Cathedral (58 page)

Bellini answered, "Okay. When Second Squad clears the chimney, you open the door and find out."

"Right." He handed the phone back to the commo man hanging beside him, who said, "How come we never rehearsed anything like this?"

The squad leader said, "I don't think the situation ever came up before."

At 5:35 the ESD sniper-squad leader in Rockefeller Center picked up the ringing field phone on the desk in a tenth-floor office. Joe Bellini's voice came over the line, subdued but with no hesitation. He gave the code word. "Bull Run. Sixty seconds."

The sniper-squad leader acknowledged, hung up, drew a long breath, and pushed the office intercom buzzer in an alerting signal.

Fourteen snipers moved quickly to the seven windows that faced the louvered sections of the towers across Fifth Avenue and crouched below the sills. The intercom sounded again, and the snipers rose and threw open the sashes, then steadied their rifles on the cold stone ledges. The squad leader watched the second hand of his watch, then gave the final short signal.

Fourteen silenced rifles coughed, and the metallic sound of sliding operating rods clattered in the offices, followed 485

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by whistling sounds, then the coughs of another volley, breaking up into random firing as the snipers fired at will. Spent brass cartridge casings dropped silently on the plush carpets.

Brian Flynn looked down at the television sitting on the floor of the pulpit. The screen showed a close-up shot of the bell tower, the blue-lit shadow of Mullins staring out through the torn louvers. Mullins raised a mug to his lips. The scene shifted to another telescopic close-up of Devane in the south tower, a bored look on his face. The audio was tuned down, but Flynn could hear the droning voice of a reporter. The reporter gave the time. Everything seemed very ordinary until the camera panned back, and Flynn caught a glimpse of light from the rose window, which should have been dark. He realized he was seeing a video replay from early in the evening. Flynn reached for the field phone.

A dozen Fenian spotters in the surrounding buildings watched the Cathedral through field glasses.

One spotter saw movement at the mouth of the chimney. A second spotter saw the line of windows in Rockefeller Center open.

Strobe lights began signaling to the Cathedral towers.

Rory Devane knelt behind a stone mullion, blowing into his cold hands, his rifle cradled in the bend of his arms. His eye caught the flashing strobes, and then be saw a line of muzzle flashes in the building across the Avenue. He grabbed for the field phone, and it rang simultaneously, but before he could pick it up, shards of disintegrating stone flew into his face. The dark tower room was filled with sharp pinging sounds and echoed with the metallic clatter of tearing copper louvers.

A bullet slammed into Devane's flak jacket, sending him reeling back. He felt another round pass through his throat, but didn't feel the one that ricocheted into his forehead and fractured his skull.

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Donald Mullins stood in the east end of the bell room staring out across the East River trying to see the predawn light coming over Long Island. He had half convinced himself that there would be no attack, and when the field phone rang he knew it was Flynn telling him the Fenians had won.

A strobe light flashed from a window in the WaldorfAstoria, and his heart missed a beat. He heard one of the bells behind him ring sharply, and he spun around. Muzzle flashes, in rapid succession like popping flashbulbs, ran the width of the building across the Avenue, and more strobe lights flashed in the distance; but these warnings, which he had been watching for all night, made no impression on his mind. A series of bullets slammed into his flak jacket, knocked the breath out of him, and picked him up off his f eet.

Mullins regained his footing and lunged for the field phone, which was still ringing. A bullet shattered his elbow, and another passed through his hand. His rifle fell to the floor, and everything went black. Still another round entered behind his ear and disintegrated a long swath of his skull.

Mullins staggered in blind pain and grabbed at the bell straps hanging through the open stairwell. He felt himself falling, sliding down the swinging straps.

Father Murphy huddled against the cold iron ladder in the bell tower, half unconscious from fatigue. A faint peal of the bell overhead made him look up, and he saw Mullins falling toward him. Instinctively he grabbed at the man before he passed through the opening in the landing.

Mullins veered from the gaping hole and landed on the floor, shrieking in pain. He lurched around the room, his hands to his face and his sense of balance gone along with his inner ear, blood running between his fingers.

He ran headlong toward the east wall of the tower and crashed through the splintered glass, tumbling three stories to the roof of the northwest triforium.

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Father Murphy tried to comprehend the surrealistic scene that had just passed before his cloudy eyes. He blinked several times and stared at the shattered window.

Abby Boland thought she heard a sound on the roof of the triforium's attic behind her and froze, listening.

Leary thought he heard the pealing of a bell from the tower and strained to listen for another.

Flynn was calling into the field phone, "South tower, north tower, answer."

In the chimney the commo men with the two squads answered their phones simultaneously and heard Bellini's voice. "Both towers clear. Move!"

The Second Squad leader threw the gathered rope up and out of the chimney and scrambled over the top into the cold air. They had gambled that by leaving on the blue floodlights that bathed the lower walls of the Cathedral, they wouldn't alert the Fenian spotters in the surrounding buildings or in the attic. But the squad leader felt very visible as he rappelled down the side of the chimney. He landed on the dark roof of the northeast triforium, followed by his ten-man Assault Squad. They moved quickly over the lower roof to a slender pinnacle that rose between two great windows of the ambulatory. The squad found the iron rungs in the stone that StilIway said would be there and climbed up to a higher roof, partially visible in the diffused fighting. Dropping onto the roof, they lay in the wide rain gutter where the wall met the sloping expanse of gray slate shingles, then began crawling in the gutter toward the closest

-dormer. The squad leader kept his eyes on the dormer as he moved toward it. He saw something poke out of the open hatchway, something long and slender like a rifle barrel.

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The Third Assault Squad leader at the steel door watched the last dark form disappear from the chimney pot overhead and hooked his pinchers on the door latch, muttered a prayer, and lifted the latch, then slowly pushed in on the door, wondering if he was going to be blown up the chimney like soot.

Jean Kearney and Arthur Nulty stood in dormered hatchways, which were on opposite sides of the pitched roof, scanning the night sky for helicopters.

Nulty, on the north slope of the roof, thought he heard a sound below. He looked straight down at the triforium roof but saw nothing in the dark. He heard a sound to his immediate right and turned. A long line of black shapes, like beetles, he thought, was crawling through the rain gutter toward him. He couldn't imagine how they got there without helicopters or without the spotters in the surrounding buildings seeing them climb the walls. Instinctively he raised his rifle and drew a bead on the first man, who was no more than twenty feet away.

One of the men shouted, and they all rose to one knee. Nulty saw rifles coming into firing position, and he squeezed off a single round. One of the black-clad men slapped his hand over his flak jacket, lost his balance and fell out of the rain gutter; he dropped three stories to the triforium roof below, making a loud thup in the quiet night.

Jean Kearney turned at the sound of Nulty's shot. "Arthur! What-?"

The dormer where Nulty stood erupted in flying splinters of wood, and Nulty fell back into the attic. He rose very quickly to his feet, took two steps toward Jean Kearney, his arms waving, then toppled over the catwalk and crashed to the plaster lathing below.

Kearney stared down at his body, then looked up at the dormer hatch and saw a man hunched in the opening. She raised her rifle and fired, but the man jumped out of view.

Kearney ran along the catwalk and dived across the 489

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wooden boards, reaching a glowing oil lamp. She Rung it up in an arc, and it crashed into a pile of chopped wood. She rolled a few feet farther and reached for the field phone, which was ringing.

Men were dropping into the attic from the open hatches, scrambling over the catwalks and firing blindly with silenced rifles into the half-lighted spaces. Bullets hit the rafters and floor around her with a thud.

Kearney fired back, and the noise of her rifle attracted a dozen muzzle flashes. She felt a sharp pain in her thigh and cried out, dropping her rifle. Blood gushed through her fingers as she held a hand under her skirt against the wound. With her other hand she felt on the floor for the ringing phone.

The woodpile was beginning to blaze now, and the light silhouetted the dark shapes moving toward her. They were throwing canisters of fire-extinguishing gas into the blazing wood, but the fire was growing larger.

She picked up her rifle again and shot into the blinding light of the fire. A man cried out, and then answering shots whistled past her head.

She dragged herself toward the bell tower passage, leaving a trail of blood on the dusty floor. She reached another oil lamp and flung it into the pile of wood that lay between her and the tower, blocking her escape route.

She lay in a prone position, firing wildly into the flamelit attic around her. Another man moaned in pain. Bullets ripped up the wood around her, and the windows in the peak behind her began shattering. The fires were reaching toward the roof now, curling around the rafters. The smell of burning wax candles mixed with the aroma of old, seasoned oak, and the heat from the fires began to warm her chilled body.

In the northeast triforium Eamon Farrell heard a distinct noise on the roof in the attic behind him. His already raw nerves had had enough. He held his breath as he looked down into the Cathedral at Flynn in the pulpit cranking the field phone. Sullivan and Abby Boland across 490

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from him were leaning anxiously out over the balustrades. Something was about to happen, and Eamon Farrell saw no reason to wait around to see what it was.

Farrell turned slowly from the balustrade, lay down his rifle, and opened the door in the knee wall behind him. He entered the dark attic and turned his flashlight on the steel door in the chimney. God, he was certain, had given him an escape route, and he had been right to keep it from Flynn and right to use it.

Carefully he approached the door, put the flashlight in his pocket, then lowered himself through the opening until his feet found an iron run,-.

He closed the door and stepped down to the next rung in the total darkness. His shoulder brushed something, and he gave a startled yelp, then reached out and touched a very taut rope.

He looked upward and saw a piece of the starlit sky at the mouth of the chimney, which was partly obscured by a moving shape. His stomach heaved as he became aware that he was not alone.

He heard someone breathe, smelled the presence of other bodies in the sooty space around him, pictured in his mind dangling shapes swinging on ropes in the darkness like bats, inches from him. He cleared his throat.

"Wha-who . . . T'

A voice said, "It ain't Santa Claus, pal."

Farrell felt cold steel pressed against his cheekbone, and he shouted,

"I surrender!" But his shout panicked the ESD man, and darkness erupted in a silent flash of blinding light. Farrell fell feet-first and then somersaulted into the black shaft, blood splattering over his flailing arms.

The Third Squad leader said, "I wonder where he was going?" The squad moved silently through the chimney door and assembled in the dark attic over the bride's room.

Flynn turned off the television. He spoke into the pulpit microphone.

"It's begun. Keep alert. Steady now. Watch the doors and windows. Rockets ready."

Bellini squatted at the door in the knee wall and listened to Flynn's voice through the public address system. "Yeah, 491

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motherfuckers, you watch the doors and windows." The First Squad knelt to the sides with rifles raised. Bellini put his hand to the latch, raised it, and pushed. The ESD men behind him converged on the door, and Bellini threw it open, rolling onto the floor into the dark triforium. The men poured through after him, diving and rolling over the cold floor, weapons pointing up and down the long gallery.

The triforium was empty, but on the floor lay a black morning coat, top hat, and a tricolored sash with the words Parade Marshal.

Half the squad crawled along the parapet, spacing themselves at intervals. The other half ran in a crouch to where the triforium turned at a right angle overlooking the south transept.

Bellini made his way to the corner of the right angle and raised an infrared periscope. The entire Cathedral was lit with candles and phosphorus flares and, even as he watched, the burning phosphorus caused the image to white out and disappear. He swore and lowered the periscope.

Someone handed him a daylight periscope, and he focused on the long triforium across the transept. In the flickering light from below he could see a tall man in a bagpiper's tunic. leaning over the balustrade and aiming a rifle at the transept doors across the nave. He shifted the periscope and looked down toward the dark choir loft but saw nothing, then scanned right to the long triforium across the nave and caught a glimpse of what looked like a woman in overalls. He focused on her and saw that her young face looked frightened. He smiled and traversed farther right to the short triforium across the sanctuary where the chimney was. It appeared empty, and he began to wonder just how many people Flynn had used to take the Cathedral and fuck up everyone's day.