Dirty Harry 10 - The Blood of Strangers Read Online Free PDF

when the enemy could not be seen and the only ones who could possibly be hurt would be innocent people?
    Naturally, there was pandemonium. Those who weren’t screaming were shouting, though what message they were trying to communicate wasn’t at all clear with all the commotion. Several men, who looked like sales representatives of some massive conglomerate, were attempting to pile their way into an elevator. One of the robbers—the edgy one who’d been the first to pull the trigger—didn’t like the idea that they should escape so easily. It was more a matter of hurt pride than a strategically vital move, but nonetheless, he turned his gun on them, and fired several times into the heaving mass of black jackets.
    How many were hit wasn’t immediately discernible. But there could be no question that the conglomerate would be recruiting new sales representatives in the very near future. At least two men were critically injured and both of them toppled into the elevator as it was about to close, their bodies sprawled out at awkward angles. With them in the way the doors were unable to shut.
    Others, in their desperation to get out of the path of the bullets, found themselves stumbling, and all that did was add to the confusion and further impede flight.
    A great number, not so emboldened as these sales representatives—nor so intoxicated with alcohol—decided not to go anywhere but remained flattened out on the floor of the lobby, hoping that they would simply be ignored.
    The three men who’d been responsible for this mayhem knew that they could not stay like this forever and so they rounded up half a dozen hostages, four women, one six-year-old boy and one man, and began to make their way, slowly, very slowly, out of the lobby.
    Neither of the two surviving officers could get off a shot, not with the hostages forming a human wall around the three gunmen.
    As soon as they reached the exit, they discovered what looked like an entire army; snipers were deployed everywhere, behind parked cars, on adjacent rooftops, but they had no clearance to fire.
    Observing these events was the news crew from KCVO-TV. In spite of her apprehensions, Ellie had been the first newsperson on the scene and she had fully exploited her advantage, positioning herself and her cameramen directly in front of the hotel. And because there was so much chaos no one in authority had ordered her back. If I don’t get a Pulitzer one of these days, she was thinking, it won’t be because I haven’t had the right story.
    To one of the police sergeants standing nearby she said, “Excuse me, are you acquainted with a homicide detective by the name of Callahan?”
    “Dirty Harry, you mean?”
    “Dirty?”
    “That’s what everyone calls him. He’s right over there.”
    The sergeant indicated a tall confident man whose face, however, looked to her like a battle had taken place on it. His eyes were bloodshot, he had two days growth of beard, but beyond that there was a sense that he had lived too long and done too much, and all within the last twenty-four hours. He was handsome in a way, but not in a way that Ellie was attracted to. Why was Bressler so eager to have her accompany him on his rounds? Well, perhaps she would find out soon enough.
    The sergeant said, “You want to know how he came to be called Dirty, you watch.”
    Harry had just emerged from his unmarked car. It was a two-door Coronado and it was almost as battered as its driver. With seeming indifference, he regarded the strange procession of gunmen and hostages as it eased its way through the crowd onto the sidewalk.
    “We need a car and a driver!” one of the robbers declared. “Only one car, no one following us. When we are safely outside the city we will let the hostages go.”
    It was assumed that this would be the sort of strategy the perpetrators would employ and the police had already contrived a response, which was not to say that there wasn’t going to be any improvisation