Chapter 9

Well, there's nothing like subtlety, I guess. There it was: a large burning swastika over the door. On one side was a sign that said "Death to filthy Jews" and on the other a sign that said "Death to scabby Niggers." Of course, the Free Speech amendment assured that they could get away with it, especially in a city as liberal as Boston, but I did think that the whole thing was going more than a little too far. Over the icon was a sign proclaiming "Home Clubhouse of the South End Motorcycle Gang." Well, the South End was not what one would call a bastion of liberal thinking, so I guess I should not have been surprised that they would be so blatantly public with their hatred.

It was close to 0200 hours, so the small number of motorcycles parked out front was no surprise. I assumed that the missing motorcycles belonged to those people who had to be at work the next day, and the present motorcycles belong to those who were unemployed. Anyway, there were 11 bikes parked out front.

Martha drove two more blocks before letting us out. She went on to find a place to park while Phobos and I went through alleys to return to the clubhouse. The clubhouse seemed to occupy the whole of a three-storey building. From the smell of the place, I assumed that there was at least a beer license for the joint, but it might be that the cops either didn't care or were paid to look the other way.

We climbed the wall to reach the fire escape. We used that to get the rest of the way to the roof. No matter what it looks like in the movies, going up steps is a lot less tiring than climbing a wall. We oozed over the wall because there were some people on the roof drinking beer. That was wholly unexpected, but not unreasonable, considering how nice the weather was. Luckily for us, we didn't have long to wait before the beer drinkers decided to go back to wherever the keg was for another round. They didn't even bother to close the door going down, so we just followed them as far as the top floor.

The beer drinkers kept going, so we soon had the hallway to ourselves. I had no idea what we would find behind the closed doors, but my curiosity would not be denied. Every one of the doors was locked by a deadbolt. Fortunately, Phobos was an adept lock-picker, so we had our first door open in a jiffy. The light was off, so we really didn't know what we had found until he closed and locked the door. I fumbled around for the light switch, and we were dumbfounded when the light came on.

We were in a rather large room, and it was filled with rack after rack of AK-47s. Well, OK, maybe they were technically something else, but I knew what they looked like from the TV news. Phobos did a quick count and came up with an estimate of 400 rifles. Shit! They could start a war with that many guns, and I'll bet that was what they had in mind. We had to do something to render those guns useless, but there was nothing that we could do right then.

OK, so much for the rifles, what was in the next room? That's where we found the ammunition. These guys were crazy! Storing large quantities of ammunition like this was just asking for trouble. The thought of what might happen in a fire scared the hell out of me. Phobos assured me that what I saw was bad practice, but not as dangerous as I feared. OK, he was the expert, but I was still scared.

The next room was a different story. This room contained case after case of RPG rockets and small mortar rounds. A fire here could literally play hell. Now, Phobos was as upset as I was. We looked around quickly, and got on to the next room. This one contained the RPG launch tubes and about 40 cases of small-caliber mortars, probably 60mm, but there were no markings on the cases, so we were not absolutely sure.

If it were not for the explosives, we could just start a big fire and let the Fire Department find the weapons when they put out the fire. But there was no way we dared start a fire in a building in the middle of a city with so much high explosive warheads lying around. If they went off, they might easily level several blocks in radius and kill hundreds of innocent people.

Well, we had found what we really wanted to know, so it was time to leave. We retraced our route and were picked up by Martha. On the way home, we told her what we had found. We ate our late supper and went to bed. We would hunt for a solution tomorrow.

The next day, we tried to come up with a way to get the weapons cache found by the authorities without getting anybody killed. We were stalled by the simple expedient of not knowing who could be trusted within the city political structure. We were sure that the mayor was good, but he was going to send the actual job to a subordinate, and that's where we lost control. If the subordinate tipped off the gang of an impending raid, there was no way we could know what would happen next.

Homeland Security was a logical choice, but they seemed to us to be such bumblers that we were sure that they would botch the whole thing. The FBI. Who could tell? The only people we thought to be completely trustworthy were the Fire Department, because they had no ax to grind.

What we needed was for the Fire Department to attend to a call at the Gang's headquarters building, and do it in such a way that the Gang would have no chance to hide the weapons before the Fire Department arrived. If we could set up something spectacular, the TV stations would cover it so that there would be no way for the Gang to hide the weapons and explosives before the public heard about it. Once it was public knowledge, we could go from there.

The three of us were sitting around drinking coffee and brainstorming the question when Martha asked, "Why don't you just blow out a section of wall? Surely the Fire Department would investigate that."

I immediately pipped up with, "We can't do that because of all of those explosives. We don't want to have a big explosion that will hurt innocent bystanders."

Chris was quiet for a moment, then exclaimed, "WAIT A MINUTE! She's right. The explosives won't be armed, so they won't explode from being banged around. Besides, the RPGs and mortar shells have to travel a certain distance before they can be armed. A big fire could set them off, but not an explosion that just shook them around a lot.

"We could blow away a section of the wall on the third storey that was not close to the explosives, and that would insure that there would be no explosion. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Thank you, Mom. Your idea was brilliant!"

Martha beamed while Chris went on to expound on the details of the sabotage. Our main problem would be in acquiring the explosive and the detonators to do the job. Fortunately, Chris knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who might be able to help us out. That afternoon, he went on an expedition to track down some C4 and the necessaries to make it explode.

Meanwhile, Martha and I went on an expedition of our own to photograph the appropriate wall of the building so that we could plan where to put the explosive charges. Martha drove while I used a digital camera to get as many photographs of the building as we could manage without attracting too much attention. We got 32 photographs before we decided that we had enough. The light was shifting on us, so that we were running into inconvenient shadows that were hiding the south wall that we were especially interested in.

Shortly after we got home, Chris reported in with the news that he had found a source of C4 and the other stuff we needed. He had ordered more than we would need for this job in case something else came up; he wanted us to have a reserve so that he would not have to return to the source too often. The problem was that the complete order was going to run close to $10,000 in cash, so I was going to have to go to the bank tomorrow to withdraw the money. Fortunately, I had it available.

The explosives would be ready for delivery in three days, so I did have a little bit of a time cushion. We had plenty of time to look at the pictures and to decide where to place the charges and the order that they were to go off. Chris had enough experience with explosives that he was quite competent to direct this phase of the operation. The stuff we were getting was very easy to use and he expected no trouble in training me to help set the charges. Chris could do the job solo if he had to, but I wanted to be a part of the operation, and it would go much quicker if both of us worked on it.