Professor -- .' Suddenly Gadi jumped up and pulled off the headphones.
'the professor can't get through! Apfel didn't hang up the phone!'
Stern forced himself to think clearly. His well-planned operation was
unraveling around him. Snatching up the phone, he tried to call Yosef
and the professor. 'Busy,' he said.
'They're still trying to reach Hauer. That means the stairs won't be
covered.'
'Aaron has to stay at the elevator box,' Gadi said quickly.
'You've got to keep trying to reach the professor. That leaves me to
cover the stairs.' The young commando picked up his Uzi and started for
the door. He had not heard it open.
With the mute surprise of a man watching the earth split open at his
feet, Gadi watched a small round fragmentation grenade rolling toward
him through the foyer. The door slammed shut.
'Grenade!' he shouted.
While Stern-a veteran of three desert wars and countless guerilla
actions@over behind the far bed, Gadi Abrams proved the boast he had
made minutes before about the sayaret matkal commandos. With the
reflexes of a gifted soccer player, he stopped the grenade's forward
motion with his right foot, then kicked it sideways into the bathroom.
Then he hurled himself backward into the space between the two double
beds.
Hauer was leaning out of the door down the hall, straining his ears for
the slightest sound, when Swallow's grenade exploded in the bathroom of
room 820.
'Donnerwetter!' he roared. 'What the hell was that?'
Reaching back blindly, Hauer wrenched Hans through the door.
'Stay with me!' he commanded. 'And don't use your gun unless you
absolutely have to!'
Hauer dragged Hans toward the fire stairs, away from the explosion. They
crashed through the metal door at speed, careening headlong down
concrete steps like teenaged hoodlums. As they passed a large,
red-painted 5, Hauer caught hold of Hans's jacket.and pulled him against
the wall. He clapped a hand over Hans's mouth and listened for any
sound of pursuit. At first he heard only their own ragged gasps.
Then a slow creak, as of someone attempting to silently open a disused
fire door, echoed through the stairwell.
When the crash came, Hauer knew that their pursuer had given up all hope
of stealth. He shoved Hans downward and charged after him.
They took each flight in two leaps, only lightly touching the rails as a
guide. On the third-floor landing Hauer grabbed Hans and growled a
dozen words into his ear, then slipped through the fire door while Hans
continued downward. Hauer drew his stolen Walther-then he recalled his
warning to Hans. The explosion upstairs would draw all attention to the
eighth floor. If he fired the unsilenced Walther here, he would
certainly draw some attention to himself.
With a curse of frustration he slipped the Walther back into his pocket
and waited.
Four floors above him, Yosef Shamir flung himself down the stairs like a
man possessed. From the moment he'd gotten off the telephone with
Stern, the young commando had been hauling his instincts. Stern had
ordered him to stay put, but from what Natterman had told him, Yosef
feared that the woman with the machine pistol was now on her way up to
find Stern. Leaving Natterman to complete the call to the Germans on
his own, Yosef had raced upstairs to help Gadi and Stern. He had
reached the seventh floor.when he heard the door just above him crash
open. He slipped quietly through the seventh floor door just in time to
see Hauer and Hans rush past him down the stairs. With a sudden sick
feeling, Yosef realized he was probably -the sole remaining link to
Stern's quarry. The young Israeli bounded down the fire stairs with no
regard for safety, his mind only on regaining contact with the Germans.
When the steel edge of the fire door materialized in front of him like a
phantom, time slowed down. Yosef twisted his body to avoid the deadly
obstacle, but he simply couldn't move fast enough.
The door caught the side of his forehead, opening a three-inch gash and
dropping him like a stone on the landing.
Hauer threw his weight against the third-floor fire door and forced
Yosef's unconscious body out of the way, then knelt to examine him. He
didn't recognize the face, but he hadn't expected to. Yosef's pockets
were empty. No wallet, no coins, no clue to his name or nationality.
Even his clothes had no labels. On impulse Hauer took hold of Yosef's
head and lifted it to search for the tattooed eye ...
A scream of agony rebounded up through the stairwell. A man's scream.
Then a pistol shot exploded.
'Jesus!' Hauer cried. He dropped Yosef's head on the concrete and
raced down the steps after Hans.
As Gadi Abrams came to his knees and leveled his Uzi at the smoke-filled
foyer, the first spray of bullets from Swallow's Ingrain tore into room
820. Gadi hit the floor and cursed in fury. Either the gunman was
using a silencer, or the grenade had blown out his eardrums.
Beneath the far bed he saw Stern speaking into his walkie-talkie.
'Aaron, this is Jonas. We are pinned down here. Please respond.'
Stern waited while Gadi rose up and peppered the door with a burst from
his silenced Uzi. 'Aaron!' Stern tried again. 'Please respond!'
'He can't hear you!' Gadi shouted. 'Too much concrete between him and
us! We've got to storm our way out, Uncle! We're going to lose the
Germans otherwise. It's the only way!' The young commando leapt to his
feet.
Feeling a surge of adrenaline unlike any since the '73 war in Sinai,
Jonas Stern clutched his own Uzi, rose up, and followed his shouting,
blasting nephew'into the smoke of battle.
Hauer found Hans on the garage landing, standing silently over a corpse.
The body was blond and fair-skinned and looked about thirty-five. Its
right hand gripped a pistol.
'I told you not to use your gun!'
'I didn't!' Hans shot back.
Then Hauer saw the knife. The German knife from sporting goods store.
It was buried to the hilt in the d man's left side. 'I'll be damned,'
he said.
