Dirty Harry 08 - Hatchet Men

by Dane Hartman

  There was one great thing about the apartment, Harry figured. No ambusher could realistically hide in it. The cop shrugged off his jacket and threw it over the back of the one chair at the foot of the bed in the middle of the room. While undoing his shirt with one hand, he opened and reached into his icebox with the other. As the last button came undone, the can of brew reached his lips.

  The next thing that had to come off was his gun. Harry pulled the weapon out of its shoulder holster. In his hand was a Smith and Wesson Magnum .44 Model 29 revolver. In his closet was the adapting kit and the eight-and-three-quarter-inch barrel, but at the moment, Harry carried the blue steel version with the six-and-a-half-inch barrel. What little he lost in accuracy, he more than made up for in practicality. With the eight-inch barrel on, it was like hauling a bazooka out of his armpit.

  The six-and-some-odd-inch barrel suited his needs best, especially in conjunction with his specially made holster. Harry tossed the gun on the end of the bed and started pulling the shoulder apparatus off. It was the soft “Lawman Leather Cutaway” holster, designed and built specifically for him in 1969. During the various student skirmishes of the decade, which occasionally led to death, Harry found his quick draw marred by the regulation holsters which kept the revolver’s cylinder enclosed.

  So the cop had the Lawman Company make him a device that was cut out in the side of the upper portion so the .44’s cylinder would protrude. In the more than a decade since, Harry’s exploits with the holster had become so well known “in the trade” that the holster company had taken to calling the new mass-produced cutaway the “Dirty Harry” model. Whenever some patron would inquire as to why, the company’s execs would regale them with stories about the time Harry foiled an armed robbery single-handed, how he foiled a skyjacking single-handed, or the time he rescued the mayor from terrorists single-handed.

  Harry Callahan drank the rest of his beer single-handed. He crushed the can in his hand, threw it across the room and into the kitchen garbage can without hitting the sides, and then sat down at the head of his bed.

  Downstairs, Suni Michelle only got to scream once.

  It was enough. Almost as soon as the sound registered, Harry had bounded forward from his seated position, scooped up his .44 and leaped over the end of the bed as well as the chair.

  Harry flew out his apartment door and vaulted over the banister. He landed midway down the first flight of steps. From the sound of the scream, Suni had been surprised at the second-story landing. Harry had to turn a stairway corner before he could see what happened. He jumped down the remainder of the steps, swinging around the corner and preparing to bellow the woman’s name.

  On the second-floor landing were three black-suited men crawling all over the unconscious form of Suni Michelle. That, in itself, was not incredible. Harry had subconsciously harbored worries that one of the city’s many sick weirdos would target the attractive woman for raping and/or murder. But the weapons the three men held were not of the normal psycho variety. One had a VZ61 Scorpion in one hand, another had a MAC 11, and the third had an Uzi. And all three weapons were silenced.

  The man with the VZ pointed at Harry with the weapon, barking something in an Oriental language. As Harry threw himself back, he saw the man with the Uzi spin around. He wasn’t going to stay to see what happened next. Even with his Magnum talent, he wasn’t about to start shooting because of the possibility of hitting Suni. The other men had no such obstacle.

  The VZ and Uzi went off at the same time, tearing up the top step and the wall he had just been standing in front of. Harry didn’t stick around to check out the damage. He charged back up to his apartment, jumped back across the bed, and threw open the window. He swung himself out onto the fire escape and climbed down to the second floor as fast as he could.

  Standing on no ceremony, he found the first open window and dove in. He landed in someone’s dark, well-appointed living room on his shoulder, rolled and jumped for the door. Whoever lived there slept through Harry’s invasion. The back of the cop’s mind noted to tell the guy it wasn’t safe to leave his window open. Harry clicked open the door’s two locks and ran out into the hall. The last of the men’s heads disappeared under the landing. By the sound of their hurried footsteps, they were racing for the front door.

  Harry took two long steps and bent himself double over the banister. He held himself there with his left hand and stomach muscles. His right hand brought the Magnum down in front of him. The VZ man was carrying Suni’s limp body out the front door. The two others were skittering behind him. Harry saw them upside down, since he was hanging over the banister like a possum sleeping with his tail wrapped around a tree limb.

  His position threw his first shot off. The big blue Magnum boomed in the confines of the thin stairwell, the bullet smashing the glass next to the inside locked door. The Uzi man immediately pivoted and brought his vicious weapon up. Harry remained hanging even when he saw the masked man’s finger tighten. Streams of 9mm Parabellum tore up the stairs and the wall, accompanied only by the hacking cough of the silenced sub-machine gun.

  It hardly made a difference. The masked shooter wasn’t really looking where he was firing. It was the surprise of a Magnum going off that made him fire back in the first place. These three boy-os were dressed professionally—all in black to blur their outlines with dark ski masks covering everything but their eyes—and they were armed like seasoned terrorists. It was painfully obvious that they wanted to get Suni only and not leave any shells or corpses behind to set up a trail. Unless they had to.

  The Uzi user ran after his associates, swinging the locked door closed behind him. It was all the same to Harry. He shot the Magnum right through the door. The .44 boomed again, bucked, and the bullet blasted through the door’s glass and into the Uzi user’s left shoulder. The disguised man hunched, twisted, and fell against the mailboxes.

  The MAC man, framed in the second, heavy wood front door, twisted around to cover his friend. Harry fired his third shot at the same moment the MAC man fired his first. The 9mm rounds of the sub-machine gun tore out slices of the banister next to Harry’s face, pushing him back and up in spite of himself. Harry’s slug punched out a two-inch section of the wooden door’s side.

  As Harry fell back, the MAC man grabbed his wounded partner by his good shoulder and hauled him outside. Harry heard the thick door slam as he leaped up and rounded the landing to charge down the stairs. His shoe hit something wet and gooey. It slid right across the stuff and sent Harry crashing to the floor on his back. As he dropped, he realized that it was the dinner Suni had promised to bring him.

  The leftovers saved his life. Almost as soon as he fell, the painfully vindictive Uzi user and MAC man opened up on the closed front door as some sort of a warning not to follow them. The bullets bore through the wood and shot up the staircase over Harry’s prone figure. The cop pulled himself forward, letting the foodstuffs get crushed under him as he snaked down the stairs. He stood the moment the flurry of lead stopped.

  Midway down the first-floor flight, he blasted another .44 round in return. A peephole the size of an “a-ok” finger sign appeared in the middle of the thick wooden door as the revolver’s report echoed up all three flights. Harry reached the first floor before the sound had diminished and twisted off toward Suni’s apartment just before some more 9mm missiles came shooting through the door. The portal was beginning to look like a slice of brown swiss cheese.

  Harry kicked open Suni’s door and ran from the small foyer into the living room. Since the woman lived on the first floor facing out on the street, her place had a bay window. Through it, Harry could see that the VZ man was loading her into the back of a dark, nearly windowless van. His two associates were covering his ass. Harry decided to keep them occupied. He pushed the Magnum’s barrel through Suni’s window and fired once again.

  It was one time he wished he had the eight-inch barrel. With its added accuracy, he just might have been able to hit the hunched over Uzi u
ser again or the left rear tire that was just behind him. As it was, the .44 slug took off a piece of the man’s pant’s leg and poked a hole in the van’s side—just to the left of the tire and too low to hurt anyone inside.

  The backup men didn’t take their time returning Harry’s shot, but as their bullets blasted out the remainder of Suni’s bay window, Harry was already racing past her dining room to barrel through her bedroom. He jumped onto her bed, using it as a trampoline to throw him toward her bath. Inside the spotless, white-tiled expanse he found the opaque blue window leading out to her fire-escape landing.

  He threw the window wide, dove out, scrambled for the ladder and slid down the creaking thing to the ground. Harry came around the base of the building just as two masked men slammed the back doors of the van and ran toward the front seat on either side of the vehicle.

  Harry did some quick calculating. The VZ man had to be in the back with Suni, so his best bet was to peg the one heading for the driver’s seat. That would give him a couple of extra seconds with the van stationary. Without further ado, Harry let the guy on the driver’s side have it right in the back. His aim was perfect this time. He could practically chart the bullet’s progress as it streaked unerringly from the cloud of metal ash and fire at the end of the barrel to right between the MAC man’s scapulas.

  The MAC man flew forward, his back a tangled, bloody mess, and splattered against the open front door which caught him like an outstretched hand. The power of the .44 bullet combined with his own speed kept him flat against the door as it stretched as far as its moorings would let it go, and snapped back. Like a hand, the door threw the dead MAC man so that he landed on the street with a sodden thud.

  Harry changed his view so that the .44’s sights converged on the back of the Uzi user. The wounded man was dragging himself painfully toward the passenger door so Harry had more time to nail him. Waiting until his aim was perfectly aligned—just before the Uzi user pulled himself into the van—Harry pulled the Magnum’s trigger.

  His hammer clicked onto a spent shell.

  Harry didn’t even bother to curse himself as he reached toward his pocket for a speed loader. Then he cursed himself. The speed loader was upstairs in his tweed jacket. All Harry was wearing now was an open shirt and his pants. He had been so rattled by Suni’s scream and subsequent kidnapping that he forgot to get his extra rounds as well as neglected to count his shots.

  All this went through his mind as he was charging for the dead man’s dropped submachine gun. If he could reach it before the VZ man got to the driver’s seat or the Uzi user could muster enough strength to shoot back, he—and Suni—might still have a chance.

  Just as he got to the rear of the vehicle, the motor gunned into life. The vehicle leaped forward, crushing the dropped MAC 11 under its rear wheel. Harry reacted instantaneously. Forgetting the gun, he grabbed the rear door handle, twisted and pulled.

  He saw Suni lying unconscious on the van’s floor. He saw the back of the VZ user’s head behind the wheel. And he saw the Uzi user twisted in his seat, the gun pointed back at Harry.

  The weapon rattled with power, the bullets searing by Harry’s face. He actually felt them whipping closer and closer in the space of a second until it seemed sure that the next bullet would smash into his skin. At that moment, the Uzi clicked empty. Harry wasn’t the only one with reloading problems.

  But before he could take advantage of the situation, the van picked up sudden speed, ripping the rear door handle out of Harry’s hand and sending him tumbling to the road. He dropped his Magnum and rolled to the curb as the vehicle streaked down the street.

  Callahan forcibly stopped his cushioning roll so he could get a look at the van’s license plate. As he assumed even before he did it, the plate was removed. As he looked, the van took the corner with a screech, letting centrifugal force close the door Harry had opened. It quickly disappeared behind the buildings.

  Even then Harry didn’t call it quits. He raced into the underground garage, jumped into his car, grabbed the police radio at the same time he was jamming the keys from his pants pocket into the ignition, and started everything up. He was putting an All Points Bulletin (APB) out on the van at the same time as he was wrenching his car out from between the two compacts and tearing out onto the street.

  As soon as he had dispatched all the pertinent info, he threw the radio mike down and scrambled in his glove compartment for the extra speed loaders he always secreted there. Ever since the corrupt Lieutenant Neil Briggs caught him without extra bullets, Harry had made a point of sticking speed loaders all over the place. As it turned out, he hadn’t needed his .44 to get Briggs—the brain behind the “Magnum Force” of vigilante cops. He had finished him off with the bomb he had taken out of his mailbox.

  As Callahan scoured the streets for any sign of the van, he wished he had had another bomb to hurl at the kidnappers. His newly loaded Magnum was certainly doing him no good now. For all intents and purposes, the van had disappeared. As thoroughly as Harry checked and as often as he called in for any news, no one had seen the damn thing. After almost three hours of scouring the streets, Harry had to admit it to himself. The van had gotten away. And with it, the only woman he had allowed himself to care for in more than five years.

  Angry and tired, Harry looked around to see exactly where the hell he was. His eyes had gotten bloodshot and dry from staring intently for the van. Although he possessed a rudimentary understanding of the roadways and an inherent navigational sense, Harry hadn’t been paying much attention to anything else.

  Glancing out the passenger’s window, he immediately recognized the Maritime Museum sitting just in front of the west basin of Fisherman’s Wharf. Out the window on his side was the impressive ten-story Ghirardelli Square shopping complex. During the day, the place was a phantasmagoria of tourists, shoppers, salesmen, and street performers, but at three o’clock in the morning, it was deathly still.

  Looking in his rear-view mirror, Harry caught sight of the fishing fleet—taking off from the east basin on their daily trip under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a picturesque, romantic sight—completely at odds with the way he felt. Harboring no idealistic illusions, Harry looked away from the misty, heroic image—just in time to see a van disappear behind a building on North Point Street across the square.

  Callahan stomped on his accelerator, the powerful, pre-emission car engine hurling the vehicle forward. Harry screeched around the corner onto Van Ness and took another hard left on North Point. By then the van was way down the line, all the traffic lights with him. Harry poured on the speed, trying to get close enough to get a good look at the other vehicle. At this distance, he couldn’t be sure if it was the same one which stole Suni.

  A red light slowed him just as the van took a left on Stockton, but not for long. Harry simply slowed until he could check down Leavenworth in both directions, then roar forward again. Just let someone try to give him a ticket for running a light. Callahan would punch his ticket permanently.

  When he got to Stockton, the van was no longer in sight. Harry raced ahead, checking Beach and Jefferson as he passed. Seeing nothing but a few cars moving, he screeched onto Fisherman’s Wharf proper, his eyes darting back and forth to take in everything. His tenacity paid off. The van was parked down at Pier thirty-five.

  It was only then that Harry started to consider why the trio of terrorists had taken Suni. He slowed the car down and approached the pier cautiously. As he passed between the row of piers on the waterfront and the dozens of closed-up seafood shops and stalls, he considered calling in the cavalry, who would bottle the thirty-fifth pier up tighter than a pair of wet designer jeans on Orson Welles. Then he thought better of it. The three men who took Suni were willing to pepper an apartment building with lead—these weren’t the run-of-the-mill crooks who took hostages because they saw it done on Kojak.

  One man had a much better chance of slipping in and getting the drop on them without the hostage’s head being put on
the block. Harry cut his lights, turned off the car’s engine, and silently rolled toward the motionless van. Holding the wheel with his right hand, he had the Magnum up and ready with his left. The dark van began to take distinct shape in front of him.

  Quickly looking to his left, he saw a variety of pleasure crafts, outboards, yachts, and cabin cruisers, bobbing in the early morning waves. With this quick glance, Harry noted that only one ship revealed any life. It was the seaworthy yacht three-quarters of the way down on the right side. There were lights on below deck and the distant sound of music and laughter.

  Callahan brought his attention back to the van. He just saw its dark side out the windshield as the car slowed to a crawl. Harry pulled it even closer to the water and let it slow completely to a stop without touching the brake. Then, not even wanting to betray himself with the noise of his door opening and closing, he pulled himself out the open window.

  Harry headed toward the van on foot, the .44 held up like a beacon, his body tensed and ready for action. He was within twenty feet of the thing when he noticed the window on the back doors. It was a small, curtained glass section, positioned high up on the left-hand rear door of the vehicle. Harry straightened, lowered his weapon, and walked farther to the right.

  He saw that the license plate was attached under the back bumper and unobstructed. It was not the same van. Unless, by some phenominal stroke of luck, the terrorists had transferred Suni to another, nearly identical, van, Harry had stalked a couple of guys going to a yacht-side party.

  Leaving nothing to chance, he went over to the vehicle and checked it close up. Looking through the rear window, he saw that it was a simple, stripped-down affair, consisting only of a single front seat which could hold three and an empty, uncarpeted, uncushioned flat bed in the back. Harry walked around to the passenger side and with irritation, shoved the Magnum back into its holster. He pulled the jacket back into place and turned to go back to his car.