On the ride over with Axle, I stayed on his right but hung back about a dozen feet, just enough that I could see if Axle pulled out his phone or pressed a pager or did anything that would have looked like he was providing outside communication. To me, no action was too small for me to analyze.
But in the twenty minutes it took us to get from our headquarters over to the region of town controlled by the Fallen Saints, I didn’t notice anything unusual. Of course, just because there was a spy in our midst didn’t mean that they were going to do something to expose themselves in a stupid, haphazard fashion. The Fallen Saints were, in my mind, evil, but they weren’t insane. Like ISIS, we had to have an odd sort of appreciation for the enemy’s intelligence—we could hate their guts and wish them expunged from the world while acknowledging that they had awareness and agency in the battle.
I also kept my head on a swivel, looking back at the other club members to see if anyone else might be doing something, though I did not fear this as much as I did Axle. A mere club member or prospect would not have knowledge of the things we were doing well enough to sabotage us to the extent we’d been over the past year or so. But it was still reassuring to see that, for example, Pink Raven and other members were not displaying suspicious activities.
About a mile outside of the Fallen Saints’ quarters, Axle had us pull over to the side of the road. I looked at him to get a sense of his mood, but the only thing I saw was anger and determination—not exactly the kind of thing that instilled suspicion of being a potential rat.
“Everyone ready?” he asked.
We all nodded. Axle looked at us and gave a curt nod. If we were heading into a trap, it was a mighty well-disguised trap. But at this point, I wasn’t convinced there would be a trap—said rat had too many eyes on him to do anything.
But then again, that hadn’t stopped Ramadi from happening...
I shook my mind free of the negative thoughts, knowing full well a bogged mental space would only make my physical actions less effective. I followed Axle closely, keeping the same distance as before. In just a minute, we had arrived at the Fallen Saints’ HQ.
Tonight, the place looked relatively unguarded, and with decent enough reason. The Saints had no reason to expect us to attack on a Thursday, much less without the benefit of forewarning from someone, and even more less with an entire unit of men. They probably figured we were going to launch an attack the following weekend.
We took advantage of it as we found a cluster of bikes just inside the gate to their compound. Axle and I got there before Lane’s crew, so we quickly hurdled our bikes, pulled out some knives, and slashed the tires to their bikes. We got through about four bikes apiece before the sound of a bullet filled the air, missing us.
“Shit!” Axle yelled.
“We made our point,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“No, we finish the job.”
Under fire here, and he still wants to stay?
Shit, maybe we were wrong about him. A rat’s not this altruistic.
I went through about three more bikes before Axle waved us away. On the other side of the compound, some of the Black Reapers were taking potshots at the building, not really hitting anyone but providing enough cover fire to prevent the Saints from retaliating.
Seconds later, at Axle’s command, we all rode off without any casualties other than the feeling of having been fired upon.
Fortunately for us, there was no one in the club better equipped to handle gunfire on them than Axle and I. We were far from the only veterans, but we were the only veterans who were also officers. Such a position meant we had the experience to control our fear and the respect to inspire others to follow us into the valley of fire.
And Axle just earned my respect tonight. He could have easily bailed. Either he’s really committed to playing the part of Reaper officer while he’s working for the Saints.
Or we were wrong about him.
* * *
When we returned to the shop a short while later, there were shouts for celebratory drinks. Lane nodded to me and asked me to join him in a private room, away from the chaotic cheering and twisting off bottle caps. He looked pleased, but not satisfied.
“Did you see anything?” he said.
“Not at all, man,” I said. “In fact, I gotta be honest, I wanted to bail when the gunfire started. Didn’t seem like it was worth the risk of getting killed, you know? But Axle said we had to finish the job. So maybe we were wrong about it. Maybe he’s not the spy.”
“Could be.”
Lane didn’t exactly sound convinced, although he didn’t sound dismissive either. He mostly just sounded confused, like he was having his entire hypothesis thrown for a loop that he couldn’t quite get back under control.
“That doesn’t explain why he was the way he was on Monday night.”
“I don’t think it’s anything, man.”
Lane wasn’t happy to hear that. But Lane also knew more than anyone else in the club, I could be trusted to give him inconvenient truths. Call it the perks of friendship.
“I still think there’s a spy in the club, of that I have no doubt. But after tonight, man, I have a hard time believing that it could be Axle.”
