by Dane Hartman
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANE HARTMAN 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.