Read Dirty Harry 03 - The Long Death for Free Online Page A

screamed after him. “Hold it, hold it!”
    Harry punctuated Cunningham’s outburst with a burst of his own. He fired the Magnum right through the open locker door. Even though the distance was at least twenty feet, the high-powered hunk of lead went through the thin metal without throwing the door back. It made a hole almost an inch wide and ripped off the shirt cloth from Gagne’s elbow as he ran.
    Harry looked to his left. The locker room was fairly big, with three rows of lockers ending with a wall of scuba and feeding equipment. From where Harry was standing he could not see another exit, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Harry pointed his gun at Cunningham.
    “Don’t go anywhere,” he warned.
    “Not me,” said the diver, both hands up.
    Harry moved quickly to the left. A moving target was better than a too cautious one. Just as he hopped from the cover of the first locker row to the second, there was a whipping, springing sound and a spear shot over his right shoulder and ripped sparks off the concrete wall behind him. Callahan immediately leaned to the right and fired. The bullet tore the spear gun in half but Gagne was gone again.
    “Don’t be an idiot, Bobby,” Harry heard Cunningham call out. “He’s got us dead to rights. Come on out so the good cop can take us in.”
    Harry didn’t like the sound of that. Especially since Cunningham’s voice was coming from a different place than Harry had left him. Rather than hazarding another hop between rows, Harry moved silently back to the first locker row. He looked around the corner of them to see Cunningham turning the corner at the other end. On the bench where he had been sitting was a box of shells.
    So good old Ted came to work prepared with a weapon in his locker. Harry sadly shook his head and quietly slipped in two new shells to replace the spent ones. Then he moved down to where Cunningham had been sitting. He made a mental calculation of how far the bench was from the locker, how tall the lockers were, and what kind of effort it would take to vault them. Then he looked at the ceiling.
    There were fire faucets along a pipe just under the cement ceiling. Harry reached into his tweed jacket pocket for a pack of matches. He stood on the bench while bending a match to rest against the flint strip in his hand. He put that in his left hand under the fire faucet and held onto his Magnum with his right. With a flick of his thumb and forefinger the match was lit. He loosened his grip so the match could burn down and set the whole pack aflame. As soon as they flared, the water came on.
    The sudden indoor shower got the reaction Harry was hoping for. One of the men swore. Harry pinpointed the voice in the next aisle. He hopped off the bench, ran back, and shot two Magnum bullets through the lockers in the voice’s general direction. He ran right after the bullets, leaped onto the bench again, and vaulted up to the locker tops. He landed flat on his stomach just in time to see Gagne blasting at the lockers with his own gun. He was shooting at where he thought Harry was. Harry shot him from where he actually lay.
    Bobby was thrown back, the back of his knees catching on the second aisle’s bench. His head swung down to slam against the closed locker doors with a sound that would make a bell ringer proud. He bounced off that, his legs unfurled from the bench, and he slammed to the cement floor, still and silent.
    Harry hopped down, keeping a wary eye out for Cunningham. He was the crafty one of the group. He wasn’t the boss, but he was the closest thing to it they would find here. He heard the door slam. Callahan ran back to the entrance, pushed it open as he passed, then flattened himself on the wall next to it. Two bullet holes popped open in the wood of the door from outside. Cunningham was on the run, armed and dangerous. Harry shouldered his way through the door after him.
    He saw Cunningham slamming open the exit door to the roof. Harry walked