Dirty Harry 07 - Massacre at Russian River (11 page)

“Shit. All right, do the best you can.”

Already, twenty minutes out, Turk’s elaborately contrived two-pronged advance, directed at Lunar and Rain mountains, thought to be the two likeliest redoubts of the marijuana business, had become bogged down in the mud.

Harry felt it poetic justice that an operation requiring millions of dollars and sixty men armed to the teeth should have to rely on a mechanic from Maxie’s Garage to get underway.

Turk was so furious over the delay that Harry decided not to antagonize him with such a gratuitous comment. Instead, as delicately as possible, he asked him if McPheeters had concurred in the scheduling of the invasion.

“No objection at all. We were perfectly in accord. I don’t know why you say I shouldn’t trust him. I’ve worked under him for years.”

Turk clearly was not about to allow anything to interfere with the consummation of his dream. No matter what Harry said, the only voice he was ever going to listen to was his own.

But Harry was fast coming to the inescapable conclusion that the only reason McPheeters might condone Turk’s scheme, however wild or preposterous, would be to ensure its failure.

The transmitter crackled again. It was a federal marshal who wished to know whether the strike against Charlie Mountain should be put off until the truck in the second column was extricated from the mud so that the two columns might attack simultaneously. Turk informed him that he was putting off nothing.

From the air—if the weather had allowed anyone to fly up into it—the two columns, the one advancing, the other mired in the treacherous terrain, resembled twin snakes on diverging roads. Each column consisted of maybe ten or twelve vehicles of one sort or another. When they were all in motion the clouds of exhaust fumes that they collectively produced made for a noxious and murky atmosphere.

And where was the man from Maxie’s Garage? An hour had gone by, and he had not arrived. Davenport’s eradication team, as the invasion organizers called it, remained where it was, motionless in the shadow of Lunar Mountain. The rain storm was growing worse. Thunder rumbled north and west of the mountains, greenish-white flashes ignited the sky, giving the whole landscape a vaguely sinister, phosphorescent look.

In the green rusted pickup in which Harry and Turk were installed, the radio receivers were filled with voices, some of them recognizable to Harry, others unfamiliar. All sought guidance from Turk. The reports were of more rain through the night. The roads, never in the best of condition, would be inhospitable to a Sherman tank, were such a thing available to the eradication forces.

Again and again came pleas to pause for the night, to establish a base camp, draw the trucks and half-tracks around wagon-train fashion, and wait for the storm to blow over.

The more plaintive these requests got, the more heated Turk became in opposition. “That’s playing into their hands,” he would say, referring to the growers who resided deep in the heart of the muddy county. “To delay tonight would be to sacrifice the element of surprise.”

We’re going to surprise ourselves, Harry thought but said nothing. No, Turk was too far gone. He was absolutely committed to this venture. But if hell couldn’t impede his progress high water just might.

Another man counseled putting off the ascent on Charlie at least for a few hours. “Maybe it’ll clear enough to send up the spotter,” he said tentatively. “With infrared photography we should be able to gauge our bearings more accurately.”

Turk wouldn’t consider this suggestion either. “We have all the data we need,” he said. Turning to Harry, he said with evident disdain, “Last-minute jitters. Once we start, once we make our first bust, then you’ll see.”

See what? Harry wondered. But again he knew enough to remain silent.

Turk attempted to contact Davenport. “Domino One, this is Xanadu One. What’s happening there?”

“We’ve got someone working on the truck right now. Just got here.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?”

“The mechanic they sent out here isn’t sure. He wants to try himself, but it seems to be a bigger job than he expected. He might have to go back into town for more equipment.”

“Damn. Well, you do the best you can. We’re moving right along here.”

And they were moving right along, surprisingly enough, in spite of the oozy earth. At times the paved surface of the road could not be seen, there was so much mud strewn over it. And visibility was nearly zero, compelling Turk’s column to slow down to fifteen miles an hour maximum.

But little by little the gradient of the road became more pronounced. The column was at last proceeding up into Rain Mountain. Yet there was scarcely reason for optimism; this was the easiest part of the journey. Soon the road that had led them out of Russian River would disappear, replaced—if the maps could be relied upon—by a network of smaller unpaved roads that on paper looked like so many broken veins in the nose of an alcoholic.

It was more thickly wooded here, dense with brush and tendril. The ground was cluttered with rocks and overtaken by moss. The most frequent sound, aside from the steady attack of the rain, was the squeal of tires fighting against the slippery surface, gnashing spokes, mud, and stone until purchase was obtained.

But they continued to make progress, which was more than could be said of Davenport’s column. That one hadn’t moved since early that evening and, given the latest information, wasn’t likely to any time soon.

It was nearly eight o’clock. The atmosphere was rain and dark, dark and rain, nothing else. The neighboring trees rose like ghosts in the high-intensity headlight beams. Dinner was a few sandwiches and soda packed earlier by one of Russian River’s restaurants.

“We should be reaching the turn-off right about now,” Turk said, laying his road map flush against the steering wheel.

And within five minutes his judgment proved to be correct. There, caught in the headlights, was the juncture at which the main road came to an end and divided into two.

And positioned squat in the middle of the juncture was an abandoned school bus, more rust than yellow, with all the glass gone from the windows.

With an oath Turk brought his truck to a halt and radioed back that the other drivers do similarly. The last thing he needed right now was for a pileup to develop because someone applied the brakes too late.

For half a minute Turk sat in stony silence, staring at the obstacle in his path.

“Well, what do you think we ought to do? Try and ram it out of the way or see if we can get enough men to push it off the road?”

“Let’s take a look first,” Harry advised.

And so they got out of the truck and walked over to where the bus rested. The rain soaked them within moments. The two men examined the way the bus was laid across the road. One pair of tires rested on asphalt, the other on mud which meant that the bus was slowly sinking in the rear.

“Hell, let’s ram it,” Turk said, too impatient to contemplate any other course of action.

“Whatever you say,” Harry declared. “It’s your show.”

The bus didn’t like being moved. Turk aimed his pickup as if it were some kind of guided missile, and he took it, at twenty-five miles an hour, dead center into the derelict school bus. The school bus shuddered in reaction, the truck shuddered, but that was all.

“Once more!” said Turk.

This time he took the truck in at a higher speed. Harry dreaded to think what the result of this collision might be and kept his head down.

The truck slammed into the bus from another angle, closer to the front, and managed to jar it loose, forcing it farther back into the mud.

“I think if we got out and pushed,” Harry said, “we could do it.”

Several reluctant volunteers, who vastly preferred the shelter of their vehicles, were recruited. Together they strained and slipped and lost their grip again and again because of the wetness. The bus finally gave way and coasted gently into the mud, freeing access to the narrow road that would take them to their first destination, a marijuana farm said to be owned by a man named Harlow Gentry.

Turk, consulting his map again, stated that the Gentry farm was located only three miles down this secondary road. It was now a quarter to nine. Dislodging the bus had exhausted nearly an hour of their time.

No further impediment stood in their way, and the next three miles, along a torturous and sometimes nonexistent road, were conquered without incident. Off to their right lay a grassy expanse and a white structure on the crest of a faraway hill that Harry guessed was where Gentry kept his home and his marijuana.

“This is Xanadu One,” Turk said, speaking into his receiver. “We are at Mark One. Repeat: We are at Charlie Mark One. Prepare for strike.”

One by one the vehicles stopped. The men began to emerge, their weapons in hand, their heads wrapped in folds of raincoats or covered by hardhats that glimmered in the lights of their trucks.

“What do you know about Gentry?” Harry inquired.

“Nothing,” said Turk, “except that he lives here and grows rich dealing in weed.”

Whatever else Gentry did or did not do was unclear because his house was empty. The lights were off but not because he had gone to sleep early. He just wasn’t in. Harry inspected the bathroom. Opening the medicine chest, he was confirmed in his hypothesis.

He went downstairs and found Turk and two other law enforcement officials rummaging through the closets and bureaus, searching for evidence that might implicate the absent occupant.

“He’s split for a while,” Harry said. “Medicine chest’s empty.” When Turk didn’t seem to comprehend what he was saying, he added, “So much for surprise.”

Turk didn’t seem particularly dismayed, however. “That’s only one. You can’t tell. It could be just coincidence. Let’s see what our men have come up with in the fields.”

But there was little there that made Turk happy. There was marijuana all right but not very much of it. The vast majority of the plants appeared to have already been harvested, most likely for the shake weed—droppings from the lower portions of the plants—that was culled at this time of year.

Turk looked glum, no longer so confident that this was coincidence and nothing else.

Twenty pounds of mediocre grass was hardly much of a reward after going to all this effort. Especially when the grower himself had slipped away.

Nonetheless, it was obviously too late to think of turning back now even though Harry suspected that they would find only more of the same as they continued their half-assed odyssey up higher on Rain Mountain.

“Next farm’s another five miles up the road,” Turk noted. And they were on their way.

The road was more pitted along this stretch. Its many small gulleys and niches had quickly filled with water. Driving up it was something like driving through a swollen river. Water slapped against their windows, mocking the frantic attempts of the windshield wipers to restore any sort of visibility.

Just ahead of them, scarcely two miles from the Gentry farm, they heard a huge thunk.

“What was that?”

Harry didn’t know. But he counseled Turk to slow down quickly.

No sooner had he said this than there was a second disturbance, just as loud and ominous.

“A tree,” Harry said. “They’re felling trees to block our way.”

Turk peered into the distance, but there was just the rainy gloom. He did not have any reason to think Harry was wrong so he radioed back to his men and ordered another halt.

“I guess we ought to go out and take a look.”

They did exactly that. It was treacherous walking, and soon they were up to their knees in viscous water. Only after slogging for what seemed a considerable period of time did they come upon the new barriers.

The two downed trees were huge, with thick massive trunks that would require several men to move. Tied to the stumps Harry found strands of rope that had just been cut.

“There’s no doubt now that they’ve been expecting us,” Harry said.

He gazed out into the darkness, wondering just where they might be and what other ideas they had in mind.

“Fuck them,” Turk muttered. “We’ll move out on foot.”

In spite of Turk’s resolve, he recognized the need to get McPheeters’ opinion before continuing ahead without vehicles. Harry thought that surely McPheeters would refuse to sanction the abandonment of the trucks, but again he was surprised.

In a voice that was astonishingly genial, the voice of a radio talk-show host, McPheeters said, “Listen, Turk, you’re in the field, you have enough experience to judge the situation up there for yourself. If you think it makes sense to march out, by all means you certainly have my approval.”

Harry was more convinced than ever that McPheeters, for whatever reason, dearly wanted this operation to fail. And Turk, who wanted the exact opposite, was clearly doing more to advance that objective than the most devious saboteur could possibly do.

The thirty-two men who had come along with this column were understandably loath to expose themselves to the drenching rain without any hope of returning to shelter for some hours to come. But they were under orders and wearily they adjusted their raingear, came out of their trucks, and clambered over the felled trees. Looking more like Napoleon’s army on its retreat from Russia than any kind of strike force, they followed Turk’s lead to Mark Two, a farm owned by Jason Milandra.

C H A P T E R
N i n e

F
or a while the rain subsided, fading to a constant drizzle. The humidity must have been close to a hundred percent. A thick fog was settling over the rise, making it difficult to see anything more than a yard or two in advance. No one was speaking, being too absorbed by the task of putting one foot in front of the other.

It was possible that the eradication team would stumble on the Milandra farm before they caught a glimpse of it.

Turk was still in the lead. All at once Harry heard him groan and double over. He ran to his side.

A series of chains had been strung across the road, and Turk had simply blundered into one. He was clutching his stomach and doing his utmost not to scream aloud.