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With your pulse racing, you focus on the approaching bikers. They ride machines bedecked with a strange symbol: a priest or some other holy man, dressed in flowing white robes, with a halo above his head. It looks a curiously pious symbol for a clan to adopt, until you remember that before ‘The Day’, the name of the professional football team based in New Orleans was the ‘Saints’. Suddenly you realize that this pack of riders, some 400–500 strong, are the New Orleans clan that Mad Dog Michigan sent for. It would be disastrous for the convoy to run head-on into a group of this size, and you hurry back to the colony as quickly as you can to break the bad news.
With the New Orleans clan approaching from the north, a large Mexican clan crossing the border to the south, and the threat of a Maverick ambush to the west, the prospects of reaching El Paso unscathed now look decidedly unpromising. With no time to discuss the situation at length, the convoy reverts to the original plan: to stay on Interstate 10 and approach El Paso from the east. It is the shortest, most direct route, even though there is a very real chance of falling prey to a Maverick ambush.
