Dirty Harry 01 - Duel For Cannons (20 page)

Sweetboy got the beer truck on and moving. They lurched up the private road, the hitman grinning like a gargoyle. “This is great,” he said. “This is great.”

Harry checked his surprise partner over. Sweetboy was still in his all black outfit. The only difference between his appearance in the park was an extra holster attached to a gun belt around his waist. He had a shoulder holster like Harry’s as well as a hunting knife in a scabbard on his left leg.

“I don’t want to kill anybody,” Harry told him. “I want Striker to give himself up.”

“Fat chance,” Sweetboy replied easily.

“I know,” Harry admitted. “I’m just attempting to subtly tell you not to shoot unless shot at. Let’s get out of this thing alive.”

Sweetboy grinned his death-head grin again, taking a second to stare fullfaced at Callahan. “Fat chance,” he said again.

Harry picked up on his meaning. Even if they blasted through Striker’s house and came out the other side, they still had a matter to take up with each other. Neither was going to forget what the hitman had done to Boris Tucker and Candy McCarthy.

But for now it was just two big guys with four big guns banded together for survival.

“Hold it,” said Sweetboy, motioning for Harry to take the wheel. Harry complied as the truck slowed down and the hitman stuck one of his Magnums out the driver’s window. As they rolled slowly pass, Sweetboy shot the lens of a tree-mounted video camera apart.

“Well, now they know we’re here,” commented Harry.

“What do you think?” Sweetboy defended himself. “A truck from a brewery is going to fool anybody? Although you smell bad enough.”

Harry sniffed. He smelled the beer that had soaked into his jacket. “OK, then,” he shouted over the roar of the old engine. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”

Sweetboy pushed his foot to the floorboard. He ground the gears all the way up. The truck barreled down the road toward the main gate.

Harry took in as many details as he could as the vehicle grew ever nearer. The main gate was the usual ostentatious type: wrought metal twisted into a flowery shape laid across a thick steel frame. They looked like giant bathroom doors, only they locked in the middle and rose twelve feet from the road.

Beyond them was a large, perfectly manicured yard and then Striker’s rambling Spanish-style mansion. On either side of the place and around the back were gardens rivaling those of Brackenridge Park.

Harry could see no more because the metal gate loomed in front of the windshield. Both men ducked down as the truck crashed through, hurling one side of the gate back and completely ripping the other side out of its stonewall mooring.

Sweetboy began to sit up again. “Stay down!” Harry warned just as a simultaneous barrage of gunfire blasted out from the house. It wasn’t concentrated enough to do any major damage, but several small spiderwebs appeared in the windshield.

“OK,” said Harry as both men warily sat up. Sweetboy started hauling the truck’s wheel from side to side, making them into either a harder target to hit or a very drunk-looking truck. Harry watched the grounds carefully to spot any possible targets. Puffs of gunfire and pieces of lead continued to shoot out of five different ground-floor windows.

“Striker’s office is in the back!” Sweetboy shouted as the truck tore across the lawn, throwing up big hunks of grass with its eight tires. “Let’s see if I can drive all the way to it!”

The truck straightened and bore down on the manse’s front door. Harry had to agree. It was a crazy thing to do, but he would have done it alone as well. Harry rammed his Magnum back into his holster and braced himself. Old “leadfoot” Williams gunned the engine again and drove right at the front stairs and front porch.

“Whooooo-weeeeeee!” Sweetboy screamed as the truck leaped up the steps, bowled across the stone porch and exploded through the front of the house.

Plaster, brick, adobe, and glass blasted in every direction. Furniture and furnishings spun everywhere. The truck kept on going. It careened off a marble column into the main hall. Sweetboy spun the steering wheel to avoid driving up the front steps. Instead the side of the wheels bounced off the bottom of the stairway and drove right through two more doors into the dining room.

The truck front pushed down the doors, taking a good section of the sculptured wood walls with it. Harry saw the truck hood accordion and what was left of the headlights ram into the engine. Then tables, cutlery, and china were flying everywhere. Harry saw one tabletop smash into a shotgun-wielding guard at the front window. Both of them went outside the hard way. The guard at the other front window scuttled into the unlit fireplace for protection.

Then the truck came out the other side of the dining room into the gigantic living room. It looked to be the size of a football field with a six-foot-high stone fireplace between two picture windows and two long couches lining one wall, a play area complete with pool table and a bowling alley against the other, and a sunken entertainment center in the middle.

The beer truck smashed through double French doors, slammed down three stairs that stretched all the way around the room, scraped against a circular stairway that led up to a balcony that also lined all four walls, then fell right into the entertainment area.

It was almost a perfect fit. Sweetboy slammed on the brakes and the vehicle slid across the floor and dropped down into the equipment-filled space. The front slammed against the front of the sunken area, stopping the forward movement. The rear of the truck dropped down to crush a giant video screen, a quadraphonic stereo system, a video recorder, and several smaller TVs.

The firefight didn’t wait for the smoke to clear. Armed men behind the gaming tables, behind the couches and on the balcony started shooting. They had everything. As Harry threw open his door and dropped below the top of the sunken level, he saw AR-15 Sporters designed from the Colt M16, Ruger Mini-14, .223 carbines with twenty-round box magazines, thirteen-round, 9mm automatics, army forty-fives, and shotguns of all types.

But while the enemy had quantity, their shooting was hysterical. They just poured on the lead thinking that they’d hit something by sheer number alone. If their targets hadn’t been Sweetboy and Dirty Harry, they probably would have been right.

Both men knew what to do. The more men firing, the worse their chances were. Harry was on the couch and fireplace side while Williams was being pinned down by those among the adult toys. They ignored both, choosing to pick off the men on the balcony first. It afforded the men the least cover and the best angle to shoot from.

Harry kept the .357 in his left hand, his right jacket pocket filled with extra shells. His left pocket had all four of his auto-loaders, replenished from Sweetboy’s glove compartment armory.

He fired with the aim only fear of God could create. The first Striker henchman fell back against a balcony bookcase, most of his stomach hanging out his back. A bullet plowed into the floor near Harry’s face. He immediately swung his Magnum arm around to peg another balcony man, who fell over with a hole in the side of his neck.

Now it was time to get the guys on the ground level. A foolish fellow jumped up from behind the lefthand couch with a “Supermatic” auto-loading shotgun held at waist level. He tried to let Harry have three rounds, but Callahan was no longer where he was aiming. The pellets dotted the side of the truck as Harry rolled, came up six feet away, and shot the guy in the chest. The shotgun spun onto the couch and the guy flew out the window behind him.

Another shotgun owner popped up from behind the righthand couch. He also held the weapon at stomach level, so his shot ground into the floor two feet in front of Harry. The only damage that guy did was to sting Harry’s shoulder with a couple of pellets that bounced. These guys never learn, Harry thought. You can’t get any accuracy holding any rifle at waist level. But those hotshots see “Rifleman” repeats and they think they can do anything.

Harry brought the Magnum up to his eye level and blew the other man’s head apart. He fell behind the couch. That finally reminded Harry why this firefight looked so familiar. It was like a penny-arcade rifle game played for keeps. Little targets pop up and you knock them down for points. Only this time if you lose you die.

In the few seconds he had before reinforcements arrived, Harry looked through the truck cab’s window. Sweetboy was doing the same from the other side.

“All set?” Harry asked.

“Yeah. I think more’s coming.”

“Let’s get out of here. I’ll give them a diversion.”

Sweetboy nodded, then both men scrambled out of the sunken area and raced for the closed doors on the other side of the room. Before they separated to take positions on either side of the two closed doors, Harry instructed through clenched teeth.

“On the count of four . . . both barrels into the gas tank.”

“All right!” Sweetboy acknowledged.

The pair split up to take positions by each of the two doors leading out into the next room. Their timing was perfect. As soon as Harry rested his shoulder against the wall, the doors swung outward, effectively masking both him and Williams as another bunch of henchmen ran into the room.

None thought to look behind the doors. Instead they ran to their fallen comrades. Harry counted while aiming both guns at the smoking vehicle in the entertainment pit. What he was aiming at was the glove compartment. The gas tank was in the back and he couldn’t hit it from that angle. He hoped Sweetboy had a better angle. He hoped he could detonate the ammo in the glove compartment, which, in turn, might find the gas tank. He hoped the whole room didn’t wind up scattered all over San Antonio.

He reached four and fired. He didn’t wait around to see what happened. He threw himself around the door and out the way the reinforcements had come in. He heard one shout behind him then his back was baked by a warm glow, the air pressure increased on his ear drums, a strange wind gripped his entire body at once, and he found himself flying.

Then he heard the explosion.

He was sliding across a brightly tiled hallway when he saw the flames lick out of the living room and pieces of the car and house started flying by. Harry crashed against the opposite wall, dropping his two guns in the process.

It didn’t make any difference. No one would be doing much for the next few minutes. They were very lucky the room was as large as it was or they would have been killed as quickly as were the reinforcements.

As it was, the explosion’s concussion blasted out every window in the room and took off most of the ceiling. Big holes appeared in the walls where hunks of the truck had traveled, and what was left of the walls were in flames. Bodies and parts of bodies littered both the front and back yards.

Harry felt hard pieces of something punching into the wall behind him. Without thinking he clawed his way to the nearest room which happened to be a sumptuous bathroom off the hall he had just flown down. He fell across the sink and onto the toilet as Sweetboy slammed up against the wall he had just left.

Harry watched the last remnants of the explosion course down upon the lying hitman through the open bathroom door. He heard the crackle of flames and the faraway wail of an automatic alarm. Although their detonating the truck was a dangerous maneuver, it was a fortuitous one. Not only had it wiped out most of the opposition in one fell swoop, it was sure to bring authorities. At least a whole bunch of firemen.

Harry cautiously hazarded a glance out the bathroom door. The living room was completely filled with smoke. The hallway off it was littered with debris and blood. Sweetboy lay motionless under a pile of rubble. Harry wasn’t so much interested in whether he was dead or alive as where his guns were. Harry found his own after ten seconds of concerted searching. Before he moved off, he tapped his inside jacket pocket. He heard the click of the plastic cassette within. He had lucked out. He hadn’t lost the evidence. Now all he had to do was find Striker.

Harry shuffled past the hitman’s still form and opened a battered door into a bedroom. Huddled together on the floor were four young women in maids’ uniforms. By the bed in front of them were two more henchmen with guns.

It was a pretty classic confrontation. Both men grabbed for their weapons inside their jackets. Harry brought up both his pistols which were already in his hands and shot them. The one on the right was dead. The one on the left was badly wounded. Harry wasn’t as used to the .357 model.

He walked over and kicked the wounded man’s gun out of reach, then turned his attention to the quartet of pretty women. Each was Anglo, of various hair colors, and all were petrified with fear.

“Where’s the boss?” Harry asked.

Misunderstanding him, the brunette, raven haired, and redhead pointed to the blond. “Aw, son-of-a-bitch!” she said.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Harry said, feeling more and more like he had stumbled into a John Wayne movie. “I just need to know where Striker is.”

“He’s in his office,” said the brunette.

“Where is it?” asked Harry.

The women looked at each other, suddenly becoming all loyal and secretive.

“Come on, there isn’t much time,” Harry pressed.

“Through there,” the blond said, pointing at a darker-colored, ornately sculptured section of the wall.

“How do I get in?”

“He has a little box that opens it,” said the redhead. “He carries it with him.”

“Great,” Harry muttered.

“But I’ve seen him open it from the bed,” the raven-haired girl piped up.

“I bet you have,” cracked the blond.

“No, really,” said the black-haired girl, hopping up onto the canopied bed and reaching behind the headrest. “Here, look.”

“Hold it,” Harry demanded. “The rest of you get out of here,” he instructed the women. They looked fearfully from the smoke pouring into the room from the living room back to Harry.

“But we don’t have a way out,” complained the blond.

Harry pointed the .357 over their heads and shot through a small, circular stained glass window on the front wall.