Cannibal Corpse, M/C

“I wouldn’t even expect that of a murdering, raping animal like you, Slaughter,” Brightman explained. “I’ve put together a team for you. We’ve cleaned them out of prisons across the land just so you’ll have company.”

“A team?” Oh, this was going to be good.

Brightman thumbed a button on his intercom. Within seconds two soldiers with automatic weapons strolled in and behind them, chained together were some of the most vicious, degenerate criminal types that Slaughter had ever seen, and he knew each and every one of them. Brightman had secured the release of the remaining six members of the Devil’s Disciples. And here they were. All of them flying their colors, all of them grinning, and all of them looking for a good fight.

Slaughter figured they weren’t going to be disappointed.

He started laughing. “The shit is on, my brothers.”

* * *

The gang was all there: Irish, Moondog, Shanks, Apache Dan, Fish, and Jumbo. They’d been released from hardtime federal pens like Atlanta and Lewisburg, state hellholes like Rahway in New Jersey and SCI Greene in Pennsylvania. For the longest time—after he got Brightman out of his hair, that was—Slaughter just stood there staring at his brothers, blown away by it all, nearly beyond words. Seeing them, he was reminded of all the Disciples that had died during the Outbreak and in blood wars with other clubs.

Brightman let them have the conference room all to themselves and all the beer they wanted with the stipulation that they kept it and themselves in there and did not cause trouble elsewhere. So for the first hour or so as they put down the brew and exchanged war stories and tales of lock-up, they got caught up on things. In a lot of ways it was like Church, the monthly club meeting. They talked about Brothers like Cherry from the Pittsburgh chapter who’d thrown his bike on the I outside Altoona two months before the Outbreak. His funeral had turned into a drunken brawl. Slaughter learned that Charley Sweet from the Baltimore chapter had died in a shoot-out with the state police and two others—Creep and Toot—had died in a car crash while being pursued by ATF agents. Pegleg, who had first brought Slaughter into the club twenty odd years before, had died in Rahway from spiking some China White that had been more strychnine than heroin. The list went on and on.

There were so many gone that it became depressing.

If it hadn’t have been for incarceration, Slaughter knew, the six Disciples with him would probably be dead, too.

Yeah, give three cheers for life in-stir, he thought.

What there was in that room was all that was left of the Devil’s Disciples Nation: seven hard-living, hard- riding animals. This was his crew. At one time there’d been thirty guys in the Pittsburgh chapter alone and that, of course, didn’t take in the Baltimore, Harrisburg, Youngstown, and Bayonne chapters, or the newer chapters in the UK and Denmark.

Seven fucking guys including me.

That’s it. No more. Probably never will be any more, he thought then. And I have to lead them to their deaths so I can grab that Isley, the bio, so they don’t cook my fucked-up, whacked-out brother.

Slaughter was glad Apache Dan was there because next to Neb, he was his best friend in the world. The feds had dropped him thirty years on a RICO conviction six years before. Nobody was happier to be out than him. Moondog was the sergeant-at-arms, warlord of the Pittsburgh chapter. He’d been the guy that walked around with a baseball bat at club meetings and rapped guys in the head if they got out of hand or spoke out of turn. He was absolutely brutal and fearless and the very man that could plan and stage a raid into the guts of the Red Hand. He’d been doing ten years at USP Atlanta for arms trafficking. Shanks and Irish were from the Youngstown chapter and were good boys. They’d been whacking guys for the Youngstown Italian mob and were doing life at Lewisburg on murder conspiracy convictions. Fish was out of Baltimore. And Jumbo—all 350 pounds of him—was from Pittsburgh. Fish had been sitting on a twenty-five year stretch for narcotics distribution and Jumbo on fifteen years for extortion, hijacking, and racketeering.

Once everyone had a good shine going, Slaughter stood up and laid it all out for them. What was at stake, what they had to do, and how slim their chances of survival were.

“Nobody’s forced into this shit, man,” he told them. “This is really my beef, my brother, my life. Any of you boys want out you just say so and nobody thinks less of you.”

“You heard the man,” Moondog said.

“Shit,” Shanks said.

“Fuck that noise,” Fish said. “I’d rather die out here than rot inside.”

“Ain’t that for sure,” Irish told him. “I gotta eat that creamed beef on toast in Lewisburg one more fucking time and I take my own life.”

A few laughs at that.

“Shit,” Fish said. “You oughta try the green bean casserole at Rahway. Motherfucker, it’ll shrivel your balls.”

“Bullshit,” Shanks said.

Jumbo said, “John, this is a get-out-of-jail-free card for us all. And there ain’t a man here you haven’t helped and you haven’t gone to the mat for. We’d all rather die at your side, high and free, than be picking nits at the graybar hotel.”

“Yeah, that’s the shit plain and clear,” Apache Dan said. “We’re Disciples so let’s get it on, baby.”

So that pretty much took care of that.

Slaughter figured he had to throw that out there just to be fair on things. Even though he was in charge as the club president of Pittsburgh and nobody disputed the fact, the Disciple Nation had always been a democracy and every patch had his say, every member voted. But Slaughter knew they wouldn’t let him down. It was inconceivable for the men they were. Once you were patched-in to a club like the Disciples, the club and its members always came first. First before wives, girlfriends, family, jobs and your own well-being. First before even God. That’s the kind of connection there was. It wasn’t easy to earn the three-piece patch of the Devil’s Disciples, prospecting for them could be three shades of hell, but once you were part of it, once you were patched-in, you were part of something bigger than yourself and you took care of that and it took care of you.

“All right then,” Slaughter said. “We all agree. So I call a war council and we plan this shit out.”

Once war council was called, everyone yielded to Moondog, the war lord, even the president, because Moondog was the guy who was responsible for the safety of the club, the security of its members, and carrying out raids and retribution against enemies of the Disciples. Moondog, whose real name was Mike Spector, was cut from the same cloth as Slaughter himself: both were ex-Marines. But whereas Slaughter had seen some action in Iraq with the 15th Marine Expeditionary, before he was sent stateside and spent most of his enlistment in the brig, Moondog had been a member of an elite Scout/Sniper platoon and a demolitions expert. There wasn’t much about weapons or explosives, night-fighting or surveillance that he did not know.

So when Moondog spoke, even the baddest boys of the club listened and listened good.

“While you girls been having your hen party, I been scratching down some items we’re gonna need. First off, we all need bikes. Second, we need guns and I’d like some C-4 and det cord just in case. Grenades would be nice. White phosphorus…”

His list was long and detailed.

His strategy, based on Brightman’s map of the NORAD fortress, was sketchy. The fortress was surrounded by a high chainlink fence. That would have to be breeched. There were six doors leading into the structure itself. One or more would have to be blown. Other than possibly the use of several diversions to draw the rats from their den, he had no solid plans and wouldn’t, he said, until he scoped out the place and knew the numbers of the Red Hand, their weapons, what kind of security they were running. Most of the Ratbags at the fortress were ex-military. They were commanded by Colonel Krigg himself, the leader of the Red Hand. Chances were, things would be tight.

“All I can tell you right now is that it’s gonna be fucking hairy,” he said. “That and the fact that I want explosives. Lots of C-4.”

This whole ride into Indian country was going to be one for the books, one to go down in the annals of the Disciple Nation, one to remember.

If any of them survived it, that was.