Within a few minutes of their escape, they were pulling out of the construction lot, headed towards Graf and the journal.
Chapter 14
Taylor was focused as they drove. Since the last thing he wanted was to get pulled over and have a patrol officer look at the tied up guy in the back of the van, Taylor obeyed every traffic law, while still weaving through traffic to make up every second he could.
“So, what’s this additional security you set up?” Taylor asked, not taking his eyes off the road.
“A small fireproof safe that I bolted to the floor of the storage room. It’ll lose me my deposit, but they’ll either have to cut out a section of cement or cut into the safe to get the bolts out. Since they can’t take it with them, at least easily, they’ll need to cut into the safe there. While that’s not such a big deal, it seems unlikely Graf just has the stuff needed for that in his car. He’ll have to send someone out for it, and that’ll take some time.”
“We’re not that far behind him. Maybe five minutes, which means he’s just getting there now. He’ll either have to break in or badge the attendant and bluff his way in without a warrant. Either way, it’ll slow him down a little bit. Unless we hit traffic or something, we should show up not long after he gets into the locker.”
“Jesus, why didn’t you say ‘this is my last job before I retire’ while you’re at it. You can’t just say ‘unless we hit bad traffic.’”
Whitaker rolled her eyes but recognized his joking was a way to blow off some tension. Taylor’s shoulders were hunched, and he was sweating from the pain in his hand, which was steadily getting to him. Once things got serious, he knew the adrenaline would push that to the side, but right now, in the van, his hand hurt like hell.
“We need Graf alive, if at all possible. If he dies, most of the answers die with him. Alive, we could get something else out of him, and we need everything we can get.”
“Agreed. I promise I won’t shoot him dead.”
They pulled into a parking lot several buildings down from the storage lot. Graf was the kind of guy to set up precautions, even if he thought Whitaker and Taylor were entirely out of commission. Taylor was nearly certain he’d have some guys outside the storage place, keeping an eye out.
From around a neighboring building, Taylor saw he was right. Two of the guys that had been with Graf, still in their tactical gear and fake patches, were in front of the two-story storage building. Unlike the other one that Whitaker had used, this one was more upscale. Instead of a fenced-in lot with doors that opened up to outside paved areas, here, all of the storage spaces were inside.
People who rented one could park by a freight elevator and used the provided dollies to wheel everything inside.
One guard was by the front door of the building, and the other was by the freight elevator.
“Where’s your storage unit?”
“About ten feet in front of the freight elevator on the second floor.”
“I’m not crazy about being caught inside an elevator while armed hostiles are mobile outside of it.”
“Agreed. We’ll go in the front door. There’s a stairwell on this end of the building.”
“Good. We still need to take out both these guys, though. We don’t want either one coming up behind us.”
“Quietly, though. We don’t want the real cops showing up too soon, or alert Graf. I’ll take the guy by the freight elevator and meet you by the front door.”
Taylor nodded and turned back to the van to get one last item. The good thing going for them is the way the building was shaped the man by the elevator was essentially at the rear elevator. Not only could the two men not see each other, but they also couldn’t see the approaches to each other either. Taking the men silently would have been a lot harder if they’d put just one more man out who was able to see the two sentries. The current set up meant that neither knew if the other was still standing.
The other thing they had going for them was where the building was located. It was currently in the middle of the day. The area they were in didn’t have a considerable amount of foot traffic, with most people going places by car. If they’d been closer to downtown, they’d have to worry about spectators calling the police. Taylor knew these guys weren’t cops, but to the casual observer, it would look like Taylor was assaulting a police officer. This was going to be hard enough without a helpful citizen trying to do his part.
The sentry at the front door had clearly never been military or even a police officer, Taylor was reasonably certain. As he approached the side of the storage building, the sentry never even looked his direction. He was bored and just standing there, more than actually watching for any problems. If Taylor had to guess, he’d say this was just another criminal employed by Graf. The last set, at the other storage place, had been ex-military, but they’d been drummed out of their service. Years of extortion and brutality instead of training and focus had made this set the wrong kind of people for this type of operation. Which was fine with Taylor.
The main problem Taylor had was getting close enough to the guard to subdue him quietly. The guy was standing a foot or so from the front door, which precluded Taylor being able to sneak up on him. He might
