by Dane Hartman
“Hold it right there,” Harry said, sighting his .44 on him.
The man had a companion who’d been looking out for him. A shotgun roared, and the branches directly over Harry’s head disintegrated.
Though he was unhurt, the surprise attack distracted Harry momentarily. He instinctively moved back just as the first assailant picked up his shotgun and fired.
His shot went low, shattering the trunk of an alder and spewing a geyser of mud into the air. Harry fired his Magnum.
One round caught the assailant in his kneecap, the other in his thigh. He spun first to the left, then to the right, seemingly unable to make his mind up where to fall. Then he crumpled, becoming a small and bloody figure against a backdrop of damp and gloom. He made a horrible keening noise, mourning his own life as it seeped away into the mud that had turned into a burial ground for so many this night.
His friend, wise enough to keep concealed, fired twice more in rapid succession. Harry was relying on the darkness to save him, and the darkness cooperated. Both shells, in spite of the concussive sound of their explosions, failed to get anywhere near their intended target.
Although Harry had intended to get back to Turk’s force, he found that this was no longer necessary. The battle appeared to be coming to him.
Everywhere he looked there were men running. Maybe they had some purpose, but it was impossible to discern. They shot and ran. Sometimes they wouldn’t bother shooting but would just move. Were they advancing? Retreating? Harry didn’t know. He didn’t even have any idea whether these were members of the eradication team or were the men who had opened fire on them.
It was ludicrous to go anywhere or shoot at anybody under the circumstances. Harry was baffled. How had the situation been allowed to develop to this point?
When someone began firing at him, however, Harry had no choice but to answer in kind. There was a sharp exchange. Then Harry heard a muffled groan. He never saw anything, couldn’t be certain he’d hit anybody, but for the moment he seemed no longer to be a target.
It was then that he turned and saw a sight that positively astonished him.
Coming through the forest, with a delirious look in his eyes and a banshee yell rising from his lungs, was Turk. Blood covered nearly half his face, transforming it into a mask, at once grotesque and absurd. He was alone, but it looked as though he really thought he was leading the force. He might have believed that he was directing troops over the battlefield at Verdun. Or Gettysburg as far as that went. Whatever the case, Harry was certain he’d taken leave of his senses.
He was half-running, half-stumbling, frequently discharging the .38 he had in his hand, though he didn’t appear to be aiming it at anything. Harry realized what had happened. Rather than settling for a diversionary strategy, covering fire, which was all that Harry had requested, or a feint to confuse their antagonists, Turk had initiated a direct assault. How he had managed to convince anyone to go along with him was a mystery to Harry, but he had evidently succeeded.
Now Turk was alone and oblivious to the danger he was in. His troops were in disarray. The air around him was filled with bullets, and yet he made no effort to protect himself. It was as if he wanted to die.
Harry called to him. Turk didn’t hear. He kept right on hurrying forward, shooting at the unseen enemy.
There didn’t seem to be any alternative but to tackle the man and throw him to the ground. Which was precisely what Harry did.
Turk struggled against his rescuer; he was damned if he was about to let anyone save him, Harry tried his best to talk some sense into him, but Turk refused to listen. He didn’t even seem to recognize Harry. His eyes were wild, testifying to some very severe derangement. But his strength was there. He was frenzied, and his madness had given him frightening power.
He managed to throw off Harry and get himself upright. Then to make it clear that he would take no further interference, he trained his gun on Harry. Harry was afraid he might actually kill him just for the hell of it.
“It’s me, Turk. Harry Callahan.”
If there was any recognition in Turk’s eyes, it was hard to tell. He said not a word. He scowled and made a sound that might have been a word, then he began again in the direction he was going when Harry had stopped him.
He didn’t get very far.
A 30-30 blast, tore through his abdomen. Harry thought for an instant that he could see Turk’s viscera flying out his back. The wound was critical, and the very force of the blast caused Turk to totter. Why he didn’t go down was puzzling. Perhaps his mind had failed to register the extent of his body’s injuries.
He now started forward again, one hand clutching his open stomach, the other still affixed to his gun. Like a man who’s been on a wild bender, he lurched and wobbled but miraculously maintained his vertical posture. There were a great many more shots, not all of them directed at Turk. For a few seconds longer, his luck, if luck it still was any longer, held.
But the man with the 30-30 might just have been biding his time until he could be certain of success. Or possibly, like Harry, he was so astonished by Turk’s insistence on remaining upright that he wanted to see how long the man could go on before he was struck a second time.
The second blast of the 30-30 catapulted Turk into the air. When he came down, his arms were extended. He looked like a bird whose wings won’t work for it anymore.
Weirdly, he was still alive. He grappled at the mud and attempted to pick himself up again. But then he faltered and ceased his futile efforts. By the time Harry got to him he had breathed his last.
C H A P T E R
T e n
Turk’s was the final death of the night. The pandemonium had ended. There was no one to be seen in any direction, neither the defenders of these clandestine farms nor the men who had sought to arrest them and eradicate their source of livelihood. The rain had begun to taper off, but the mist that it had left behind clung to the fields and woodland, smothering the bodies of those who had not lived to see the dawn.
Harry felt that he was the only person left alive in the world. Way in the distance he could hear the faint rumble of the trucks and pickups. He presumed that the eradication team, now leaderless, was wending its way down Rain Mountain and back to Russian River. All those John Doe warrants would have to be put away for another day.
Harry had not elected to stay up here. He had been left behind. Turk’s bloody corpse was his only company.
In spite of the disastrous result of the expedition, Harry decided that it wouldn’t be a total loss if he could gain some understanding of why it had occurred. Not that the growers had a great desire to be busted, but that did not explain why they had resisted the authorities so violently and claimed as many lives as they had. Making huge sums of money from the growing and selling of marijuana was a serious crime to be sure, and several years in prison might be expected if one was convicted for it, but the punishment the courts might choose to mete out for trafficking in weed would be nothing compared to what they would give to those convicted of murder, particularly when police officers and agents of the federal government were among the victims. There had to be, Harry felt sure, some kind of an explanation. It might not make much sense, but he was interested in hearing it all the same.
Although the cloud cover remained as pervasive as ever, especially farther up toward the summit, the approach of day carried with it a trickle of light sufficient to disclose the landscape.
He could begin to discern where the woods ended, where the open fields began. What in the darkness had been a terrifying confusion of underbrush and trees and mud took on a more innocent, almost rustic appearance. Nothing looked remotely threatening.
It was chilly and damp, and Harry longed for a shower and a change of clothes, and most of all, for sleep. He was exhausted, running on momentum and adrenalin. But if he were to find out what he wanted, and then get off Rain Mountain, he would just have to wait for relief.
He said his good-bye to Turk, promisi
ng himself that if he could he would be back to recover the body. He’d be doing it to fulfill a personal obligation, he supposed. Turk was beyond caring.
He got up toward the next rise and halted. Below him he spied a lone figure walking downhill at a leisurely pace. He was carrying a shotgun over his shoulder, but his loping gait and the meandering path he was following indicated that he was in no special hurry to get anywhere. And why should he be? The battle was over.
For all Harry knew he could have been one of the men who’d fired on him. Whoever he was, the shotgun resting on his shoulder certainly implicated him. Harry decided to follow him.
The first light of day and the cessation of rain had not done anything to make the conditions underfoot any better. Only the outer crust had begun to dry. With the slightest bit of pressure it would give way, delivering the stroller right back into the muck again.
From time to time the man with the shotgun stopped and cocked his head as though he had heard something to arouse his suspicions, but then he’d go on again. Harry stayed well behind him and took the further precaution of finding trees and outcroppings to hide himself from sight.
After maybe half an hour’s trek the man came upon a stone shelter that might once have been utilized for storage. It now lacked a roof and the walls had fallen into disrepair. Harry’s quarry, confident that he was in no danger, rested his weapon against the wall and stepped inside.
When he looked up and saw Harry, he expelled an angry groan.
“Damn it!” he cried out. “Not while I’m taking a shit.”
“That’ll have to wait.”
The man grunted and rose, hiking up his trousers. The .44 sighted on him seemed to dismay him less than the fact that he had been interrupted in such a manner.
“I was just trying to heed the call of nature,” he protested. “What are you going to do, waste me for that?”
“Who are you?”
“Hey, man, I ought to ask you that.”
Harry offered him a strange smile. “Yes, punk, but you forget I’m the one with the gun.”
“Yeah, you’re the one with the gun.” The man didn’t sound any more conciliatory.
Harry decided to lower the Magnum so that it was trained on the man’s crotch. This produced a reaction.
“You wouldn’t . . . ,” he said.
“Do you know me?”
“Hey, man, I don’t know you from Adam.”
“Then you don’t know what I would or would not do.”
The man seemed to consider this logic for a while. “I see where you’re coming from.”
“Good, that’s a start. Now let’s take it from the top. Who are you?”
“Jason . . . Jason Milandra.”
Harry remembered the name. “You own a farm hereabouts?”
He hesitated. “You’re a cop.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re a fucking cop.” The revelation was taking its time to sink in. “I didn’t have anything to do with what happened last night.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.” Seeing that this was hardly likely to satisfy his interrogator he added, “Some dudes.”
That wasn’t much better. “Just some dudes?”
“That’s right.”
“Quite a commontion for just some dudes to make, I’d say. You know that there must be eight or nine men lying dead in those fields right now because of what happened. Cops, deputized citizens, maybe a federal marshal or two.” Harry was trying to see what kind of reaction he could elicit from the otherwise impassive Jason Milandra.
“That’s a problem,” Milandra conceded. “You are right about that. But you have to remember, man, that our lives were at stake. We didn’t defend ourselves, we would’ve been butchered. It’s happened before.”
“What do you mean you would have been butchered? We were only armed in the event we were fired on.”
“In that case, why were the cops the first to open fire?”
Harry recalled the mysterious barrage that had triggered off the engagement. Who had been the first to open fire? If it wasn’t the eradication team and it wasn’t the growers, then who was left?
Instead of responding directly, Harry posed another question.
“Why did you go to so much trouble? Why didn’t you just disappear? In these mountains, that shouldn’t have been so difficult.”
“You don’t understand, man. We were tired of running. You fucking people have been coming up here, wasting folks, we were tired of running.” When he saw that Harry wasn’t yet convinced, he went on. “Look at what happened to Chapman, to Harris and his old lady. That was just the beginning. There’s no question, man, you’re no better than us. You want to waste us, then take our crops and sell them yourselves. You figure, ‘Hey, who’s going to give a shit about those hippies? Nobody knows who the fuck they are to begin with so who’s going to miss them when they’re dead?’ ”
There seemed to be something to what Milandra was saying.
Another question: “You know a guy by the name of Mike Kilborn?”
“You shitting me? Kilborn? The dude’s a cock-sucker. He’s in it good. He’s been going around advising us to sell our farms.”
“Oh? Who does he want you to sell them to?”
“To him. What do you think? Otherwise—” He made a slashing gesture across his neck. “What am I telling you this for? You’re all the same. You, Kilborn, Ham, all the fucking cops.”
“What about Turk?”
“Turk?” Milandra had no way of knowing that Turk was dead, but apparently it would make no difference to him. “Turk is a goddamn joke, man. Nothing was happening out of his office. That was all for show. The poor bastard has no idea, but it’s all for show. We know better here in the mountains what’s going down in Russian River than he or that joker, Davenport, do. No, the reality is with Kilborn and whoever the fuck he answers to.” He gazed at the Magnum with his sad stoned eyes and said, “So what’ll it be, man? You want my balls? You going to take me in? I got to know, man. The suspense will kill me before you do.”
“No, my friend, you are free to go. All I’m going to do is relieve you of your weapon here.”
It was a Weatherby, Milandra complained, and it had cost him a bundle.
“That well may be, but you’re just going to have to go out and get yourself another one.”
Harry was appropriating the shotgun so ballistics tests could be run on it. If it turned out that anyone had sustained any injuries from shells discharged from Milandra’s weapon then Harry would personally see to it that the farmer was taken in. At the moment though he lacked the power to do so. He was, after all, acting in no official capacity. Moreover, he was a wanted man himself.
With a resentful look on his face, Milandra proceeded to loosen his belt, about to resume where he’d left off.
“One more question.”
“Yeah?” He sounded none too happy about the prospect.
“How the hell do I get down from here and back to town?”
“You go east man, you keep going east, toward the sun, and you’ll come to the road.”
That was all well and good. The problem was finding the sun. Too much rain, too many damn clouds. The sun, when it finally broke through, was no brighter than the neon sign that told drivers they were approaching Danton’s Motel Inn.
It took Harry the better part of three hours to make his way down Rain Mountain. On the way he spotted a logging truck that looked like it had been a part of Turk’s caravan. It probably had stalled out. No one had cared to stick around and try and repair it. The idea had been to get off the mountain as quickly as possible.
Farther toward the bottom Harry came across the school bus they’d pushed out of the way. They should have known better. Seeing what had happened, they’d have been better off turning right around.
At the base of the mountain, Harry was thoroughly exhausted. His clothes were wet and clammy against his skin and when he touched his fac
e, he found that his hands were stained with mud and dust. He probably looked like a man who’d been in the coal mines for too long.
The thought of walking all the way back to town, a distance of twelve miles, was a daunting prospect after making the trek down the mountain. Harry decided he would hitch. It was a better idea in theory than in practice, given the sparseness of traffic along this part of the highway.
Eventually, after forty minutes or so, he spotted a pickup rattling along in his direction. He stepped onto the roadway, with his finger out.
The truck continued on beyond him, then abruptly came to a stop.
The back of this track was packed solid with what looked to be huge bales of hay, tied firmly with rope. The cabin in front had only one occupant. The driver, a farmer from all appearances, had a face as roughhewn and weathered as his clothes. A visored cap was set backward on his head.
“How’re you doing?” the man said. His voice was like the atmospheric conditions; a fog had filtered into his lungs.
“Could be better,” Harry replied.
The driver gave a cursory glance at the mud-spattered clothes and agreed with his assessment. “I can see that. Where you headed? Into Russian River?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’m glad I can do you a good turn. That’s where I’m going too. Taking my crops to market there.” He reached over and shook Harry’s hand. “You have a name?” he asked.
Harry gave him the one he was born with.
“Well, it’s great to meet you. My name’s Tom Reardon.”
The name struck a cord. This was the father of the young man Harry’d shared a cell with a few nights back. Harry regarded him again. Yes, Tom was the same fellow he’d briefly glimpsed in the courtroom on the morning Judge Plinth advised him to get out of town. Judge Plinth was wiser than he realized, Harry thought.
“Heard there was a little ruckus up there on Rain Mountain last night,” Tom said.
“Ruckus is one way of putting it.”