“Cover me,” Cummings yelled to Butler as he broke open the case for the fire extinguisher.
* * *
The screeching beep tone of the fire alarm pulsated through the lobby of Watergate East as Mac, Wire, Berman and Speck hustled inside. They immediately approached Chase.
“What’s going on?” Berman asked, already on alert.
“I don’t know,” Chase replied, bewildered. “The fire alarm just went off.”
Mac and Wire quickly made their way to the Security Station with Speck, who showed his FBI identification. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a fire on eight, in the hallway.”
Mac and Wire jumped over the counter to look at the monitor, the hallway full of smoke.
“Now we’ve got a fire on six as well,” the Security Guard wailed as he pushed the alarm for the Fire Department, “also in the hallway.”
“Evacuate the building,” the security chief ordered.
Mac looked at Wire, “I got a bad feeling,” and then to Berman, who was on her phone, “The guys on the eighth floor monitoring Connolly? Where are they?”
Berman dropped the phone from her ear, “Cummings and Butler are trying to extinguish the fire to get to Connolly’s unit.”
* * *
Kristoff opened the door on the fourth floor and started running down the hallway, all the way towards the other end of the building, away from the stairway that came out in the main lobby. At the end of the hallway, he lit the wick and threw the last of his Molotov cocktails back down the hall and watched the fireball explode. As he closed the door, the stairwell down below started to flood with Watergate residents reacting to the fire alarm and order to evacuate the building. He mixed in with the residents as they made their way down the stairs.
* * *
Cummings and Butler reached the door for Connolly’s unit. Butler covered for Cummings who jumped into the unit, looked to his left and saw feet sticking out by the end of the center island to the kitchen.
“Agent Berman, Connolly is dead, shot in the chest and head.”
* * *
Berman looked to the group, “Connolly is dead.”
“Kristoff,” Wire muttered while Mac grabbed the building diagram off the wall to look at the available exits. Four Washington DC patrol officers came rushing into the lobby. Speck grabbed them and McRyan quickly handed out pictures of Kristoff. “We are looking for this man,” Mac held up a picture. “He is a professional killer and extremely dangerous.” McRyan looked everyone in the eye. “Understand?”
Everyone nodded.
Mac held out the building layout. Groups of two were assigned to all of the exterior exits and four men were assigned to the parking garage. “Grab more men as they come on the scene. Agent Berman and Speck, you have the lobby.”
Mac and Wire started to walk out the front when Mac stopped and went back to the Security Desk. “Show me where the fires are in each of the hallways.”
The security guard pulled up the fires. “The ones on eight and six are on the south ends of the hallways. The one on four is on the north end.”
Mac looked at the building layout and for the north end emergency exit. “Let’s go,” Mac said to Wire and started running out the front of the building and turned left, running to the north.
“What are you thinking?” Wire asked as she pulled out her Sig, and checked the clip.
“That he’s trying to get away from the glut of people that’ll be coming into the lobby,” Mac answered at a full sprint. “Dara, he cut across the building before he set that last fire. He’s coming out on the north end.”
* * *
Kristoff pushed out of the stairwell and out onto the sidewalk along Virginia Avenue. Fire engines were approaching the scene on south bound Virginia Avenue. As the truck passed him, he jogged across the street to the sidewalk on the far side, tearing off the beard and tossing his glasses in the process. Looking up he could see smoke billowing out from the balconies above.
He kept walking and glanced again over to his right and he saw two familiar faces running along the sidewalk towards the stairway he just exited.
* * *
“Cripes, this is chaos,” Wire moaned as they approached the north stairwell emergency exit. Mac and Wire scanned the crowd but did not see any familiar faces. Mac stepped back away from the crowd and out onto Virginia Avenue which was now blocked off one block to the north by squad cars. In the