Page 41 of Monk
Max casts me a long look, a pinched expression on his face. He’s a good kid, but I don’t know that he’s ready for life in the MC. Despite having done a tour in Afghanistan, he still seems naïve to me. I don’t know how he managed it, but he came out of it somehow less jaded and cynical than the rest of us. He’s somehow managed to hold onto that humanity and naïveté better than anybody I’ve known.
Still, the scars of war are deep. And although he may still be a little green and raw, the things he’s seen and done, have affected him. He feels as disconnected from the world as the rest of us and sought out the sort of brotherhood that’s led us all to the Pharaohs.
Max goes to the van to unpack one of the weapons as Cosmo looks at me and laughs.
“And you give Poe shit for hazing the prospects,” he says.
“He should be ready for anything.”
“Come on, how many times have we worked with these clowns? We’ve never had an issue.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like them.”
“You don’t like anybody,” Cosmo says.
“I like these guys even less than most. I hate white supremacists.”
“Well, to be fair, there’s not much to like. I’m not crazy about ’em either. But in this game, the only color that matters is green. And they’ve got lots of it.”
Liberty’s Bastards is an end-of-days militia group we’ve dealt with for a while. Though they’re not overt about it, they’ve got some white supremacist tendencies that I’m not crazy about. But hey, if they want to arm themselves to the teeth and have some apocalyptic war with the ATF or FBI, that’s no business of mine. All that matters is that they pay well, and they pay on time.
“Here they come,” Max calls out.
Two black panel vans come down the road and park in the campground. Six large guys climb out, all dressed in fatigues. Five of them I know from past dealings. The sixth I’ve never met, but there’s something about him that tickles something in my memory. Leaving his boys by the vans, the leader of this small band, a vet named Spooner, comes over. He gives us both a nod.
“How’s it goin’, boys?” Spooner asks.
“Can’t complain. How about yourself?” Cosmo replies.
Spooner’s tall. Six-four, maybe six-five, and is ripped with muscle. I’m not a small guy, but I feel like one standing next to him. He’s got broad, sloping shoulders, a square jaw, and biceps as big as my thighs. It’d be easy to dismiss him as a connoisseur of steroids, but I get the feeling the guy puts in the necessary work in the gym to look like a pink, hairless gorilla.
I let them shoot the shit for a minute and take another look at the new guy in their crew. He’s talking to his guys and not even paying attention to me, which gives me a minute to study him closely. The guy is about five-ten, lean, and in good shape. He’s got sandy blond hair, cut short and clean, a neatly trimmed beard, and brown eyes. He’s pretty nondescript, overall. The kind of guy you’ll forget five minutes after meeting him. But there’s something about him that’s… familiar.
“You ready to do some business?” Spooner asks.
Cosmo nods. “Always.”
And then, it hits me. A shot of white-hot adrenaline courses through my body, lighting up every cell as I realize why the new guy looks familiar. I cut a glance over at Cosmo, doing my best to not freak out in front of Spooner. But I know if I don’t put a stop to this deal, this is all going to go to shit in a heartbeat.
“Good to hear. Be right back then,” Spooner says.
He turns and walks toward the vans and I take the opportunity to take a step closer to Cosmo. My throat is suddenly dry and I can’t force the words out because I know the minute I do, it’s going to set in motion, a chain of events that’s going to result in that guy’s death. Probably a painful and horrible one since these militia assholes don’t like snitches. They like government-planted snitches even less.
But if I don’t say something, and we let this deal go through, the repercussions will be catastrophic for the club. If I don’t say anything, it’s likely that all of us are going to end up dead or in prison when the FBI, ATF, and whatever other alphabet soup agencies come knocking on our doors.
It’s a damned if I do, damned if I don’t situation. It’s his life or the lives of all my brothers. And when I put it like that to myself, I realize the decision isn’t very hard to make at all. No matter the cost to yourself or anybody else, you always have the back of your brothers. Always. It’s a code I lived by in the service, and it’s the code I live by as one of the Pharaohs.
I lean closer to Cosmo’s ear and pitch my voice low enough so only he can hear. “Don’t say anything right now and don’t even look over at their group. You see the new guy? The one who doesn’t look like much?”
“Yeah. I see him.”
“He’s a Fed.”
Cosmo looks at me, and though he controls his features, careful to avoid giving anything away, I see the alarm in his eyes.
“You sure about that?” he asks.
“One hundred percent. I recognize him from Afghanistan, if you can believe it.”
