What Lies Beneath The Broken Asphalt On County Road Nine

CHAPTER 3: BLOOD ON THE SILO FLOOR

Robert moved before the speaker phone even clicked off. He crossed the office in two strides, parted the metal blinds with two fingers, and peered through the rain-streaked glass.

The gravel yard was completely empty of civilian traffic. But parked across the two-lane road, blocking the driveway of the closed grain elevator, sat a rusted Dodge Ram dually with darkened windows. Beside it stood two men in heavy canvas work coats, their hands shoved deep into their pockets. The bed of the truck held two five-hundred-gallon agricultural propane tanks, their red emergency release valves already fitted with remote pneumatic actuators.

“He’s not bluffing,” Robert said, his voice dropping into the cold, rhythmic cadence of a combat commander. “Those tanks are rigged with solenoid switches. If they blow that rig across the asphalt, the shockwave will collapse the front wall of this station.”

James drew his service pistol from its holster, checking the chamber with a crisp metallic snap. “He’s lost his mind. Hatcher has run this county like his personal plantation for thirty years, but he’s never tried to siege a municipal station.”

“Because he’s cornered,” Robert said. “A cornered predator doesn’t care about the collateral damage. He knows this ledger puts him on federal death row for the arson-murder of a federal inspector. Cassidy, get under the desk. Now.”

Rowe didn’t hesitate. She dropped to the linoleum floor behind the heavy steel pedestal of James’s desk, curling into a ball, weeping silently.

“Where is the emergency exit?” Robert asked James.

“Back through the evidence lockup. It opens into the drainage culvert behind the grain silos,” James whispered, unholstering an Ithaca twelve-gauge shotgun from the gun rack behind his chair. “From there, it’s two hundred yards through the corn to the old county maintenance barn. I keep an unmarked Dodge cruiser in the back bay.”

“We need to get this ledger to the federal courthouse in Mason City,” Robert said, wrapping the oilcloth securely around the charred book and tucking it inside his leather jacket, zipping the heavy brass zipper all the way to his throat. “Local lines are tapped, and if Hatcher’s got private security on the perimeter, county dispatch is likely compromised. We move now.”

They slipped out of the office into the rear corridor. The station was dead quiet. The two desk deputies from earlier were gone—their coffee mugs still steaming on the laminate counter, their cruiser keys missing from the magnetic board.

“Defected,” James muttered through clenched teeth. “Hatcher paid them off.”

“Expect nothing less,” Robert replied.

James pushed open the heavy steel fire door at the end of the hall. The biting north wind hit them like a wall of ice, carrying the smell of wet earth and dry corn husks. The concrete culvert ran deep and dark behind the building, choked with dried reeds and stagnant autumn rainwater.

They scrambled down the muddy embankment, keeping their heads below the lip of the concrete culvert. To their left, the towering concrete silos of the Shell Rock Cooperative groaned in the wind like ancient monuments.

Suddenly, a sharp crack echoed across the valley, followed immediately by the dull thud of a high-powered round striking the concrete wall six inches above James’s shoulder. Concrete fragments showered into the mud.

“Sniper!” Robert hissed, grabbing James by the collar of his coat and pulling him behind the massive steel base of an irrigation pump. “Elevator roof! South cat-walk!”

James racked the shotgun with a thunderous clatter. “That’s three hundred yards! I can’t touch him with buckshot!”

“We don’t need to touch him,” Robert said, his eyes scanning the terrain. “Look at the dust chute above the catwalk. The grain elevator’s overflow pipe is rusted through at the elbow. See that yellow brass release cable running down to the ground-level compressor?”

“That’s the emergency chaff purge,” James said, understanding flashing in his eyes. “If we trip that line, it dumps forty tons of dried corn husk into the catwalk draft.”

“Give me three seconds of cover fire against the catwalk railing,” Robert ordered, drawing his nickel-plated Colt Commander. “Keep his head down while I reach the compressor.”

“Ready!” James braced his shoulder against the iron pump housing, leaned around the corner, and fired three rapid blasts of twelve-gauge double-ought buck. The heavy lead pellets peppered the corrugated tin of the catwalk with a deafening roar of metallic impacts.

Robert exploded from the ditch like a sprinter. At sixty-two, his knees ached from old shrapnel, but forty years of muscle memory took over. He crossed thirty yards of open gravel in four seconds, diving behind the rusted housing of the compressor unit as high-caliber rounds chewed the dirt behind his heels.

He reached up, grabbed the heavy iron purge lever, and pulled down with all his body weight.

A deep, groaning screech shook the five-story tower. Above them, the overhead steel hopper swung open. A blinding, choking blizzard of golden corn chaff, pulverized dust, and dry husks cascaded down from the sky, engulfing the catwalk and the entire south face of the silo in a roaring golden fog.

A muffled shout of panic came from the catwalk as the sniper was blinded, coughing violently, his thermal scope overwhelmed by the particulate cloud.

“Go! Go!” Robert shouted.

They broke through the chaff storm, plunging headlong into the high rows of dried corn, the brittle stalks whipping against their jackets as they ran toward the maintenance barn.