A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [117]
Get the gun!
Griff heard the words in his mind as if Melvin had hollered them.
The gun!
Two agonizing strides and Griff had the submachine gun in his hands. He whirled and aimed at the center of the man’s chest. His index finger pulled the trigger, and the assailant, who was clumsily trying to stand, dove to his right in evasion.
The gun did not erupt.
Griff aimed at the man’s back and pulled the trigger once again.
Nothing.
Griff’s experience with guns was a single, unpleasant session many years before at a firing range with a friend and his target pistols. Now, he panicked.
Had the gun jammed?… Was there a safety he needed to release?
Either way, Griff knew his ignorance was about to be lethal. The man was back on his feet, no more than ten feet away, clutching the heavy knife. Griff glanced down at Melvin, who was unmoving and silent, his eyes wide open and staring unblinking at the blackness. Dark blood was pooled on the frozen ground beneath his head.
For a moment, Griff stopped caring. He wanted desperately to charge the beast, who had perhaps killed the most harmless, gentle man he had ever known. He wanted the whole thing just to be over.
Finally, with the man moving unsteadily toward him, Griff took a single step backward and looked to the south. The plains there were divided by stretches of wood-post fencing that extended in every direction. The distant farmhouse seemed unlit—five hundred yards away, he estimated. Maybe farther.
His chest was throbbing mercilessly, but he could no longer feel the painful cold in his feet. Still, clutching the useless weapon, he shambled awkwardly across the field. The solid, frost-coated ground was pocked with divots that made every step a danger. The surgical booties made traction even worse. Now, from behind him, Griff heard footsteps crunching on the frozen ground. The footfalls were steady but uneven, suggesting the assassin might be limping.
But they were also getting closer.
“You’re a dead man, Rhodes!” the killer bellowed from behind him. “This knife is going to love finding a resting place in your heart!”
CHAPTER 53
DAY 6
4:30 P.M. (CST)
The running had brought an electric pain back to Griff’s feet. Still, he drove ahead. His booties had torn away, but traction in his bare feet was no better. Every step was treacherous. His injured ribs made each breath agony, and now, it seemed, he was unable to draw in enough air. A strong gust of wind caused him to stumble, and twice he nearly fell. The uneven ground was as great an enemy as his pursuer. He could afford one fall, perhaps. Two, he knew, would cost him his life.
He was closing in on another fence—three rough-hewn rails, sixty inches or so high, with posts spaced every twenty feet. Beyond the fence was a tightly packed herd of bison, and some distance beyond them, his only hope, the barn.
Suddenly he was lurching and stumbling downhill. The land had dipped into a shallow, frozen swale that he had not seen. There was no way his aching legs could keep up with the decline, and he fell, tumbling over and over to the bottom. Skin vanished from his exposed elbows and knees. His final graceless landing drove his damaged ribs together with the force of a thunderclap. Ignoring the intense pain as best he could, he staggered up the other side of the slope.
At the top, he risked a glance backward. To his astonishment, he had kept his injured pursuer somewhat at bay, and had what he estimated to be a forty-yard lead. The barn, though still some distance away, seemed possible.
Jets of frozen breath from his mouth and nostrils filled the air in front of him. His lungs burnt mercilessly. Thirty feet to the fence … now twenty. Griff looked behind again. Trouble! Somehow, in the brief span since he had last checked, the man had cut his advantage in half, and was hobbling much less now. Unlike Griff, his breathing did not seem labored.
The fence came up suddenly.
Griff slowed but could not keep himself from skidding awkwardly into the sturdy rails. He cried out as his