This had been a mistake. It was now Dalkimoni who had commandeered the dumbwaiter escape route to save his own neck. Housek was ordered to remain behind and sacrifice his life if necessary to cover Dalkimoni's escape. Adnan Khadouri, fanatically devoted to the cause, was left behind to insure Housek's loyalty and dedication did not falter.
"Allah akbar! God is great," Khadouri said to Dalkimoni as his leader stepped cautiously inside the narrow shaftway and placed one foot on the dumbwaiter. "Don't worry, my brother. We'll give you plenty of time to get away."
"Make sure I have at least five minutes," Dalkimoni curtly replied, climbing entirely into the dumbwaiter and crouching atop the shelf.
Khadouri blessed his boss again and re-sealed the opening with the now somewhat dented panel. Then he cocked the AK-47 cradled in his hands and went into the livingroom.
Farid Housek was sitting on the couch, his head propped between his palms, his body shivering. Clearly, he was a man without heart, a craven coward. Worse yet. In Khadouri's eyes Housek was a mahmoon, he who takes it up the ass.
Adnan Khadouri got the assault rifle from where it leaned against the wall and tossed it on the couch beside the gutless Housek. He told this spineless mahmoon to pick up the rifle and prepare to die like a man.
At that moment, Winternitz and Hans were reaching the landing of the fifth floor and crossing toward the apartment door with pistols drawn.
Winternitz took up a position to one side of the metal door frame. Hans crouched near the stairway landing, out of the direct line of sight of the eyehole at the center-top of the entrance door. Both cops' Sig-Sauer semiautomatic pistols were drawn and charged with a round in the chamber of each.
Winternitz held his gun in one hand while he reached out to rap on the door with the other. Hans clutched his weapon in a two-handed combat grip, his body planed sideways toward the door and his right eye lining up the twin white dots of the rear U-sight with the single red dot of the front sight in a direct line with the door at approximately the chest height of anyone who might open it.
Winternitz rapped on the door and waited a second or two. No answer came in response. He quickly glanced at Hans and tried again.
"Police!" he shouted. "Aufmachen! — Open the door. We have a warrant to search the flat!"
Both cops could now hear the telltale clink of eye hole covers to left, right and behind them being slid aside as occupants of the floor looked out to see what all the commotion was about.
One door at the corner opened a crack. Winternitz held up his shield and gestured at the woman in curlers and housecoat. The door quickly shut again, and he could hear the security chain ratchet into place.
Winternitz prepared to rap a third time.
A volley of automatic fire punched through the thin sheet metal skin covering the original hardwood door. The rapid series of pops echoed through the tiled hallway, the steel-jacketed bullets fragmenting as they ricocheted off walls, floor and stairway.
Winternitz knew he should call in the SWAT team at this point, but he was not about to step back and let some hot-shit heroes grab his collar. Let them sack him if they wanted. This was his bust or nobody's.
Winternitz had signed out a door-blowing charge from Ordnance and brought it with him, knowing it might come in handy. The small DM-12 Sprengmasse cutting charge (DM-12 being the German equivalent of the US C-4) was designed to clamp over the lock plate. Winternitz quickly put it in place, risking taking a hit, shouted a final warning, and took cover.
As the Sprengmasse detonated, the door blew in, coming right off the hinges and falling flat on the floor of the apartment's foyer. Hans charged through, tossing in two flashbangs, one after the other, just to make sure.
The two cops were in after the non-lethal grenades went off with staccato reports and blinding, disorienting flashes.
Adnan Khadouri was on his feet, pointing the business end of an AK right at them. Triggering the Kalash, he blind-fired a multiround burst, striking Hans square in the chest. Hans went down with a groan of pain and Winternitz fired back, catching Khadouri in the upper chest and face area with a salvo of 9-millimeter hollowpoints.
As Khadouri's upper torso exploded into a raw hamburgerlike mass, Farid Housek flung aside his weapon. He was dazed and disoriented from the effects of the flashbangs, but he knew that he was not about to die for anybody's bullshit revolution. Not even for Allah.
Winternitz slapped the cuffs on Housek and then cautiously scoped out the apartment with pistol drawn and a fresh high-capacity clip in the mag well. Dalkimoni was nowhere in sight.
The chief returned to Hans and found that he was still alive. The Kevlar laminate ballistic vest under his coat had absorbed the impact of the bullets. Though Hans was grimacing in pain, it was probably a combination of shock trauma and several broken ribs. If a lung wasn't punctured, he'd be back on the job in two weeks.
Winternitz called for an ambulance for Hans on his handheld radio and took another look around the apartment. In the kitchen he noticed chips of old enamel paint littering the floor.
It took him another second or two to pry loose the wall panel and comprehend what had happened.
Inspector Helmut Offenbach was surprised when the busty mädchen he'd earlier seen on the street opened the door in response to his knock and his shouted identification as a police officer. She smiled innocently and told him she was alone in the apartment, and that they must have the wrong place.
Helmut insisted on taking a look around anyway, but had momentarily dropped his guard. Nikki had come to the door wearing only a sling bra and low-cut panties, and there was little left to the imagination, including the platinum blonde's incongruously dark bush. As he entered the apartment, a bearded man with unkempt black hair popped up from behind a sofa and fired a shotgun blast. At only a few yards distance most of the fan of thirty-ought-six steel balls caught Helmut in his upper torso.
Enough of the pellets hit beyond the zone of protection afforded by his bulletproof vest. A butterfly of five of them was enough to tear away most of his throat, including his larynx and lower third of his trachea. Helmut spouted a plume of blood and reached toward his mangled throat as though trying to stuff the flaps of hanging flesh and bulging masses of blood pudding back into it as the impact hurled him against the wall.
Outside in the hall, his partner Adolph Bermann heard the shotgun blast and the shrill woman's scream that followed it. He knew better than try and bull his way inside the flat. Instead he retreated down the stairs and radioed for reinforcements. The routine bust had turned sour in a hurry.
This was not turning out to be a very good day, now was it, he thought bitterly.
By the time the medics arrived, Winternitz was out the apartment door in a cold sweat. He shoved past them full-tilt to the edge of the landing.
"Wohein?" he shouted aloud. "Where?"
He meant where did Blower/Dalkimoni go, where could he hope to find the bastard before he slipped away for good?
Getting stares but no answer, Winternitz raced down the steps and out into the street, thankful for the force of gravity for making it much easier on the way down than it had been climbing up to the fifth floor.