The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do and doing it with the people you love.
That’s what Bad Tony told me the day I joined The Sons Of Satan, a brotherhood of mean, dirty fuckers.
The Sons Of Satan were a motor cycle group who were big in the organised crime scene and notorious for running drugs, laundering money, extortion, enforcing their way on others and bringing violence down on anyone who got in their way.
At first it took time for me to be fully accepted, doing the shit jobs, showing deference to the senior members, stuff like that and I always had to stand up to some dick head who wanted to put me in my place but I bided my time and eventually they trusted me more and more, until they started to let me go on drug runs and do a bit of enforcing, stuff like that.
I could handle that sort of stuff by telling myself I was just doing my job but things started to get ugly when we went to pick up some money that was owed to the chapter by some freak junkie down south.
Being Sons Of Satan, our reputation proceeded us and we pulled up outside the dude’s house, revving our thundering bikes as we parked them to let the guy know he better have the money he owed ready.
There was Bad Tony, Big Red, Monk and me and we thought we’d only be there for a short while, slap him up a bit, threaten his missus, grab the money and leave, fuck we were in for a surprise.
We hadn’t even reached the front door before the gunshots started.
Bad Tony got hit in the arm as we all ran to the side of the house for cover.
We thought the junkie had found some balls and was going try and shoot his way out of his mess but then the sound of Harley’s and choppers roared down the street and we saw twenty heavily armed members of another gang called The Breed pull up in front of the house.
The shooting stopped as they got off their bikes and slowly walked over.
Another three members of the Breed walked out of the house with shotguns pointed at us.
We’d walked right into a trap.
The fucking junkie had set us up, paying The Breed for protection from us and The Breed were only too happy to do damage to any member of the Sons Of Satan and getting paid for it, well how could they refuse.
We all knew we were fucked and if we got out of this alive we wouldn’t be able to walk or talk for a long time.
They broke both of Bad Tony’s arms, smashed Big Red’s knee caps and cut off one of Monks ears.
Me they were going to make a real example of.
I was surrounded by ten of them with my back to wall, silently praying for a miracle or at least for it to be over quickly.
They all held baseball bats or short, spiked metal bars on the end of chains and I could see in their eyes they were going to enjoy smashing me to a pulp.
Their leader was an ugly prick called Maggot, a greasy turd who liked to piss on his victims with kerosene and then set them alight just to hear them screaming as they burnt, a real bad arse but as far as I was concerned he was a low down mother fucker who needed to be put in the ground for good.
Unfortunately it looked like I was the one going in the ground and there was fuck all I could do about it.
Maggot didn’t say anything as he stood there smiling at me with his rotten teeth, his eyes glowing with malice and cruelty, then he hawked and spat on me.
“After they pick up your pieces and put them back together again, you can tell The Duke and the rest of you satan suckers, this town and everything else in it belongs to The Breed. You understand me pretty boy?”
I didn’t say anything, just stared at his ugly face while trying to think of someway to escape but I knew there wasn’t so I kicked him in the balls and as he doubled over I grabbed his head and kneed him in the face.
He went over like the sack of shit he was and then the rest started laying into me with the base ball bats, chains and metal bars.
I fell to the ground, curled up into a ball and wrapped my arms around my head as I felt one of my ribs crack while the baseball bats, iron chains and metal bars whacked into my body.
Fuck it hurt and yet all I could think of was my dad and how his beatings had been far worse than what these ugly cunts were trying to give me.
Suddenly I heard a shout and the beating stopped.
As I looked through a haze of my blood running into my eyes, I saw The Breed were running for their bikes as the sound of thunder thumped down the street.
My brother Sons Of Satan had arrived like the cavalry in a black and white western and I had never been so glad to see them.
Some of The Breed got away but six of them were caught.
They were taken to a quite place out in the country and experienced the ugly side of Satan’s justice, they were never seen or heard of again.
Our leader was a vietnam vet called The Duke and he made sure the four of us were well looked after by a doctor who did his best to mend our wounds.
For the next week we got nothing but respect from everyone and a whole lot of partying and pussy. We had become heroes for getting fuck beaten out of us but heroes all the same.
Things went to shit after that.
War broke out big time over the next two months between The Breed and The Sons Of Satan.
Houses were fire bombed, members shot and killed and families beaten, kidnapped and raped.
A lot of members on both sides were killed and some innocent people got hurt along the way and the police seemed powerless to stop it.
The end finally came when The Duke and the fifteen remaining members of the Sons Of Satan including myself, rode out to an old farm where we knew The Breed had retreated to.
The Duke decided that since Maggot had started the ball rolling, it would end up stopping on his crushed head.
We were all heavily armed with automatic machine guns, heavy calibre pistols, grenades, knuckle busters and long hunting knives, fuck the baseball bats.
We knew Maggot was there and would have the farm protected with what was left of The Breed so we pulled our bikes off the road and parked them in a hidden part of the forest surrounding the farm.
From there we made our way cross country, climbing to the top of a hill that looked down on the farm.
We saw six members of The Breed standing guard in different spots. We marked them, silently crept up on them and brought them down, whoever was left was in the farm house.
It was an old place that looked like it had been built well over a hundred years ago or more, the gutters were rusted, a lot of the paint had peeled from the sides of the house revealing timber that had been harvested long before my daddy or his daddy had even been born.
There was junk and all sorts of useless, rusting shit scattered around the yard and the front screen door was torn in places and hanging from broken hinges.
Just when I thought how quiet it all seemed, the sound of machine guns went off and two brothers, Pig Stain and Weedy went down with big chunks of their heads missing.
The rest of us got behind any cover we could find lying about the yard.
There was no need to say anything we just let our guns do the talking.
In a matter of minutes the whole front of the farm house looked like a piece of cheese with holes all through it and the front screen door breathed its last gasp and crashed to the verandah floor.
I’d ducked behind an old oak tree at the side of the house for cover and that meant I was in the best position for making my way round to the back of the house to stop the fuck heads inside from escaping.
I knew I was probably going to get my head shot off and found it hard to stop shaking from a mixture of adrenalin and fear but I kept on telling myself I was just doing my job and it would all work out in the end but the truth was I fucking doubted it.
Luck was with me cause I managed to get around to the back of the house without being shot at and found a protected spot where I had clear aim to cover the back door.
Maggot and whoever else was in the house were still shooting at the others out front with a MK 22 machine gun, a weapon that would rip the skin from your bones before you could say fuck.
Because there wasn’t any glass in the windows, I saw one of The Breed pick up what looked to be a standard army issue bazooka. Christ they were going to blow the others out from behind their cover and there’d be nothing but little pieces remaining.
The sound of my heart beating in my ears grew louder and louder and I felt like throwing up and having a piss at the same time, but there was no time if I was going to make this whole thing come to some kind of satisfactory ending.
“Just remember you’re just doing your job and it will all work out in the end”, I told myself. “Yeah and the president is going to suck my cock just as soon as this is all over”, crazy the lies we tell ourselves just to scrape up a bit of courage to get through.
I had half a magazine left in the automatic resting in my arms, a colt .45 shoved into the back of my jeans, a bowie knife down the side of my boot, a canister of tear gas in my hand and a prayer on my lips.
I was as ready as I was ever going to be.
On the count of three I took a deep breathe and ran to the back door of the house.
No one had seen me, so far so good.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and stepped into the cool darkness inside.
I waited a few seconds for my eyes to adjust from the light outside and saw the inside of the house was as much a junk yard as the outside.
Crap was scattered everywhere as though a storm had appeared and threw up all over the place and where things landed they would forever stay.
“Fuck, only animals live like this?” I thought as I watched a halo of flies fighting over the bits of rotting food that stained the plates and bowls lying about in the overflowing sink and littering what bench space there was in the kitchen.
Rifle shots jerked me out of my musings and I gathered my thoughts as to what I was going to do next.
All the firing was coming from the front of the house so I made my way through the kitchen, down the hallway past two bedrooms.
Normally I would have checked the bedrooms as I passed but being in the middle of a gun fight was anything but normal.
In the lounge room at the front of the house I saw what was left of The Breed.
I couldn’t see Maggot but two of The Breed were sending bursts of automatic fire out front and behind them were five dead Breed members lying on the floor.
Some had bits of them missing while others had bled to death from bullet wounds.
As one of them kept firing, the other started preparing to load up the bazooka, readying to the blow the shit out of whoever was left of the remaining Sons Of Satan still taking cover out in the front yard.
Just as I was about to aim my machine gun at them and tell them it was all over, explosions of light burst behind my eyes and everything went black.
I came to with an awful ache in my head and the sounds of silence ringing in my ears.
I was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, my hands tied behind my back and Maggot and a woman who looked familiar, were sitting on the other side of the kitchen table in front of me.
“Hello pretty boy. We meet again.” said Maggot in a sarcastically friendly tone.
“The last time we met, you gave me something that I am going to fucking enjoy giving back to you.” The smile he gave me was anything but friendly.
I looked around me but couldn’t see anyone else in the room.
“If you wondering where the others are, they’re busy picking up the pieces of your dead brothers. Fuck that Bazooka did its job, I’ve never seen dead people fly so high up in the air. So now we’re gonna have a barbeque and your going to be our guest. In fact you’re first course and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into you.”
What? They were going to eat me?
This isn’t part of my job, everything wasn’t going to turn out all right, at all.
Maggot pulled a revolver out of his greasy jeans.
“Baby, keep an eye on this fucker while I go see how the barbeque preparations are going”, he said to the woman who flinched as he slammed the gun down on the table in front of her.
He leant in close to her and while watching me he said “If he moves, shoot him.”
He laughed and walked out of the kitchen to the front yard.
The woman stared at me trying to look brave but I could see in her eyes that she was scared.
I knew I had seen her somewhere before but couldn’t place her until she spoke.
“I was wondering when you’d show up, I don’t think I could have taken much more. When are the others arriving, we don’t have much time.”
It took me a few seconds to remember and then it all started to come back to me.
“Marie? Fuck! It is. Shit what are you doing here?”
“Same as you, under cover. You forgot to check the rooms when you snuck in but Maggot saw you, came up behind and gave you a hell of a belt on the head, are you o.k.?
I nodded and regretted it straight away, “I’ll live” I said.
“You won’t unless back up arrives and real quick. How long till they get here?”
Marie was a cop same as me. We’d met just before this under cover operation had started, had a one night stand and never saw each other again until now. When I’d first met her she had had long black hair, now it was short and bleached blonde.
She had studs in her lips, nose and eyebrows and a few tattoos on her forearms.
She certainly looked the part and I could se she’d endured a lot, she looked like she’d been through hell.
“They should be here soon. in fact I’d have thought they’d have been here by now, we’ve made enough noise.”
“Who did you call?” she asked dubiously.
“A direct line to Captain Truan of course. He needs to know when it’s time to send in the cavalry. He said they were on there way”.
“Fuck! That arse hole!”
“Who? Truan?” I asked as she came over and cut the rope tying my hands.
I could feel her hands shaking with fear and I just hoped she didn’t accidently cut one of my arteries.
“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here now!” she said as I rubbed the circulation back into my hands.
“What the fucks going on. You know something I don’t?”, I asked.
“Don’t expect the cavalry to arrive until after we’re dead. Truan is on the take to these scum. I work for internal investigations and we’d suspected Truan was mixed up with these animals but the only way we could prove it was to infiltrate and gather information from the bike gangs he was getting kick backs from, which is why I’m here.”
I couldn’t believe it, Captain Truan was on the take? I had admired him, we all had. It was he who had organised the anti biker branch as well as the undercover operation. So did that mean the gangs had known I was a cop all along? So many questions and not the right time to find the answers.
“Fuck, I hope you’re wrong” I said.
“The only way we’re going to get out of here is by taking those fuck heads out. Where are my guns?” I said.
Marie pulled my colt .45 out of a drawer and put it on the table in front of me.
She picked up the revolver Maggot had left for her and we made our way down the hall to the front door. It was surprisingly quiet outside but we knew Maggot and the other Breed members outgunned us so we had to take them by surprise.
I looked at Marie as we stood near the front door, like me she was shaking with fear and adrenalin, she also looked very beautiful, her face set with determination.
Man, living undercover with these animals must have been fucking hard,she was certainly one hell of a ballsy lady.
She looked at me for the go and just as we were going to rush out the front door, we heard the unmistakeable sound of a gun being cocked behind us.
“You don’t want to do that.” said a familiar voice.
Turning around we saw the fat, sweating body of Captain Elmo Truan pointing a glock .45 at our heads.
“Put the guns on the floor nice and easy and gently kick them over” he said calmly as he wiped the sweat running down his neck with a blue handkerchief.
We did as he asked and then stood there staring at him.
Just as I had, he’d come in through the back and snuck up on us
I couldn’t believe I had been suckered by this man I had admired since I was a cadet in the police academy.
Truan had been my instructor and had become a sort of father figure/mentor for me, taking me under his wing, inviting me round to his house to have dinner with his family, gaining my trust.
Marie was about to fall over with the stress of the past six months and I could see this was the final straw.
Truan picked up the guns and put them in his coat pockets.
He looked at me with what seemed to be a sorry expression on his face and in a way he probably was. I’m sure something of him must have been genuine towards me over the years.
“Why?” was all I seemed to be able to get out.
“I’m sorry Frank” he said apologetically, “I’m up to my neck in debt and the only way out was to get rid off anyone who knew. I foolishly let myself get dragged into the business, so to speak. Borrowing money off these scum bags to pay off my gambling debts at the time, seemed like a good idea and all I needed to do was look the other way.
A good hand or a winning horse was all I needed to make things right but they eluded me and I found myself getting deeper and deeper into debt. It was a mistake I had to remedy or else I’d be ruined.
Those cock suckers outside thought having a cop in their pocket would be a good thing so they tried to black mail me and I couldn’t have that, so I thought the best thing to do was to start a gang war and let them all kill each other, problem solved.
“Unfortunately I had to keep up appearances and make out we were doing something about all the bike gangs, so I set up this undercover operation. It was a bit of a risk on my part but if whoever went undercover found out something I didn’t want known, it was just a matter of letting the gangs know they were a cop and they’d disappear along with whatever they’d found out about me.”
“I didn’t want you involved in this remember but you were the only one stupid enough to volunteer, I mean what were you thinking boy? Promotion? Or do you really believe in all that protect and serve bullshit?
If it’s any consolation I protected you by not revealing you were a cop. Whatever you may think of me, I’ve always thought of you as a son.”
He looked at me as though I should be grateful or something but all I felt was anger. Anger at being betrayed, lied to and angry that all Marie and I had been through these past six months had been for nothing, just pawns in Truan’s game.
“Ah, and you Miss Avler,” he said turning his attention to Marie for the first time, “I know all about you and your role in internal affairs. Did you really think I would be stupid enough to let myself be caught by you lot? I left a few bread crumbs to whet your appetite but there was no way they were going to lead you anywhere, you were never going to find your way to the cake. I can see though you’ve been through quite an ordeal but I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you”, he sighed as though there was very little he could do about it.
Marie lent against the door, closed her eyes and slid down to the floor saying nothing.
“What about me?” I asked, stalling for time until some brilliant idea came into my head.
“Well you my boy, I’m sorry to say, know too much. So you will have to say goodbye to all you love and hold dear, that or I cut out your tongue and poke out your eyes.” he said in an apologetic tone.
I could feel my anger more than my fear but felt impotent and helpless. If I charged him I’d only get my head blown off and god knows what would happen to Marie after I was dead, god knows what would happen to her while I was still alive.
I slid my back down the wall, sitting on the ground next to Marie and hugged my knees, trying desperately to think of something to say that would change his mind but I knew there was nothing. It didn’t matter how much I thought our friendship might have mattered, when it came down to it, it was either him or me.
Truan stood there smiling like the cat that drank all the milk and I could see no remorse for what he was about to do, his plan had worked brilliantly and there would be no witnesses.
Suddenly Marie started to cry, making choking, sobbing noises.
Truan’s fat face grew dark as he stepped over to her, grabbed her roughly by the hair and turning her to face him, pressed his gun against her cheek.
“What’s the matter slut? Feeling a bit sick and sorry for yourself now you know it was all for nothing? It must have been hard pretending you liked it when Maggot sucked and fucked you but you thought that bringing me down would make it all worthwhile, didn’t you bitch? You’re no better then them, turning yourself into a whore and sleeping with these scum just to get some information that you thought you could use against me? And just for that, I think I’m going to have a bit of fun with you before you die, we’ll see what sort of a whore you really are, eh?”
Tears of pain were streaming from Marie’s eyes which glared hatred at Truan who just smiled maliciously as he pulled harder on her hair, enjoying the pain he was inflicting.
He was really just a glorified sadist that knew how to hide his true nature well.
“Get up.” He stepped back and motioned to us with his gun. As we stood up, Marie lost it and jumped at him screaming like a banshee, intending to rip his eyes out with her finger nails. Truans gun went off and the bowie knife I pulled from the inside of my boot slid into the fat bastards gut.
With a grunt and look of disbelief, he dropped the gun and fell to the floor, lying there as bright red blood pumped out of his fat, dying body.
I knelt down close to him so he could see my face. He looked desperate and frightened as though he only now realised what he had done and wanted to make things right.
He held onto my hand as he died, gasping for breath like a fish out of water.
It was over.
Fortunately Truans gun had put a big hole in the wall instead of Marie who I helped up and together we walked outside.
Lying next to a huge pile of wood that had been gathered for the barbeque, were the dead bodies of Maggot and the other two. Not wanting any witnesses who could black mail him,Truan had shot them in the back of the head.
Even in death Maggot looked like the scum bag he was.
Marie and I were both emotionally and physically exhausted, it was hard to believe it was all over. The fear, the lies, the pretending. As we found a cool spot under an old big oak, we collapsed and waited for the police to arrive which they eventually would when they couldn’t reach Truan,
Sitting there feeling a soft, cool breeze flowing about my face, I finally opened up the gates and let my mind free from the prison camp I had placed it in, in order to cope with the madness of the past year.
I felt as though that all I had been the past year was one big lie, trying to live a double life and feeling my mind begin to fracture the more it went along.
Why the fuck did I even volunteer for this assignment?
Was it because I wanted back in to the gangs, the bikes, the whole life style?
I used to be a gang member before I became a cop. Someone I knew died and something inside me broke, y’know, things suddenly came to a stop and I was left wondering where the fuck I was leading my life to. I’d done some bad shit and I also paid for it with an internal crucifixion of my conscience.
For some reason I thought being a cop was what I needed to do, help clear the bad shit out of being in a bike gang and enjoy the good stuff about it without being hassled but the price for trying to do that was too much.
In the time I was undercover, I had some wild, fantastic times.
A lot of fun, fear and adrenalin and a sense of freedom that only comes when you live for the day. I loved riding my bike in a pack, feeling the thunder thumping up through your very being and knowing everyone else was feeling the same thing, there’s nothing else like it.
You feel strong, invincible and you feel like a family, something that most of the gang never got to experience when they were young. I had come to feel as though the other members were like brothers to me. No matter what the situation, they always had my back and even though I would never trust them with my woman or my stash, I knew I could trust them with my life.
Even though, if they had known who I really was they would have made me some cement boots, cut off my dick, shoved it in my mouth and thrown me into the river, I felt more respect for them then the straight man I was pretending to be, trying to uphold all the bullshit that makes the foundations of our great society.
I had deceived people who had trusted me and I’d been betrayed by people I had trusted.
A stab you in the back merry go round. Even if at times they acted more animal than human, the Sons of Satan had accepted me, believed I was who I said I was and for what?
I had told myself it was my job, something I had to do, upholding the law, protecting ordinary citizens, blah, blah, blah, but really it was like everything else in my life, it was just another lie I could ride away from the truth on.
The truth being that thing inside of me, that knows the right from the wrong and where all the lies are I’ve hidden throughout the days, hoping to forget, constantly trying to create a new future, a new me and finally realising there is no new me, there is just me and only ever was just me.
No matter what we do or where we go, we can never truly escape the lies we tell ourselves because those lies are a mirror to our salvation, a way to finding our way back to who we truly are, but then...... perhaps that’s just another lie.
BELOW ARE SOME PHOTOS I FOUND OF MY
DAYS WITH THE SONS OF SATAN, I ONLY
HAD A FEW, I WISH I HAD MORE…….
Some members from The Sons Of Satan
Back Row: Monk, Me, Billy the Rat
Front Row: Sweet Jane, Iron Mike, Cut Throat Sioux and Shotgun Stu
Iron Mike and Sweet Jane
The Sons Of Satan arrive in town
Motor Mouth tripping on L.S.D.
Animal George