Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill (21 page)

Harry could not get a line of sight on Virgilio who had wisely taken shelter behind a giant, stone pre-Aztec god whose grotesque features seemed to mock the scene of death that was being played out before it. But neither could Virgilio seem able to find Harry in his sights, for Harry had taken refuge behind the couch where only ten minutes previously Virgilio had been probing the ample charms of his whore. Thick tufts of upholstery went flying into the air as the couch was perforated by successive rounds from the submachine gun, but Harry remained untouched.

Ignacio in the meantime was trying to crawl away, navigating himself between the four bodies that lay on the floor—only one of whom showed any sign of life at all: the guard with the demolished kneecap. Ignacio gasped and cried out for his madre whenever the fire from Virgilio’s gun swept over his head. A journey to the Amazon would not have seemed as far to him as the one he was now attempting to make to the doorway.

Naturally, all this commotion was heard throughout the villa. Three men—another security detail—came running into the corridor that lay just beyond the threshold. They were sufficiently cautious not simply to rush the room, and so they contented themselves with digging in just beyond the exposed doorway.

But the only one who was doing any firing was Virgilio. Harry could have shot Ignacio, but he balked at putting a bullet into an unarmed man crawling to safety on his belly. And being unable to hit Virgilio, he decided to save what ammunition he had.

Virgilio kept on firing until he had expended his clip. But hearing only the groans of the surviving guard and the uproar in the corridor outside, he realized that he was accomplishing nothing by laying down a second barrage. He reloaded and called to Ignacio who had nearly attained his goal of the threshold.

“Tell them to rush the room!” he cried. This was spoken in Spanish, but Harry knew just enough of the language to catch the meaning. What Virgilio hoped was that by drawing Harry’s fire he could circle around and kill him himself. That others might be sacrificed so that he could execute his stratagem mattered nothing to him.

Ignacio crept out of the room, heaving a sigh of relief and offering up a prayer to several patron saints, and then proceeded to communicate Virgilio’s directions to the security detail hunkered down in the corridor.

They obeyed without question. The first two, as soon as they were framed in the doorway, were brought down immediately. Harry held an excellent position, and his aim was as accurate as necessary. The reason he did not shoot the third was that the third, orders or no orders, had decided to withdraw.

Virgilio opened up again, infuriated that he had secured no additional advantage, but all he did was to gouge the couch out. He screamed at Harry, cursing him and himself for stupidly allowing this unhappy situation to develop. Then he screamed out to the corridor, upbraiding his men for failing to come to his aid. But they seemed determined not to meet the fate of those who already had complied with Virgilio’s commands.

Though the situation threatened soon to become a stalemate, Harry understood the importance of making a hasty escape, not just from the Villa Corona but from the whole of Carangas and environs. But until his eyes again fell upon the pre-Aztec statue he could think of no way to accomplish this.

The statue, he now noticed, was not consistent in texture. Breaking the rough harsh stone surface that defined the statue was a small, narrow, smooth band that circled the neck. Harry deduced that this was where the statue had been repaired; it had been probably found in two pieces, head and torso. Previously, Harry had entertained no notions of penetrating the statue—it looked too sturdy, having already resisted what ravages time could visit on it. But there was an outside chance that if the .44 struck this ribbon of smoothness about the neck it could send the head tumbling down on Virgilio’s more vulnerable one. Accordingly, Harry fired so that the trajectory of the bullet would impact directly against the rejoined neck. There was a loud walloping sound in response and a sudden spurt of dust and stone fragments. Then the hideous head rolled out of its mooring and dropped not on Virgilio’s head but his foot. Virgilio let out a whoop of pain, hollering defiantly.

Without wasting a moment, Harry rushed forward, catching Virgilio unawares. Virgilio was too preoccupied in extricating his left foot from under the extraordinarily heavy head that lay on it to notice Harry until the .44 was pressed flush against his skull. Gazing up at his antagonist, he shook his head, still muttering with the pain, and said, “You are being most inconsiderate, señor. It is senseless for us both to die.” He threw down the submachine gun, fully prepared to meet his maker, but this did not cause him to cease his efforts to get his foot free.

But on the contrary, Harry had no intention of hastening Virgilio’s introduction to his maker (whichever maker would take the dubious honor of having been responsible for his creation). He viewed Virgilio as his passport out of this place. At last, with a pronounced groan, Virgilio succeeded in recovering his foot. He began to knead it with his hands, but Harry ordered him to stand. It was not easy, and the look he gave Harry was the look not of a heroin dealer or murderer but rather of an angry child.

“Must I stand up to be executed?”

“No execution now. We’re taking a little trip.”

Virgilio discerned Harry’s plan and shrugged. He was not certain that this extension on his life made things better or worse. At the moment, however, he seemed to recognize the necessity of playing his role to the hilt. Four armed guards stood ready to clutter Harry’s body up with 5.54mm cartridges. They certainly would have done so were it not for the fact that they would have to do the same to Virgilio’s.

“Lower your weapons,” Virgilio said, first in English for Harry’s benefit, then in Spanish.

The guards appeared baffled by the request but did as they were instructed, allowing the two to pass.

Harry now was in possession of both the .44 and the Karl Gustav submachine gun, both of which discouraged anyone from attempting to rescue Virgilio, who grumpily dragged his injured foot behind him.

“Show me the laboratory,” Harry said.

This directive obviously startled Virgilio. “You wish a guided tour—now?”

Harry was in no mood to discuss his motives. Spying Ignacio who slunk against the wall, curiously eyeing the two, he called out to him. Whatever he said was incomprehensible to Harry, but somehow Harry caught the sense of it simply by the intonation. He abruptly whipped around, spinning Virgilio with him. Ignacio was now armed and had with some difficulty produced a handgun of some kind from his pocket. Harry allowed him no opportunity and fired simultaneously with both the .44 and the submachine gun.

Ignacio crashed back against the wall, aghast that he had lost this one opportunity to demonstrate that he was no coward, then slowly drifted to the floor. His glasses slipped off and in his final moments of life it was his glasses that he groped for. He wanted one last clear look of the world before he departed it. He never got it.

Virgilio looked from the lifeless form of his partner to Harry and gave him one of his customary shrugs. Life was hard, it was over easily, he would have said had he been inclined to say anything at all.

Two of the tunic-gowned figures appeared and stooped down by Ignacio to see if medical assistance might help him. Determining that it would not, they turned him over so that they wouldn’t have to look at him any longer.

The sentry at the door leading down to the laboratory, where the heroin was derived from the morphine base, was unwilling to admit Harry even with Virgilio. He evidently thought that he could reason with Harry for he addressed him in a Spanish so rapid he couldn’t get one word out without a second overtaking it. Harry, having neither the time nor patience to listen to his gibbering, simply knocked him aside with the Karl Gustav. Virgilio gave Harry one of his suspect smiles.

“You can be most persuasive when you want.”

Strangely, Virgilio showed no trace of nervousness, not in his manner nor in his voice. His sense of fatalism allowed him a kind of freedom.

Peering down a short flight of stairs Harry could see only a welter of burners, pipes, sinks, and trays filled with what looked like chemical solutions. Men in white, not all of them Mexican, were toiling over their chemicals, carrying out their tasks in an antiseptic atmosphere that vaguely reminded Harry of an operating theater. The smell reminded him of something as well, but he could not say just what it was. But it was heavy in the air, almost sickening.

To Virgilio he said, “Tell all of them to leave.”

So absorbed were most of these people that they took scant notice of Harry and their employer standing at the head of the stairs. Virgilio’s voice surprised them. They raised their eyes to him in confusion. Then Harry began shooting at all the equipment, shattering glass and demolishing some of the elaborate machinery that had been set up for the distillation process. This reinforced the impact of Virgilio’s words, and the air was filled with plaintive screams and cries of alarm as the chemists and their assistants scrambled for the exits.

Harry’s bullets hit something that was obviously combustible because suddenly flames shot up from perhaps three or four different locations in the laboratory; with the enveloping smoke it was difficult to determine exactly.

“We only will rebuild this, you know,” Virgilio said, almost chiding him. Still, he admitted that it would be a rather costly loss. The smoke from the fire began to waft up in their direction. Harry supposed that he had done enough, maybe more than enough, for Keepnews. Now his only objective was to save his ass. For that he was going to have to rely on Virgilio once again.

But the fact was that with the fire spreading so rapidly, consuming the Villa Corona with ease, no one seemed to be paying attention to Harry or Virgilio any longer. It looked like every man for himself. All the inhabitants of the compound were fleeing in the direction of the lush tropical vegetation, which was already alive with the vicious chatter of birds adding to the human cries of alarm.

The Land Rover was where Ignacio had left it. But it was obviously too much of a temptation, for already five men were attempting to clamber into it. Harry, still keeping the .44 pressed to Virgilio’s back, advanced unhurriedly toward the vehicle. He raised the Karl Gustav so that it was targeted directly on the man who had just taken the wheel. The man, sputtering from the smoke that had infiltrated his lungs, looked vastly surprised to find somebody impeding his way. His four passengers, greedy for prompt movement, were not especially pleased to see him either.

Thinking that the problem Harry presented to them would be easily enough solved by running him over, the driver gunned the jeep forward. Virgilio, mindless of the threat of the .44, leapt out of the way but Harry held his position and fired a round. The driver’s forehead turned bright scarlet and he lurched back over the seat. The Land Rover swerved off to the side, coming to a rest against the side of a palm that buckled but finally did not give way. Seeing their driver killed like this inspired the four others to choose another means of escape. They had no stomach for fighting while the fire raced across the brush that sprouted immediately outside the villa. Flames spewed from the windows. The air, torrid enough to begin with, grew hotter still as the blaze whipped up and through the tiled roof. Harry was astonished that the structure could go up so fast. It was in its own way a rather impressive sight.

By pushing the dead driver out of the way Harry was able to get himself behind the wheel. The jeep had not been critically damaged in its collision with the palm. The tires spun as the jeep regained a more accommodating surface.

Virgilio was screaming to two armed men to stop Harry. But the two men were much too interested in escaping the fire to listen to Virgilio. This so infuriated him that he attempted to stop one of them forcibly, upbraiding him for his cowardice.

The man might or might not have recognized that this was his employer. But it was plain to see that he did not wish to have anyone distract him at a time such as this. He attempted to push on. Virgilio wouldn’t let him. He began to tug on the man’s revolver; if no one else was going to do so, he would kill Harry himself.

But Virgilio had evidently chosen the wrong individual to harass. The man balked at surrendering his gun and instead uncocked it. Virgilio didn’t appear to notice. The man then squeezed the trigger. Virgilio was so close to him that the shot was muffled. A large ring-like gunpowder stain formed on his shirtfront. Virgilio released his grip and tottered backward. For good measure, the man shot him again. This time he did notice. He did a steady march backward, clutching his stomach. He kept taking his hands away to stare at the blood that was accumulating in them. Then he would shake his head as if in disbelief and continue his uncertain progress to the rear. At last he came to a halt, and a very thoughtful, if somewhat dazed, expression crossed his face. This was not how he had expected it to end. He decided that all things considered he would sit down. He remained sitting for several minutes, wondering why he was not dead yet. Blood flowed so plentifully from the two wounds that it created a large puddle between his legs, so large that every so often he’d shift position so he wouldn’t become too wet.

He stayed where he was, his dying a protracted affair, until the fire caught up with him, tracing its path across the thick verdancy of the terrain. And when the fire did reach him, he made only the slightest effort to move. Then he realized it wasn’t worth it. He thought it most unfortunate that Harry had survived and he had not. It would not have even been too bad if they had both been killed. Possibly, he reflected, someone else would do his work for him.

C H A P T E R
S i x t e e n

“T
hey’re not coming,” Vincent said, staring over the gunwales. Carangas was fading gradually into the thickening dusk, receding into the darkness of the shoreline. Bursts of feeble light were all that separated the town from the surrounding forests.