Dirty Harry 08 - Hatchet Men by Dane Hartman Read Free Book Online Page B

to a stop without touching the brake. Then, not even wanting to betray himself with the noise of his door opening and closing, he pulled himself out the open window.
    Harry headed toward the van on foot, the .44 held up like a beacon, his body tensed and ready for action. He was within twenty feet of the thing when he noticed the window on the back doors. It was a small, curtained glass section, positioned high up on the left-hand rear door of the vehicle. Harry straightened, lowered his weapon, and walked farther to the right.
    He saw that the license plate was attached under the back bumper and unobstructed. It was not the same van. Unless, by some phenominal stroke of luck, the terrorists had transferred Suni to another, nearly identical, van, Harry had stalked a couple of guys going to a yacht-side party.
    Leaving nothing to chance, he went over to the vehicle and checked it close up. Looking through the rear window, he saw that it was a simple, stripped-down affair, consisting only of a single front seat which could hold three and an empty, uncarpeted, uncushioned flat bed in the back. Harry walked around to the passenger side and with irritation, shoved the Magnum back into its holster. He pulled the jacket back into place and turned to go back to his car.
    He stopped halfway around and slowly returned to his previous stance. He had seen something out of the corner of his eye as he was turning. It was something unusual happening on the lighted boat. Just as Harry was turning, a blond man with a mustache had clubbed a chubby, dark-haired man on the deck. As he looked back, he could just make out a cut-off high-pitched scream over the thumping rock music. If he had not seen the man get hit up top, he would have assumed the screech was part of the music. Instead, he stood by the van and paid careful attention to the rocking, lit-up yacht.
    The blond man with the mustache looked down at the man he had just slugged. The guy was facedown on the highly polished deck, a small pool of blood forming under his face. He must have broken his nose when he fell flat on the deck, the blond figured. There was also a stream of blood oozing from the cut on his scalp where the blond had hit him with the butt of his Colt .45 automatic.
    Smugly satisfied that the chubby troublemaker would be out for some time to come, the blond told an aide to keep watch and casually went below deck. In the main cabin he found the group as he left them. Two men were beating the young “captain” of the ship while the third had his girlfriend. The captain looked to be in his early thirties and would have been rakishly good-looking if not for all the bruises and cuts the beating duo had splashed his face with. He was rocking back and forth on his wheeled desk chair as the two men took turns punching him with their fists and handguns.
    The girl was a streaked blond in her middle twenties who filled out a one-piece bathing suit admirably. Her captor had her left arm wrenched high up her back and kept his other arm locked around her windpipe. She struggled, choked, and mewed to the delight of her attacker.
    “That’s enough,” said the blond with the .45, holding it up. “For the moment.” The two men beating the yacht’s owner immediately stopped and pressed the man’s arms to the arms of his chair, which were already cruelly bound there with strands of his own clothing. The blond leaned into the bleeding, purple, puffy face of the tortured captain.
    “Now I told you before,” he said quietly, “before we were so rudely interrupted by your ‘first mate,’ that you’re carrying a load for me. You picked it up in the Caribbean and hid it aboard ship. I want to know where it is.”
    “And I’ve told you,” the beaten man breathed through swollen, cracked lips, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    The blond swung the .45 across the captain’s jaw in a vicious arc. The resulting sound was so sharp and painful even to hear that the girl