State Of The Union

Instinctively, DeWolfe and Toffle hit the deck, but Nixie stood in abject horror as she watched the roiling fireball come racing for her and engulf her in flames.

Harvath was the first to regain his feet and he ran to Nixie, covering her with his coat and knocking her to the ground. He rolled her from side to side, slapping at her body with his bare hands as he tried to put out the fire. Once he was convinced that he had it out, he began to remove the jacket and right away smelled the sickening scent of burnt hair and flesh coming from her body.

Her once stylish designer suit now hung in charred strips from her blistered torso. Her eyebrows were gone, as was much of her once beautiful mane of blond hair, but she was alive. Harvath did a quick assessment of her injuries and found her to be unresponsive. Most likely, she had gone into shock. “We need to get Nixie to a hospital, fast,” said Harvath, but neither DeWolfe nor Toffle was listening. They had exited the stairwell and leapt through the flames into the foyer of the King George.

Harvath yelled to them, but doubted he could be heard over the thunderous roar of the fire. Now that the door was open, his nostrils were filled with unmistakable tang of the accelerant that someone had used to deliberately set this fire. The sting of the noxious odor was so pungent it was like being slapped in the face. As the acrid smoke began to intensify, Harvath worried about how safe it was to be breathing such rapidly deteriorating air. He called out again and was answered to by two three-round bursts of semiautomatic weapons fire, which he assumed were from DeWolfe’s Beretta.

Making Nixie as comfortable as he could, he propped her against the railing and crept over toward the door where he aimed his H amp;K at the sea of blinding orange fire, just in time to see an enormous silhouette making its way toward him. Through the jagged blades of flame, he tried to make out who or what it was, but the scorching intensity of the fire made it impossible. As he stared into the inferno, Harvath’s brain tried to make out what he was seeing, but he couldn’t categorize it. The dimensions were all off. Reflexively, he raised his pistol, ready to fire.

Then, he heard a low, guttural roar and made a last minute decision to roll out of the way, just as Herman Toffle leapt through the wall of flames separating the foyer from the stairwell. He landed with an amazing crash, dropping the body of Kiefer, the security guard, whom he had fireman-carried all the way back through the blaze.

“Verner’s dead,” said Toffle, gasping for breath as he beat his hands around his body, making sure neither his hair nor his clothing were on fire.

“Where’s DeWolfe?” asked Harvath.

“He saw someone in the foyer and chased after him.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

“What about other people in the building?”

“From what I can see, the whole downstairs is on fire. There’s no getting out this way.”

“Why haven’t the sprinklers kicked in yet?”

“The building is pre-World War II. It probably doesn’t have them.”

“Okay, then,” said Harvath, thinking. “Then the only way we can go is up. Can you make it?”

Herman was coughing and obviously suffering the effects of smoke inhalation, but the resilient former terrorism expert flashed Harvath the thumbs up and tried to force a smile.

With Harvath helping Nixie and Herman carrying Kiefer, they struggled up the stairs to the next level, where the stairwell door was actually a false piece of richly engraved wood open to a long handsomely paneled hallway. Doors were spaced evenly along the corridor and it was readily apparent that this was where a good part of the King George’s business was conducted as customers and employees in various states of undress were running screaming up and down the hallway.

Getting his bearings, Harvath found the door to one of the bedrooms he assumed faced the front of the building and kicked it open. Three very attractive young women and one balding, overweight middle-aged man had shattered the window and were frantically trying to pry loose the decorative fleur-de-lis ironwork that stood between them and a one-story drop to freedom.

“Stand back,” ordered Harvath as he laid Nixie on the bed and took aim at the grating. He fired five shots in quick succession, sending sparks and chunks of masonry in all directions.

When Harvath lowered his pistol, the middle-aged client quickly moved back to the window and began shaking the ironwork for all he was worth. He was a man possessed, and when the grating failed to give way, he began crying, convinced he was going to die. Spent, the man fell to the floor and continued to sob.

“Passen Sie auf!” yelled Herman as he set Kiefer down on the floor and after picking up an antique bureau, ran at the ironwork-covered window with all his might.