Dirty Harry 07 - Massacre at Russian River Read Online Free PDF

bet.”
    “That’s right.”
    The two detectives and the man from the sheriff’s office looked from one to the other in an attempt to decipher the meaning of this exchange.
    The helicopter had banked off to the right. They were over Rain Mountain. Here the trees grew in such profusion that it didn’t appear as though the sun could ever penetrate to the earth from which they sprung.
    Nonetheless, on these slopes too Turk was able to make the necessary discriminations and point out the location of two fields—or gardens as the growers preferred to call them, regardless of their size.
    “If you know where all the shit is, where each of the farms are, why don’t you just go in there and bust the hell out of them?”
    The detective from San Jose had a point.
    “It’s not that simple,” said Turk. “We need reasonable grounds. We need warrants. Judges aren’t always so cooperative. Besides, there’s a problem with manpower.”
    “The Feds could do it if they wanted.”
    Turk shrugged as if to say the Feds could do any damn thing they pleased but just in theory. “Remember, there’s a limited budget. You have your Mexican border and your Florida smuggling operations and your Middle East poppy growers and your Marseilles connections. So it’s not like you can just concentrate on two counties in California.”
    “Budgets,” muttered the Palm Springs detective. “The only thing I know about budgets is that they’re always cutting them.”
    Turk directed the pilot to take them lower. “There’s something interesting here I’d like you gentlemen to see.”
    They never had a chance to find out what it was. No sooner had the helicopter descended to just above the treeline than there was a deafening explosion. This was followed moments later by a series of pops. These were less noisy, more hollow in quality, the sound of an inflated balloon punctured with a pin.
    Before the occupants of the Sikorsky could manage to ascertain the source of these detonations their craft listed sharply, beginning to veer off to the right on a course headed down into the trees.
    The jarring movement upset the men from their seats. Harry had been thrown to the floor and was now attempting to get right himself. But this was not so easily done since the detective from Palm Springs had landed on top of him. And the detective from Palm Springs was not cooperating; he insisted on staying right where he was, flung on top of Harry.
    Harry quickly realized there was a reason for the man’s failure to cooperate. A chunk of something sizable, perhaps from a projectile, perhaps a part of the helicopter itself, had been hurled into his stomach and gone out the other way, leaving a gaping hole that immediately filled with blood, blood that was now soaking into Harry’s jacket. No life remained in the detective. Someone else would have to collect his pension for him.
    He was not the only one who’d suffered harm. The pilot’s head was bloody, half of his face seemed to have disappeared, exposing for a brief moment the white of the skull before the blood covered it over. It was impossible to determine immediately whether or not he was alive.
    The man from the sheriff’s office was struggling to put his gun to use. But how? Who was there to shoot? The explosions had ceased, the helicopter was speeding far from the site of the ambush, but it was doing so without anyone in control.
    Turk and the detective from San Jose were apparently too dazed to recognize the peril of their situation. A gash had opened up in Turk’s forehead and blood was oozing down his face; he did not seem to be aware of his injury. All he kept doing was shaking his head vehemently as though by doing that he could regain command of his senses.
    Harry was in a bad position, unable to wrest control of the craft from the critically injured pilot in time to prevent it from dropping down into the trees. He tried, stretching his arms as far as he could, but the descent of the damaged