Dirty Harry 08 - Hatchet Men (5 page)

“Sure.”

“Tell you what, then. I’ll warm the food and bring it up . . .” She paused momentarily, looking at the floor with a grin. Finally she could no longer contain herself. “Then I’ll do the same for you,” she said with a knowing exaggerated look that spoke volumes.

Harry brought his right forefinger up and waved it at her in an admonishing motion. “I warned you,” he said. “My knee will be waiting.” And then he couldn’t keep from adding, “among other things.”

She laughed and went inside her apartment as Harry turned to start the three-story climb to his place. On the way up, he thought about Suni. He was both father-confessor and lover to the woman. He was hardly around, but when he was, she told him things no one else knew. Harry probably knew more about the twenty-seven-year-old than her parents did. The one thing her parents had over him was knowledge of her real name. Sunny had become Suni, but Michelle had stayed the same. It was not a Japanese name, but the woman remained adamant about keeping it. Harry could understand why. From what she had told him about her absurdly strict, nearly hypocritical upbringing, it wasn’t surprising that she had renounced her past.

Harry unlocked his door and twisted the knob. Unconscious habit made him do this with one hand, leaving the other one free in case of emergency. His door swung in with an uneventful creak, revealing an almost octagonal room that gave new meaning to the word “quaint.” It was quaint the same way a slum could be called “rustic.” To the left of the door was a bureau. To the left of that was the bathroom door. To the left of that was a small refrigerator. To the left of that was a kitchenette so small the fridge had to be put in the living area.

To the left of that doorless doorway was the night table with his wife’s picture on it. To the left of that was the unmade bed. The covers might not be that great, but Harry had bought the best mattress and box spring that money could buy. The last thing he needed was back trouble or insomnia. Next to the bed was another table with a portable black-and-white TV on it. Behind that was a two-door closet. Next to that was the front door, and it all started over again.

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 user 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.