Taylor pulled down on the handcuffs, pushing the metal frame over his now more narrow hand. Even with his thumb now folded in with the knuckle no longer sticking out as a barrier and the larger room he’d managed to make, the clearance was very tight. The metal arm of the cuff scrapped against the dislocated joint, causing blinding pain. Taylor kept pushing, trying to ignore the pain.
After a few seconds, the cuff popped over the thickest part of Taylor’s hand, and he was able to slide his left hand out. He didn’t waste any time. Because he’d readjusted positions, Taylor was able to push up with his bend leg, twisting around. By the time, the guard closest to him registered the movement, Taylor was up, close behind him.
Taylor threw his left arm around the man's neck, pulling tight. This had the double benefit of pulling the man backward, off-balance, his arms flailing slightly, while also starting to cut off his available air in a half chokehold. Since he was only using one arm, the guard was going to be able to pull out of it reasonably quickly, but that was fine with Taylor. He just needed to have the man reacting instead of trying to directly kill Taylor for a few seconds.
With his right hand, Taylor reached down and pulled the pistol out of the holster against the man's hip. Lifting the weapon up with his arm extended, Taylor fired. The guard behind Whitaker had just started to realize something was wrong, seeing motion out of his peripheral vision, he hadn’t even begun lifting his rifle up when the bullet smashed into his face.
Taylor had aimed high, since the guy was wearing tactical gear, including a full vest. Like most in the military, Taylor had been taught to aim center mass as much as possible. The idea that the smaller the target, the more likely he’d miss had been drilled into his head time and time again.
Thankfully, the combination of a long history in high-intensity situations and hundreds of hours at the range building muscle memory served him well. The guard dropped like a marionette with his strings cut.
The guy he was holding reached up with both hands, grabbing Taylor’s wrist and trapping the pistol. Taylor’s grip around his neck was too loose to keep him from twisting out of it. The guy had a strong grip on Taylor’s wrist, but there was no way he was freeing the pistol.
The guy was just releasing one hand off of Taylor, mostly likely to get to the rifle, with the plan to pull it up and get a shot off. Unfortunately for him, he was focused on Taylor and had forgotten that there were two of them.
The guard had just gotten his hands on his rifle when Whitaker’s heel smashed into the back of his knees, collapsing the man in a heap. Whitaker spent a lot of time training for unarmed confrontations. While she preferred Judo, which helped her in using the weight of larger opponents against them, it was hard to not take that to the next step of combining other disciplines and veering into MMA territory.
She was all over him the second he hit the ground like some kind of wild terrier. Within seconds, she had the man on his side with her arms around his head and neck and legs wrapped around his waist in a classic triangle, pulling back hard to cut off his air supply. Both the man's hands shot up to tug at Whitaker’s arms, but he had no leverage. Taylor was pretty sure there was a counter to something like this, but he didn’t have the training Whitaker had. Regardless the guy on the ground either didn’t know it or wasn’t able to do it for whatever reason because his pulling at her arms became steadily weaker until finally went limp.
She pushed him off and popped up.
“How the hell did you get out of the handcuffs,” she said, looking, securing the unconscious man with his own handcuffs, and zip-tying his feet for good measure.
Taylor held up his left hand, displaying his throbbing thumb, bent in an obscene z pattern.
“Something I learned in the service. The downside is I can’t use my left hand until I get to a doctor. The upside is I shoot with my right.”
“Jesus, John. Doesn’t that hurt?”
“It hurts like hell, but a lot less than the bullet those two planned on putting in our brains.”
“We need to get moving.”
“There’s no way we'll beat Graf to the storage locker. He’ll destroy that book the second he gets his hands on it.”
“Hiding it there wasn’t my only precaution. The boxes of files were too big to do much with, at least with the time I had available, but I was able to set up some additional security for the journal. He’ll need some time to get into it.”
“Let’s throw this guy in the back of the van and get going then. Odds are he’s got a sheet. Once we tell the Germans our story, they might be able to get him to roll on Graf.”
“Sure, but let's hurry. The precautions I took will slow him down, but he’ll eventually be able to get it.”
Getting the guy into the van was harder than it should have been since Taylor could only lift him with one arm. He’d probably end up with as many bruises from all the times they whacked him accidentally into the vans metal frame as he got from the brief fight with Whitaker.
They left the dead guard behind but retrieved his weapons. Whitaker would be able to use the small assault rifle. However, Taylor would have to stick to the pistol he’d recovered from his guard
