They wore denim jeans and black leather jackets studded with chrome, steel-toed motorcycle boots, Nazi helmets, Confederate caps, even Stetsons. They all carried weapons: assault rifles, submachine guns, revolvers, pistols, knives, machetes. On the back of every jacket was a grinning skull winged with flames — The Outlaws. All of them were male.

"Line the bikes up!" yelled Horse, pacing the loading ramp. "Over there, line them over there. Keep this ramp clear. Chief! Form everyone up. Charlie, break the locks off those trailers on the boat. Where's Turk? Turk!"

"Something wrong?" The dull-eyed ex-merchant marine ambled up to Horse. Turk was a balding giant with thick features, huge arms and shoulders falling about his beer belly. His ten-shot pistol-grip Ithaca riot shotgun hung in front of him, the sling looped behind his neck, his hands folded over the receiver.

"You know your job. Get in that tug, get that engine going."

"Ah, yeah. Was just gonna do that..."

"Three minutes! Three minutes and then we're on our way."

Aboard the barge, Charlie began to throw the boxes and crates from the interior of a semitrailer to the bikers on the dock. A line of bikers passed the freight from the dock, hand-to-hand up the loading ramp at the back of the semitrailer on land. As the last of the motorcycles came down the plank ramps, bikers threw the freight into the empty trailer.

Other bikers unloaded the gang's heavy weapons from the second semitrailer. It had taken the Outlaws months to assemble the contents of these nylon and oilskin cases. They had looted gun-shops, burglarized the homes of collectors, traded drugs for what they could not buy: M-60 machine guns, Marlin .444s with telescopic sights, grenades. A raid on the desert bunker of a radical Christian sect gained LAAW (Light Anti-Armor Weapon) rockets still in cases marked for shipment to Korea, .50 caliber Browning machine guns, and light mortars. It had taken three pickup trucks to carry away the weapons and ammunition. Now the weapons were bound for Santa Catalina Island.