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….”
The man with the grenade launcher said, “But he’s
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,
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 corner overlooking the north transept. Two men searched the triforium attic as the team leader reported on the field phone, ‘Captain, northwest triforium 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 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 triforium 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 … fucking 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 looked at the other man. “You’re not going to believe this …”
Someone in the choir loft laughed.
An ESD man beside Burke picked up Bellini’s bullhorn 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
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 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. 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
