As luck would have it, the plan worked like a dream. After a brief period of eerie silence, a flurry of kicks and clouts impacted against the unprotected door panel and it quickly gave way. Half a dozen hands appeared and frantically tore at the edges of the hole to make it larger, a split second later a head poked its way through. The head turned slowly upwards, just in time to see the twin barrels of the shotgun swing up to meet it. Link fired at point blank range. The face vanished leaving a cloud of red mist and a scream of agony in its wake.
Link immediately dropped to one knee, reloaded, poked the gun through the hole in the door and let rip with a second shot. This time a jet of white-hot flame shot out of the top of the gun and the whole weapon fell apart in his hand. He reeled back, clutching at his scorched flesh as the head and shoulders of a second Ratae came crawling through the hole. Boone swung down on the head of the invader with his pickaxe handle using all his strength. The man’s body went limp, blocking the gap for those behind.
Out in the street, they could still hear Scout screaming at the top of his lungs. ‘Get in there! Fucking get in there!’ seemingly oblivious to the fact that at least two of his men had already been badly hurt. Such was his power that the members of his club would rather risk injury during the attack than face his wrath for refusing to take part.
The Ratae now turned their attention to the large bay window to the right of the front door, frantically trying to pry off the barricades. Link and Boone fought them off as best they could, using their weapons like battering rams to smash into the faces and bodies of anyone who got too close. The other Pagans in the living room joined in but they knew it was impossible to stop them all.
With their attention distracted, Boone and the others did not see the body blocking the doorway being pulled free. Almost immediately, dozens of Ratae began kicking and throwing their weight against the frame again and again until it split and splintered open. Dozens of enemy came streaming through into the building. The first few were taken out by furious hits from bats and bars but more and more followed, clambering over the bodies of their fallen comrades and the Pagans soon found themselves in imminent danger of being overrun.
Everything and anything became a weapon in the desperate battle to hold their ground. Chairs, crash helmets, fire extinguishers, table legs, even hi-fi speakers were all thrown and swung and crashed against the invaders but it was no good, the sheer weight of numbers meant there was nothing they could do. Abandoning their outer posts, the Pagans made a hasty retreat upstairs to their own private Alamo.
The Ratae followed close behind and it was only now that an element of sheer folly in their plan of attack became clear. The narrow staircase on the left side of the living room was only wide enough for one person to ascend at a time, but the landing that overlooked it allowed up to half a dozen Pagans to simultaneously attack anyone making their way up.
The first Ratae managed to use sheer momentum to barge his way past those at the top and did not stop until he found himself in the bathroom that lay directly on from the stairway. Inside and surrounded by Pagans, he realised he was in serious trouble and took desperate measures to get out of there, turning around and making a perfect swan dive headfirst down the stairs in order to escape.
A second wave of Ratae made a charge, led by a man with a shotgun of his own. Link was desperately looking for a weapon and eventually grabbed the first thing to hand – an old manual typewriter – heaving it down the stairs towards the mob surging towards him. The lead Ratae ducked, but not far enough. The metal bottom edge of the machine caught him just behind the forehead and sliced off a neat strip of skin and hair all the way to his crown. The scalped man fell back, eyes wide, screaming in agony. Another headed towards Boone who hacked at him with the samurai sword before kicking him back down the stairs.
Other Pagans closed in around the landing, raining down blows on the fresh waves of Ratae with unmitigated ferocity, driving them back time and again. It didn’t matter how many of them there were: the narrow staircase gave the Pagans a supreme tactical advantage. Like the 300 Spartans defending the pass at Thermopylae, the superior numbers of the enemy made little difference. There was no way the Ratae were ever going to be able to break through.
Scout switched tactics, pulling his men back to regroup so Boone and some of the others moved to the front bedroom, overlooking the street. A sea of Ratae heaved about on the road in front of them, loading shotguns and preparing petrol bombs.
The Pagans had Molotov cocktails of their own already prepared, along with weighty chunks of stone and brick with which they could pelt the enemy. Rabbi lit the fuses of two of the petrol bombs then handed them to Boone before lighting two more for himself. Boone stepped forward but then did nothing, caught in a moment of bizarre illogicality. He couldn’t work out what to do. If he threw the petrol bomb it would explode inside the room as the windows were closed. He couldn’t open the windows because both his hands were full. At the same time, he couldn’t smash the windows because this was the clubhouse and he’d be pulled up at the next meeting and forced to explain himself. He’d have to pay for the damage and might even be busted back down to prospect.
He felt as though he was standing there forever, but in reality it was only a fraction of a second before the answer suddenly came to him. Just smash the fucking window, you fucking idiot. Boone kicked out the glass and threw down the first bottle, sending some of the Ratae scattering. Up until that point the attackers had not paid much attention to the upstairs windows at the front of the building, but all that was about to change.
As Boone and Rabbi rained their liquid fire down into the street, the attackers replied with petrol bombs of their own. Little wonder that confused eyewitnesses would later report that the Ratae were throwing petrol bombs and that the Pagans were catching them and throwing them back.
In truth, the Ratae’s petrol bombs were having a devastating effect. All around Boone and the others, furniture and fittings began to burst into flames. The enemy then began using their shotguns to fire up at the windows. Boone saw one Ratae take careful aim and sidestepped to safety just in time. But Rabbi was too slow. Boone watched as the blast tore through the open window, passed directly through the middle of Rabbi’s body and ripped a massive hole in the plaster of the wall directly behind him. Rabbi had been shot. He was a dead man. He had to be a dead man.
Rabbi stood motionless in the window frame for a second, his lower jaw hanging down slackly. He slowly turned to Boone and then shrugged. Boone stared at the spot where he had seen the shotgun pellets pass through the body of his friend: there was nothing there. There wasn’t a mark on him. It made no sense. Boone had been so certain that Rabbi had just been shot in the middle of the chest – the mark was still there in the wall behind him – but now he could only assume that somehow he had been mistaken.
There was no time to dwell: two more petrol bombs landed in the room and the fire intensified, flashing over the ceiling and threatening to engulf all those inside. The wooden shelves, chest of drawers and even the state-of-the-art music system were now all ablaze. Boone and the others made a run for the door and once they were all safely through, he slammed it shut to prevent the fire spreading into the hallway. As he gripped the handle, he could feel it pulling away from him as the diminishing oxygen levels in the room created a suction effect. Boone held on even more tightly, well aware that if the door were to spring open now it would create a backdraft that would send a fireball raging through the entire property and kill them all.
But the suction quickly became more powerful and Boone found himself having to hold on with both hands. It was only when the handle started to turn back and forth that he realised what was really going on. He let go of the door and it sprang open and out came Tank who had somehow been left behind when everyone else had made their hasty exit.
Fires were burning everywhere now and the whole of the upstairs of the house was filled with thick, acrid smoke. The Pagans had no choice but to go
to the one place the flames had yet to reach – the downstairs living room. As they cautiously descended they were brought up short by a deafening explosion that echoed around them. It sounded like a massive gunshot but no one could see where it had come from and no one seemed to have been hit. It would only be much later that they would realise the sound had been caused by the intense heat of the fire cracking the entire side wall of the house.
The Pagans gasped when they reached the base of the stairs. It wasn’t just that the room looked as though a tropical storm had torn through it, it was the fact that there was not one single member of the Ratae anywhere. It seemed too good to be true. The Pagans carefully checked around all the corners and alcoves, expecting an ambush to be launched at any moment, but it soon became obvious that their attackers had fled. The battle had lasted a couple of minutes at most and ended almost as quickly as it had started.
A siren sounded in the street outside as a solitary patrol car arrived on the scene. It wasn’t exactly a proportionate response. The attack on the clubhouse just happened to coincide with a major diplomatic event in the Warwickshire area which had stretched the capabilities of the local police force – the smallest in all of England – to its absolute limit. When dozens of terrified neighbours and passers-by began calling 999 to report what was going on in George Street, that single car was all that was available.
The two unarmed officers – one young, one middle aged – who emerged from the vehicle were completely out of their depth: nothing in their experience or training had prepared them for anything like this. The eyewitness reports had described a scene that seemed more suited to the Lebanon than sleepy Leamington Spa. As well as the shotguns and the petrol bombs, there had also been reports of at least one man running into the street with his hair on fire. But as far as the police could make out, the whole area was now deserted. The officers had no real idea of what had taken place, who had been involved or what had happened to any of them.
Unwilling and unable to enter the still burning building themselves, they gingerly called through the smashed-in doorway for any inhabitants to come out and make themselves known. The thirteen Pagans remained out of sight behind the stairwell until the police officers moved away to investigate the back of the building.
Boone and the others saw their chance and slipped out of the house, splitting up and heading off in different directions. As Boone rounded the first corner, he ran into the younger of the two police officers coming the other way. Fear and apprehension were etched into the man’s face – he was clearly having trouble taking it all in.
‘Who are you? What’s your name?’ the officer asked.
‘What do you want to know that for? I haven’t done anything. I’ve been down the pub.’
‘Didn’t you just come out of that house?’
‘Nah, I was in the pub. Why, what’s going on here?’
Overwhelmed and under-resourced, the officers gathered up the scattered Pagans as best they could and took a note of all their names, not that it would do them much good as none of the gang gave a genuine one. The bikers were then sent on their way as the officers waited for the fire brigade and backup to arrive.
* * *
Thirteen may be unlucky for some but it turned out to be an extremely lucky number for the Pagans that night. None of them had been seriously injured though they knew without a doubt that the same could not be said of the Ratae. The clubhouse had been all but destroyed but at the end of the day that was just a building. The club was the important thing and the Pagans had proved themselves.
In retrospect the Ratae never stood much of a chance. It wasn’t just the layout of the building but also the attitude of the Pagans that put them at a massive disadvantage. Boone and the others had not expected to survive. They had all been terrified. Boone would later believe what made them so dangerous was the fact that none of them believed they were going to come out of it alive. It meant they had nothing to lose. Once they had accepted that fact, they had no fear; they had nothing to lose.
Instead of backup, the next cars to arrive on the scene brought the remaining Pagans whose eyes and mouths immediately fell wide open with shock. ‘Jesus Christ! What the fuck happened here?’ they gasped in unison.
As more police officers and other emergency workers began to arrive on the scene all the Pagans gathered together and met up at Boone’s house. They sat down, smoking, drinking and even laughing about what had happened, taking apart each and every moment and trying to work out exactly why things had gone their way.
All of them felt a certain exhilaration to have survived it, the same way that soldiers who have been in the midst of intense battles feel when they realise they are still alive even though their friends and colleagues are not.
The Ratae had raised the stakes and the Pagans had no choice but to raise them in return. This time round there would be no mercy, no hesitation. In the space of a few days the violence had escalated out of all control and it was now blatantly obvious that it wouldn’t end until someone was dead. For their next move the Pagans were going to head deep into the heart of enemy territory. And once they found one of the Ratae, they were going to kill him.
KILLZONE
The hours that followed the attack on the George Street clubhouse were filled with a heady mixture of adrenaline, anxiety and anticipation. The thirteen Pagans who had successfully fought off the Ratae repeatedly related their experiences to the fifteen or so other club members who had failed to arrive in time. With no serious injuries on their side and the police so clueless they were unable to press charges on anyone, the Pagans that had missed the house brawl were eager to see some action for themselves.
Thanks to a fledgling friendship with the Pariah MC, the Pagans knew the exact location of the Ratae clubhouse in the centre of Leicester, but had no plans to launch a frontal assault. The Ratae themselves had already proved the folly of such a move and if anything, their clubhouse was likely to be even more heavily fortified than George Street.
What the Pagans needed were the addresses of individual Ratae. That way they would retain the element of surprise and be able to pick off the members of the gang one by one. But it wasn’t an easy task. In the pre-internet age few clubs had any kind of public presence. The regular inter-gang hostilities that had erupted since the start of the eighties meant that most members were keen to keep their personal lives as low profile as possible.
When a tip came through about a lone Ratae living in a small house in Hillmorton, Northamptonshire, the Pagans set off in a multi-vehicle convoy to confront him in the early hours of the following morning. It was overkill by any standard – it seemed as though every member of the gang wanted to be there. No one wanted to miss out on a golden opportunity to take revenge.
It took less than an hour for the group to make the journey to the small village. Having left their vehicles just outside the perimeter they armed themselves with a couple of shotguns they had managed to scare up along with some pick axe handles and Bowie knives, vaulted the fence and made their way up to the main entrance. They kicked the door off its hinges and stormed inside, only to find the whole place deserted.
Pumped up with aggression and spoiling for a fight, the disappointment was palpable for many of those there. By the time they returned to the house in Coventry that was serving as a temporary Pagan HQ, they were itching for the next opportunity to present itself.
In the meantime the police were pursuing their one and only lead from the clubhouse battle: the piece of scalp with long dark brown hair attached was being kept in a jar at Leamington police station and officers had launched a national manhunt to find out who it had belonged to.
The Pagans watched the developing story with interest but then had a lucky break that put them back on track with the real business of the day. The registration number of one of the vehicles that had driven the Ratae away on the night of the attack had been noted and, through the same friendly contact at the DVLA who had helped them out before, the
Pagans had managed to obtain an address. This time round the property was a small farm holding in Brackley, Northamptonshire, and just before dawn on the following morning, the gang began preparing to mobilise for a second time.
By now Boone, Rabbi, Dozer and Tank had been awake for seventy-two hours straight. At first the sheer adrenaline buzz had prevented them from getting any sleep; then the need to have guards watching over the properties and homes of Pagan officers in case of revenge attacks meant they had not been allowed to rest.
It was Link’s birthday so Club President Caz presented him with a large bag of premium-quality marijuana and ordered him and the others to relax and enjoy themselves. ‘We’ve got more than enough people already. We don’t need you on this job,’ he told them. ‘You can all stand down.’
It seemed like a good idea at first but Tank and Rabbi were still eager to be part of the attack. They argued the point with Switch, the club’s sergeant-at-arms and the man in charge of all matters of discipline. He backed his president, ordering the men to head home and get some rest. Still eager to get involved, Rabbi waited until Switch and Caz weren’t looking then sneaked into the back of one of the vans that was heading to Brackley.
By the time Boone and the others noticed what he had done, the vehicle had already pulled away. Eager to share in the latest adventure, the three managed to squeeze into one of the last cars leaving for Northampton. If Rabbi was going to see some more action, they demanded their fair share too.
Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs Page 4
