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

the operating room Maggin had holed up in.
    “Come on, Marshall,” Harry called. “You’re only making things worse.”
    He was answered by several bullets slamming off the door frame. But the junkie was cunning enough not to show himself so that Harry could bring him down.
    “You’re running out of bullets, Maggin,” Harry continued, undaunted. “It’s only a matter of time.”
    This time, the answer was a hysterical laugh. “You think so?” Maggin’s screeching voice asked. “Then come get me, pig. I’ve got something waiting for you.”
    Harry mentally counted the rounds the creep had used so far. He and DiGeorgio had heard at least four. The one that felled the intern made five. The security guard made six. The vending machines took at least three more. The operating room entrance took two additional bullets. And, as far as Harry knew, Maggin only had Petrillo’s and the security guard’s six-chambered revolvers.
    That left the junkie with either one slug left, or possibly none, if Harry hadn’t counted right. It was worth a small risk to nail the obviously crazy guy.
    Harry steeled himself, and then jumped into the operating room doorway on one knee, his Magnum thrust out in front of him. He had just enough time to see Maggin standing over a naked body on an operating table and fooling around with some sort of crane, before he was knocked aside.
    The Inspector fell over to the left, regaining his balance a second later. He spun to see that Petrillo had, for some reason, dived forward and pushed him out of the way. The patrolman remained crouched in the doorway for a moment, saying, “It’s a—”
    Then his arm flew up and his legs straightened, throwing him back against the wall. He smashed into it solidly, then slid down to sit on the floor, looking like a thrown rag doll. His eyes were open, and he had a stupid, open-mouthed grin.
    But while Harry watched, a thin, red line appeared in the middle of his face—as if an artist had drawn a vertical line from his brow to his lower lip. Then the line started to drool red ink. It wasn’t long before the blood was bubbling from behind the razor-thin cut, making a pool inside his shirt.
    “It’s a laser!” The doctor completed the message for the dead Petrillo from the other side of the hall. “We use it for cataracts and cancer operations.”
    “Why didn’t you say so in the first place, you asshole!” Callahan shouted angrily from the other end of the corridor. “I don’t give a fuck about million-dollar equipment, but this is a killing machine!”
    “No it’s a lifesaving machine,” the doctor wailed. “It’s only powerful enough to make a shallow incision—no deeper than a scalpel!”
    “Deep enough,” Harry yelled, waving his Magnum at the patrolman’s corpse. “Can you pull the plug on it?”
    “It has its own power supply,” the doctor admitted.
    “Wonderful,” Harry said to himself. And who knew when that power supply would run out? At close range, Maggin might be able to make confetti out of them all for days to come. “Who is that in there with him?” Callahan asked the doctor.
    “That’s Mr. MacCurdy,” the surgeon replied. “We were removing some nodes from his vocal cords when this crazy man burst in. If we don’t get back in there soon, he’ll die from choking on his own blood.”
    There seemed no way around it. Harry would have to race into the face of a death-ray if he didn’t want a drawn-out hostage negotiation process. By then, MacCurdy would already be dead, anyway. Harry tightened his grip on his Magnum and prepared himself.
    “What are you going to—!” said the doctor, just as Harry ran forward into the operating room.
    His timing couldn’t have been better. Maggin, in his maddened state, had been listening to the hallway conversation closely, so when Callahan moved in the middle of the doctor’s question, the junkie wasn’t prepared to act. Harry twisted to the side, trying to get a clear shot at