“Fine,” he said eventually.
“Good. Throw out your weapon.”
A pistol came sliding across the floor, bouncing off the foot of one of the dead gunmen. Taylor held up a hand to tell Whitaker to hold still. If this was a double-cross and Graf was still armed, he didn’t want them both in the line of fire.
Taylor stayed low, kneeling to try and not be in line with where Graf would assume Taylor would be, just in case. Weapon at the ready, Taylor leaned in to see Graf propped up against the safe Whitaker had bolted to the floor. His right arm was still in a sling. His other hand was gripping his thigh, blood seeping between the fingers.
Taylor gave a side nod for Whitaker to go in the room, not taking his eyes or weapon off Graf. She moved in, only slinging her rifle when she reached him. She’d grabbed handcuffs off one of the bodies near Graf. Gripping his shoulder, she rolled him over, pulled the arm in the sling out, and cuffed his wrists together. Graf howled in pain at her rough treatment. Taylor figured that considering everything he’d done to her, Graf should feel lucky he got out with only that.
Whitaker rolled him back over and sat him up, away from the safe. While she went to retrieve the journal, Taylor holstered his weapon and knelt in front of Graf, looking him in the eyes.
“Now comes the part you’re really going to hate. You’re a smart guy, too smart to trust that your bosses wouldn’t throw you to the wolves one day. You know their type. They’re only loyal to you as long as they see some type of value. If their balance sheets say they’ll make more money selling you out rather than backing you, they’ll do it in a heartbeat. You would have prepared for that, had something in your back pocket to make them look at their numbers a second time, or maybe even a third! I need whatever that is.”
“I don’t know what...” he started to say before Taylor smacked him on the top of the head.
It was an open palm smack, just hard enough to let him know he’d been hit, but not so hard as to actually hurt him.
“Don’t bullshit me. You made a big mistake, you know. She’s always been the type to do things by the book. She’s never had any patience for making exceptions when the situation requires it. You’re decision to frame her has made her rethink that, at least a little. Now, I’m not sure it’s gone so far as allowing me to beat the information out of you, but I’m not sure you want to test that either.”
“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 shot off as they were both hit multiple times.
After what seemed like forever, but had been less than ten minutes total, the storage area finally fell silent, or at least mostly quiet. The cuffed man near Whitaker’s feet was cursing up a storm, and
his unconscious friend was starting to come too, moaning. While Whitaker restrained him, Taylor returned to the storage locker.
They were cutting it close. Ten minutes of gunfire was enough to bring every cop in the area down on them, and enough time for the first units to begin arriving. His plans fell apart the moment he rounded the corner into the locker.
On the ground lay Graf, dead. Taylor couldn’t see any immediate wounds, but it was probably one of the stray rounds that had been bouncing around the concrete room. They now had a couple of tied up muscle for hire who’d almost certainly lawyer up the second they were interrogated and some circumstantial documents.
Taylor was trying to work his way through his plans, trying to come up with one that was still viable when the service door banged open again. More shouting in German followed.
Taylor pulled his weapon and began to rush out to back up Whitaker when her voice called out to him.
“John, stop,” she said, predicting his response. “It’s the police. The actual police.”
Taylor had just dropped his weapon when the first uniformed street cop came around the comer, gun at the ready.
Chapter 15
After fifteen days Taylor and Whitaker stepped out of the central Berlin police station, following their final round of interviews with the police and government attorneys.
They had almost never made it out of the storage locker. The responding officers saw all the scattered bodies on the floor in official-looking uniforms and reacted poorly. Even though Taylor had thrown down his weapon, he could see several fingers tightening on triggers as they looked around the carnage about them.
Police officers are well trained and have procedures they are required to follow, but they’re also people. Seeing what you believe are murdered coworkers and friends can overwhelm even the most disciplined person into a lapse of judgment, a certainly fatal lapse in Taylor’s case.
Luck, the single biggest thing Taylor and Whitaker ever seemed to have going for them, was on their side once more. One of the responding officers recognized a body lying face up in the hallway. Apparently, not all of Graf’s men were mercenaries. Some were, in fact, just street criminals who didn’t mind physical work. In this case, it was a criminal that the officer recognized. His audible confusion at seeing someone he knew for a fact wasn’t in law enforcement dressed up as one of their tactical response team members was enough to slow everyone down just enough to keep things from going south.
That wasn’t enough to get them to handle Taylor and Whitaker with kid gloves, but it did keep them from getting shot. The officers were still keyed up and weren’t gentle about putting Taylor and Whitaker into the back of patrol cars. Taylor still had the remnants of a few of the bruises as he stood outside the police station, but at least he was alive.
Things had spiraled out of control after that. Confusion was rampant within a few hours. First, there was the issue of Graf being there at all. He was signed out for the day and hadn’t arranged for any official actions that would require a heavy response team. Then they found a complete lack of any kind of documentation required for their involvement. Finally, they got prints back on several more of the bodies in the storage building, none of whom had any business dressed out as police officers.
It took more than a day for anyone to even question Taylor or Whitaker as they tried to figure out what the hell was going on. When detectives finally did interview the two of them, separately, of course, they dismissed their story out of hand.
Taylor didn’t blame them. Even he had to admit it sounded outlandish. Thankfully, Joe Solomon had called in a few favors, enough for the Germans to begin an investigation into both the evidence they’d acquired and looking into Graf himself.
Taylor had been right that they didn’t have enough proof. Had Graf been alive to make excuses, he would have almost certainly have been able to talk his way around the financial records and video. Thankfully, that wasn’t all they had after the confrontation at the storage locker. The two fake officers they’d detained had talked, trying to cut a deal, selling the other one out. The police also picked up the banker, who eventually talked as well.
What bothered Taylor though was that he had the impression that all that together still wouldn’t have been enough had Graf still been alive. Officials did not want to come to grips with the idea that one of their own was dirty and kept looking for a way to rationalize everything.
Graf wasn’t alive, however. In the end, the officials decided they’d rather sweep everything under the rug rather than deal with the fallout of a dirty cop. Taylor and Whitaker had to agree to quietly get the hell out of Germany in exchange for the dropping of all charges. Since this included shooting a gun and causing a panic at the college campus, something they actually did do, that worked for Taylor. It wasn’t perfect, but it was probably the best deal they would get.
“I still think this is bullshit,” Whitaker said as they started walking down the steps away from the police station.
“It’s how things are. I know it sucks that everything’s being swept under the rug, but that was how it's always going to be. At a high enough level, everything’s about politics. Do you think if the Bureau found an agent actively committing paid murders and framing people to cover it up, and they had the chance, they wouldn’t make everything quietly go away?”
“No, they wouldn’t. They exposed Aldrich Ames.”
“He was still alive, so they had to do something. If he’d shot himself, they would have made it look like an unfortunate end to a glorious career and hushed everything up.”
Whitaker stopped and gave glared at Taylor.
“Hey,” he said, holding up his hands in a don’t shoot gesture, “I’m just pointing out how things really are. If anything, the military’s worse when it comes to something like this. It’s the way it is. They were never going to come out and say, ‘we had a bad officer who did all these bad things.’ What’s worse is that the people who ordered all of this aren’t even getting that. They’re getting away with everything.”
They reached the street, and Taylor held out an arm, waving down a passing taxi.
“They’re who I’m worried about. These are the type of people who believe they’re above everything. If they think we’re in any way a danger to them, they’ll silence us.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to mention the journal or turn it over?”
Taylor had managed to signal to Whitaker as they were being apprehended to say nothing about the journal. Since the cops had kept them separate, he hadn’t been sure she’d gotten the message until later, during the interrogation.
“No, that won’t matter to them. We already know enough to be a problem.”
“So, how do we make ourselves not a danger?”
“We can’t, so we go the other way. Everything’s a balance sheet with people like this. We have to make it so that it’s not worth the costs of coming after us. We have to make ourselves radioactive.”
She had more to say, but Taylor waved her off, opening the taxi door for Whitaker to get in. They rode to the Wissler Trust offices Taylor had previously visited in silence, both to gather their thoughts and because this wasn’t the type of conversation they wanted to have in front of a stranger.
“I still don’t like it,” Whitaker said once they were out of the car.
“I know. This is what I’ve been trying to say for a long time now. Laws are great, and policies have their place, but not everything falls into those black and white guidelines. Sometimes reality forces our hand. They bought off a police officer and had him murder multiple people and frame us, just to keep a journal hinting at illegal activities from surfacing. They aren’t going to let the law keep them from doing whatever they want to do. There are only three ways out for us, here. Getting every last one of them arrested on something so damning they won’t be able to wiggle out of it, which considering their political clout doesn’t seem feasible. Killing everyone involved with the trust until there�
�s no one left to come after us. Again, not a feasible option. The only remaining option is convincing them it’s better for them to leave us alone.”
“Using the journal? Won’t that just make it worse? Won’t they just come after us to get it back.”
“That’s the tricky part. Let’s go.”
Any other comments Whitaker might have had were cut short when Taylor walked away, into the trust’s offices. At first, the secretary tried to blow them off, but Taylor made enough hints that it would be worth their while for someone to speak to them and mentioned the person he’d met before. She seemed skeptical as she called up to check, but as soon as she told the person on the other end who was in the lobby, and what they wanted, Taylor and Whitaker were escorted to a small conference room where he’d previously met with the trust representative.
Family Ties (John Taylor Book 5) Page 19
