“You said...”
“I said we wouldn’t kill you," Taylor said with a chuckle that would freeze nitrogen. "You’ll be alive. You'll just wish you weren’t. You’re a smart guy. You’ve looked into me, and you know exactly what type of person I am. The smart play is to give us what we want and hope you can use our... alternative methods of questioning as a wedge to get out of jail time. Hell, I’m fine with that. If you can weasel your way out on a technicality, more power to you, as long as you give me what I need.”
Taylor paused for him to respond when he heard the stairwell door bang open. His immediate thought was it was the police, either summoned by Graf or responding to calls of shots fired. Taylor stood up to go and see when he noticed the smile on Graf’s face. It wasn’t a smile of someone who thought, ‘I’m being rescued.’ It was the type smile someone has when they've pulled a fast one on someone else.
“Shit. He’s been stalling us. Those are more of his men.”
“Are you sure?” Whitaker asked, moving into position by the side of the bay door.
“Pretty sure.”
Taylor leaned out and then back in as quickly as he could, figuring if he was fast enough, they wouldn’t have time to react. It was almost the last mistake he ever made. The three men he could see in the hall were ready for something like that. As he pulled back, he could feel the air ripple as a bullet missed his head by inches.
“Shit. Three of them.” Taylor said, sticking his gun out and blind firing down the hallway.
Whitaker followed suit, firing off several rounds without looking. A hail of bullets answered, forcing both of them back into the storage locker. Whitaker cried out, his hand going to her side.
“Loretta!” Taylor called out, starting to go to her.
“No,” she said, holding up the hand now smeared with blood in a stop gesture. “I was only grazed by a ricochet.”
She stuck her rifle out and fired off several more rounds.
“The elevator doors just shut,” Whitaker said.
“Must be more of them, trying to do what I did.”
Taylor looked around the room, trying to work out a plan. They were boxed in and about to get flanked. They needed to figure something out now, or they were dead for sure. Taylor involuntarily ducked, getting close to the floor, when a bullet fragment whizzed past his ear. Looking up, he was only a few inches from the bodies of one of the men he’d shot and suddenly put together a plan.
Graf’s men had gone all out to impersonate a believable tac team, probably because Graf thought they’d find Taylor and Whitaker in a populated area, and he needed to make it convincing. Taylor hadn’t paid enough attention before, but they’d gone into more detail than they could have possibly thought was necessary.
Graf’s precautions were going to end up helping Taylor and Whitaker, now. The body of the man closest to him was completely decked out, including a flash-bang hooked onto his web harness. Taylor grabbed the man's leg and pulled hard with his one good hand, trying to get the body enough into the room to retrieve the flash-bang without getting shot.
Bullets were still whizzing around the small concrete room. He’d felt a couple get close, but so far he’d been lucky. He needed to end this soon, though, because that luck wasn’t going to hold. Taylor finally got the body back far enough and waved to get Whitaker’s attention. Using hand signals, since all the firing in the enclosed space had made hearing anything impossible, he told her his plan. With a nod, she readied for covering fire so he could step out.
Pulling the two pins on the flash-bang was agony since the forceful tug needed aggravated his dislocated thumb. Stepping out enough he underhand tossed the projectile down the hall, bouncing near the leg of the man he’d killed by the stairwell, earlier.
As soon as the flash-bang was airborne, both he and Whitaker pulled back, covering their ears and closing their eyes. They were already partially deafened by all the weapons fire in an enclosed concrete room, but neither wanted to add to that if they could help it.
Even though his covered ears Taylor could hear the distinct sound of the small explosive and see the flash from behind his closed eyes. As soon as the sound passed, they were both on the move. They found the three men covering their faces. One fired blindly down the hall, or attempting to, hitting a locker door to his right instead.
Since he was still holding a loaded weapon, Taylor shot him in the chest as they closed, not trusting, getting too close to an armed and panicking man. The other two had dropped their weapons, trying to clear their heads. They hadn’t discussed it, but both Taylor and Whitaker had come to the decision that they needed to take someone alive, hopefully, so the real police could question them.
Taylor pushed his free forearm against the back of the man’s helmet closest to him and slammed it into the wall. With the helmet on, he wouldn’t be permanently injured, but Taylor put all of his weight behind it. The man’s legs went out from under him, and he dropped, helmet scraping against the wall on the way down.
Whitaker had the second man down and on his back, slapping on the cuffs that the man had been wearing on his belt around his wrists. Taylor was moving to help her when he caught movement from the elevator doors beginning to open. He didn’t hesitate, firing off his weapon until the slide locked back as the doorway expanded. The two men, who’d been standing in the center of the doorway, never got a
