Buried Treasure Ch. 01-05

He thought about it. "I hate to think it's our own people, but you're right. They've penetrated our Agency somehow." He looked at me, wondering what I was thinking. "How would you do it differently?"

"Biker life isn't a life you can practice for a few weeks and pull it off, it's something you have to grow up with. What I would like to do is find someone who can live that life and intercept them before they are even HIRED by the DEA. We help this person get introduce to the gang, go through prospecting and become a patched member, all without actually being an agent."

His jaw dropped. "Is that even possible? And why the hell are you going to do it that way?"

"Simple, it's safer for him. No paper trail, no missing time, and they are completely honest when they say they are not and never have been a cop or Fed, because they have never been hired on as one. Only after they are patched in do we make them an agent, and even that will be different. The training will be done one on one, in secret, and the personnel record will be paper only and held only by his direct supervisor. Me."

He thought about it. "What do we do about the time before he's sworn in?"

"We get two pieces of paper to keep in his file. One is to give him retroactive service credit to when he starts is work, so he doesn't miss out on his pay and benefits and gets back pay when this is all over. The other is a pardon for any illegal activities he may have to participate in before he gets sworn in." He looked at me funny. "Look, we know they test Prospects with taking drugs and committing crimes, because they know our Agents can't do that. The best way to fool them is to allow him to be like any other prospect."

"It's a ballsy proposal, Frank." I just nodded; I knew it was, but did we have a better idea? No. "It's a great idea. I'll need high-level people to bless it off. I take it you want to run this?"

"Yes sir. I'd like to be the single point of contact for this operation. Only the two of us will know who he is and what he is doing. I'll report progress only to you." He nodded. "Make sure they understand this is a long play for us. He could be undercover for years, and we won't risk him for anything short of a home run."

"I'm tired of bloop singles and bunts, Frank. I'll get back to you."

A month later, I was scanning through the applications to the DEA, FBI and Customs looking for someone who could do this. I needed someone smart, streetwise and courageous, who rode motorcycles and liked to party. It took another month to find the right man. Captain Andrew Killian of the United States Marine Corps via the University of Minnesota ROTC program.

I had his service record, and he was impressive. Two tours in Iraq, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. His application stated he would be out of the service in six weeks. Recently divorced, he listed riding his Harley among his hobbies. He was stationed at Quantico, a short drive from my office.

We met at a bar outside the gate, taking a booth where we could have some privacy. I laid out what I wanted him to do and why. "So let me get this straight, Frank." He took a drink of his beer. "You want me to work for you in secret. I won't get paid for years, I won't have any official status or support for the first two years while I become a patched member of an outlaw biker gang. After that I'll be a sworn agent with my badge in your office safe. I will be expected to do whatever the club asks, including illegal acts which will be retroactively pardoned by another letter in my file." I nodded. "I give up years of my life working a dangerous undercover assignment, getting close to people I will betray and imprison at the end. When it's all done, you give me a new identity, I get my life and my back pay, and go on to be a normal Federal agent again."

"Pretty much," I said. "For your own protection, I'll be the only person who knows who you are and what your true status is."

"And when you are dead or transferred?"

"I report only to the Director of the Los Angeles Bureau on this. No one else will know we have an agent in place, and there will be no paper trail for anyone to find. You will see and know no one else in law enforcement. For all anyone knows, you will be biker Andrew Killian, kicked out of the Marine Corps and bitter at the world."

He looked at me. "What do you mean, kicked out of the Marines?"

"If you do this, you have to do it right. Your Captain America routine won't fly with an outlaw gang." I looked right into his eyes. "You have a chance to make a real difference here. You could take down an outlaw gang and break up a drug smuggling ring that is flooding our streets with methamphetamine and other drugs. It's a risk for both of us, but mostly for you. The question is whether you have what it takes to immerse yourself completely into the biker life, to make yourself beyond question so you can get into the gang as a trusted member. Once you are in and beyond suspicion, you will officially but secretly become an agent, and work with me alone to build the case that will bring them all down."

He didn't think long. Guys like him lived to make a difference. He came home from deployment to find his wife had used the power of attorney to empty his bank accounts, sell his possessions and greet him at the airport with the divorce papers. The only reason he still had his Harley was because it was in storage; the local Harley dealer stored it free of charge while he was deployed. He had nothing holding him anywhere and nowhere to go. "I get to do it my way, and I only work for you?"

"Exactly. We sign these papers and it goes into my safe. Your recruitment and undercover work have been approved by the DEA Administrator and the Attorney General of California. I've spent two months looking for the right person, and I know it is you. What do you say, Andy?"

"What the fuck, it's not like I had a better plan," he said. We both signed the papers and I put them in my briefcase. "Now how do you get me out of the Marines?"

"I'll take care of it. Just remember, it all goes away eventually, and we have to do this because we want your story to ring true. If they talk to guys you served with, they'll get the same story. Nobody saw it coming until you crashed and burned."

He nodded. "What do I need to do?"

"Take this," I said as I pulled a pill out of my pocket. He didn't say anything, he just popped it into his mouth and washed it down with the rest of his beer. I smiled as I got up. "Stay here, get drunk and get in a fight. I'll take care of the rest."

"I'm a Marine, that's Tuesday," he said with a smile. "Get out of here, I've got a lot of drinking to do."

He was drummed out of the Marines by the end of the week. The fight got him arrested, the drug test came back positive, and a small amount of cocaine was found in his quarters. A week later, he was riding his motorcycle in California and looking for a way to make some money.

Andrew Killian (Sean Ryder's) POV

Los Angeles, 1993

I was three months in and starting to make some headway. I started hanging out at Sneaky Pete's, a biker bar near Long Beach, where the Satan's Riders liked to hang out. It took almost two months before I was invited to visit the clubhouse, and I had graduated to hang-around status. Today, we were riding out to the desert for some weapons training.

The Riders didn't talk much about how they made their money, but they had it. There was an old junkyard they used for targets, setting up cans and other targets. They carried pistols, but few had really learned how to shoot properly. Bikers need to learn how to shoot left-handed too, so they could shoot while riding if needed.

As a Marine, I sure as hell knew how to shoot. I used the opportunity to teach them properly, and by the end of the day they were much improved. "Come on, Drew," Smoke told me. "Let's go back to Pete's and have a few drinks."

I put my pistol and the extra ammunition in a saddlebag and followed them. Since I wasn't in the Club, I rode behind everyone else. We were just entering the outskirts of the city when the cops pulled us all over. I stopped next to Smoke's bike. "Shit, if they search me, I'm packing and with a gang," he said. "I'm on parole, I'll end up back inside for years."

"Run for it?"

"I have to."

I looked at the cops who were getting out of their cruisers. "Go, I'll hold them off." Both of us accelerated hard, steering between the oncoming cars and across the median to head the other way. The four policemen ran back to their cruisers, ignoring the rest of the group to go after us. We had no chance on the freeway, so I led Smoke off an exit. "As soon as they are out of sight, turn and kill your engine, I'll lead them away." The winding canyon roads were perfect, and Smoke turned hard into a driveway and parked behind an RV as I kept going. The cop cars caught sight of my bike and kept going.

I drove for another couple miles before the helicopter showed up and the roadblock stopped me. I braked hard and put the stand down, following their directions as I was taken to the ground and cuffed. I did five months for my little joyride, but Smoke got away. When I got out of prison, the Club was waiting me with my Harley and a cut. My prospecting time had begun.

Ch. 5

Three Tequila's POV

Orlando General Hospital

Harleigh had been tired after the visits from the doctor and the detectives and had fallen back asleep. Mongo poked his head back in the room and saw that and gestured for me to come out with him. "There's a guy here that wants to talk to us," he said.

We followed Detective Jackson as Detective Rosenberg spelled the DEA man standing guard on the room. That was another thing I didn't like; I was fine that she was protected, but I didn't like that the Club had been frozen out. The Steel Brotherhood was still reeling from the attacks, and we didn't like how we were being treated as a warring biker gang instead of a protective family. The Winter Park investigators made it clear they wanted all bikers out of their town, not just the Sons of Tezcatlipoca. We took the elevator to the third floor and went into a conference room. It was already full of suits, and it was clear the Feds were now involved just by the quality of them.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. and Mrs. Lane. I'm DEA Director Frank Grimes, and this is my team. Please sit." We took seats at the middle of the conference table. "I'm sorry for your loss. Sean and Kelly are old friends of mine, I knew them both in Los Angeles when they met."

"Thank you," I said. "Please call my husband Mongo, and I answer to Three Tequila. Mrs. Lane sounds like my mother. Now, what can you tell me about the men who did this?"

"Before we get to that, I'd like to know what you knew of Sean's activities in the DEA around the time your sister met him."

I thought back those two decades. "She didn't say much. I was still in Florida and she was in LA. She told me she met a guy she really liked, and he was an agent with the DEA on a case she was working. She never mentioned his name or what the case was. A few months later, she brings him out to visit. I find out that she had gotten married without telling me and was now Kelly Ryder, and this was her honeymoon! I don't know what I was more pissed about, that she didn't share anything with me, or that she married some suit with a desk job."

Frank started to laugh. "A suit?"

"Yeah. A clean-cut, safe choice suit who probably drove a Volvo for its safety record and played golf on weekends. Kelly had always had a weakness for bad boys, and I thought she'd sold out for the whole white picket fence, two kids and a dog thing. It wasn't until I saw him out of the suit and on a Harley that I figured out he was really her type. I was shocked to find out he had more tattoos than Mongo. The four of us spent a lot of time riding before they had to move to Quantico for his training."

"Did they ever talk about his work in California?"

"Just that it was undercover. Kelly got pregnant, they moved away, and we only saw each other a few times a year after that."

The Director opened a folder and passed us a few photos. The first was of a young Marine officer in his dress blues, the second was a newspaper article showing the same man in Iraq receiving a Bronze Star. "This is your brother-in-law before I recruited him. His name was Captain Andrew Killian when I met him, just before he left the Marine Corps." He went through the whole story of his recruitment and time undercover, as he became a patched member of the Satan's Riders and then the Prussians. He ended by saying how Sean was key in shutting down the drug-running operation of the Sons of Tezcatlipoca.

"Those Clubs aren't even active east of Texas, and the Brotherhood doesn't associate with them," Mongo said. "I've been in touch with all of the Chapters in the cities we both are in, none have any active beefs. We stay clear of them and they leave us alone."

"This isn't a Club beef that got him killed, this is personal. In the raid on the Sons, we didn't know the safe house had some of their Old Ladies in it. The leader's wife, Jose Correria, was killed in the attack. He blames Sean for his part and that's why he is dead."

"I need more than your word," Mongo said evenly. "The Club is taking this as a direct attack on our membership."

He looked at me. "You may not want to see this next part, Three Tequila. It's the crime scene photos from their house."

Mongo took my hand, and I looked at him. "I need to know," I said.

Five minutes later, I was throwing up in the trash bin and wondering why I had stayed in the room. It was worse than I imagined; my sister had been brutally tortured and raped while her husband watched. "Are you all right," my man said as he held my hair.

I just spit and nodded as the Director gave me a bottle of water.

When I sat up, the rest of the men had left the room. "I'm sorry I had to show you that, but I need you to know the full story," he said. "You confirmed to me that Sean never broke cover, never talked about his undercover work. When he was done, he had a new name, a new badge and was out of the firing line. Even during the prosecution, only a few people ever saw his face, and one was your sister."

"Then how did they find him?"

"That's what I have to find out. I have to head back to Los Angeles today, but I'm leaving men here to help protect her. My problem is that Harleigh is still alive, and the Sons of Tezcatlipoca always wipe out the entire bloodline of traitors. Jesus will not stop until she is dead, preferably in a fashion like what happened to her Mom."

"Have you picked him up yet?"

He shook his head. "We ran into a problem with that. He was pulled over by Los Angeles police an hour after the attack on your clubhouse. It was a positive identification, and it gave him an airtight alibi. We brought him in, he lawyered up, and we got nothing. If we can't get someone to confirm he ordered the killings, we have zero case against him. With him free, I'm very concerned about your niece."

I was horrified at the thought. "Can't you protect her?" Mongo sat back at the table and pulled me into his lap.

Frank sat back in his chair. "Until she gets out of the hospital, probably. She's the only eyewitness to what happened to her parents. This doesn't end until we take down the Club and put Jesus back in prison forever."

"And maybe not then," Mongo said. "They won't react well to her being alive, or the fact that they lost three men at our Clubhouse. I need the cops out of there and our weapons back."

"I can't help you, that's a local thing. Use your lawyers." He let out a smirk. "I find it hard to believe you haven't found a way to replenish your armory, despite the police presence."

"We're just law-abiding citizens who believe in armed self-defense, Mr. Director." He leaned forward. "Can you get her into Witness Protection?"

"I could, but I have concerns," he said. "Sean did everything he was supposed to do. He didn't talk about it, he and Kelly assumed their new identities and remained far away. I don't know how he was found, but they did. The Sons are tight with the Cartels, and we think the Cartel intelligence people have penetrated our security somehow. We've lost two other former deep-cover agents, one DEA and one FBI, since Sean was killed; one in Cleveland and one in Seattle. The deaths were the same, brutally tortured with their families and their faces marked with the Eye." My stomach rolled. If this was true, we couldn't trust the Feds to keep her safe. "I've got to find and plug the leak before I trust it to keep your niece safe. Your club needs to protect her. Don't tell me where or how, just find a place to keep her safe until I tell you it is over." "What about the hospital?"

"All I can do is keep an officer at the room. I'm leaving two agents here to keep the investigation going, but the security is going to be local. Do what you have to do." He got up and came around to us, holding his hand out. "Sean was a hero and a friend. Kelly was a good woman. I'm going to find these fuckers and put them away, you take care of Harleigh."

"We will," I said.

There was a knock on the door and one of the DEA agents stuck his head in. "Sir, we got the DNA results back on the fourth shooter."

"Do we have an identification?"

"No sir. It wasn't in the system, but we compared it to Jesus anyway. The lab says it was a familial match, a paternal one in this case."

"What?"

"It was Jesus' son, Jose. We're putting out a warrant for him now."

The Director walked to the door. "I have to go. We'll be in touch."

Mongo pushed me up. "Go back to her, I've got to take care of a few things. We need to have Church tonight to talk about this."

He walked me back to the room, where I nodded at the policeman and walked inside. Harleigh was still sleeping, her arms and the cast on top of the blanket. I sat in the chair, looking at my only remaining family, and held her hand as I cried.

No matter what, I would protect her.

Mongo's POV

Once I had Three T back in the room and had verified Harleigh was all right, I walked quickly to the lobby and turned on my phone. The first call was to the Clubhouse, where Tripod answered. I filled him in on the news about Jesus' son, Jose, being identified as the fourth man. "Make sure we get his photo out to everyone, and send it to all the Chapters as well," I said. "We need to find this fucker and quick."

"What if we find him?"

"He killed two patched members, we do what we have to do," I said vaguely. "Any other news?"

"The Pensacola chapter called ten minutes ago. One of their guys spotted about two dozen Sons of Tezcatlipoca in their cuts heading east on Interstate Ten. They have a guy following them at a distance without his cut on, they are coordinating with the Tallahassee chapter so we can keep eyes on them until they stop." Fucking fuckers, this was going to get bad if they came to Central Florida. "What do you want us to do?"

"Keep the Clubhouse locked down, nobody goes out in their cuts unless they have a brother with them," I said. "Pass the word to the Ladies, have them bring the families to the Clubhouse and send guys out to stock up on what we need. I want everyone inside tonight."

"Is that really necessary? The cops are all over the place still."

"I'll tell everyone at Church, set that up for eight tonight. I'm calling the Regional President, we need some backup."

"That bad?"

"Worse." I hung up, finding the contact for Eclipse. He had been Regional President of the Brotherhood for five years now and lived up in Atlanta, where he had retired and sold his restaurant delivery business so he could ride more. He was called "Eclipse" because the brother was so big, he blocked all the light. "Eclipse, it's Mongo. I've got a problem."