“I wouldn’t put myself at the mercy of any of them. We couldn’t reach those stairs anyway. I won’t be shot down by scum like Leary or Megan. I’m staying here.”
“Then you’ll be blown up by John Hickey.”
She buried her face in her hands, then looked up. “Over the back of the sanctuary, keeping the altar between us and the choir loft. Into the Lady Chapel—the windows are about fifteen feet from the floor. Climb the chapel altar—one of us boosts the other up. We won’t get that far, of course, but—”
“But we’ll be heading in the right direction.”
She nodded and began moving under the pews.
The Fifth Assault Squad crouched on the two flights of steps behind the high altar. The squad leader peered around the south side of the altar and looked to his left at the bronze floor-plate. He turned to the right, put his face to the floor, and tried to locate the hostages under the clergy pews, but in the bad light and at the angle he was looking he saw no one. He raised his rifle and called softly, “Baxter? Malone?”
They were both about to spring out toward the rear of the sanctuary but dropped to a prone position. Baxter called back, “Yes!”
The squad leader said, “Steps are clear. Cardinal’s safe. Where is Father Murphy?”
Maureen peered across the sanctuary floor to the stairwell thirty feet away. “Somewhere in the towers, I think.” She paused, then said, “Gallagher? The man who—”
The squad leader cut her off. “The bomb under us hasn’t been found yet. You have to get out of there.”
“What time is it?” Baxter asked.
The squad leader looked at his digital watch. “It’s 5:46 and twenty seconds.”
Maureen stared at the face of her watch. Ten minutes slow. “Bastard.” She reset it and called back. “Someone’s got to get the snipers in the loft before we can move.”
The squad leader poked his head around the altar, looked up at the choir loft illuminated by candles and flares, and tried to peer into the blackness beyond. “He’s too far away for us to get him or for him to get you.”
Baxter shouted with anger in his voice, “If that were so, we wouldn’t be here. That man is very good.”
The squad leader said, “We’re sitting on a
Maureen called out to the squad leader, “Listen, two people planted the bombs, and they were down in the crawl space less than twenty minutes. They carried two suitcases.”
The squad leader called back, “Okay—I’ll pass that on. But you have to understand, lady, that the Bomb Squad could blow it—you know? So you have to make a break.”
Maureen called back, “We’ll wait.”
“Well, we won’t.” The squad leader looked up at the triforium directly overhead where Bellini was, but saw no one at the openings. He called on the field phone. “Captain, Malone and Baxter are under the pews below you— alive.” He passed on the information about the bombs and added, “They won’t try to cross the sanctuary.” Bellini’s voice came over the line. “I don’t blame them. Okay, in thirty seconds everyone fires into the loft. Tell them to run for it then.”
“Right.” He hung up and relayed the message to Maureen and Baxter.
Maureen called back, “We’ll see—be careful—”
The squad leader turned and shouted to his men on the opposite stairs. “Heavy fire into the loft!” The men moved up the steps and knelt on the floor, firing down the length of the Cathedral. The squad leader moved the remainder of his squad around the altar and opened fire as the two triforia began shooting. The sound of bullets crashing into stone and brass in the loft rolled back through the Cathedral. The squad leader shouted to Malone and Baxter. “Run!”
Suddenly two rifles started firing rapidly from the choir loft with extreme accuracy. The ESD men on both sides of the altar began writhing on the cold sanctuary floor. Both teams pulled back to the staircases, dragging their wounded and leaving a trail of blood on the white marble.
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 colunm 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 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 detcord 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
“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….”
