Above Ground. Don Easton

people. He thought of his own life, the past eleven years of which he had been a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Last year he had been transferred from Manitoba to work on the Intelligence Unit in Vancouver.

      That was when he had met Jack Taggart, a man who was both his partner and his boss. He was also his best friend. Working with Jack was not easy. During his first shift with Jack, Danny had been attacked from behind by a junkie with a knife. Later, both he and his family had been targeted for assassination by a splinter group of bikers from Satans Wrath. This group had been led by a corrupt Crown prosecutor by the name of Sidney Bishop.

      When the first assassination attempt had failed, Bishop had ordered the bikers to set up an ambush. The bikers were subsequently killed in a shootout, but Bishop fled the country. Danny ended up with a 40 percent loss of vision in one eye as a result of bullet fragments from the skirmish. He looked at one tombstone and did a double take before realizing the name he saw was O’Brien. He gave a wry smile. Not even close to O’Reilly!

      His thoughts brought him back to his family. His daughter, Tiffany, was now fourteen months old. The latest arrival to their family, James Patrick O’Reilly, was two months old. Susan was a great mom. An even greater wife. Working with Jack does make you appreciate life ... as long as you’re still alive to appreciate it.

      Danny glanced at Jack. He’s been with me through a lot of scrapes. Then again, he’s also the asshole who got me into them!

      Jack was a specialist as an undercover operator and had received special police schooling for the task. At the moment, Jack was clean-shaven. Although Danny was now sporting a goatee, he was not a trained operator. His job was usually to remain in the background and try to keep Jack alive when things went wrong — or to identify the right culprits if Jack was killed. Not an easy task.

      Satans Wrath was one of the top organized crime families in the world. Things had changed since the seventies. Long past were the days when they were just a bunch of thugs on wheels. Control of the drug industry brought immense wealth and sophistication to the bikers. The club expanded into twenty-one different countries. Now it was one of the most dangerous and insulated organized crime families in the world. Partly, Satans Wrath could thank the police. Years of police work and international cooperation had decimated much of the mafia, and Satans Wrath had been more than willing to step in and take over.

      In Vancouver, police intelligence units estimated that Satans Wrath had ninety-two members split between the east-side and west-side chapters. There was a president in charge of each chapter. The national president of the club, Damien, also lived in Vancouver.

      With approximately ten hard-core criminal associates connected with each member, in Vancouver alone Damien was in control of an army of approximately one thousand. Across Canada, there were twenty-one other chapters, all with their own armies — and no shortage of recruits.

      Satan’s Wrath was actively seeking recruits at the moment. Competition was deadly. The Indos were of particular concern to Satans Wrath, followed by Asian gangs. At the moment, the Indos were still fighting amongst themselves to gain a share of the drug market, but it would be only a matter of time before the pecking order was established and the Indos turned their attention to Satans Wrath.

      It was Satans Wrath that Jack and Danny focused their attention on, and Lance was the key to their success. Satans Wrath was importing tonnes of cocaine from a vicious drug lord in Columbia by the name of Carlos. Lance had let Jack and Danny know about the intended arrival of the last ship, with a cargo that included one metric tonne of cocaine. To divert suspicion from Lance, Jack had tipped off a friend in the American Drug Enforcement Agency, who had then seized the ship before it ever reached Canada.

      Lance, along with two others, had tried to kill Jack once, believing that he was a police informant. Jack had escaped with Danny’s help. Danny grimaced when he thought of how close Jack had come to dying. That was one of the first lessons he had learned from Jack about seeing the big picture.

      Danny would have arrested those involved. Jack had another idea. He knew that Lance was a family man with four children and a lot to lose. He used this as leverage to convince Lance to become their informant. Having an informant in Satans Wrath was almost unheard of.

      Unfortunately, the same was not true in reverse. Satans Wrath routinely developed informants of their own. In short, Lance was in an extremely precarious situation and Jack insisted that Lance’s real name never be used. He was simply referred to as our friend. It also left Jack and Danny in a position where morality had to be carefully weighed and sorted out. It was a task that Danny found difficult. How much evil do you allow on the prospect of stopping a larger evil? There was something else that had bothered Danny since he had begun to work with Jack. The law and morality may not coincide when your own family is threatened.

      Danny thought back to the ambush attempt on their lives and the biker who had threatened his family. It was someone he could have arrested ... but didn’t. Danny was lucky. Lucky to have survived the ambush and lucky that Connie Crane in the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team purposely ignored evidence indicating exactly how the biker had died.

      Danny had become a changed man since working with Jack. His understanding of right and wrong was now a tangled mess. Jack had brought him into a world where the rules were different and the laws of society were held in contempt. A world where the strong murder the weak. To survive, you have to be strong. If you’re not strong, you die ... or someone you love dies. Jack had survived for a long time. Danny hoped he would too.

      Lance nodded as they approached, then said, “Got some news for ya that ought to make ya happy. Our chapter had our elections. I made it. You’re now lookin’ at the new president of the west-side chapter.”

      “Excellent,” said Jack, giving him a thumbs-up. “Way to go. Next thing you know you’ll be national president.”

      “Not a chance,” chuckled Lance. “I know my limitations. Damien is a lot smarter than I am. I don’t know anybody that could replace him and do as good a job, including the guys back east.”

      “How did it go with us taking down the labs today? Any heat?”

      “No heat, but you screwed up. You missed two of ’em.”

      “We tried. I think they were tipped.”

      “Warned ya. Told ya you had a narc talkin’ to the club.”

      “Would be nice if you found out who. We had over sixty cops involved.”

      “You two go to all seven places yourselves?”

      “No, Danny and I just coordinated and sat back. My name is on all the search warrants for providing the information, but we try to keep out of court as much as possible.”

      “Heard on the news you arrested thirteen. Word is you got Petro.”

      “He received the money. Case on him is weak but we charged him anyway.”

      “Serves him right. He should have stuck to arson. That’s his specialty.”

      “Explains the nickname. We also nailed a striker. He collected the coin from the labs and gave it to Petro.”

      “Silent Sam?”

      “Yes. Charges on him should stick.”

      Lance nodded.

      “You’ve been doing well,” continued Jack. “Still no problems with that ship being taken down in San Diego?”

      “Not a bit. Your buddy in the DEA did it right. What with all the security for terrorism these days, everybody figures the cops in the U.S. just got lucky.”

      “I told you he would protect you. I wouldn’t have used him if I didn’t trust him.”

      “Yeah, well, I guess you were right.”

      “You told us that Damien fronted half the money for that shipment — $3 million U.S. He must be a little agitated.”

      “He did get a lot of heat from