Dirty Harry 07 - Massacre at Russian River (20 page)

The floor was covered with sawdust and everywhere Harry looked were heaped kilos of marijuana. Some of them wrapped and camouflaged, others exposed to the open so that their contents stood revealed, green and brown under the powerful lights that had been strung across the ceiling. Seeing in this case wasn’t necessary for believing; one’s nose could render an equally precise judgment as to the nature of the goods that were stored here.

Marijuana was not the only item to be found. A small arsenal was also present. In addition to the M16s and the AK47s, the SKS 7.67 mms and the AR15s, there were also bazookas and what, on superficial examination, appeared to be sophisticated antitank devices. The sort of artillery that could be used to blow a chopper or two out of the sky.

Harry kept exploring the house, expecting at any moment to confront further opposition. But with the exception of Kilborn, he seemed to have run clean out of people who were anxious to kill him.

He found a staircase at the far end of the building and this led him to a second floor which protruded like a balcony over the vastness of the storage space. Here, the floor was lined with canvas. A number of closed doors were situated to his left. He opened each, carefully, standing back as he did so in case someone was waiting in ambush.

The first door he opened, yielded a john with a toilet that had overflowed so that the floor was immersed in at least three inches of water. The second door disclosed a room which had been laid out for the weighing and testing of the grass. There were several scales on the table and a pungent smell of a variety of chemicals, which could be seen in the bottoms of beakers and test tubes.

Behind the third door, Harry detected a slight movement. The door was locked. He shot the lock off and crashed through.

There, sitting in a rocking chair that looked as if it had been salvaged from somebody’s attic, was Howard McPheeters. He looked very old and gray. He held a small revolver in his hand, but there was no indication that he meant to use it against Harry. He clutched it fervently.

When Harry burst in, he did not look up. There was nothing left of the cold self-important figure Harry had first seen in San Francisco and later in Russian River when the invasion was just getting underway. He seemed to have shriveled. The spirit was gone.

“Why didn’t you run like your friend Kilborn?” Harry asked him.

He shrugged. “There would have been no point. It’s over. It got too big. Too messy. It involved too many people. It was bound to happen, I suppose. I thought though, I could anticipate events, you understand. I couldn’t.”

“There are other countries.”

“I considered fleeing. But by the time I did, it was too late. A warrant’s been issued for my arrest.” He directed his gaze at Harry. “You just precipitated things, that’s all. It makes no difference at this point.”

“Why don’t you give me the gun?” Harry approached him.

“That is something you shall not deny me.”

When he lifted his Beretta, Harry reacted by sighting his .44, but McPheeters was undeterred.

“Maybe you want to save me the trouble?” he said, putting the gun to his head and firing before Harry could get to him.

Half of his skull seemed to crumble. His eyes narrowed, and his face, for a moment, turned as green as the marijuana plants sitting in bales downstairs. His body bounced slightly against the back of the chair, propelling the chair into a slightly faster motion. Harry left him like that, rocking his way into eternity.

There were windows in this part of the house, though they’d been obscured by strips of the same canvas that covered the floor.

Harry studied the landscape for a sign of Kilborn. To his astonishment, he spied him—a mere speck of white—in the distance, practically submerged in a field of hay. He wasn’t going very fast. Maybe he’d run out of breath. More likely, he had concluded that since no one seemed to be coming after him, there was no sense in maintaining such a rapid pace.

I am going to get this son of a bitch, Harry resolved. He went back to McPheeters, and without interrupting his perpetual motion, dug into his pockets finding a set of keys.

Among the keys was one that started up the government van. Harry maneuvered it out into the fields. The high grass whipped against the van as he drove, gaining speed as he did so.

Kilborn came into view, though he was still a considerable distance away. He obviously had heard the van coming. At first he stared at it, without moving. Unable to see the driver he probably thought that his luck had changed, that it was McPheeters at the wheel.

But as the van got closer to him, he comprehended how much in error he was. With an expression of pain on his face, he bolted, half-running, half-skipping through the field. Occasionally, he’d stumble, then quickly regain his balance, and continue. Of course, there was no way he was going to outrun a moving vehicle and he soon realized this for he spun around, gun in hand.

But the van was intended to be bulletproof. While the windshield registered the impact of his shots, forming a web of cracks, it failed to give way. Nevertheless, Harry kept his head low, in case the windshield failed to live up to its billing.

When Kilborn saw that he had failed to stop the van, he turned and started running again. His shades slipped off, and in place of the faintly ominous appearance that they’d given him, was the look of a bewildered boy who’d gotten lost.

Then he surprised Harry by flattening himself in the path of the oncoming vehicle. Harry couldn’t stop, or redirect the van in time and ran right over him. But he heard none of the sounds one would customarily expect to hear as a result of running over a body. He guessed that being as thin as he was, Kilborn had managed to position himself so that all four tires missed him completely.

Harry couldn’t be sure though. He brought the van to a stop, opened the door and peered back.

His supposition was correct. Kilborn was alive. He took aim at Harry and fired. The open door shuddered in response. Harry fired back before Kilborn could get off a second shot.

The .44 took Kilborn in the center of his pale sweating brow and sent him tumbling back into the hay.

The sun was making its way above the horizon, shedding a pale pink light on the farm. It was the first time Harry could remember, since his arrival in Russian River, that he’d seen the sun without a layer of clouds in its way. It was an auspicious sign.

He directed the van back out on the Saw Mill Road, abandoning it near where he’d left the Olds. In the Olds, he took the other way back to 101 and San Francisco. He hoped never to see Russian River again.

D
ANE
H
ARTMAN
was a Warner Books imprint pseudonym used by two American novelists, Ric Meyers and Leslie Alan Horvitz. "Hartman" was credited as the author of the Dirty Harry action series based on the “Dirty” Harry Callahan character of the popular 1970’s and 1980’s films starring Clint Eastwood.

Following the release of the third Dirty Harry movie, The Enforcer, in 1976, Clint Eastwood made it clear that he did not intend to make any more Dirty Harry movies. In 1981, Warner Books (the publishing arm of Warner Bros., which made the films) began publishing a number of men’s adventure series under its now-defunct "Men of Action" line. One such series features the further adventures of Inspector Harry Callahan. The series was brought to an end when Eastwood decided to direct, produce, and star in a fourth Dirty Harry movie, Sudden Impact, which was released in December 1983.