Cathedral (62 page)

. ...

The man with the grenade launcher said, "But he's cufled!"

The team leader put his hands to his temples. "This is fucked up. . . .

We might have fucked up . . . ... He put his hand on the ladder rail and steadied himself. Blood ran down the rail and collected in a small pool around his fingers. "Oh . . . oh, no no, no, no-2'

The other half of the Second Squad from the attic made its way carefully down through the dark bell tower, then rushed into the long triforium where Abby Boland had been. They hit the floor and low-crawled down the length of the dark gallery, passing over the blood-wet floor near the flagstaff and turning the comer overlooking the north transept. Two men searched the triforium attic as the team leader reported on the field phone, 'Captain, northwest triforiurn secured. Anything you see moving up here is us."

A voice came over the wire. "This is Burke. Bellini is dead. Listen . .

. send some men down to the choir loft level. . . . The rest of you stay there and bring fire down

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on that loft. There're about two snipers there-at least one of them is very accurate."

The team leader acknowledged and hung up. He looked back at his four remaining men. "Captain got greased. Okay, you two stay here and fire down into the loft. You two come with me." He reentered the tower and ran down the spiral stairs toward the loft level.

One of the remaining two men in the triforiurn leaned out over the balustrade, steadying his rifle on the protruding flagstaff, which he noticed was splintered and covered with blood. He looked down and saw in the light of a flare a young woman's body lying in a collapsed pew.

"Jesus . . ." He looked into the dark loft and fired a short burst at random. "Flush those suckers out . . . ...

A single shot whistled up out of the loft, passed through the wooden staff and punched into his flak jacket. He rose up off his feet, and his rifle flew into the air. The man lay stretched out on the floor for a few seconds, then rolled over on his hands and knees and tried to catch his breath. "Good God . . . Jesus H. Christ . . ."

The other man, who hadn't moved from his kneeling position, said, "Lucky shot, Tony. Bet he couldn't do it again."

The injured man put his hand under his flak jacket and felt a lump the size of an egg where his breast bones met. "Wow . . . fuck-ing wow. He looked at the other man. "Your turn."

The man pulled off his black stocking cap and pushed it above the balustrade on the tip of his rifle. A faint coughing sound rolled out of the choir loft, followed by a whistle and crack, then another, but the hat didn't move. The ESD man lowered the hat. "He stinks." He moved to a position several yards down the triforium and peered over the edge of the balustrade. The huge yellow and white Papal flag was no longer hanging from the staff but was stretched across the pews below, covering the body of the dead woman. The ESD man stared back at the staff and saw the two severed flag-ropes swaying. He ducked quickly and 515

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looked at the other man. "You're not going to believe this ... 11

Someone in the choir loft laughed.

An ESD man beside Burke picked up Bellini's bullborn and began to raise it above the balustrade, then thought better of it. He pointed it upward from his kneeling position and called out, "Hey! You in the loft! Show's over. Nobody left but you. Come to the choir rail with your hands up. You won't be harmed." He shut off the bullhorn and said, "You'll be blasted into hamburger, motherfucker."

There was a long silence, then a man's voice called out from the loft.

"You'll never take us." There were two sharp pistol shots, followed by silence.

The ESD man turned to Burke. "They blew their brains out."

Burke said, "Sure."

The man considered for a moment. "How do we know?" he finally asked.

Burke nodded toward Bellini's body.

The ESD man hesitated, then wiped Bellini's face and forehead with a handkerchief, and Burke helped him heft Bellini's body over the parapet.

Immediately there was a sound like a bee buzzing, followed by a loud slap, and Bellini's body was pulled out of their hands and crashed to the triforium floor behind them. An odd shrillish voice screamed from the loft, "Live ones! I want live ones!"

For the first time since the attack began Burke felt sweat forming on his brow.

The ESD man looked pale. "My God.

The Second Squad leader led his remaining two men down the dark bell tower until they found the choir practice room. They searched it carefully in the dark and located the door that led out to the loft. The squad leader listened quietly at the door, then stood to the side and put his hand on the knob and turned it, but there was no 516

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alarm. The three men hugged the walls for a second before the squad leader pushed the door open, and they rushed the opening in a low crouch.

A shotgun exploded five times in the dark in quick succession, and the three men were knocked back into the room, their faces, arms, and legs ripped with buckshot.

Megan Fitzgerald stepped quickly into the room and shone a light on the three contorted bodies. One of the men looked up at the black-robed figure through the light and stared at her grotesquely made-up face, distorted with a repulsive snarl. Megan raised a pistol, deliberately shot each of the writhing figures in the head, then closed the door, reset the silent light alarm, and walked back into the loft. She called to Leary, who was moving and firing from positions all over the loft.

"Don't let Malone or Baxter get away. Keep them pinned there until the bombs explode!"

Leary shouted as he fired, "Yeah, yeah. Just watch the fucking side doors."

A long stream of red tracers streaked out of the long northwest triforium and began ripping into the choir pews. Leary got off an answering shot before the last tracer left the muzzle of the ESD man's rifle, and the firing abruptly stopped.

Leary moved far back to the towering organ pipes and looked out at the black horizon line formed by the loft rail across the candle- and flare-lit Cathedral. It was strictly a matter of probability, he knew.

There were thirteen hundred square feet of completely unlit loft and less than twenty police in a position to bring fire into the loft. And because of their overhead angle they couldn't bring grazing fire across the sloping expanse, but only direct fire at a specific point of impact, and that reduced the killing zone of their striking rounds. in addition, he and Megan had flak jackets under their robes, his rifle was silenced and the flash was suppressed, and they were both moving constantly. The ESD

night scopes would be whited out as long as the phosphorus below kept burning, but he was firing into a lit area, and he could see their shapes when they came to the edge of the triforia. Probability. Odds. Skill.

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Vantage point. All in his favor. Always were. Luck did not exist. God did not exist. He called to Megan, "Time?"

She looked at her watch and saw the luminous minute hand tick another minute. "Fourteen minutes until 6:03."

He nodded to himself. There were times when he felt immortal and times when immortality only meant staying alive for just long enough to get the next shot off. Fourteen minutes. No problem.

Burke heard the field phone click and picked up the receiver from the floor. "Burke."

Mayor Kline's voice came through the earpiece. "Lieutenant, I didn't want to cut in on your command network-I've been monitoring all transmissions, of course, and not being there to see the situation, I felt it was better to let Captain Bellini handle it-but now that he's-"

"We appreciate that, sir." Burke noticed Kline's voice had that coot preciseness that was just a hair away from whining panic. "Actually, I have to get through to the crawl space, Mr. Mayor, so-"

"Yes-just a second-I was wondering if you could fill us in-"

"I just did."

"What? Oh, yes. Just one second. We need a situation report from you as the ranking man in there-you're in charge, by the way."

"Thanks. Let me call you right back--2'

"Fine."

He heard a click and spoke to the police operator. "Don't put that asshole through again." He dropped the receiver on the floor.

The Sixth Assault Squad of ESD rappelled from police helicopters into the open attic hatches. They ran across the foam-covered catwalks to the south tower and split up, one team going up toward Devane's position, the other down toward the triforium. and choir loft levels.

The team climbing into the tower fired grenades ahead of them, moving up level by level until they reached the

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copper-louvered room where Devane had been posted. They looked for the body of the Fenian sniper in the dark, smoke-filled room but found only bloodstains on the floor and a gas mask lying in the corner.

The squad leader touched a bloodstain on the ascending ladder and looked up. "We'll go with gas from here."

The men pulled on gas masks and fired CS canisters to the next level.

They moved up the ladder, floor by floor, the gas rising with them, into the narrowing spire. Above them they heard the echoing sounds of a man coughing, then the deep, full bellow of vomiting. They followed the blood trail on the rusty ladder, cautiously moving through the dark levels until they reached a narrow, tapering, octagonal room about fifteen stories above the street. The room had clover-shaped openings, without glass, cut into the eight sides of the stonework. The blood trail ended on the ladder, and the floor near one of the openings was smeared with vomit. The squad leader pulled off his gas mask and stuck his head and shoulders out of the opening and looked up.

A series of iron rungs ran up the last hundred feet of the tapering spire toward the copper cross on top. The squad leader saw a man climbing halfway up. The man lost his footing, then recovered and pulled himself up to the next rung. The squad leader dropped back into the small, cold room. He unslung his rifle and chambered a round. "These fucks blew away a lot of our people--understand?"

One of his men said, "It's not too cool to blow him away with all those people watching from Rockefeller Center."

The squad leader looked out the opening at the buildings across the Avenue. Despite orders and all the police could do, hundreds of people were at the windows and on the rooftops watching the climber make his way up the granite spire. A few people were shouting, making encouraging motions with their hands and bodies. The squad leader heard cheering and applauding and thought he heard gasps when the man slipped. He said,

"Assholes. The wrong people are always getting the applause." He released the safety

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switch, moved toward the opening, and looked up. He shouted, "Hey, King Kong! Get your ass back here!"

The climber glanced down but continued up the spire.

The squad leader pulled his head back into the room. "Give me the rappelling line." He took the nylon rope and began hooking himself up.

"Well, as the homicide detectives say, 'Did he fall or was he pushed?'

That is the question."

The other half of the Sixth Assault Squad descended through the south tower and, following a rough sketch supplied by Gordon Stillway, located the door to the long southwest triforium. One of the men kicked the door in, and the other four rushed down the length of the long gallery in a crouch. An ESD man spotted a man dressed in kilts lying crumpled at the comer of the balustrade, a bagpipe sticking out from under his body.

Suddenly a periscope rose from the triforiurn across the transept, and a bullhorn blared. "Get down! The loft! Watch the loftl"

The men turned in unison and stared down at the choir loft projecting out at a right angle about thirty feet below them. A muzzle flashed twice, and two of the five men went down. The other three dove for the floor. "What the hell . . . T' The team leader looked wildly around the long dark gallery as though it were full of gunmen. "Where did that come from . . . the loft?" He looked at the two dead men, each shot betwe ' en the eyes. "I never saw it. . . . I never heard anything. . . .

One of the men said, "Neither did they."

Ile fifteen men of the 69th Regiment had moved back into the Cathedral after the carrier had stopped burning, and they lay on the floor under the choir loft, sighting their rifles down the five wide aisles toward the raised sanctuary. Major Cole rose to one knee and looked over the pews with a pair of binoculars, then scanned the four triforia. Nothing seemed to be moving in the Cathedral, and the loudest sound was the striking of bullets from the

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Fenian sniper overhead. Cole looked at the smoking armored carrier beside him. The smell of burnt gasoline and flesh made his stomach heave.

A sergeant came up beside him. "Major, we have to do something."

The major felt his stomach heave again. "We are not supposed to interfere with the police in any way. There could be a misunderstanding . . . an accident . . ."

A runner came up the steps, moved through the battered doors, and crossed the vestibule, finding Major Cole contemplating his watch. The runner crouched beside him. "From the Governor, sir."

Cole took the handwritten report without enthusiasm and read from the last paragraph. "Father Murphy still missing. Locate and rescue him and rescue the other two hostages beneath the sanctuary pews. Cole looked up at the sergeant.

The sergeant regarded Cole's pale face. "If I found a way into that loft and zapped the sniper, you could dash up the aisle and grab the two hostages--~' He smiled. "But you got to move quick because you'll be racing the cops for them."

Major Cole said stiffly, "All right. Take ten men into the loft." He turned to the runner. "Acknowledge -message. Have the police command call their men in the triforia and tell them to hold fire on the loft for .

. . five minutes." The runner saluted and moved off. Cole said to the sergeant, "Don't get anyone hurt."