Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill Read online

  “DIRTY HARRY” IS ON

  A RAMPAGE—AGAINST A

  MOB-RUN DOPE NETWORK

  ONLY HE CAN BUST!

  Not even losing his badge can keep “Dirty Harry” Callahan away from Magnum-powered action. Now Harry’s working for a millionaire, and battling dope-running sea pirates from San Francisco to Mexico’s heroin-packing shores. Behind the scenes and the big guns is his old enemy Father Nick. An underworld kingpin and ex-con, Nick can’t let the past die—and Harry won’t let the mobsters live!

  SHOOTOUT IN

  THE PACIFIC

  There was no sound save the thrust of the engines and the splash of water. Dawn was approximately two and a half hours away. The pilot’s face, visible through the glass, betrayed a look of intense concentration. When he saw Harry making his way around the deck, he slid the protective glass so he could fire the Smith & Wesson gripped in his free hand.

  But Harry had anticipated this. He had only brought his head into view, providing just enough temptation to impel the pilot to react. Harry slipped back out of sight just as the Smith & Wesson discharged.

  All this happened so quickly that the pilot couldn’t be sure whether he had hit Harry or not. So he leaned out, poking his head into the wind.

  Which was when Harry, extending his Magnum out beyond the perimeter of the cockpit, answered his fire . . .

  Books by Dane Hartman

  Dirty Harry #1: Duel For Cannons

  Dirty Harry #2: Death on the Docks

  Dirty Harry #3: The Long Death

  Dirty Harry #4: The Mexico Kill

  Dirty Harry #5: Family Skeletons

  Dirty Harry #6: City of Blood

  Dirty Harry #7: Massacre at Russian River

  Dirty Harry #8: Hatchet Men

  Dirty Harry #9: The Killing Connection

  Dirty Harry #10: The Blood of Strangers

  Dirty Harry #11: Death in the Air

  Dirty Harry #12: The Dealer of Death

  Published by

  WARNER BOOKS

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1982 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc., 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10019

  A Warner Communications Company

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 0-446-90863-0

  First Printing: March, 1982

  DIRTY HARRY #4

  THE

  MEXICO

  KILL

  The Beginning

  To the horizon there was nothing to see, nothing but a vast empty expanse of ocean. The Pacific shimmered in the late afternoon sun; the world seemed to consist only of heat and light. But to the five crewmen who labored aboard the Hyacinth the scorching temperature made little difference. They were accustomed to working in such conditions. For years these men had been sailing the globe, generally in the pay of men like Harold Keepnews who owned the Hyacinth. The salt of the sea had gotten into their blood.

  This leg of their journey, from the waters off Baja California up to San Francisco Bay, was a relatively easy assignment in comparison to what they had had to do the week before. Now it was a matter of navigation and keeping the craft in seaworthy shape. The fishing tournament was a thing of the past, a triumph arduously earned over a series of grueling days. The fish had made them sweat and caused them to strain and rip muscles. The fish had lost, but they’d exacted their price.

  Keepnews had returned by private jet to his home, leaving his crew to bring the Hyacinth to him. It was a beautiful vessel, a forty-five-foot cutter with round-bilge hull and skeg rudder; a commanding presence, its towering main and foretriangle sails gave it the look of a pure white specter when viewed from a distance.

  Occasionally a whale would be sighted, a gray humpback playfully emerging from the deep, spouting a geyser of water, then vanishing again. From time to time, too, the men would observe a school of dolphins migrating in a southerly direction. But only seldom would they ever see another boat which was why, toward dusk on the evening of July 8th, the appearance of a thirty-foot cruiser bobbing listlessly in the water excited the attention that it did.

  The cruiser, silhouetted against the westering sun, was visible from the port side of the Hyacinth, and the way it cast from side to side caused the Hyacinth’s skipper to think it was in some kind of difficulty. He directed the yacht to move closer to the disabled vessel.

  When the Hyacinth drew in toward the cruiser, the crewmen began to make out a signal beacon that they’d failed to notice before with the sun in their eyes. Tiny discharges of red light were barely discernible. There was, however, still no sign of human life on board this boat whose bow declared its identity in small black letters: Angel Lily.

  The skipper took hold of a megaphone and called out to the Angel Lily, asking if there was anyone on board. Presently a figure popped up from below deck, a man with straggly russet hair that drooped to his shoulders.

  “Yessir, you could be of help to us,” the man shouted. “Something’s fucked up with our fuel, can’t figure out what the hell it could be. Been out here must be two days doing circles waiting for somebody to come along. Don’t know how happy we are to see you.”

  Something about what this man said disturbed the skipper, a fifty-year-old veteran of the sea, but he couldn’t determine what it was. It sounded to him like this man and his companions, whoever they might be, didn’t know the first thing about sailing. How else would they have ended up here in the middle of the Pacific, stranded because they ran into some sort of problem with their fuel? But maybe it was just the man’s looks that bothered him? He was as unkempt and slovenly in appearance as the Angel Lily. The Hyacinth’s skipper could sense from just cursory observation when a boat was the victim of neglect or simple abuse, and there was no question that the Angel Lily had suffered from both.

  Despite his reservations, the skipper was not about to abandon a stricken boat. He gave the order to drop anchor, then returned his attention to the Angel Lily.

  Now there was a second man on the deck. He was taller, less hirsute, but the skipper didn’t like his looks any better. The skipper kept quiet, maintaining a steady, scrutinizing gaze, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “We got a dinghy here, we’ll be over there directly,” said the first man.

  “Don’t you want us to come over to you?” the skipper inquired. “Maybe we can diagnose your problem and send you on your way.”

  “Oh, save yourself the trouble. No way in hell this crate’s going to get anywhere. Needs a major overhaul. And it’s sure not worth it. You just take us partway up the coast we’d be mighty appreciative. Drop us off a bit south of Enseñada be just fine.”

  The first mate was dubious and expressed his sentiments to the skipper who felt exactly the same way. “But I don’t see what else we can do really. After all, we can’t just leave them here. Enseñada is not far from Tijuana. By tomorrow afternoon we can get rid of them.”

  The mate was compelled to agree with the logic of this, without, however, being any more convinced of its wisdom.

  “We just have to load in a few things here, and we’ll be right with you folks. Don’t want to hold you up none on account of us.”

  After several minutes had passed, the two men carefully lowered their inflatable dinghy over the side and then clambered into it. The dinghy, luridly orange against the darkening water, seemed to take forever to reach the waterline of the Hyacinth.

  The yacht’s crew members assisted the two in hoisting up their duffel bags, which were as bulky as they were heavy. “What in God’s name have you got in those things?” the skipper asked.

  The bearded character,
who was the only one who seemed to do any talking, shrugged, replying, “All sorts of junk, nothing special.”

  With the two safely on board with their possessions, the skipper ordered the anchor lifted. Preparations began to maneuver the Hyacinth back on course. By this point, the crew was too preoccupied to pay much more than perfunctory attention to the new arrivals. They were given berths and provided with food and drink; that was sufficient, in the skipper’s view, to satisfy the demands of seagoing hospitality.

  Overhead the sky was filling up with stars, becoming glutted with them. Some of them refused to stay put and went streaking crazily downward, looking as if they had every intention of plunging into the Pacific.

  Two of the crewmen had decided to retire. The three others, including the skipper, remained on deck, guiding their craft north against a gentle five-knot wind. What the two strays they’d picked up were doing they had no idea; presumably they’d gone to bed. They’d heard not a sound from them since they’d come on board.

  In the silence, broken only by the sea lapping against the hull, any noise, even a cough or a grunt, was easily picked up, and it sounded louder, more significant than it actually was. When the three men on deck heard the footsteps, bootheels producing a rough rhythmic tattoo against the stairs that led from the cabin—they all turned around to see who was coming.

  It was their two guests.

  “Anything we can do for you gentlemen?” the skipper asked, still looking out toward the sea rather than at them.

  “Not a thing,” responded the bearded man. “Not one blessed thing.”

  The first mate started to say something. But he sputtered his words, and they weren’t articulate enough for the skipper to adequately comprehend.

  Nor did he have an opportunity to make himself understood.

  Just then there was a terrific clatter and a burst of blazing light that for an instant outdid anything in the sky. Then the first mate tumbled over, his chest torn apart and becoming engulfed with blood. The skipper turned and beheld two AK47s confronting him. He did not know whether first to protest, appeal for mercy, or demand an explanation. In any case, he was not given a chance. Two Soviet-made machine guns were trained on him simultaneously. One took him to the port side, the other to the starboard. Bullets from one gun met and coupled with bullets from the other midway in his body. Spun into the air, a man twice, three times dead, he crashed into the sea that he’d sailed all of his life. The third crewman, immobilized by the fear, made a belated attempt to run. The problem was there was nowhere he could go, no escape. A single shell trapped in the base of his neck was sufficient to kill him. Others followed, but they were simply gratuitous.

  All this commotion had predictably aroused the two crewmen below. The hijackers were prepared for them. As they raced up the stairs they were met by a withering fire that tore into both of them, sending them reeling back down into the cabin, their bodies gaping grotesquely with holes that rapidly filled with blood. For a few moments, an arm could be seen moving in the tangle of limbs and bodies, flailing this way and that. But the man was dead and simply hadn’t realized it yet.

  The two assailants, their clothes spattered with the blood of the men they’d so easily killed, regarded their night’s work with satisfaction. “Two for the price of one,” the bearded man remarked.

  “Never mind that,” the other muttered. “Time to dump them overboard. The sharks are waiting for their supper.”

  C H A P T E R

  O n e

  Harold Keepnews was not a man who liked to be kept waiting. He had not amassed forty million dollars by waiting. In fact one of the reasons he’d gone out of his way to make so much money was so that he wouldn’t have to endure long lines and endless delays. If someone told him that he would get right back to him, well, he assumed that he would. No one put off Harold Keepnews.

  Maybe it was all that money that made him look as prosperous and as vital as he did, but you never knew. He had the sort of presence that commands respect. He sauntered into a room, and you knew right away that whatever he did it must be something truly important. Determined to fight back the encroachment of time, he exercised regularly in a gym he had built onto the back end of his house, ate vegetarian, drank herbal teas, and voted Republican. The Democrats he was sure would drive him and his friends into penury before long.

  You had the feeling Harold Keepnews would live a long time no matter what party controlled the White House. His granddaddy had made it to the venerable age of ninety-one, his father had succumbed two months shy of eighty-nine. They had passed on to Keepnews a handsome genetic legacy.

  Keepnews had friends everywhere, friends in the police, friends in the Coast Guard. Which was why he assumed that his problem would be very quickly, and smoothly, ironed out.

  “My boat’s been hijacked,” he declared matter-of-factly to Captain Cornell Haines who was trim and handsome enough to have walked right out of a Police Benevolent Association poster. Keepnews didn’t like to sound alarmed even though the circumstances might be pressing.

  Haines had met Keepnews on a variety of occasions, official ceremonies mostly at which San Francisco’s social and financial elite was expected to turn out. Keepnews was the sort of man who didn’t have to look into a mirror to remember what he looked like; his photograph was in the newspapers that often.

  Haines respected Keepnews and listened carefully to what he was saying, taking notes. He didn’t have to take many notes though. Keepnews preferred to be succinct.

  “When did this happen, sir?”

  “Sometime between the 5th of July and yesterday. I couldn’t tell you exactly when.”

  “How do you know that the Hyacinth wasn’t simply lost at sea? There’s always the possibility of an accident. I’m not suggesting that you’re wrong, sir, I just want to explore all the options.”

  Haines looked up at Keepnews, fully expecting a reprimand for his presumption. He’d much rather have conducted this interview at the station than here in the lush airy setting of Keepnews’ house.

  “It was no accident. If it were an accident I’d be talking to my insurance agent now and not you. We are talking about piracy and murder.”

  Haines didn’t like the sound of the word piracy. It had a vaguely anachronistic ring to it. On the other hand, it wasn’t such a farfetched allegation. People were crazy if they didn’t take a 30-30 or a shotgun with them when they set out on sea journeys of any significant distance. It had gotten that bad. But Haines was strictly a city boy. What happened in the water—unless that water was the bathtub water somebody drowned in—was none of his concern. Still, when a man like Keepnews talked you listened.

  “You must admit, Mr. Keepnews, that if your charges are true, and they may well be . . .”

  “There should be no doubt in your mind,” Keepnews broke in.

  “It’s not my mind that counts here. It’s a matter of gathering evidence. You maintain no radio contact with your boat, then it disappears with all on board.”

  “The crew disappeared, not the boat.”

  Haines looked puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Part of the problem in this exchange was that Keepnews had the habit of starting at the middle and working back to the beginning of his story, all the while expecting his listener to follow his train of thought.

  “My boat’s here. Right in San Francisco. Moored at the Marina Yacht Harbor.”

  “You saw it, you saw the Hyacinth?” Haines suddenly had the hope that this case might be surprisingly easy to solve.

  “Of course, the pirates have changed the name. It’s called The Sojourner now. They’ve done a painting job on it. Sails are all a mess of colors. Me, I only had white sails. These bastards have no taste.”

  “You are positive it is the same boat?”

  “Positive. It’s a Mariner, same design. You investigate you’ll find a Perkins 62-horsepower diesel, skeg-mounted rudder, all the rigging’s three-eights-inch stainless 304.”
r />   Haines wasn’t sure he cared for all the technical details and he held up his hand to stop Keepnews from getting carried away.

  “Now you said that you’ve spoken to Coast Guard officials.”

  “Joe Morse himself, you know him?”

  “Afraid I don’t, sir.”

  “Fine fellow, Joe: Known him for years. Useless though. He advised me to speak to you folks.”

  Haines nodded gravely. “You saw your boat when, yesterday?”

  “Two-thirty in the afternoon. I’ve been down at the marina every day since Friday waiting for the Hyacinth.”

  “You see anyone on the boat?”

  “Let’s say there were some suspicious-looking fellows in the vicinity but I can’t say as whether they were with the boat or not.”

  “No one you recognized?”

  “No, no one. Whoever they are, we travel in entirely different circles.”

  Haines rose, preparing to say his goodbyes. He wanted to assure Keepnews that the police would do everything within their power to bring the matter to a successful conclusion.

  Keepnews frowned. “Captain,” he said, “I expect immediate action. Tomorrow morning I would like a call from you to give me the latest report.”

  “These things take time, sir. We can’t just invade a private yacht without reasonable grounds of suspicion.”

  “I gave you all the reasonable grounds you need, Captain.”

  This last remark Haines missed completely. His attention was diverted by the woman who’d just appeared in the doorway of the study. She was clad in a blue denim robe loosely gathered over a lustrous black tank bathing suit. Her long brandy-colored hair was dripping water down into her face but she didn’t appear to notice. Her eyes were child-like, brimming with mirth and innocence; she looked like an updated version of Orphelia, taken out of the lake before she had a chance to sink to the bottom of it.

  Keepnews observed Haines’ reaction with amusement.