Dirty Harry 11 - Death in the Air (14 page)

His eyes and mouth were both open, and he had a red third eye in the middle of his forehead which was leaking crimson tears. Somehow, it seemed like an open invitation of some sort, so Harry took it.

He stepped into the elevator doorway, leaned against the closing doors, and fired two bursts from the Mac into the car’s ceiling. He ripped the bullets across the roof in an X pattern. To his savage satisfaction, he heard one grunt and one scream.

The trapdoor in the elevator ceiling caved in and the torso of a Program man fell out, his tongue lolling out of his bloody mouth. Harry planted a nine-millimeter round through this nose.

Callahan moved back so that the sliding elevator doors could close as the man’s brains began to drool down the car’s back wall. For good measure, Harry turned and decorated the stairway door with Mac rounds just to make sure no one was considering an ambush on the other side.

He wrenched the now-empty clip out of the submachine gun and rammed in another from his coat pocket as he strode toward the obstruction. He kicked it open and started running down the steps.

“Come on,” he heard himself grunting. “I’m waiting. Come and get me. Come on.”

The cop tore across the first-floor landing, away from the lobby. He found an office directly under Jessup’s and kicked in the door. He strode quickly across the space, and went directly to the far window.

He took only a moment to holster the Browning before he grabbed a chair from behind a desk and tossed it through the glass. The barrel of the Mac immediately followed, and its bullets started dotting the alley floor before the chair even hit.

The man who had killed Rodriguez danced back, the hurtling lead playing the tune. The other Program assassins retreated quickly as Harry pulled himself out onto the fire escape while still shooting. He let up on the trigger only when they disappeard around the corner.

But the battle wasn’t over for him, not even then. Driven by a maniacal desire to end it once and for all, Harry jumped over the fire-escape railing, hit the ground one floor below, and rolled to his feet, running.

He had just gotten to the Spanish cop’s body when he heard the car engine come to life from the other side of the building. The Program was cutting its losses and pulling out. That gave Callahan no satisfaction. Remembering that it was Rodriguez’s dark-green Pontiac, Harry kneeled and pulled the keys out of the corpse’s pocket.

He got a good look at the Program vehicle as he reached the street. Trust it to be a van, and a deep red one at that. Dr. Carr was seeing to it that his men went first class. Harry didn’t care how they went, as long as he could make their final destination the morgue.

He ran to the late cop’s Pontiac and got the thing unlocked and started before the van was able to get a full block away. Harry burned rubber and clipped the back of the Captain’s car as he pulled into the street. Dobbin was in no condition to care anymore.

The van took a hard right on Stockton Street and Harry followed suit. Far ahead was the glittering neon cage of Columbus Avenue. As they passed Broadway and Vallejo, heading right for Columbus, Harry pulled the radio mike out from under Rodriguez’s dashboard.

“Inspector 71, Inspector 71,” he said into the mike, controlling the speeding car with one hand. “Report a number fourteen; officer in trouble. Columbus Avenue south of Washington Square. Officer in need of assistance. Be on the lookout for a dark red van heading in that direction; occupants armed and dangerous, over.”

Harry dropped the mike when the controller started asking for details. He needed both hands to swerve in and out of the traffic that always seemed to congest San Francisco’s answer to Forty-second Street and the Combat Zone. Columbus Avenue had the look, sound, feel, and soul of a ten-dollar hooker.

Harry tore the car in and out of tight spots, but for every sudden stop he had to make, the van was having twice as much trouble. It was bigger, wider, and taller than the Pontiac.

Finally, it pulled past the Columbus Avenue intersection, but not before Callahan had gotten almost right behind it. They both took off like teen-age drag racers on Sunset Boulevard.

The X-rated pleasures were immediately left behind, as if the Lord himself had cut them off at the corner. On three sides of the sin oasis was Little Italy, and it was Italian with a vengeance. Tomato sauce and Provolone hung in the air like smog.

The van made a fast left on Filbert Street, trying to shake the cop tail off. Harry wasn’t having any of it. He came up fast right behind them as they were taking the turn, and broke off the right side of their rear bumper.

As soon as the cars got on the straightaway, the rear doors of the van flew open. Callahan got a look at the six masked men inside, just before two of them opened up on the Pontiac with the M-16s.

Harry couldn’t tell whether the windshield cracked into a thousand Chiclets first, or if he ducked first. And, as long as he wasn’t dead, he didn’t care. But the bullets riddled the engine and drove through the dashboard as well.

The police radio sparked and broke onto the floor, one of the piston rods drove through the carburetor and into the passenger seat, and the left-front shock absorber broke off and drove itself up through the floor.

The steering wheel wrenched itself out of Harry’s hand and spun of its own volition. In response, the Pontiac spun three times down the street, tipped up on its side wheels, then stopped. It fell hard, back onto the street, flattening the rear tire.

Callahan threw open the door on the second bounce. He still refused to let the van get away. He slithered out onto the road, rolled clear of the crippled auto and emptied the Mac’s clip at the back of the Program vehicle.

Whether or not he did any damage was a moot point. As the van raced down the otherwise quiet street lined with three-story townhouses, toward the next intersection, two police cars appeared on that crossing street, blocking their escape.

The van swerved onto the empty sidewalk, smashed through a picket fence into a small yard, and crashed into the corner of the building. Harry was instantly on his feet, running toward the crash, but he was still too far away to prevent what happened next.

Thinking that the accident was enough to subdue whoever was inside the van, the interrupting officers exited their own cars without the proper degree of cover. So, when the Program killer came leaping through the van’s windshield, they weren’t prepared for his lethal onslaught. Whether he broke the windshield with bullets or with his body, Harry had no way of knowing. All he knew was that the man came shooting out like a human cannonball. He came out shooting.

The cops went down like harvested wheat in front of the man’s chugging, silenced Uzi. As they fell, the van’s side doors opened, releasing the five other assassins. They forced Harry face-down with more M-16 fire as they headed for the patrol cars.

Harry watched in frustration as they knocked the dead and wounded policemen aside. Two of them got in one car and four in the other. The cars started to move in opposite directions.

Harry pounded his fist on the asphalt. He couldn’t let them get away now. But when he felt the pain from his frustrated punch go up his arm, he realized that an empty hand needed a weapon to fill it.

As the police cars started rolling, the Browning was in one hand and his Magnum was in the other. He was still on his stomach on the road, but that was a perfect angle. With anguished rage supporting his aim, Harry pumped the high-speed, high-temperature bullets into the crashed van’s gas tank.

The Program vehicle exploded, sending hunks of burning debris spinning through the side windows of one of the patrol cars just as it was passing. Harry heard the satisfying screams of the assassins even from where he was. Without waiting for further reaction, he scrambled to his feet and raced to the spot.

The other police car had escaped unscathed, since it was moving away from the van. Callahan saw it turning the corner up at Chestnut Street. But the first car was practically alongside when the van erupted. Harry made a wide circle around the burning wreck to see the affected patrol car nestled against a wall across the street.

They hadn’t had a chance to get going very fast, so all the damage was to one headlight and to the interior. Harry came forward as one of the killers stumbled out of the front seat, his hair in flames.

Harry snuffed out the man’s flame with one Magnum bullet. The man jumped in place and dropped on legs that didn’t work anymore.

Callahan cautiously looked in the cop car’s side window. The man within was contending with a hunk of sizzling shrapnel which had buried itself in his lap. He saw Harry at the same moment that Callahan saw him.

The M-16 was too unwieldy to maneuver in the seat. The Inspector’s .44 had all the room in the world, outside. Harry fired through the open window, finishing the work the shrapnel had started. The killer’s crotch burst into flames as his head burst all over the far window.

Harry wrenched open the door and dragged the man out. Taking off his coat, he wrapped it around his arm, then swept and stamped out the other pockets of flame inside the singed patrol car.

When he turned, the occupants of the building next to which the van had exploded, as well as most of the rest of the neighborhood, were looking out of their windows with trepidation.

Seeing that they were all right, Harry got into the stalled police car and turned the key. It would take more than a slight collision and a nearby explosion to kill all the horsepower in the San Francisco patrol cars, the Inspector marveled. The engine coughed and then screeched to life.

Harry slammed the car into reverse and moved back from the wall, dropping pieces of broken headlight as he went. Flooring the gas pedal, he executed a 180-degree turn. Now he was in his police element.

The Magnum and the Browning were in their holsters. The Mac was on the seat beside him. All the ammunition he’d need was in his jacket pockets. He had four more killers to take off the street before the night was out.

C H A P T E R
T w e l v e

H
arry had no problem finding them. His problem was what to do once he did.

The search was quick and vicious. Harry had glimpsed the car number stenciled on the side as the vehicle pulled away from the van wreck. He had determination on his side, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the San Francisco streets.

Like a veteran taxi driver, he knew which roads would be congested, which streets were one-way, and which thoroughfares were clear. If the assassins got on Chestnut, they could go straight through to Sansome or the Embarcadero. Both could take them almost directly to the freeway system.

Harry went straight down Powell Street, took a left on Vallejo, and cut them off, sirens screaming all the way. With both hands sliding all over the steering wheel, he didn’t have the time or inclination to call in another alert.

Their grills practically kissed as he came roaring onto the Embarcadero. The patrol car filled with the Program men swerved to avoid him, braked, then slipped behind him to turn onto Jackson—heading back into the main section of town.

Harry sped one block farther and skidded west onto Washington, moving parallel to the other car. Playing it safe, he took another quick right on Front and came up behind them at the next intersection.

By this time, both their sirens were screaming, clearing the late-night streets. But that didn’t keep the killers’ guns inside the auto. As Harry tried to pull up alongside, the two men in the back poked their rifle barrels out the back window.

Callahan braked abruptly and swung the responsive car to the other side of the road. Straightening it as the men in the back seat tried to compensate their aim, he reached for the Mac beside him.

“Two can play at that game,” he murmured, the soft words counterpoint to the rubber-melting ferocity of the car chase.

Harry pulled the steering wheel in the other direction just as it seemed the duo of gunmen had a bead on him. The damaged patrol car moved back to the right side, looking like the wagging tail of a dog. As he zigzagged, he brought the Mac up and dotted the vehicle in front with the parabellum ammo.

The full burst had a devastating effect. The lead car shot off to the right as the Program men ducked for their lives. The driver lost control of the car as it jumped the curb at Mason Street. It roared across the sidewalk and into the yard of the Fairlawn Hotel Tower.

The doorman leaped out of the way as the police car slammed in between two parked taxis. The bellboys and guests scattered as they saw the auto racing up the front ramp.

Harry pulled his car to the side of the street and braked as the first car smashed through the Fairlawn’s picture window and into the lobby. The car’s spinning rear tires ripped up the sumptuous carpet as it barreled across the room and slammed into the reception counter.

Callahan jumped out of his car, digging into his coat for another Mac clip. There were none left. He threw the submachine gun back into the patrol car’s front seat and ran for the ruined façade of the luxury hotel, pulling the Browning from the holster on his belt.

He made it to the destroyed window just as a bellhop was approaching the smoking, stationary car which was half-buried in the reservations room.

“Stay back!” Harry warned loudly, brandishing his automatic. That was another cue for hell to break out all over again.

A masked man appeared in the nonexistent rear window of the crashed police car, his M-16 pointed directly at Callahan. The man fired, killing the bell captain who had hurried toward Harry the moment he appeared.

The dying hotel employee dived forward, tackling the Inspector. Both went down as the Program killers began slipping out of the car like maggots leaving a skeleton.

The man framed in the back window pulled himself out and tried to shoot Harry again while standing on the hood. The bellboy who had been warned off by the cop threw a suitcase at him, knocking the gun aside as the killer pulled the trigger.