Under and Alone

Under and Alone is a book written by undercover ATF agent William Queen and published in 2005 which chronicles his infiltration of motorcycle gang the Mongol Nation.

The Book

By 1998 Queen, a motorcycle enthusiast, was a 20 year veteran ATF agent. That year a “confidential informant” contacted Queen's boss, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols. This was to become one of the most extensive undercover operations inside a motorcycle gang by American law enforcement.

From Random House:

Nor did Queen suspect that he would penetrate the gang so successfully that he would become a fully “patched-in” member, eventually rising through their ranks to the office of treasurer, where he had unprecedented access to evidence of their criminal activity. After Queen spent twenty-eight months as “Billy St. John,” the bearded, beer-swilling, Harley-riding gang-banger, the truth of his identity became blurry, even to himself.

During his initial “prospecting” phase, Queen was at the mercy of crank-fueled criminal psychopaths who sought to have him test his mettle and prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling (and doing) drugs, to arms trafficking, stealing motorcycles, driving getaway cars, and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol “ol’ lady” after a particularly brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend.

Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, for whom planning cop killings and gang rapes were business as usual, Queen also came to see the genuine camaraderie they shared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from family, his friends, and ATF colleagues, the Mongols felt like the only family he had left. “I had no doubt these guys genuinely loved Billy St. John and would have laid down their lives for him. But they wouldn’t hesitate to murder Billy Queen.”

From Queen’s first sleight of hand with a line of methamphetamine in front of him and a knife at his throat, to the fearsome face-off with their decades-old enemy, the Hell’s Angels (a brawl that left three bikers dead), to the heartbreaking scene of a father ostracized at Parents’ Night because his deranged-outlaw appearance precluded any interaction with regular citizens, Under and Alone is a breathless, adrenaline-charged read that puts you on the street with some of the most dangerous men in America and with the law enforcement agents who risk everything to bring them in.

Movie

Under and Alone is currently being made into a feature film directed by Gregor Jordan and starring Mel Gibson as William Queen. It is expected to debute in U.S. theaters in 2008.

Random House, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-6084-2

Books On Tape/Books On CD, A Division Of Random House, Inc. ISBN 1-4159-3488-6