cigarette … you know?”
Burke looked at his watch. “At least this one can’t go into overtime. At 6:03 it’s finished.”
Bellini also checked his watch. “Yeah … no overtime. Just a two-minute warning, then a big bang, and the stadium falls down and the game is over.” He laughed again, and Burke glanced at him.
The ESD climber reached the top of the shaft. He tied a nylon rope ladder to the pulley crossbeam and let the ladder fall. Bellini caught it before it hit the metal roof of the elevator. The communications man threw up a field- phone receiver, and Bellini clipped it to the shoulder of his flak jacket. “Well, Burke … here goes. Once you get
Bellini paused at the oak door of the Archbishop’s sacristy and put his ear to it. He heard footsteps and froze. Suddenly the crack of light at the bottom of the door disappeared. He waited several more seconds, his rifle pointed at the door and his heart pounding in his chest. The footsteps moved away. His phone clicked, and he answered it quietly. “Yeah.”
The operator said, “Our people outside report all the lights are going out in there—but there’s … like candlelight … maybe flares lighting up the windows.”
Bellini swore. The flares, he knew, would be white phosphorus.
At the top of the shaft the climber sat on the crossbeam, pointing his light farther up, and Bellini saw a small opening where the shaft wall ended a few feet from the sloping ceiling of the triforium attic. Bellini mumbled, “Caught a fucking break at least.” He stood precariously on the crossbeam, eight stories above the basement, and stretched toward the opening, grabbing at the top of the wooden wall. He pulled himself up, squeezing his head and broad shoulders into the space, a silenced pistol in his hand. He blinked in the darkness of the half attic, fully expecting to be shot between the eyes. He waited, then turned on his light, cocking his pistol at the same time. Nothing moved but his pounding chest against the top edge of the wall. He slid down headfirst five feet to a beam that ran over the plaster lathing, breaking his fall with his outstretched arms and righting himself silently.
Burke’s head and shoulders appeared in the opening, and Bellini pulled him through. One by one the First Assault Squad dropped into the small side attic behind the triforium.
Bellini crawled over the beams, sidled up to the wooden knee-wall and moved along it until he felt a small door Stillway had described. On the other side of the door was the southeast triforium, and in the triforium, he was certain, were one or more gunmen. He put a small audio amplifier to the door and listened. He heard no footsteps, no sound of life in the triforium, but somewhere in the Cathedral a bagpipe was playing “Amazing Grace.” He mumbled to himself, “Assholes.”
He backed carefully away from the wall and led his squad to the low, narrow space where the sloping roof met the stone of the outside wall. He unclipped the field phone from his jacket and spoke quietly to his switchboard below. “Report to all stations—First Squad in place. No con tact.”
The Second Assault Squad of ESD men climbed the rungs of the wide chimney, fire axes slung to their backs. They passed the steel door in the brick and continued up to the chimney pot.
The squad leader attached a khaki nylon rappelling line to the top rung and held the gathered rope in his hands. The cold night air blew into the chimney, making a deep, hollow, whistling sound. The squad leader stuck a periscope out of the chimney pot and scanned the towers, but the Fenians were not visible from this angle, and he pointed the scope at the cross-shaped roof. Two dormers faced him, and he saw that the hatches on them were open. “Shit.” He reached back, and the squad commo man cranked the field phone slung to his chest and handed him the receiver. The squad leader reported, “Captain, Second Squad in position. The damned hatches are open now, and it’s going to be tough crossing this roof if there’re people leaning out those dormers shooting at us.”
Bellini answered in a barely audible voice. “Just hold there until the towers are knocked out. Then move.”
The Third Assault Squad climbed the chimney behind the Second Squad but stopped their ascent below the steel door. The squad leader maneuvered to a position beside the door, directing a flashlight on the latch. Slowly he reached out with a mechanical pincher and tentatively touched the latch, then drew it away. He called Bellini on the field phone. “Captain. Third in position. Can’t tell if there are alarms or mines on the door.”
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 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 he 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.
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 Waldorf-Astoria, 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 feet.
