Read Dirty Harry 11 - Death in the Air for Free Online Page A

hardly talk—the next minute he’s running around like Tarzan!”
    Callahan looked around the left-hand corner to see another long corridor with two hospital workers huddled behind a vending machine while a security guard lay motionless, face down. The gun was missing from his holster, too.
    “Explain,” Harry said tersely.
    Petrillo calmed himself with an effort. He breathed deeply several times and swallowed. “Okay,” he said. “I carry Maggin to the emergency ward. He’s so bad off he can’t even stand. They stick him into an examining room with a bunch of doctors, nurses, and interns, and they ask me to wait outside. I figure that’s all right, because the junkie wouldn’t get five feet in his condition. Inspector, I’ve seen addicts before. I know faking when I see it, and Maggin wasn’t faking. He was gone!”
    Harry had seen addicts, too, and he had to agree with the patrolman. Either Harry was more tired than he thought, or Maggin was a superb actor.
    “All right,” he concurred. “What happened then?”
    “So all of a sudden, he comes tearing out of the examining room like a banshee, slugs me, grabs my gun, and goes running. I took off after him, but now he’s moving like O. J. Simpson. I get him cornered down here and he starts shooting.”
    Harry looked around the corner again. The hall was beginning to fill up with thin, white smoke, and the gunfire had ceased. Replacing the shots, however, was a crackling hum.
    “What’s that?” Harry wanted to know.
    “You got me,” Petrillo answered.
    “Stay here,” Callahan commanded. “Wait for the cavalry. I’m going to get those people out of there.”
    Again not waiting for a reply, Harry moved down the hall in a crouch, his Magnum up and ready. The thin plumes of smoke stung his eyes and nostrils, but he made it to a position behind the vending machines without incident. But when he placed a hand on the shoulder of a kneeling nurse, he was rewarded with a shriek. The doctor in front of the girl turned at the sound.
    “Oh, my God,” he said.
    “Police,” Harry told the terrified duo, cursing his misleading disguise. “Get back around the corner. I’ll cover you.”
    “We can’t leave him in there,” the doctor said stridently.
    “We’re not going to,” Harry promised. “But we can’t have any more injuries. Now get going.”
    The nurse was more than pleased to slink out of the way, but the doctor wouldn’t budge. “You don’t understand . . .” he said. He was interrupted by the appearance of Marshall Maggin two doorways down, brandishing two revolvers.
    “I saw that!” Maggin screamed, pushing the guns out before him and pulling the triggers. The bullets whined off the cement walls and slammed into the candy and beverage machines, putting holes in eight packages of Doritos and springing a leak in the Welch’s grape-soda tank.
    As the beverage dispenser began spitting carbonated water and bleeding purple syrup, the nurse cried in shock and fell in the hall. Petrillo grabbed her arms and dragged her around the corner as Maggin disappeared back into the room.
    “Get the hell out of the way,” Harry warned the doctor as he moved forward.
    “Wait!” the doctor cried, as Callahan silently hopped over the guard’s prone body and flattened himself against the opposite wall. “Please,” the doctor pleaded.
    Harry looked back at the man’s desperate face. “He’s in our most technically modern operating room,” the doctor stressed. “There are literally millions of dollars of delicate equipment in there.”
    “That’s not going to buy these men’s lives back,” Harry said, motioning to the still security guard.
    “But it can buy many others’ lives back,” the doctor countered. “Please, please be careful.”
    Callahan continued through the smoke, noticing out of the corner of his eye that Petrillo was moving forward to collect the distraught surgeon. Harry slid along the opposite wall until he was right outside