It's unclear whether the Bandidos are, as the feds continue to insist, an organized-crime enterprise, but it is likely that they tolerate a minority of members who are criminals and who use their brothers' loyalty as cover.

More of a boast than an admission of criminal intent, вЂњone-percenterвЂќ is a reference to a long-ago line attributed to the American Motorcyclist Association that 99 percent of motorcycle owners are decent, law-abiding citizens. But as вЂњone-percenters,вЂќ the Bandidos also exist in a category apart from most other clubs. Most bikers today, in Texas and elsewhere, are community-minded law-and-order Republicans-the less affluent, more racially diverse descendants of the Elks and the Knights of Columbus. вЂњThe вЂ™60s are over,вЂќ one Bandido insisted to me. Jeff Pike, the club's publicity-shy current president, has held office-mostly quietly-since 2005. But there hasn't been a major Bandidos bust since 2011, when 39 club members and associates were arrested in Dallas, San Antonio, and Denver on gun and drug charges. During the 1970s, вЂ™80s, and вЂ™90s, the Bandidos did everything the feds continue to accuse them of doing today, including trafficking in narcotics and prostitution. Chambers's three successors were all taken down by the feds for a variety of offenses. They abducted two drug dealers who'd cheated the Bandidos on a meth deal, forced the dealers to dig their own graves in the Texas desert, then shot them and set fire to their bodies. They were founded in 1966 by an ex-Marine and Vietnam vet named Don Chambers, whose road name was Mother and who led the club until 1972, when he and two other men were convicted of double murder. That's my personal fucking opinion on those stupid asses. The Cossacks are a bunch of inbred corn-fed dumb fucking hillbillies. Jon вЂњHondoвЂќ Moses, Cossacks, Hill County chapter And virtually every biker I spoke with last June and July-Cossacks, Bandidos, members of multiple other clubs, 22 bikers in total-believes that the real blame for all the dead bodies belongs with the Waco police. Nevertheless, all the Cossacks interviewed by GQ for this story insist they showed up that morning to make peace. It's an insular and suspicious world, especially in Texas, especially now, in the hazy aftermath of the bloodiest day in the often sensationalized history of American biker clubs. Infrequent, but growing in brutality.ДЄs a general rule, bikers are not big talkers. But things had been ugly between the two rivals for a while-fistfights, knife fights, roadside beatings. In fact, May 17 marked only the second time in memory any of the club's members had ever attended a COC meeting for years, they'd refused to join the organization-a direct rebuke to the Bandidos, Texas's most powerful motorcycle club and one of the nation's largest, with more than 2,000 members. Then again, they have virtually zero history of Cossack participation.

These bimonthly confederation meetings, known as COC meetings, are mostly arcane discussions of motorcycle-rights issues.

Biker gang hide out