Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

Suffused with frustration and no small measure of admiration, Tim had no choice but to turn and watch Chief disappear.

The Cholos rolled along, a river of flying colors. Aside from the war wagon twenty yards ahead, El Viejo led alone-no road captain to detract from his eminence. His face and bearing were classics, torn from pulp-western covers and second-rate cowboy etchings that tour-group participants hung in bathrooms. The narrow highway stretched flat and unforgiving through Antelope Valley, where the high Mojave grudgingly gives way to dusty civilization. The occasional car flashed by on the sole opposite lane, an anxious pale face or two pressed to a window.

The ride was windless and serene. Just the purr of the bikes, the flutter of synthetic rubber over blacktop, the whistle of air through helmets.

The front and rear war wagons exploded simultaneously, lifting off the ground and sending out a burst of heat and orange flame.

The Cholos went down in waves, only those in the middle of the convoy managing to stay upright. The trapped bikers wheeled and revved, wild horses corralled.

Two Harleys peeled out from behind an embankment shoring up a hillside ahead, Den and Kaner in the driver positions. Goat and Tom-Tom rode sidesaddle behind them, AR-15s at low-ready. They shot through the orb of fire engulfing the front war wagon, racing along the side of the convoy, AR-15s blazing. The Cholos absorbed the fusillade in tangles of metal and flesh, engines revving, tires biting through cloth and skin.

The Sinners screeched to a halt at the end of the run, guns smoking. The procession had been decimated. A few weak groans and coughs. Limbs rustling among the bodies and machinery. The smell of burned flesh.

The four Sinners dismounted, pulling handguns from their waist-bands. They walked calmly among the fallen, kids at a tidal pool, shooting the wounded in the head.

In the front El Viejo lay broken-limbed ten yards from his steaming bike, an ideal chalk-outline model. His headdress lay behind him, ablaze. The heat from the fiery van had baked his rich bronze skin auburn. His cheek was stuck to the asphalt.

Den strolled over and stared down at him, blotting out the midday sun. "Look at me."

With great effort El Viejo pulled his cheek free of the road. He met Den's eyes defiantly, his wrinkled face hardened into a grimace.

A single report.

Goat pulled a bike over, and Den slung himself onto the back. As they took off after Kaner and Tom-Tom, the heat ate deeper into the war wagons, setting off a crackling of ammo.

Tim crouched among the bodies, some charred from the bonfire blazes, taking in the quarter-mile death scene. The smoldering shells of the war wagons remained, exhaling black smoke. An upended bike framed his view, its tire spinning lazily like a pinwheel in a faint breeze. Tim closed his eyes, trying to drown out the pervasive buzz of black flies, and images pressed in on him with the smell-Black-hawks circling, desert sand swirling, dossiers smudged with camo-face-paint thumb marks. His combat memories underscored what he'd already gathered: This wasn't macho bikers squaring off over wayward glances at club mamas but a tactical hit, expertly planned and executed.

A sheriff's deputy chuckled and pointed to the quarter-size holes that the cooked ammo had punched in the war wagon's metal. "Looks like they got their twenty-one-gun salute."

Tim said, "This is funny to you?"

"They cut irony outta the federal budget, too?" The guy casually went back to scribbling in the crime-scene attendance log.

Tim rose and walked over to a cluster of criminalists by the CSI van. Before the hit TV show, they'd called the division Crime Lab, but a number-one ratings winner can be a strong impetus for change. Guerrera stood a few feet off from the group, finger in his ear, phone pressed to his head. He gave Tim a quick nod.

Aaronson was squinting at a slug he held up before his face on tweezers. He was a slight man, prone to wearing crisply ironed, tissue-thin button-ups that showed off the lines of his undershirt. His crime-scene reports were filled out in a hand that looked like typewriting.

"Explosives look to match?" Tim asked.

"Those used on the transport convoy? Oh, yeah."

"AR-15s again?"

"Yup. They don't call 'em street sweepers for nothing."

Bear jogged over, high-stepping through the wreckage, and beckoned Tim and Guerrera. By the time they reached him, he was holding a handkerchief against his mouth and nose.

"So get this. I found out where Uncle Pete was after the funeral." Bear undercut his dramatic pause with a sneeze. "In church. He and the whole chapter rolled into First Baptist, scared the hell out of all the blue-hairs. Not the pastor, though. He thought he made the score of a lifetime."

"The times line up?" Tim asked.

"Perfectly. Before that the entire mother chapter was mourning peacefully under our surveillance. No way they had time in between to get out here. It was a nomad job, all right."

"They got solid intel for this. They knew the route, which vehicles to rig."

"Maybe they had someone on the inside."

"With this rivalry? Doubt it."

"They could've put the squeeze on one of the Cholos."

"Can't interrogate them now." Tim surveyed the steaming landscape, the wooden box of the coffin resting untarnished amid the destruction. A mournful club mama sitting out the ride with a broken leg had turned over the restricted Cholo mother chapter's roster; a preliminary check matched a body to every name.

"That's why they shot Chooch Millan," Guerrera said suddenly. He looked at them expectantly, then seemed to realize they were waiting for him to connect the dots. "What's the only thing that gets a whole club together in one place?"

Tim bobbed his head-of course. "A funeral ride."

"Right. Shoot someone in the rank and file, within a few days you'll have the entire club assembled right before your sights."

Bear surveyed the scene with watering eyes. "Hell of a revenge for Nigger Steve."

"This isn't revenge," Tim said. "This is extermination." He took in the baked tableau. "They're paving the way to something bigger."

Bear made a muffled noise in his throat, and Tim started back to his car. Before driving off, he sat for a few minutes, staring at the wheel. He headed toward downtown in silence, stopping off at Forest Lawn.

His phone chirped as he climbed out of the car.

"Hey, babe. Jesus, huh?"

"Yeah."

He heard Mac shout something in the background, and then Dray said, "Shoot, I have to peel out. You think you'll be home?"

He chuckled.

"Right. Okay, the captain needs someone to pick up a few overtime parole hours-this case is stretching us thin on man-hours, too. I'll take 'em if it'll be a late one for you."

"It will."

"See you whenever. If it's before dawn, bring Yakitoriya."

"Yakitoriya?"

"Don't ask. I'm craving chicken neck." More distant voices. "Okay. Gotta run. Be safe."

Tim folded the phone and got out, strolling among the gravestones. It wasn't hard to locate Palton's fresh carpet of sod. A blanket of lilies cascaded over a table laden with candles and bouquets. Frankie's decade-old credential photo from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center had been blown up and placed in a gold frame, like a signed former-celebrity eight-by-ten at a dry cleaner. His pose, stalwart and uptight, didn't reflect his humor. He wore a suit and no smile, twenty-four years of tough with a shaving nick at his Adam's apple. He and Janice, high-school sweethearts, would have been six years into their marriage when the photo was taken. And now he lay six feet under, collateral damage in a biker gang war.

Tim's mind pulled to the civilian killed in the explosion, the illegal guy in the Pontiac, but he couldn't produce a name. He thought about Dray's cautionary words as he'd sat perusing the field files at the kitchen table. Though he was three years older than his wife, she still had him hands down on wisdom.