belonged there. Maybe he did. The door swung open. Two shaved-head white males with fresh enflamed tattoos on exposed arms stood ready to repel any and all comers. The tattoos in black and red and white ink depicted Harley Davidson motorcycles and the Grim Reaper, various handguns and shotguns, and women with large naked breasts. This was more what I had expected. Both wore denim vests and black Dickie pants, a kind of uniform. Both looked close to the same age, about twenty-eight or thirty, their domes tatted. They displayed no emotion.

Mack caught up to Drago and whispered, “Stay with us asshole, you’re not the leader here. You’ll blow this whole deal.”

I caught up and passed Drago and Mack on the front walk to the door. “FBI, we have a search warrant for the premises and we demand entry.”

The two prospects looked at each other and then back at us. They didn’t move and continued to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking the door’s entrance. The taller one with a smaller head said, “No one’s comin’ in here. I don’t give a shit if you got CIA, the Secret Service, and the whole fucking army behind you. Which you don’t. So you’re not comin’ in. So you can turn your ugly asses around and get the hell outta here.”

From behind me, Drago chuckled. “These boys are prospects. If they let us in without having their asses kicked and stomped into the ground, when Sandman Colson gets back, he’ll do it worse. Isn’t that right, boys? And maybe Sandman will even lose it like Sandman tends to do. Then these here boys, their ugly corpses will be put in the back of a DeFrank’s Plumbing truck, taken out to the Mojave, and shoved six feet under blow sand, Joshua trees, and jumpin’ cholla. Am I right, boys?”

Drago had too much information on how this all worked.

The two prospects didn’t look at one another. The shorter one said, “I don’t give a shit what you say, you’re not comin’ in here.”

The camera trained on the back of my neck made the hair stand and ripple. What were we going to do? The ruse was set up as a “knock and talk,” a consensual contact with a consensual search, that’s what Mack had told the sheriff’s detectives. If we went western on these two, the detectives would roll in the backup. Ten cop cars with lights and sirens. We wouldn’t know if the backup was called until they arrived on scene, and then it’d be too late to run. Back to prison forever. Sweat beaded my forehead.

Drago, with his mass, stepped around me, effectively blocking the view to the doorway by the sheriff’s camera, big enough to block out the sun. “You boys think these guys are cops. They’re not. They’re with me.”

I stepped to one side to see if his words had any effect. Neither said anything, neither moved, their expressions void of any emotion. I would’ve been hard pressed to hold my urine had Drago walked up cold to my house and wanted in.

“Do you know who I am?” asked Drago.

Again, no response.

“In the joint, they call me ‘Meat.’”

The taller one’s eyes twitched. “I heard of a dude named Meat. He’s in the joint doin’ life. Warfield tells us about him all the time, says we go to the joint, and we see this Meat dude, our ‘prime directive’ is to take him out any way possible. And if we don’t, we get taken out.”

“Prime directive?” Drago said. “You two hard-ons don’t even know what that means, do ya? Clay tell ya what I look like?”

Neither answered.

Drago lifted his football jersey, exposing the tattoo Aryan Brotherhood Forever, with the battle axe dripping blood underneath. He rolled his belly fat. The axe made a small chopping motion. Both their mouths dropped open.

“And now watch this,” said Drago. He shucked off the handcuffs and dropped them to the ground. Drago acted, pushing the edge he’d created, and took one giant step. He moved right up on them, took a throat in each hand, lifted, and walked into the clubhouse. The two biker prospects gasped and choked.

We’d made it inside easy enough. Now the trick would be getting what we came for and getting the hell out.