Chapter 43 - The Silo Siege
The heavy brass lamp struck Thomas flush across the bridge of his nose with a wet, sickening crunch.
The attorney shrieked, stumbling backward into the metal shelving units. A cascade of ledgers, brass box files, and rusted tractor components rained down upon him. At the exact same fraction of a second, I threw myself violently to the right, diving over the edge of the mahogany desk.
*BANG.*
The deafening report of Arthur’s revolver split the enclosed silo like an artillery shell. The muzzle flash seared the darkness, illuminating the swirling dust particles in an instantaneous strobe of white heat. The lead slug tore through the leather upholstery of the executive chair where I had been standing half a second before, punching a ragged hole through the sheet-metal wall behind it.
"You insolent little bastard!" Arthur roared. The calculated, calm patriarch vanished, replaced by an animalistic snarl of raw, cornered rage.
The shotgun went off next—Thomas blindly firing from the floor. A spray of heavy buckshot shredded the mahogany desk into splinters, peppering the grain bin above my head with hundreds of metallic pings. The shockwave rattled my teeth in their sockets and left my ears ringing with a high, piercing whine.
I didn't hesitate. I didn't try to fight two armed men in an enclosed steel drum.
I scrambled on hands and knees through the mountain of spilled paperwork beneath the desk, my fingers finding the heavy, rubber-coated industrial power cable that supplied the floodlights and the grain auger. With a desperate heave, I braced my boots against the desk leg and yanked the main junction box off the wall.
Sparks erupted in a violent shower of blue and orange fire. The hanging fluorescent tubes exploded in simultaneous pops, plunging the bottom of the silo into absolute, suffocating darkness.
"Kill him!" Thomas screamed from the floor, his voice choked with blood and shattered bone. "Don't let him reach the ladder!"
*BANG.*
Another shot tore through the dark, the bullet ricocheting violently off an iron beam near my head with a vicious whine. Arthur was firing at the sound of shifting metal.
I stayed low, my belly flat against the freezing concrete. The smell of ozone, gunpowder, and spilled engine oil was thick enough to gag on. I knew this silo better than either of them; I had spent three brutal summers as a teenager shoveling rotten corn out of these bins while Arthur stood on the catwalk barking orders.
I crawled five feet to the left, my hand brushing against the cold iron of the safety cage surrounding the vertical ladder that led up to the high service catwalk.
Above me, fifty feet in the air, was the escape hatch that connected the silo to the external grain elevator and the roof of the old machine shed. If I could reach the roof, I could drop onto the hay trailer and make it to the tree line.
I grabbed the first rung and pulled myself up.
"He's on the ladder!" Arthur shouted, his voice echoing from the center of the floor. "Thomas, the floodlights on the tractor! Turn the damn lights on!"
Below me, I heard the frantic rustling of Thomas dragging himself across the concrete, followed by the heavy clunk of an iron latch. Arthur didn't wait. Footsteps pounded toward the base of the ladder.
*BANG.*
The bullet struck the steel rung three inches beneath my right boot, the impact vibrating through the iron and numbing my heel.
I scrambled upward with feral speed, ignoring the burning agony in my shoulders and the tearing of my fingernails against the rusted metal. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty feet. The air grew hotter and thicker near the top, stale with decades of dried chaff.
Suddenly, a beam of harsh white light slashed through the gloom from below. Thomas had found a handheld halogen work lamp. The blinding beam swept across the iron rungs, catching me dead in its center like a moth pinned to cardboard.
Arthur stood thirty feet below, both hands locked around the grip of the revolver, aiming straight up at my spine.
"End of the line, Julian," Arthur shouted over the ringing silence. "You drop down, or your wife gets the call right now."
He reached into his pocket with his left hand, pulling out the burner phone, his thumb poised over the green dial button.
I looked at him from thirty feet up. My hand wasn't empty.
When I tore the junction box from the wall, I hadn't just cut the power—I had loosened the heavy, thirty-pound cast-iron tensioner pulley that hung from the manual feed chute directly beside the ladder.
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"You should have bought Beatrice the condo," I snarled down at him.
I shoved the release lever with all my weight. The cast-iron pulley, along with sixty feet of heavy steel hoist chain, broke free from its rusted housing and plunged down the narrow shaft directly toward the light.
