Dirty Harry 07 - Massacre at Russian River (19 page)

“McPheeters?”

“But you see, I get the blame one way or the other,” he continued, ignoring the question. “Before I got the call, I was doing some serious thinking. I’ve concluded that I would rather collect only half of my pension than stay in office for another five years to get it all. You see, I don’t have the feeling I’ve got another five years in me for this. Fact is, I don’t think I’d be allowed to serve out my time. Half a pension is better than a full pension you never get to collect, don’t you think?”

Harry was obliged to concur with this assessment.

“What has happened is, that you just speeded up things is all. I am going to turn in my resignation tomorrow morning. I’ve already packed. I see no reason to stick around Russian River the way things have developed.” Now for the first time he looked Harry in the eyes. “Since you started it, I see nothing wrong with you finishing it. I just want no part of it, you understand? No part of any of it. You get your ass wasted. You deserve it. They get their asses kicked in, they deserve it too. I want you to know I really don’t give a good goddamn what happens because I’m getting out of here.”

He thrust a folded piece of paper into Harry’s pocket.

“That there’s an address. Big farmhouse outside of town. You just keep going on Van Buren and when you see a sign for the Saw Mill Restaurant, right at that junction, you turn. You go straight you’ll be on 101. There’s a white silo by this farmhouse, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”

“And what will I find at this farmhouse?”

“All your friends, I should imagine. That’s the distribution center you might say, where that asshole Kilborn and the Reardons—though it seems we’re down to just one of them now—store most of the weed. It’s measured there, tested for quality. Some of it, as you saw, goes direct to San Francisco but most ends up at this place and is shipped on later.”

“What about McPheeters? Will he be there too?”

The sheriff wasn’t inclined to answer this. “McPheeters, McPheeters,” he said. “What the hell are you always asking me about him for? How should I know? You go there and find out yourself!”

“One more thing.”

Marsh turned to him and regarded him with obvious distaste. “Haven’t I done enough already?”

“I’d like my gun back. I had to give it up, you remember?”

Marsh glared at him. “Ah, why the hell not?” he muttered. “Follow me.” And he led Harry back into the courthouse that he had just had to fight his way out of.

C H A P T E R
F i f t e e n

I
t was still dark when Harry reached the junction of 101 and Saw Mill Road. The sign for the Saw Mill Restaurant declared that there was no better place anywhere in the nation for “down-home country fare.” It was open for lunch and dinner, with special facilities for banquets and parties. There were many hours to go before lunch or dinner was a possibility. Harry would have settled for a coffeeshop that served round-the-clock; all he’d had to eat was a stale sandwich of the kind that prisons seemed to prefer. Coffee might help. So might a good shot of whiskey.

But Saw Mill Road was empty of eating establishments that kept late hours. The Saw Mill Restaurant was an oddly Victorian-shaped house with lots of darkened windows and a big empty parking lot.

For long stretches, there was nothing but fenced-in pastures, separated at intervals by thick wooded areas. The only sign of habitation was the occasional farmhouse. But none of them was complemented by a white silo.

The road threatened to go on indefinitely. For a few minutes Harry thought somehow he might have gone by the Reardon place. But then he saw it on his left. About half a mile ahead, loomed the white silo. Beyond that, stood two hulking structures, both of which looked capable of housing an abundance of marijuana.

Harry passed right by it. He noticed that there was at least half a dozen vehicles parked in the gravel lot that adjoined the larger of the two buildings. One of them was an open-ended truck that might well have belonged to Tom Sr. From his cursory look he could not identify any of the others.

There was virtually no traffic on the road at this dull gray hour and Harry had no wish to make himself more conspicuous than he already was by leaving his Olds too close to the farm. Instead, he drove on for another mile or so, then pulled the car off to the side.

He proceeded back to the farm on foot, following the highway for much of the distance, then detouring into the neighboring woods to minimize the risk of being spotted.

The woods were a more tangled, thornier affair than he first thought and it took him several minutes to fight his way out. At last, somewhat scratched and bruised, he managed to come out the other side, on an escarpment that overlooked the Reardon farm.

In the gathering light, he could make out a tractor out in the fields and a van that he was not able to see from the road. It very much resembled the van with government plates that he’d seen being loaded with marijuana in Russian River the day before.

This must be some operation, he thought, but his stomach sank when he considered that it had fallen to him alone to destroy it. No one else seemed interested in the responsibility or the danger that went with it. Actually, Harry could see why. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been tempted to take 101 back to San Francisco and forget the whole thing. Though that was no answer; there were problems in San Francisco too. That mess with the DEA agent would have to be cleared up before he could go home again.

Harry began now to crawl down the escarpment. All the while, he scanned the area, thinking that he must be missing something. He saw no guards. He saw no one at all.

A dog barked suddenly and out of the dimness a huge German Shepherd came running, its teeth bared. Here was the guard. One of them anyhow.

It was a well-trained animal, taught to go for the jugular in one quick, savage leap. Having already exposed his Magnum, he saw no choice but to use it. He didn’t have much time to consider taking alternative action.

The snarling dog was in the middle of the air when the bullet struck. That did not stop it but when it came down on Harry it did nothing more than to knock him to the ground, draped over him in death. The bullet had entered the Shepherd’s open mouth and gone straight to its brain. Much of the dog’s shattered brain, and a considerable quantity of its blood, had gotten over Harry. Had he the time he would have cleaned himself off before resuming this affair. But there clearly was no time to make himself presentable.

Two men, neither of them recognizable to Harry, rushed from the farmhouse off to his left, armed with Soviet-manufactured SKS 7.67 mm carbines which they proceeded to raise. But they didn’t immediately fire because they could not at a distance determine whether Harry was alive or as dead as the dog obviously was. With all the blood and viscera covering him, he certainly didn’t appear to be very healthy.

Harry seized the advantage and fired twice. The first man dropped so quickly that it was impossible to say where he’d been hit. The second lurched backwards, his SKS firing ineffectually into the air. As he fell, he blew a bubble that might have been gum were it not for its bright red coloring.

Throwing the dog’s body off of him, he picked himself up and raced in the direction of the farmhouse. He sidled up to its wall of brick and oak and moved flush against it. He lowered his head so he was not exposed as he passed the windows.

So far no one else had come out to try and intercept Harry, possibly because the precedent for doing so was decidedly bad. But all that meant, as far as Harry could tell, was that they were preparing a welcome for him inside.

The object was to foresee their strategy and then to outwit them at it. Reardon might not be a tactician—he was likely to come out with two guns blazing—but Kilborn had certainly demonstrated a high regard for saving his own ass. And McPheeters, if McPheeters was on the premises, was not the sort of man who would easily sacrifice his life.

He stopped right where he was and hunkered down by the side of Reardon’s truck. From there, he had a clear view of the farmhouse but those inside would have immense difficulty spying him unless they conducted a search among the seven vehicles lining the lot. Harry had no intention of giving them that opportunity.

As he had surmised, the men inside the farmhouse soon ran out of patience. Since it was apparent that the intruder was not about to come to them, they were left with no alternative but to go to him.

The first to appear was Tom Sr., brandishing an M16. To his credit, he showed no sign of hesitancy. In fact, he seemed happy to have been set loose. His face was dark, reflecting his anger at losing two members of his family. He was intent on revenge. Harry had only to look at him to recognize his poisonous emotional state.

A second man, wearing a cap and a windbreaker, soon joined him. He did not appear to be as confident as Tom Sr. Harry meanwhile held his fire, hoping to lure as many of the defenders out into the open as he could.

In the last few minutes, the first light of dawn had begun to penetrate the darkened sky and it was becoming easier to see just who he was shooting at. This tactic would prove both bad and good, Harry thought, since it would also make him more visible.

Suddenly, Tom stopped. Maybe he had exceptional vision or else relied on an inherited sense for ferreting out victims even when he couldn’t see them. Because he now fired his M16 at his own truck, demolishing the windshield completely and causing glass shards to rain down on Harry. Several of the fragments perforated his skin.

“Got you that time, you fuck!” shouted Tom Sr., laughing heartily as he raced down the row of vehicles, hoping to capitalize on his surprise.

Harry barely had a chance to get up. Ignoring the new pain that resulted from the glass cuts and older pain that was his grim legacy of the past few days in Russian River, Harry slid underneath the truck and fired his Magnum exactly at that moment when Tom Sr.’s feet appeared in view.

Tom Sr. shrieked and tumbled backwards, out of Harry’s line of sight.

“Goddamn whore, you fucking crippled me!”

That is just the beginning, Harry thought. He now risked crawling forward, poking his head out from under the truck—but only for a second. Even that was too much. Tom Sr., propped up with his elbows on the gravel, had been anticipating his appearance and fired several times. The first round had nearly decapitated Harry, but the ones that followed were senseless, betraying only the extent of Tom Sr.’s fury.

All Harry had wanted was an approximate idea of where Tom was. He extended his arm and mentally judging his aim, he fired his .44 twice—once a bit to the left, then to the right. The first, he assumed would probably miss Tom but would have the effect of alarming him sufficiently to shift position in the opposite direction.

Tom Reardon Sr. was predictable in this respect. He did exactly as Harry had hoped and found that his right arm had been blown virtually clean off. He screamed and hollered and rolled over into the gravel, but he wouldn’t let go of the M16. He just took hold of it with his one good arm and turned it on Harry as he emerged.

At the same time, his friend in the windbreaker, who had stayed in the background, tried his luck with the Ruger Mauser he carried. The Ruger was a good gun but its owner wasn’t adept with it.

His shots slammed into the side of Tom’s truck, disfiguring the door on the passenger side. Harry ducked, returning to safety underneath the truck. For one thing, he needed to reload. For another, he hadn’t counted on Tom Sr. being able to sustain resistance.

Tom Sr. was now dragging his mutilated body through the dust and gravel. He would blast Harry away under the truck if he couldn’t do so in the open.

Harry saw the barrel of the M16 and slid over to the right in order to avoid getting in the way of the shot when it inevitably came. But it was apparent that Tom Sr. meant to spray the entire area under the truck in the belief that sooner or later he had to hit Harry. There was no way that Harry could keep changing positions fast enough. So he did the only thing possible and fired directly at the M16. As if in response, the barrel spun and flew out of sight.

Tom Sr. raged some more; he wasn’t through yet. He succeeded in getting his Enforcer out and was prepared to use that. But with the blood pumping out of him and the pain from his wounds, he was not able to move fast enough. Harry squeezed himself under the car parked next to the truck in the interim, leaving Tom Sr. laying down a barrage in the spot that he had just vacated.

“Over here, Tom!” Harry signalled to him.

Tom Sr. raised his eyes, more venomous than before, and unsteadily sighted his handgun. He was ambidextrous—at least with a gun—but his skill was ebbing along with his life. Harry, protected by this red Toyota, took his time and blew Tom Reardon Sr.’s face from its moorings.

The man in the windbreaker ran behind another parked car and fired back at Harry with his Mauser. Harry responded in kind. The man went hurtling into the air and came down in the dust. He didn’t move.

These proceedings had not gone unobserved. When Harry looked toward the farmhouse, he beheld Mike Kilborn’s face framed in a window. The face vanished. A door slammed a few moments later.

Harry hastened around to the other side of the house just in time to see Kilborn scuttling into one of the fields.

While he was no longer a threat, Harry hated the idea that he might escape. He’d only pop up again another day and cause more mischief. That kind always did.

Harry wanted to chase him but Kilborn had the advantage. He was younger, nimbler, and had not been hit by a bullet the night before or been cut by glass a few minutes ago. And he probably had had the benefit of a good night’s sleep.

There just didn’t seem to be any way of catching up with him. Moreover, if he tried to, whoever else was left in the house might slip away.

As soon as he stepped inside the barn, he dropped to the floor, fully expecting to be peppered by another M16. This did not occur.

He found himself in a cavernous space demarcated by a succession of large support beams, that rose eighteen feet up to the ceiling.