Free Heavy Duty Attitude by Iain Parke

behind them.
Wibble seemed to either be oblivious to it, or to be letting it slide off him as if it was beneath him. That seemed to me to be a dangerous game to play. If you were really secure, distain could be a powerful weapon against your enemies, something that said to them and others that they were of so little account that nothing they could say or do was worth notice or action.
    But on the other hand, ignoring insolence, insubordination and indiscipline in the ranks could easily be seen as a sign of weakness. That Wibble was too insecure to take action and that the local charter was flexing its muscles.
    But before I could think any more about it I felt a stiffening of anticipation sweep through The Brethren around me as they fell completely silent at the first distant sound of an unmistakable noise.
It was the rumble of a large column of approaching outlaw Harleys.
    What the hell was this? I wondered to myself as out of the corner of my eye I saw Brethren hands freeing for action. The UK Brethren were all here I knew, so unless it was a big overseas contingent coming in, this wasn’t going to be more of their brothers who were turning up.
    Suddenly the single packing made sense. Oh God I thought, they’ve been expecting something, as nervously I started to compute likely escape routes from what was now clearly a Brethren welcoming committee waiting for these new arrivals, whoever they were, and wondered how easily I could fade backwards into the crowd if the bikers made a rush forward.
Because if it wasn’t more Brethren then it had to be someone else, some other club.
     
And in the sort of numbers that seemed to be coming from the rapidly growing noise it wasn’t any small local club coming to show their respects. This was going to be a large pack. From one of the other majors, it had to be.
     
Was one of the other big six coming to gatecrash one of The Brethren’s flagship events?
    If so, this would mean only one thing.
Trouble.
People would get hurt, I thought. And that could very well include me.
*
     
There was a collective gasp of breath as the first of the approaching bikes crested the lip of the site and pulled in through the gate.
     
A blue and white painted Harley.
     
I and everyone else on this field immediately recognised those colours and what they represented. And what this meant, right here, right now. The Rebels, The Brethren’s sworn enemies amongst the other senior clubs, were riding in to The Brethren’s flagship event.
     
And The Brethren were standing there, arranged in a rough semi circle with Wibble out front towards the centre.
     
And me beside him.
    Jesus, I thought. The Rebels? The number one enemies, invading The Brethren’s number one event. This was going to be serious trouble, civilians were going to be in the firing line and I was right in the middle of what was going to, in the next few minutes, turn into a war zone.
    The Rebels were all single packing as well I realised, as their bikes pulled up in a rank parallel to the row of Brethren Harleys. There were no old ladies along for a party day out with them either. This was a group here about serious business.
    As their engines coughed and died and the dismounting Rebels began to arrange themselves beside their bikes into a line facing the two packs of Brethren, there was absolute silence all around me.
    I recognised Stu, The Rebel’s president, from a photograph. I’d never managed to get him to agree to an interview. If anything, The Rebels were even more tight lipped when it came to journalists than The Brethren.
    Stu took off his gloves and calmly stuffed them into his lid which he perched on the end of his handlebars before he turned to face the waiting Brethren. He was tall and slim, with sharp, swarthy, almost French looking features, a neat clipped goatee beard and dark grey hair pulled back into a ponytail that streamed down his back to between his shoulder blades.
    I had a sudden vision of how he must have looked