Oath of Office by Michael Palmer

Author:Michael Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

CHAPTER 29

Advancing rapidly toward them through the darkness, looking like an attacking spaceship, its bank of headlights blazing, engine roaring, was a massive combine harvester. Attached to the front end of the harvester, whirling at a blurring speed, was a cylindrical threshing reel, at least twenty feet wide. The machine, with tires taller than Lou, was shearing stalks off at ground level.

Wind generated by the rotating blades sprayed dirt toward Lou and rushed ahead with enough force to throw him off balance. In the brightly lit cab, he could see the silhouette of the driver and wondered what George and he must have looked like to the man.

Helpless was the only word that came to mind.

Most frightening to him about the thresher was its speed. For several precious seconds, he was frozen—almost literally, a deer in the headlights of the powerful beast. The gap between him and the machine seemed to be closing rapidly. Finally, with no specific plan in mind, he whirled to his right. Nimbly, the combine responded. Moments later, Lou tripped and fell, pitching facefirst onto the rugged ground.

“George! Run! Get out of here!” he shouted, stumbling to his feet.

He could barely hear himself over the roaring engine, and knew there was no way George could hear him.

The screech of the razorlike blades was deafening, and the skill of the driver had him persistently locked between the headlights. Slivered stalks flew out from the base of the apparatus like daggers. A shot rang out from the right, then another. Bullets sparked off the metal framework of the cab. A third shot seemed to spiderweb the windshield.

Lou saw the muzzle flashes and located George, thrashing ahead through the corn, firing over his shoulder like a sharpshooter in a Wild West show. For the moment, at least, he seemed to be well beyond the far end of the screeching rotors.

Lou was dead center.

George got off three more rapid shots. Then, it seemed, he was out of ammunition. It didn’t matter. The bullets had done nothing to stop, or even slow the combine. Still, Lou was concerned that there was space for the thresher to swing from him to George.

Still fixed between the headlights, he began jumping up and down, hollering and frantically waving his arms above his head. The move sealed his fate. The thresher made an adjustment, and he quickly became the chosen one.

Fifteen feet.

Ten.

The noise was deafening now.

In seconds, it would be over.

Five.

Lou spun to his left and tripped on a root, rolling his left ankle. He pitched forward like a baseball player diving headfirst into a base. Unlike the rest of the cornfield, the soil he landed on was muddy and dense. He flattened himself out, hands stretched over his head, jaws clenched, waiting for the blades to tear him apart.

But there was no impact.

He had fallen into a trough, he realized—not a furrow between rows, but something deeper, an irrigation ditch. The roar and wind as the harvester passed over him were like a tornado. The ground shook violently, and the blades actually swept across his back.

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