Cathedral (61 page)

The squad leader swore loudly and peered around the altar. "Okay, okay, stay there!" He glanced quickly up at the choir loft and saw a muzzle flash. The marble in front of him disintegrated and hit him full in the face. He screamed, and someone grabbed his ankles, dragging him back down the stairs.

Medics rushed up from the sacristy and began carrying away the wounded.

The commo man cranked his field phone and reportd to Bellini in a shaky voice. "Hostages pinned down. This altar is the wrong end of a shooting gallery. We can't help them."

The Fourth Assault Squad moved slowly through the dark crawl space, the squad leader scanning his front with an infrared scope. The two dogs and their handlers moved with him. Behind the advancing line of men moved Wendy Peterson and four men of the Bomb Squad.

Every few yards the dogs strained at their leashes, and the Bomb Squad would uncover another small particle of plastic explosive without timers or detonators. The entire earth floor seemed to be seeded with plastic, and every column had a scrap of plastic stuck to it. A dog handler whispered to the impatient squad leader, "I can't stop them from following these red herrings."

Wendy Peterson came up beside the squad leader and said, "My men will follow up on these dogs. Your squad and I have to move on-faster-to the other side."

He stopped crawling, lay down an infrared scope, and 507

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turned his head toward her. "I'm moving like there were ten armed men in front of me, and that's the only way I know how to move when I'm crawling in a black fucking hole . . . Lieutenant."

The Bomb Squad men hurried up from the rear. One of them called,

"Lieutenant?"

"Over here."

He came up beside her. "Okay, the mine on the corridor hatchway is disarmed, and we can get out of here real quick if we have to. The mine had a det-cord running from it, and we followed it to the explosives around the main column on this side." He paused and caught his breath. "We defused that big mother-about twenty kilos of plastic-colored and shaped to look like stone-simple clock mechanism-set to go at 6:03-no bullshit about that." He held out a canvas bag and pressed it into Peterson's hands. "The guts."

She hunched over and lit a red-filtered flashlight, emptying the contents of the bag on the floor. Alarm clock, battery pack, wires, and four detached electric detonators. She turned on the clock, and it ticked loudly in the still air. She shut it off again. "No tricks?"

"No. We cut away all the plastic-no booby traps, no anti-intrusion devices.

Very old techniques but very reliable, and top-grade plastic-smells and feels like that new C-5."

She picked off a clinging piece of plastic, kneading it between her thumb and forefinger, then smelled it.

The squad leader watched her in the filtered light and was reminded of his mother making cookie dough, but it was all wrong. "Really good stuff, huh?"

She switched off the light and said to the squad leader, "If the mechanism on the other one is the same, I'd need less than five minutes to defuse that bomb."

He said, "Good-now all you need is the other bomb. And I need about eight minutes to get the hell out of here and into the rectory basement. So at 5:55, no matter what's coming down, I say adios."

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"Fair enough. Let's move."

He made no move but said, "I have to report the good news." He picked up the field phone. "Captain, the north side of the crawl space is clear of bombs."

Bellini answered, "Okay, very good." He related Maureen's information.

"Move cautiously to the other side of the crypt. Hickey-"

"Yeah, but we can't engage him. We can move back to the hatchway, though, so you can have somebody drop concussion grenades through that bronze plate in the sanctuary. Then we'll move in and-"

Bellini cut him off. "Fifth Squad is still on the sacristy stairs. Took some casualties. . . . They're going to have trouble crossing the sanctuary floor-sniper up in the loft-"

"Well, blow him the fuck away and let's get it moving."

"Yeah . . . I'll let you know when we do that."

The squad leader hesitated, then said, "Well . . . we'll stay put . . .

...

Bellini let a few seconds pass, then said, "This sniper is going to take awhile . . . . I'm not positive Hickey or anyone is down there . . . .

You've got to get to the other column."

The squad leader hung up and turned to the dog handlers. "Okay, drag those stupid mutts along, and don't stop until we get to the other side."

He called to his men. "Let's go.

The three teams-ESD Assault Squad, Bomb Squad, and the dog handlers, twenty people in all-began moving. They passed the rear wall of the crypt and turned left, following the line of columns that would lead them to the main column flanking the sacristy stairs and what they hoped would be the last bomb.

They dropped from their hands and knees to a low-crawl position, rifles held out in front of them, the squad leader scanning with the infrared scope.

Peterson looked at her wristwatch as they moved. 5:47. If the mechanism on this side wasn't tricky, if there were

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no mines, if there were no other bombs, and if no one fired at them, then she had a very good chance of keeping St. Patrick's Cathedral from blowing up.

As she moved, though, she thought about triggers-all the ways a bomb could be detonated besides an electric clock. She thought about a concussion grenade that would set off an audio trigger, a flashlight that would set off a photo trigger, movement that would set off an inertial trigger, trip wires, false clocks, double or triple mechanisms, spring-loaded percussion mechanisms, remote mechanisms-so many nasty ways to make a bomb go off that you didn't want to go off. Yet, nothing so elaborate was needed to safeguard a time bomb until its time had come if it had a watchdog guarding it.

John Hickey knelt beside the main column, wedged between the footing and the sacristy stairwell, contemplating the mass of explosives packed around the footing and bedrock. His impulse was to dig out the clock and advance it to eternity. But to probe into the plastic in the dark might disconnect a detoiaator or battery connection. He looked at his watch. 5:47. Sixteen minutes to go. He could keep them away that long-long enough for the dawn to give the camera's good light. He grinned.

Hickey pushed himself farther back into the small space and peered up through the darkness toward the spot where the bronze plate sat in the ceiling. No one had tried to come through there yet, and as he listened to the shooting overhead, he suspected that Leary and Megan were still alive and would see to it that no one did. A bullet struck the bronze plate, and a deep resonant sound echoed through the dark. Four more bullets struck the plate in quick succession, and Hickey smiled. "Ah, Leary, you're showing off now, lad."

Just then his ears picked up the sound of whimpering. He cupped his ear and listened. Dogs. Then men breathing. He flipped the selector switch on his rifle to full automatic and leaned forward as the sound of crawling came nearer. The dogs had the scent of the massed explosives and proba 510

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bly of him. Hickey pursed his lips and made a sound. "Pssst!"

There was a sudden and complete silence.

Hickey did it again. "Pssst!" He picked up a piece of rubble and threw it.

The squad leader scanned the area to his front, but there was not even the faintest glimmer of light for the infrared scope to pick up and magnify.

Hickey said, "It's me. Don't shoot."

No one answered for several seconds, then the squad leader called out in a voice that was fighting to maintain control. "Put your hands up and move closer."

Hickey placed his rifle a few inches from the ground and held it horizontally. "Don't shoot, lads-please don't shoot.If you shoot . . .

you'll blow us all to hell." He laughed, then said, "l, however, can shoot." He squeezed the trigger and emptied a twenty-round magazine across the ground in front of him. He slapped another magazine into the well as the reports died away, and he heard screaming and moaning. He emptied another full magazine in three long bursts of grazing fire. He heard a dog howling, or, he thought, perhaps a man. He mimicked the howling as he reloaded and fired again.

The ESD snipers in both triforia were shooting down the length of the Cathedral into the choir loft, but the targets there-at least two of them-were moving quickly through the darkness as they fired. ESD men began to fall, dead and wounded, onto the triforium floors. An ESD man rose up beside Bellini and leaned out over the balustrade, putting a long stream of automatic fire into the loft. The red tracer rounds arched into the loft and disappeared as they embedded themselves into the woodwork.

The organ keyboard was hit, and electrical sparks crackled in the darkness. The man fired again, and another stream of tracers struck the towering brass pipes, producing a sound like pealing bells. The tracer rounds ricocheted back, spinning and dancing like fiery pinwheels in the black space.

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Bellini shouted to the ESD man and pulled at his flak jacket. "Too long!

Down!"

All of a sudden the man released his rifle and slapped his hands to his face, then leaned farther out and rolled over the balustrade, crashing to the clergy pews below.

An ESD man with a M-79 grenade launcher fired. The small grenade burst against a wooden locker with a flash, and robes began to burn. Bellini picked up his bullhorn and shouted, "No grenades.,, The fire blazed for a few seconds, then began to bum itself out. Bellini crouched and held the bullhorn up. "Okay-First and Third squads-alI together-two full magazines-automatic--on my command." He grabbed the rifle beside him and shouted into the bullhorn as he rose, "Fire!"

The remaining men in both triforia rose in unison and fired, producing a deafening roar as streams of red tracers poured into the black loft.

They emptied their magazines, reloaded, fired again, then ducked.

There was a silence from the choir loft, and Bellini rose carefully with the bulIhorn, keeping himself behind a column. He called out to the loft.

"Turn the lights on and put your hands up, or we'll shoot again." He looked down at Burke sitting crosslegged beside him. "That's negotiating!" He raised the bullhorn again.

Leary knelt at the front of the loft in the north comer and watched through his scope as the bullhorn came up behind the column, diagonally across the Cathedral. He lay flat on top of the rail and leaned out precariously like a pool player trying to make a hard shot, putting the cross hairs of his scope over a small visible piece of Bellini's forehead.He fired and rolled back to the choir loft floor.

The bullhorn emitted an oddly amplified moan as Bellini's forehead erupted in a splatter of bone and blood. He dropped straight down, landing on Burke's crossed legs. Burke stared at the heavy body sprawled across him. Bellini's blackened temple gushed a small fountain of red .

. . like a red rosebud, Burke thought abstractedly. . . . He pushed the body away and steadied himself against the parapet, drawing on his cigarette.

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There was very little noise in the Cathedral now, he noted, and no sound at all from the survivors of the First Squad around him. Medics had arrived and were treating the wounded where they lay; they they carried them back into the attic for the descent down the elevator shaft. Burke looked at his watch. 5:48.

Father Murphy listened to the sounds of footsteps approaching from below.

His first thought was that the police had arrived; then he remembered Flynn's words, and he realized it might be Leary or Megan coming for him.

He picked up the pistol and held it in his shaking hand. "Who is it?

Who's there?"

An ESD team leader from the Second Assault Squad two levels below motioned his fire team away from the open well. He raised his rifle and muffled his voice with his hand. "It's me. . . . Come on down . . . attic burning.

Father Murphy put his hand to his face and whispered,

"The attic . . . oh . . . GodHe called down.

"Nulty! Is that you?"

"Yes."

Murphy hesitated. "Is . . . is Leary with you? Where's Megan?"

The team leader looked around at his men, who appeared tense and impatient. He called up the ladder well, "They're here. Come down!"

The priest tried to collect his thoughts, but his mind was so dulled with fatigue he just stared down into the black hole.

The team leader shouted, "Come down, or we're coming up for you!"

Father Murphy drew back from the opening as far as his cuffed wrist permitted. "I've got a gun!"

The team leader motioned to one of his men to fire a gas canister into the opening. The projectile sailed upward through the intervening level and burst on the ladder near Father Murphy's head. A piece of the canister struck him in the face, and his lungs filled with gas. He lurched back,

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then stumbled forward, falling through the opening. He hung suspended from his handcuffs, swinging against the ladder, his stomach and chest heaving as choked noises rose from his throat.

An ESD man with a submachine gun saw the figure dropping out of the darkness and fired from the hip. The body jerked, then lay still against the ladder. The ESD team moved carefully up to the higher level.

City lights filtered through the broken glass and cast a weak, shadowy illumination into the tower room. A cold wind blew away the smell of gas.

An ESD man drew closer to the ladder, then shouted, "Hey! It's a priest."

The team leader dimly recalled some telephone traffic regarding the missing hostage, the priest. He cleared his throat. "Some of them were dressed as priests . . . right?"

The man with the submachine gun added, "He said he had a gun . . . . I heard it fall. . . . Something fell on the floor here . . . ... He looked around and found the pistol. "See . . . and he called them by name . .