The Tin Man

Tom Chandler breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that Servantez kept his backbone straight on this one. Barona was as mad as a wet hen. Well, screw him. He’d be proclaiming how great he was right up until the time the gang-bangers and anarchists kicked open his office door.

In any case, Chandler knew his troops and the entire force would be running full bore for the next few weeks.

Wilton, South Sacramento County, California

later that day

Unless Townsend or one of the others needed him for something, Bennie the Chef usually slept in until noon. It had been a very late night, and he had every intention of letting his growling stomach awaken him whenever. But for some reason he’d woken up early, and something made him get up and flip on the TV around seven A.M. What he saw horrified him. Meth-lab explosions. Dozens of them. Huge explosions, killing enormous numbers of people and damaging or destroying entire city blocks.

It could only be his portable hydrogenators, Bennie thought. The explosive power of one of those units was tremendous. And he realized the location of each explosion corresponded to a Satan’s Brotherhood chapter site- the exact places that Townsend was going to send each unit.

Bennie got in his car and drove to the ranch of the Aryan Brigade brain trust in Wilton. Throughout the drive he listened to his car radio broadcasting reports of the explosions all around the state-it reminded him of the news coverage of the Persian Gulf War, when that too took over the radio. The devastation caused by the explosions was enormous. It was no wonder. Nine cubic feet of hydrogen gas mixed with oxygen and detonated with a spark was enough to blow up a two-story house. Put in enough hydrogen gas under forty psi of pressure, and the explosive effect was multiplied forty times. The steel hydrogenation unit would contain some of the blast, but the net effect would be similar to a four- or five-thousand-pound bomb.

He found Townsend, Reingruber, and several of the organization’s top sergeants conducting firearms training in one of the wooden barns. Townsend’s weapon of choice was a small 9-millimeter Calico automatic, a short, sleek pistol with a huge cylindrical ammo drum on top. Townsend seemed adept at shooting it either one- or two- handed, with either hand, on full-auto or single-shot.

“What happened?” Bennie shouted as the guards let him approach. Townsend ignored him. Forgetting who he was dealing with in his agitation, Bennie grabbed Townsend by the shoulder. “I asked you, what happened, Townsend?”

Gregory Townsend shrugged off the hand without turning around and finished his target practice-only one round went astray with the distraction; the others were dead-on-then removed his eye protection and ear defenders. “We didn’t expect you up so early, Bennie. I had a driver arranged to pick you up later.”

For a moment Bennie was relieved-Townsend didn’t appear to be blaming him for the explosions. Then he felt scared, for exactly the same reason. If Townsend wasn’t angry or upset about the explosions, then he must’ve known about them all along. He looked at Townsend in horror. “You planned this?”

Townsend unclipped the cylindrical drum from the top of his weapon, clipped a fresh one in its place, and said coolly, “We had two strikes against us from the very beginning, Bennie: We were dealing with drugs, and we were dealing with the Satan’s Brotherhood. Yes, there’s lots of money in manufacturing and selling illegal drugs, but the people you deal with in the drug business-very unsavory characters.”

Talk about ironic, Bennie thought grimly-Gregory Townsend calling the Satan’s Brotherhood unsavory.

“Did you know that four of my men were killed and one seriously wounded when the Brotherhood’s chapter members turned on them while they were delivering the hydrogenators?” Townsend went on. “I abhor anyone who cannot stick to his part of a bargain. Major Reingruber and his men are going to hunt down the surviving Brotherhood members and teach them a lesson.”

“You didn’t expect some of the Brotherhood to try to rip you off?” Bennie asked incredulously. “You blew up all the hydrogenators and wasted a chance to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a day because a few of the chapter guys killed your troops?”

“Of course not, Bennie,” Townsend replied. “I was going to kill them all anyway.” The way he said it, so casual and so businesslike, made the hairs stand up on the back of Bennie’s scrawny neck. “Actually, I was quite relieved that the death toll on our side was so small. We were at a considerable disadvantage.” Townsend smiled at the shock on his face. “Bennie, you’re an intelligent man. Tell me: What would have happened to the price of methamphetamine in the state of California if there were over a thousand extra pounds of pure uncut meth on the street per day? That would equate to approximately one hundred thousand pounds of cut meth each day.”

“The price would drop,” Bennie said.

“ ‘Plummet’ is the term you Americans use, I believe.”

“But so what?” Bennie asked. “Your deal with the Brotherhood was a thousand dollars per pound produced, no matter what the street price was.”

“But if the street price dropped to, say, two thousand dollars a pound rather than eight to ten thousand dollars,” Townsend asked, “what do you think the Brotherhood’s reaction would be?”

“They’d… they’d try to renegotiate the deal.”

“Bennie, Bennie, please don’t delude yourself like this, not with me,” Townsend scolded him. “You know as well as I that the Brotherhood would first renege on the deal, then go to war with us to try to cancel it-by killing every last one of us and keeping the hydrogenators for themselves. It was a no-win situation for us right from the start, Bennie. But now answer this: Has California’s appetite for methamphetamine been affected by these explosions?”

“Hell no. Why should it?”

“Precisely,” Townsend said. “So with the market for methamphetamine the same, and with almost every Satan’s Brotherhood chapter in the state of California closed or substantially downsized, shall we say, and with the surviving members scattered or eventually hunted down by Major Reingruber and his men, what do you suppose will happen to the price of a pound of methamphetamine that makes it to the street now?” There was a glimmer in Bennie’s eyes as he answered the question in his head, and Townsend saw it.

“So you have your answer, Bennie. Now, as we all know, the Mexicans and those remaining in the biker gangs will rush to fill the void left by the Satan’s Brotherhood,” Townsend pointed out. “So the window of opportunity for whoever becomes California’s premier meth cooker would be very small, although incredibly lucrative. After a period of time, however, the battle for control of the meth trade in the West will heat up all over again. Meth cookers will be killing each other over a few dollars or a few ounces of white crystals. That will be the time to pack up and take our leave.”

“I don’t get it,” Bennie said, shaking his head. “Are you offering me the meth dealership?”

“I am offering you much more than that,” Townsend said. “I’m offering you protection and distribution assistance as well.”

“All for the price of…”

“Just three thousand dollars a pound, plus chemicals at our cost plus ten percent,” Townsend said. “For a substance that can sell from between ten and thirty thousand dollars a pound or more, I think it’s an offer too good to pass up.”

“Three thousand a pound? Why so little?” Bennie asked. “It’s worth two or three times that much.”

“It is more important for us that we maintain a good working relationship with you, Bennie,” Townsend said with an expression that made the little hairs on the back of Bennie’s neck stand up all over again. “Frankly speaking, you know quite a bit about my organization and recent activities. Since killing you would be akin to killing the golden goose, as it were, I find it better to deal fairly with you rather than go to war. Do we have a deal?”

“I can cook anything I want, anywhere, anytime?”

“Supervised by my men, yes,” Townsend said. “I presume you are not planning to use the hydrogenation method to produce methamphetamine this time?”

“Hell no,” Bennie said. “The law will be all over the dude who tries to buy thionyl chloride or a tank of hydrogen now. If I can get my hands on some five-gallon drums of phosphorus-3-iodide, some condensers, and what’s left of the ephedrine that’s stored out here, I can whip up a couple of dozen pounds in one day. We can