The Tin Man

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 1-phenyl-1-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 industrial-strength 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 water, even the tiny bits of moisture in the 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 emaciated-looking, 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 ass-kicker 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 twenty-two pounds of methamphetamine worth four to six thousand dollars a pound in its unadulterated 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. Ingested-usually 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 “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 US 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 they 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 California-Berkeley 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.

Bennie left Berkeley in 1974, but not because he 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 than teaching 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 a 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 powerful-looking, 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 I might 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 there’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 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 US 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 were found. 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 US 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 government hit squads.”

The guy smiled a frightening smile. “Indeed,” he said. “Yes, poor Henri. He was quite mad. But I assure you I am Gregory Townsend, and as you can see, I’m alive.”

“You got any proof you’re Townsend?”

“Ah. Proof.” The Brit reached into a coat pocket and Bennie thought, Oh, shit, here’s where he drills me. But he pulled a photograph out of his pocket. “I show you this only because I so greatly desire your services, Mr Reynolds.” He flipped the photograph at Bennie. Bennie snatched it in midair, keeping the Brit and his cover guy in sight. Then he glanced at the picture and froze.

It was a photograph of Townsend kneeling in what looked like a garbage dump and supporting a corpse. The corpse’s head was partially blown apart at the forehead so the face was unrecognizable, but the upper torso had been stripped bare, revealing a large multicolored tattoo surrounded by bullet holes. The tattoo was that of the Belgian First Para, the “Red Berets,” Belgium’s elite fighting unit, of which Cazaux had once been a member.

The shot was familiar to Bennie. It was almost identical to the one that had been published in several tabloids and magazines, announcing the discovery of Henri Cazaux’s bullet-riddled body, though Townsend didn’t appear in the published photos. The gun that he held in this one was a 9-millimeter Browning Hi-Power, which was what the FBI had identified as the murder weapon.

“Poor Henri,” Townsend said again. “We could have been quite wealthy back then, but he was obsessed with attacking the American government. Insane.”

“Jee-sus,” Bennie exclaimed. “You dusted Henri Cazaux…”

“When Cazaux died, of course, his grip of terror on his business associates died as well,” Townsend said matter-of-factly, plucking the photo out of Bennie’s frozen fingers and slipping it back into his pocket. “But our bloody accountant spilled his guts to the FBI and Interpol-just before I blew him to hell-so all of our numbered bank accounts were immediately confiscated. I am now attempting to reassemble the best of what remains of his organization, and I am recruiting new members as well. This is why I am here today. I would like to offer you a top position in my organization.”

Christ Almighty, Bennie realized, the new king of the international crime trade was asking him to join him! Bennie didn’t know if this was a con or the opportunity of a lifetime, so experience told him to treat it like a con. “You’re into guns, right?” Bennie asked. “I don’t know nuthin’ about the gun-running business.”

Townsend waved a hand dismissively. “Guns are not quite as lucrative as before, Mr Reynolds,” he said. “There are so many of them out there now. Even automatic weapons, heavy military artillery, and high-performance aircraft and battle vehicles are commonplace on the open market. No, not guns, Mr Reynolds. At least not our main stock in trade.

“I’m talking about methamphetamines, Mr Reynolds. The state of California estimates meth sales are in excess of two hundred million dollars a year in this state alone, almost all pure profit, and with no importation problems. With the right combination of production, distribution, and enforcement, meth sales can easily top a half a billion dollars a year nationwide.

“You are Benjamin Reynolds, known as Bennie the Chef by the Satan’s Brotherhood Motorcycle Club. You have been convicted of manufacturing illicit drugs and possessing a controlled substance only once, and received a four-year sentence, that over eight years ago. But you have been cooking meth and instructing the Brotherhood on how to do it for about twenty years. You are obviously highly intelligent and resourceful, and worth far more than whatever you’re making from the Brotherhood. I would like you to supervise the setup of a thousand of your portable meth labs. We will become the McDonald’s of the meth world. What do you say, Mr Reynolds?”

“A thousand meth labs?” Bennie exclaimed. “A thousand portable meth labs? You’ve gotta be joking!”

“A thousand labs such as that one is only the beginning, my dear sir,” said Townsend, motioning toward Bennie’s portable hydrogenator setup. “I envision a meth lab in every county and province in every country of the civilized world. You shall supervise their construction. I shall…”

“It can’t be done, Townsend, or whoever the hell you are,” Bennie interrupted. “You want war with the Brotherhood? Just try to horn in on their meth business. There will be a bloodbath-probably all yours.”

“I am proposing a merger with the Satan’s Brotherhood, Mr Reynolds,” Townsend said confidently. “The northern California chapters of the Brotherhood control four-fifths of the meth production in the United States, most of it generated by you. The problem is that the Brotherhood is disorganized, splintered into factions. I propose to unite them. The Brotherhood will produce methamphetamine, methcathinone, and crack cocaine, and will oversee distribution; I and our new allies will oversee collections, security, and enforcement. The Brotherhood needs you to supervise their meth operations. If you agree to join me, I believe the motorcycle gangs will follow.”

“They might-or they might want to blow your shit away,” Bennie said. “No Brother is going to work with an outsider, especially a foreigner. They’ll be fighting you as much as you’ll be fighting the feds. Who’s gonna stop the Brotherhood from squashing you and your operation? Who’s going to keep all the players together? You? You and what army, man?”

“Myself-and some former members of the German army,” Townsend replied. He motioned toward the man standing behind him. “Meet Major Bruno Reingruber. He has assembled a hundred of his finest officers and soldiers and has agreed to join my operation. Major Reingruber, meet Benjamin Reynolds, Bennie the Chef.”

The German snapped to attention, gave Reynolds a straight-arm Hitler salute, clicking his heels together with military precision, and resumed his on-guard stance, scanning the entire area around them. The guy was enormous, Bennie noted, at least six four, pushing three hundred pounds but as solid as a tree. As for the Nazi salute-that was nothing new. Most of the Satan’s Brotherhood were hard-core neo-Nazis. It was part of the “outlaw biker” mystique, the gypsy thing, being wild and free. Biker gangs were big in Holland, England, Germany, even Australia, and a lot of them were neo-Nazi.

But of all the gangs, the Satan’s Brotherhood had the biggest, most dangerous reputation. If you survived the initiation process and became a full member of the Brotherhood, you were set for life. All the drugs, buddies, guns, and whores you wanted. All you had to do was ride, hang out with the Brotherhood, and of course kill, intimidate, cook meth, sell drugs, run whorehouses, and maintain the extreme level of fear that was the Satan’s Brotherhood tradition.

“Major Reingruber and his men share in the Satan’s Brotherhood’s belief that racial impurity has infected and diseased society, and they believe in all-out war between the races and with the infected governments,” Townsend said, as if he felt compelled to explain the Heil Hitler salute. “Many Nazi sympathizers existed after the Cold War ended. They’ve been repressed by the West German government but the neo-Nazi movement is flourishing, there as well as here. And Major Reingruber and his men are very good at enforcement and security.”

“Then he’ll fit in real well with the Brotherhood-if they don’t stomp you first,” Bennie said.

“Major Reingruber believes that even the Satan’s Brotherhood and the other Aryan groups in the United States have been weakened and divided by the government, victims of the racial-impurity disease they were sworn to eradicate,” Townsend went on. “We are not offering to help-we intend to take over. We have formed an army. We call ourselves the Aryan Brigade. We are the soldiers of the new antigovernment order. The key to our success is the northern California chapters of the Brotherhood. When that is in place, the Aryan Brigade will demand obedience from all the chapters.”

“Oh yeah? Well, that’ll be fun to watch,” Bennie said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as the notorious terrorist before him. “What about you, Townsend? You a Nazi too?”

“I’m a soldier, an officer,” Townsend said after a moment’s uncomfortable pause. “My job is to lead armies and plan campaigns. Major Reingruber and his men are my new army. Before long the Satan’s Brotherhood and the other Aryan armies in the United States and then the world will be part of my army-or they will be eliminated. So. What do you say, Mr Reynolds? Can I count on your support?”

Since these guys couldn’t be intimidated, Bennie decided to try reasoning. “Look, Townsend, or whoever you are, there are two very big, very mean leg-breakers over there whose job it is to keep trespassers off this property, and they take their job real serious. So I suggest you…”

“Hey! What the fuck?” came a warning shout behind them. Bennie’s two Satan’s Brotherhood enforcers had finally woken up. He didn’t give these Brothers any credit for brain-power, but they loved to fight and they loved guns. He hoped to hell there wasn’t going to be a gunfight around his hydrogenation reactor-the tiniest spark could blow them all sky-high.

The bikers scrambled for their weapons and started to move toward them. The German made a motion toward his coat opening, but Townsend held up his hand. “Nicht,” Townsend said in a low voice. “Tell those bloody bastards to stay where they are,” he warned Bennie. “Major Reingruber will not allow them to come near us. We will leave, but I need your answer. Yes or no-will you join me?”

“Or else what-I get blown away by you or your Nazi buddy?”

“If you say no, you’ll be on the losing end of an inevitable war between the Aryan Brigade and whoever stands in our way, including the Satan’s Brotherhood,” Townsend said. “I’ll let you live for now as a sign of good faith if you say no. But if you are not with me in this war, Mr Reynolds, you are against me, and I guarantee that you will die. Do you have an answer for me?”

Bennie had no assurance that anything this guy said was for real, but he did know that his chances of getting shot in the face by either the Brit or the German were better than good. Better to pledge allegiance to whatever flag was put right in front of his nose, Bennie thought, and work out the details later…

“All right, all right, I’m in. I don’t know how in hell you expect you and a hundred hired guns to go up against five thousand Brothers, but I’m in.” Bennie turned toward the biker leg-breakers: “Hey, you guys, put ‘ em down. These guys are…”

It lasted only a few seconds, but Bennie saw it all as if in slow motion:

Sure as shit, the bikers pulled their weapons, one a shotgun, the other a pistol. Never mind that Bennie was standing in their line of fire, the assholes! And they were pretty far away for a gunfight, well over thirty yards. If they thought at all, they were probably thinking that they could scare the intruders off with a shotgun blast into the ground or a few pistol rounds over their heads.

The German had the bikers zeroed in long before they leveled their guns. He withdrew a small machine pistol from his coat and pulled the trigger three times. The first three-round burst missed, but it caused both guys to freeze-not flee, not run for cover, not dive for the ground, just freeze. They made easy targets then, and the next two bursts did not miss. The biker with the shotgun pulled the trigger on his weapon seconds before his lifeless body pitched over backward and hit the ground.

The echoes of the brief gun battle were still ringing in Bennie’s ears when he opened his eyes and saw Reingruber trot over to the bikers to check whether they were still breathing. Apparently one still was; he was dispatched with a single bullet to the brain. Then the German put a single round into the other one just for insurance. “Sie sind tot, Herr Oberst,” Reingruber said.

“Sehr gut, Major,” Townsend said wearily. “I hoped that could be avoided.” He had never reached for his own weapon, Bennie noticed. “Now, then, Mr Reynolds, I suggest we get our fat friends there out of sight before any curious spectators arrive.” A stunned Bennie didn’t say a word as he was led over to the gruesome sight. Reingruber’s rounds were all neatly centered in each biker’s torso, the spread no more than three or four inches. “I have some men on patrol in the woods,” said Townsend, withdrawing a walkie-talkie from his jacket. “I’ll send them in to…”

“Wait!” Bennie yelled. He whirled toward his trailer hydrogenator unit, his eyes bugging out, and grabbed Townsend’s left arm. “Gas! I smell gas! That shotgun blast must’ve put a hole in the hydrogenator! Run for your goddamn lives!”

The three men ran upwind of the meth cooker until Bennie could run no more. He collapsed behind a tree some two hundred yards away from the hydrogenator. Townsend and Reingruber weren’t even winded.

Townsend spat an order in German into his walkie-talkie, warning his other men to stay away from the hydrogenator and take cover, but to keep it in sight at all times. Then he turned back to Bennie. “That was quite a little jog, Mr Reynolds. What in bloody hell was it all about?”

All three of them were behind sturdy oak trees, but the blast still knocked them off their feet. They felt the searing heat as the hydrogen fireball swept above them. Then they looked up. The grass and the trees around them had been blackened by the intense heat and the fireball-even the hair on the back of Reingruber’s head was singed. The truck, the hydrogenator unit, and the two bikers were indistinguishable black lumps in the middle of the charred field. Every standing object for two hundred feet around the hydrogenator had been leveled, even trees with trunks up to three inches in diameter.

“Well then,” said Townsend as he picked himself up off the ground and surveyed the blast area. “This will be a good place for the helicopter to pick us up.”

“Jeez, my cooker!” Bennie shouted. “That was my best portable fucking lab, man! That was fifty, sixty grand, up in smoke! My truck, my chemicals, the product!…”

“We will have to get you some more working capital, won’t we, Mr Reynolds?” Townsend said, as if he had decided to order a nice bottle of wine. “We should start with at least one million dollars. That should get you under way building the first ten reactors we need, plus provide us with sufficient operating funds.”

“How in hell are you gonna get a million dollars, Townsend?” Bennie shouted. This was crazy. “You gonna cook up enough speed to raise that kind of cash? It’ll take you years, man.”

A helicopter appeared out of nowhere over the trees, swooping down over the blast area in front of them. Townsend waited until the racket died down. “We will be back in operation within a month, Mr Reynolds,” he replied crisply. “And you will address me as Colonel or Oberst from now on. I run my organization like a military unit, and even my civilian subordinates must comply. Now, the fewer questions you ask from now on, the better. Follow Major Reingruber aboard that helicopter, find a seat, strap yourself in, and keep your damn mouth shut.”