Dirty Harry 11 - Death in the Air

by Dane Hartman

  Callahan was thrown to the passenger seat by the small crash, but he pulled himself upright immediately. The engine had died when the car had slowed while in third gear, so Harry slammed down the clutch and twisted the key viciously to get the thing going again.

  The car was instantly revived and lurched forward, the back of the bus looming in the windshield. But, once he reached the bus’s rear, he was stuck there. The right lane was completely jammed, and two lanes of cars were streaking by in the opposite direction on his left.

  The thought of all those dead men in Patterson’s apartment inspired him to even greater heights of reckless, furious courage. Harry pulled the car to the left, trying to find a hole in the oncoming traffic big enough for him to swerve ahead of the bus.

  He tried once, nearly getting into a head-on collision with a Mustang. He weaved again, but the Toyota’s pickup wasn’t fast enough. He had to brake and slip back behind the bus before a Ford station wagon plowed into him.

  The one good thing about his crazy driving, however, was that everyone around him gave him plenty of room. No other driver wanted to be part of the massive pileup Callahan’s car seemed to be promoting.

  And it wasn’t long before the bus driver noticed his insane antics. The bus driver’s reaction, however, was to speed up. Almost beside himself with frustrated anger, Harry pounded the Toyota wheel and grunted in pain. He had to stop the damn bus without killing everybody within range, and hit upon an audacious method.

  He floored the Toyota’s gas pedal, then reached down to grab the hand brake. As soon as he felt enough speed and saw the back of the bus blotting out everything else, he pulled up on the brake lever, and ducked.

  The Toyota’s wheels locked and squealed in smoking torture as the car smashed into the back of the bus.

  Harry was thrown tightly against the front seat, but he had prepared himself well. The seat back held him without snapping any delicate bones. And it stopped the bus. No municipal driver in his right mind was going to roll away from an accident.

  Sure enough, when Harry kicked open the car door and dragged himself out, he saw the bus braking and the front door opening. But instead of the driver, out came Denise Patterson.

  She took off between cars, as Harry got to his feet to give chase. Only then did the livid bus driver appear and clamp his meaty hands around the back of Callahan’s neck.

  “You miserable son of a bitch,” the driver seethed, surprising Harry with the strength of his grip. “What the shit do you think you’re doing? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  The driver had Harry at a disadvantage, to say the least. The cop was intent on where Patterson was heading, but the driver had him in a choking grip. Harry’s hands were useless for grabbing the man behind him, so Harry brought all his weight down on the driver’s foot.

  The man screeched and the neck hold loosened. Harry spun, letting the turn give extra speed to his right fist, which slammed across the driver’s jaw. The meaty transportation man went down like a sack of potatoes.

  That didn’t sit very well with the rest of his passengers. Some street people started getting off the bus with lynching in their eyes. Harry stopped the forward flow by dragging out his Magnum.

  “Police business,” he spat. “Take care of him,” he continued, motioning to the felled driver as he turned. There was an angry buzzing in his ears. He looked up in time to see a low-flying helicopter. Ignoring it, he turned in the direction he had last seen the woman.

  He made it around just in time to see Patterson disappearing into a doorway and down a flight of steps. The sign above the entrance said it all: Lincoln Way/Waller Street Station—BART.

  Denise Patterson had gone into the subway.

  C H A P T E R

  S e v e n

  Everything had worked perfectly until after the hospital. But the killer of Martha Murray reported in to his superiors without doubt. He had seen the danger this Inspector Callahan represented, and recommended that the cop be terminated.

  But he wasn’t making the suggestion out of logic: he was working on a hunch. He had seen Harry close up in the hospital. Determination and ability were written all over the police vet’s face. The killer instantly saw that Harry would grab onto a tiger’s tail and not let go.

  The Program, however, prided itself on its self-preserving decisions based on computer-aided logic. The computers had announced that the Inspector’s chances of affecting the Program were a million to one. Harry had beaten the odds. He had survived the hospital horror and showed up where and when it was least desirable.

  They should have let me handle the Patterson Operation, the killer thought with pride as he weaved in and out of the late-night crowd. If they had, it wouldn’t have been necessary to risk my exposure on this mop-up mission.

  The hospital operation had gone perfectly. The killer had merely slipped into Maggin’s examining room disguised as an intern—walking right past Patrolman Petrillo—and injected the junkie with the syringe pistol. Maggin didn’t complain because he had been told it would make him feel better.

  And it did. The laser standoff was an extra which the killer reveled in, but it did not succeed in disposing of Callahan. Afterward, he had all but demanded that the Program directors put a tail on the Inspector, but they had ignored this advice.

  They had assured him that pressure was being applied to insure that the police department closed the books on the Murray death, and that Callahan would be shunted to another investigation.

  But the killer had seen Harry. He knew, as the Program people should have known, that Callahan would not give up that easily.

  The proof came when the Patterson assassination came up. They had set it up to look like a robbery gone sour. But the assassin team had panicked when Harry showed up. They decided, without checking with the Program, to kill both Harry and the girl quickly with two shots, and then fabricate a logical story on the spot.

  No one had expected Harry Callahan to react so quickly and so well. As the point man on the apartment house roof had watched his men being slaughtered by a single cop, he had sent an amazed message to the Program’s “eye-in-the-sky”—the back-up surveillance helicopter.

  The copter had traced Callahan’s actions from that point on while communicating with Martha Murray’s killer in his apartment. It was what the killer had been waiting for. He had heard the .44 Magnum shots—he could guess what had happened. After all, he lived downstairs from Patterson in the same building.

  Damn their logic and their computers, the killer thought—slipping around all the happy restaurant, theater, and club patrons in his way. If they had only done the job cleanly and quickly in the first place, there would be no need for this.

  But then the killer smiled. Actually, he was glad it had worked out this way. It was going to be a rare pleasure for him to push the Inspector’s one clue right out from under his nose. Callahan’s chance at discovering the truth was going to slip right between his fingers.

  And then the murderer of Martha Murray was going to accomplish something the whole San Francisco underworld hadn’t been able to achieve in more than a decade. The man called Dirty Harry would die.

  The man called Dirty Harry hit the end of the BART platform, shaking. His wounded arm was throbbing, and his legs were vibrating slightly from the strenuous auto chase. Even in the cool night, he felt his shirt sticking to his back. He was definitely getting too old for this kind of thing.

  It wasn’t just the strain of the gunfight and the running that had done it to him, however. It was what he saw behind the whole affair that really got to him. He could hardly survey the crowded subway platform because of the mental images that kept appearing.

  The hospital fight with Maggin and the apartment assault were unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Both had a cold, technical edge that was beyond the capacity of any of the street animals he usually had to contend with.

  What did it take to make a nearly dying junkie into a cunning, kill
ing maniac? What did it take to mount an attack on a residential apartment building without attracting anyone’s attention? And how in the living hell did it match up with three girls pushed onto the tracks of a BART subway?

  These thoughts left Callahan’s brain, to be replaced by an automatic buzz. His eyes became a camera, his ears sensitive microphones. His mind told him what to look for. First, an attractive woman without a coat or shoes. Second, a person—it could be a man or a woman—with a certain look.

  No matter how good they were at acting, no matter how professional they were, they couldn’t disguise the characteristics Harry was looking for. He had seen them in World War Two, Korean Conflict, and Vietnam vets. He had seen them on the faces of the Federal agents he often had to work with and occasionally had to fight against.

  What Harry was looking for was the smug, proud, but still vacant look of a person totally committed to one way of thinking. It was the face of a murderous zombie or a homicidal cultist. There was a tension, an aura, around that kind of person.

  He didn’t see any of these characteristics on the first faces he looked at. He moved slowly, cautiously through the raucous crowd on the platform. The buzz in his mind was almost overwhelmed by the swelling noise of laughter and talk in the station. As he walked, watching everything carefully, he saw the telltale lights of an oncoming train reflecting on a faraway curve in the tiled tunnel. Its approach made his search all the more desperate.

  He scanned the crowd almost hopelessly for any sign of his quarry. In his present state of mind, he was worried that he could look right at Patterson and not see her. He. worried that she might have slipped through the throng and run out the second stairway.

  But he had practically fallen down the stairs in his rush to get there, and he had kept his eyes on the second stairway. She couldn’t have had enough time to fight her way through the crowd and get up the steps. But if he didn’t find her before the train came—between all the cars and all the stops—he might lose her for good.

  There was a movement in the middle of the crowd. A hand had risen, and someone had blown on his or her fingertips.

  He saw them both at the same time. Denise Patterson was hunched down in the thickest concentration of people in the center of the platform. She was looking forward and down, keeping her head low. Coming up behind her was a short, innocuous, rough-skinned man in slacks, a shirt, and a plain sports jacket.

  That was the one. Harry was sure of it. He had looked right through the same man at the Fulton Station the morning Murray was killed. And now, the pusher was coming up right behind Patterson, and Callahan was at least thirty feet away.

  “Hey!” Harry shouted, but the sound was swallowed up by the sound of the train rushing around the corner, and by the increased volume of conversation. “Hey!” he repeated, shoving his way forward.

  All of the actions seemed to be running at a slower, nightmarish speed—the kind of dream speed in which the limbs are moving, but not naturally. Everything was slowed just enough so that it seemed impossible to accomplish anything.

  Callahan kept pushing as he watched the killer get behind Patterson, wrap one arm around her waist, the other hand around her neck, and start walking purposefully to the edge of the platform.

  Harry saw the horror on Patterson’s face. It was almost a guiltless shock, not the look of a woman who felt she deserved such a fate. He saw her mouth working, but heard no sound.

  The train appeared in the mouth of the station tunnel. Already, the crowd began preparing to enter, covering the killer’s deadly approach to the platform’s lip. Harry pulled out his Magnum, pointed it at the ceiling like a starter’s pistol, and pulled the trigger.

  The explosion of the .44 drowned out everything else like a thunderclap. The crowd, as one, reacted fearfully to the sudden deafening noise, cowering away from its origin. For a split second, almost all movement stopped.

  In that second, the killer turned and saw Harry. He saw the recognition on Harry’s face. He saw that Callahan wasn’t going to be the easy target he had originally supposed. He took a step forward, and threw Patterson onto the tracks with all his strength.

  Harry jumped onto the tracks as soon as the killer’s foot moved. He raced forward at the oncoming train with speed he didn’t know he had. Between him and the BART was the groggy, sobbing form of Denise Patterson.

  The killer had nearly choked her to death before dumping her with his angry power. The woman didn’t fall to the tracks, she was hurled—crashing to the ground with vicious speed. The knees of her jeans were ripped, and her skin bloody. She didn’t have the strength to get out of the way.

  Harry did. The girl was obscured by the powerful beams of the BART headlights as Callahan grabbed her under the arms and leaped upward with all his might. He spun to the left, pulling the woman with him, feeling the train brush his side. It actually slid across his shirt and his pants leg.

  His feet were kicked aside only seconds before he felt the concrete of the platform slamming him on the back. The weight of Patterson was atop him. They had both made it in one piece. He looked down. Their feet were right against the train’s side. One of Patterson’s socks was missing.

  Almost as soon as they reached the platform, Harry slipped out from under the woman and rolled to his feet. His initial gunshot had scattered the pedestrians around him—most of them had fallen to the ground. Still, many remained on their feet, running around, trying to find some sort of hiding place. Adding to the confusion were the pedestrians coming off the stopped BART train, oblivious to the drama that was being played out.

  Harry couldn’t get a clear shot at the pusher, but the pusher hadn’t had enough time to get up the stairs. He had been blocked and accidentally tripped by the scurrying bystanders, so his right foot made it to the bottom step just as Harry threw himself against the platform wall twenty feet away.

  No one else was flattened against the wall, but Harry couldn’t wait until his aim was perfect. He couldn’t risk someone coming down the stairs and appearing in his sights. Callahan snapped off a shot immediately, the bullet sizzling in front of the pusher and shattering against the far stairway wall.

  This second shot drove the killer back and flattened almost everyone on the platform. For those who didn’t recognize gunfire, it sounded enough like the end of the world to make them drop on their faces. And, those who weren’t convinced by the gunfire, Harry took care of in the next second.

  “Everybody down!” he boomed, his gun weaving back and forth as he tried to get a bead on the moving killer.

  No one asked questions. But, as the people fell, the pusher moved toward the BART train. Harry instantly put another bullet between the closing car door and the killer. The slug whined off the back of the train as the pusher fell back in the opposite direction.

  It was clear shooting now. Only Harry and the killer were upright. As the cop moved forward to get a better angle, the killer hauled out a Colt .45 automatic from his jacket.

  Harry couldn’t duck for cover. If he did, he risked having an innocent bystander catching a slug. So, for three full seconds, the two adversaries stood some thirty feet apart and tried to kill each other.

  The pusher danced back and snapped off his first shot. Harry felt it streak by his left shoulder and heard it shatter against the wall at least seventy feet behind him.

  His answer was a .44 slug. It bashed into the wall behind the killer, who fell to his face. Harry didn’t think about his strategy—he just went down on one knee to get a better shot at the now-prone assassin.

  Because of that, the second .45 missile went over his lowering head. Harry’s next shot dug into the concrete platform an inch in front of the pusher, throwing shards into the man’s face and blinding him.

  The killer reacted by rolling toward the train. Callahan felt sure he had him. If he could get close enough for a clean shot, and if the pusher didn’t stumble onto a human shield, Harry figured it was the end of the line for the man who had murdered Marth
a Murray.

  “All right, freeze!” Harry demanded, running forward.

  To his amazement, the man leaped into the air instead. It was a jump rivaling the one Harry had made to get out of the BART’s way. The killer was diving upward the way most people were able to dive down. He slammed to a landing on top of the last subway car.

  Without pausing, the pusher rolled and dropped on the other side. He landed, rolled, and came up running for the opposite platform. Harry was forced to watch his progress through the train’s windows. He realized he didn’t have a chance to catch up with the man. But he didn’t have to just stand there, either.

  “Get down!” he roared again, looking at all the confused, frightened people still in the subway car. They slid to the carpeted floor as he brought the Magnum up with both hands.

  Harry emptied the gun right through both BART windows at the retreating figure of the pusher. The man was just beginning to vault onto the opposite platform when the .44 slugs started whizzing around him.

  This time, Harry had a clear shot. The only problem was the window’s deflection. It was tricky enough to throw off his aim, somewhat, but it wasn’t enough to save the pusher completely.

  The bullets smashed into the platform lip, shattered against the far wall, and ripped through the pusher’s jacket pocket to his side. The pain threw the killer back in surprise, making him drop back down to the empty tracks.

  Harry watched the wounded man move to the left and down the subway tunnel, as the cop quickly dumped out the spent .44 shells and reloaded. The obstructing automated BART train, oblivious to the battle, sealed its doors and continued on its way.

  The pusher took off down the subway tunnel, holding onto his side. Callahan dropped to the tracks and went after him. As soon as he got away from the platform and into the darkened tube, he saw the cracking flashes and heard the deafening blast of the .45. The rounds ricocheted off a support beam in the tunnel’s center and burrowed into the wall in front of him.