"If the locals don't follow orders, they die. Once the round-up starts, anything that doesn't move when it's told to, dies. Tell them once, then kill them. But that's only after the special squads are in position. Silence until we turn on the sirens. Then it's straight ahead and we don't stop until the island is ours."

Horse raised his arms to quiet the cheer.

"Remember this," he commanded. "We stay together, everyone does his job, we can't lose. But if anyone pulls some chicken shit trick, anyone gets in a hard place and thinks he can surrender, you think about what I'm going to tell you now.

"We killed four guards to get to the docks. We killed those crazy Jesus-people out in the desert. And we're gonna kill every last hero that tries to stop us on the island. That's murder-by-ambush, that's conspiracy-to-murder, that's murder of witnesses. That's mandatory death sentence, for all of us.

"Some chicken shit thinks he's going to bargain his way out of anything, the most he can hope for is life. Life in a little concrete room. I been inside, I know. So do the chicken shit a favor and kill him. Do us all a favor, kill him. Do we all understand!"

Horse let the bikers cheer and shout. "Outlaws forever!" they yelled. He pushed open the trailer door and jumped down to the barge deck. He stood at the barge's safety ropes for a minute, watching the lights of the Harbor and Long Beach recede.

Then he went into the second trailer. There he answered the questions of twenty more Outlaws, gave them the same speech as the first group. Same seething threats, same encouragement, same venom.

The voices of seventy-two Outlaws had faded, and Horse needed a fix. He wandered the deck of the barge, found shelter from the wind and salt-spray behind the wheels of a semitrailer, and unwrapped his kit. He heard the shuffling of heavy boots above him as he cooked the heroin with the flame of his butane lighter. He pushed up the sleeve of his jacket, tied off, found a vein under all the scars. Horse had been an addict for the past ten years, his habit costing him hundreds of dollars a day. The rush still lifted him to heaven.