PROLOGUE
PORTOLA, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 1997
Those in the business call it the pour-and-run
method, and it is one of the most dangerous and
explosive chemical processes ever practiced.
But Bennie the Chef was the master of this dangerous
arcane art:
In a large glass tub, Bennie mixed seventeen
pounds of ephedrine---crushed over-the-counter diet
pills dissolved in chloroform-with a toxic, corrosive
chemical liquid called thionyl chloride. The
combination immediately produced toxic sulfur
dioxide, corrosive hydrogen chloride gas, and a substance
called I-phenyl-i-chloro-2-methylaminopropane
or chloropseudoephedrine for short. They call
it pour-and-run because even in the open air only a
full-body antiexposure suit and an industrialstrength
ventilator or positive-flow breathing system
will save anyone within fifty yards from being
asphyxiated by the sulfur dioxide fumes or severely
burned by caustic acid. Bennie never used any of
this gear, so it became a test to see if he could run at
least half the length of a football field while holding
his breath. He ran the race with a towel over his
face, because if the hydrogen chloride gas touches
any wat r, even t e tiny its o moisture in t e eyes
or nostrils, it instantly produces hydrochloric acid
so corrosive that it will eat away an eyeball in seconds
If he survived the test, he'd be several thousand
dollars richer. If not, he'd be alive just long enough
to taste the blood in his throat as his lungs dissolved
, like a sheet of paper thrown into a fire.
Fifty-year-old Bennie, withered and emaciatedlooking
, was nearly exhausted after his dash to the
edge of the trees-but he made it. His mixing tub
was under a lean-to facing into the wind, and he
could see the poisonous gas streaming out from the
tub and collecting under the shelter. Ten minutes
later, it was safe to approach the tub, and he began
stirring the mixture.
His two guards, both tall, beefy, bearded men
with long hair, huge beer bellies, Doc Martens asskicker
boots, and black leather vests, could never
hope to make the run, so they were already a safe
distance away, smoking dope and drinking beer.
Both were full-fledged Satan's Brotherhood motorcycle
gang members, wearing their "colors"-the
leather vests with the Brotherhood logo and the
upper rocker that read "Brotherhood" and the bottom
rocker that read "Oakland" on the back, and
Satan's Brotherhood tattoos on their left arms. Most
of the gang members were among the most dangerous
of America's outlaw bikers, the ones rejected or
stripped of their membership in other gangs such as
the Hells Angels or the Outlaw Bikers or the Brothers
. They were avowed racists, even neo-Nazi; although
they dealt drugs to all races and ran black,
Asian, and Hispanic women in their whorehouses
and strip clubs, they never associated with anyone
other than other whites. There were more Satan's
Brotherhood members in the United States than
Hells Angels or any other biker gang, but fewer
of them in prison. The reason for this was simple:
They vowed never to be taken alive by the police.
When Bennie finished stirring the mixture, precipitating
the chloropseudoephedrine in the bottom
of the glass tub, he moved on to the second, even
more dangerous step. In a large steel tank he mixed
the chloropseudoephedrine with a metallic catalyst
called palladium black and a powerful solvent
called hexane, then capped the tank and pressurized
it with pure, highly explosive hydrogen gas. The hydrogen
would bond with the chloropseudoephedrine
to form a shiny white crystalline powder called
methamphetamine, more commonly referred to as
speed, crank, or meth. In a single day a skilled meth
"cooker" like Bennie could produce about twentytwo
pounds of methamphetamine worth four to six
form-assuming he survived the cooking process.
The Brotherhood sold it by the pound to wholesalers
all across the United States, using gang members
who carried it on their bikes, or "mules" who traveled
with the bikers but didn't ride motorcycles or
hang out with the pack.
Methamphetamine, born of so many dangerous
and toxic chemicals that it is impossible to believe
it could ever be safely handled, is one of the nation's
fastest-growing abused drugs. By the time it has
been cut with pyridoxine, or vitamin B6, available at
any health-food store, its street value has jumped to
ten to twelve thousand dollars a pound. Ingestedusually
mixed with coffee or booze-or snorted, it
produces a gradual high and a sense of heightened
energy, sexual potency, and awareness that lasts
anywhere from two to twelve hours, followed by a
very relaxed weariness that continues for one to
three days. if smoked or injected, the stimulant effect
is sharper and more pronounced, producing the
i/rush" that gives the user a sense of enormous
power, limitless energy, and a feeling of complete
invulnerability. The Brotherhood and other outlaw
motorcycle gangs had gotten very rich selling the
drug in the western United States.
Bennie used just over two thousand dollars'
worth of chemicals in this batch. Most of them are
controlled substances in the state of California but
readily available in Mexico or other states. Ephedrine
, the main component, was the easiest to get.
Mexican factories would ship a ton of diet pills, or
even truckloads of the ephedrine itself, if - he
requested it. If the DEA, the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration, or the BNE, California's Bureau
of Narcotics Enforcement, started to nose
around, Bennie simply switched sources, There
were mail-order companies in the U.S. that would
ship a hundred cases of diet pills to the Brotherhood
every week-and for twenty bucks, kids would steal
several pounds of diet pills off store shelves in a
matter of seconds. In a pinch, in place of ephedrine
Bennie could also use phenylalanine, an amino acid
sold wholesale in health-food stores at two hundred
bucks for forty pounds. He had even synthesized
chloropseudoephedrine from mahuang roots sold in
Chinese grocery stores; and he was also adept at
manufacturing phenyl-2-propanone,'a compound
similar to ephedrine, from noncontrolled chemicals.
These could be used to produce a large quantity of
lower-quality meth if other ingredients were hard to
get. But t
hey rarely were, and the meth business
was thriving.
Bennie made it through this "cookout," but his
body, including his eyes and lungs, bore the scars of
countless cookouts that had gone horribly wrong.
Inhaling just a whiff of thionyl chloride can destroy
lung tissue, and a drop of it can eat a pea-sized hole
in a hand or finger. Ephedrine can cause severe
weight loss, heart arrhythmia, or tremors. Chloroform
is a known carcinogen. But Bennie never
thought about the hazards. He just thought about
the money.
Bennie was a survivor. He had been cooking
meth ever since he and a classmate mixed up a
batch while working summer jobs as janitors in a
chemistry lab at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley
back in 1973. The batches they made in
the lab's big Florence flasks and Graham condensers
were only a few ounces, but enough for Bennie and
his friends to party with for a couple of weeks. A
tiny hit of crank, less than the size of a fingernail,
produced mild LSD-like hallucinations, with the
added bonus of creating the "pecker of power," a
hard-on that lasted for hours. With a little crank
secretly mixed in her cocktail, his date for the evening
would sometimes turn into a sex-starved creature
whose wild-animal lust could pull a ten-man
"train" all night.
got caught cooking meth in the school's labs-in
fact, Bennie's younger professors and graduate assistants
were some of his best customers. He had been
working on his bachelor's degree in philosophy on
and off for almost six years, but he was offered a job
far more lucrative thanteaching or writing: cooking
meth for the Oakland chapter of Satan's Brotherhood
. Within three years, he had supervised the
construction of eleven major meth labs from Oregon
to Nevada to Bakersfield, and taught nearly half
the Brotherhood in northern California how to cook
meth. He was almost single-handedly responsible
for filling the Brotherhood's legal war chests with
enough money to pay an army of lawyers to fend off
dozens of racketeering indictments all throughout
the 1980's.
Now, more than twenty years and countless
batches later, Bennie still had the knowledge, the
patience, the touch-and, more importantly, he
could still run-and he was still the best there was
at the meth-cooking game. Besides, meth-especially
American-made meth, as opposed to cheaper
Mexican meth-had never been more valuable than
it was today, so it was a thriving business. Bennie
was in it to stay.
He carefully checked that all of the fittings and
hatches on his reactor were secure-introducing oxygen
through the tiniest leak anywhere in the hydrogen
gas line to the pressurized reactor tank can
produce an explosion and fireball that would look
like a small thermonuclear mushroom cloud. Then
he checked the pressure inside the reactor. Still
dropping which meant that the chloropseudoephedrine
was still accepting hydrogen. Another
hour or so, and it would be done. Another few hours
to wash the meth with ether, then dry it in a dryer
made from a few janitor's buckets and mop squeegees
, and he'd have collected about a hundred and
twenty thousand dollars' worth of crank. His two
bikers were nowhere to be seen-probably sleeping
off the beer-so he stepped away from the hydrogenator
toward the tree line for a smoke break.
The key to the all-important second step, the hydrogenation
process, was the reactor. A commercial
Parr half-quart catalytic hydrogenator with heating
mantle and agitator cost nearly two thousand dollars
and would produce only about a pound of meth;
worse, it looked like lab equipment, which, always
caught the attention of the cops. So Bennie built his
own meth lab, designed specifically to be portable,
not look like a meth lab, and be capable of producing
far more meth than commercial reactor units.
The big-time portable meth lab that Bennie had
towed out to one of the remote West Coast Satan's
Brotherhood ranches scattered throughout California
was the best one he'd ever built. The core of the
operation was its forty-gallon hydrogenation reactor
, made from an old steel coffee roaster, powered
by a big gasoline electrical generator and steam
pressurization/vacuum device. It was mounted on a
trailer and camouflaged with tar to make it look
like an asphalt spreader, a disguise guaranteed not
to attract any close inspection or curious sniffing. It
was several times larger and much better than a
Parr reactor, worth almost fifty thousand dollars. It
was his pride and . . .
"Hello."
Bennie whirled. The two men were standing behind
him, no more than ten yards away, maybe
closer. Jesus, Bennie thought grimly, they move as
quietly as jungle cats! The first guy was youngish,
lean, and blond, with an patch over one eye but the
other a bright shining blue, wearing a long black
leather coat. The second guy was huge, like a pro
football linebacker, dark-haired and powerfullooking
, standing in a definite cover position a few
paces behind and to the left of the first . . .
That meant that the gun would come out of the
first guy's right pocket or out from under the right
side of his coat, while the second guy would cover
the left side. Bennie had been around trained
gunmen-mostly cops-long enough to know how
they stood when entering a dangerous situation.
Bennie was wearing his black leather vest, the
one with the Red Bat logo and the black-and-red
bottom rocker that said "Oakland" on the back, the
symbols of a Satan's Brotherhood candidate. He
didn't ride a bike so would never be a full-fledged
Brother, but to most folks it looked like he was
wearing no-shit Brotherhood colors. He hoped these
guys would see the symbols and get the message:
Clear out right now.
"Hello, sir," said the man again. "If Imight have
a moment of your time?" The accent had a definite
British cast, the voice slightly sterner now, a bit
more steel in it, not quite official like a cop but
definitely authoritative, maybe military.
"You're on private property," Bennie said in his
gruffest, unfriendliest voice, mimicking the Brothers
he had known from all over the world. Where
the hell were his two guards? Why didn't they wake
up from their stupor and come running at the sound
of his angry tone? "Get the fuck on outta here before
ther e's trouble.//
The - man in the lead held up his hands, palms
facing outward, but Bennie noticed that the cover
man never moved. Yeah, the Brit's gesture was
&
nbsp; meant to be conciliatory, but Bennie looked into his
eye and saw nothing but danger. This was not a man
accustomed to conciliation, let alone surrender.
"We don't want any trouble," the Brit said apologetically
. "We're here because I have a business
proposition for you, one that I'm sure you will find
most rewarding."
"Who are you?"
"Forgive me, Mr. Reynolds." Oh shit, Bennie
thought, he knows my name, my real name! "I neglected
to introduce' myself. My name is Gregory
Townsend."
Old Bennie, who had worked closely with some
of the meanest and most psychotic bikers in the
world for over twenty years, swallowed a gasp of
fear. A couple of years before, the United States had
been in the grip of something even more terrifying
than today's threat of nuclear war with China or
North Korea: An ex-Belgian commando turned international
arms smuggler named Henri Cazaux
had been flying around the country, dropping high
explosives or crashing airliners into several of the
largest airports in the United States. The U.S. military
was called in and had set up an extensive air
defense network of radar planes, fighter jets, and
surface-to-air missiles to try to stop him.
Cazaux had seemed invincible, unstoppable, until
his body turned up in a West Virginia dump, with
seven Black Talons fired into it from very close
range, the superexpanding bullets shredding his
body as if his insides had been chopped up in a
blender. No other clues werefound. The book was
thankfully closed on Henri Cazaux and his reign of
terror against the United States of America.
Speculation was rampant about the identity of
Cazaux's killer-an FBI hit man, the U.S. Marshals
Service's Fugitive Investigative Strike Team, even
secret CIA counterespionage groups. But the most
likely trigger man was the highest-ranking surviving
member of Cazaux's gang: his chief of plans and
operations and trusted second in command, Gregory
Townsend-a former British SAS commando
and a fixture on Interpol's most-wanted-criminal
list for many years. And now the motherfucker
himself was standing right in front of him.
Don't look nervous! Bennie begged himself. Stay
cool. "So you're Townsend? Bullshit. I heard he was
dead, along with his psycho boss, Cazaux. Killed by