Reaching into the web harness, he pulled out three magazines, plus a pistol and two more magazines the man had for that weapon.
“Here,” Taylor said, setting them all at her feet. “Keep them occupied, I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?” she replied, surprised.
“To flank them.”
Before she could ask any more questions, Taylor was through the stairwell doors and taking the steps two at a time. He stopped to see how the guy they left tied up was doing. Confirming the man was still asleep, Taylor found where they’d tossed the weapons and, more importantly, ammunition he’d been carrying and exchanged his half-empty weapon for the sentry's, along with an extra magazine.
That accomplished, Taylor dashed out the front door and around the rear of the building. As he passed the equally tied up rear sentry, he could hear Graf’s voice coming through the handheld radio. Taylor assumed he was telling his two men downstairs to come help.
Taylor ignored it and pushed the button for the elevator. While it was not a very big building, the freight elevator moved excruciatingly slowly. Taylor tapped his foot and waiting, hoping Whitaker would be okay. He didn’t want to abandon her, but he couldn’t see a way they could take out Graf and his men with the layout as it was. At least not without the strong chance of one of them being injured or killed in the process.
The elevator doors finally opened, and Taylor stepped inside, pressing the button to go back up. This would be the hardest part since Whitaker was firing directly towards the elevator doors. While Graf and his two men were inside of Whitaker’s storage locker, they would lean out to fire back at Whitaker. Considering she had to lean, take her shots, and lean back quickly to keep from presenting a stationary target for the shooters, she didn’t have a lot of time to aim. Some of the bullets were going to go into the elevator, which meant Taylor couldn’t safely leave the elevator until the hostiles were taken care of.
Here he was, in precisely the position he hadn’t wanted to be in, trapped in an enclosed space with the shooters outside of it. Of course, this way, he had Whitaker available to shoot anyone who tried to close in on the elevator, so he wasn’t completely vulnerable, but it still wasn’t exactly the position he wanted to end up in.
Taylor moved to the left side of the elevator, which put him on the same side as Graf and his men. He would have had a better shot at them from the right side, but then so would they. The elevator reached its floor, and the door slid open. Just as he predicted, Taylor heard the snap-crack sound of a bullet smashing into the back of the elevator. Luckily, the elevator was designed to handle large, unwieldy freight and was padded to protect it from customers damaging it. In this case, it protected Taylor from ricochets.
Taylor peeked out and saw Whitaker pull back into the alcove she was using as cover. The Germans seemed momentarily confused by that. When she pulled back, they were also taking cover from her shots, and neither had been firing at her. They probably thought she was reloading, but Taylor hoped it meant she realized he had circled around.
The Germans didn’t turn to look into the elevator. Graf yelled something in German in his direction, and the other two men leaned out and began firing in Whitaker’s direction, probably in hopes of keeping her pinned.
Taylor lifted his pistol and squeezed off a shot at the German closest to him, smashing a bullet into the back of his head. The man was thrown forward, the body just missing his comrade. The other shooter paused, confused. He’d been looking in Whitaker’s direction and knew she hadn’t fired. He also saw that his friend had been thrown forward, not backward, from the impact. There was a separate part of his brain, which also knew that he had allies behind him in the elevator, coming to pick him up. These conflicting facts would have caused a cognitive dissonance in anyone.
He clearly had experience and only needed a second for his brain to work out the conundrum and tell him there was danger behind him. That one second usually would never have been enough, giving Taylor time to adjust his aim and fire again. Without his left hand cradling the grip, under his primary hand, to help counter recoil and bring the weapon back on target, Taylor’s hand was forced up, away from the second man.
It cost a precious second for Taylor to muscle the gun back down and take aim, making it a race between the German’s reacting to the danger behind him and Taylor being able to fire.
The German lost, barely. He began turning, pulling his rifle around from pointing towards the area Whitaker had been at and over to the threat from the elevator when Taylor fired. Taylor was forced to fire center mass, not having time to take better aim as he did with the first shooter. It caught the man in the vest, most likely in the protective plate, protecting him.
There’s a belief that a bulletproof vest offers complete protection from bullets. Movies make it seem like a person can be shot in a vest and keep fighting. This is usually never true. It does stop the bullet from tearing through the body, but it can’t do anything about all the kinetic force behind the bullet beyond spreading that force out across the body. At five feet, a bullet has a lot of kinetic energy.
The man slammed against the track from the rolling
