“At the Cathedral?”
“What better place? The Irish have a love of spectacle, grand gestures. Whether they win or not is unimportant. Ireland will always remember her martyrs and heroes for their style, not their success or lack of it. So, who will soon forget the resurrected Finn MacCumail and his Fenians when they kidnap or kill his faithless lover at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on Saint Patrick’s Day? No, it won’t be soon forgotten.”
Burke’s mind raced. “I didn’t believe they’d hit the Cathedral … but it fits the facts—”
“To hell with the facts. It fits their characters. It fits with history, with destiny, with—”
“Fuck history.” Burke ran toward the terrace steps. “Fuck destiny, Jack.” He tore down the path toward Fifth Avenue.
Ferguson called out after him. “Too late! Too late!”
Terri O’Neal watched the IRA veterans pass on the television screen. The scene shifted from Sixty-fourth Street to a view from the roof of Rockefeller Center. The County Tyrone unit passed in front of the Cathedral, and the camera zoomed in. She sat up and leaned closer to the television set. Her father’s face suddenly filled the screen, and the announcer, who had recognized him, made a passing comment. She put her hand over her face as the enormity of what was going to happen—to her, to him, to everyone—at last dawned on her. “Oh, no…. Dad! Don’t let them get away with this….”
Dan Morgan looked at her. “Even if he could hear you, there’s not a thing he can do now.”
The telephone rang, and Morgan answered it. He listened. “Yes, as ready as I’ll ever be.” He hung up, then looked at his watch and began counting off sixty seconds as he walked into the bedroom.
Terri O’Neal looked up from the television and watched him. “Is this it?”
He glanced at the parade passing by on the screen, then at her. “Yes. And God help us if we’ve misjudged….”
“God help you, anyway.”
Morgan went into the bedroom, opened the side panel of the bay window, and waved a green shamrock flag.
CHAPTER 13
Brendan O’Connor stood with the crowd on Fifth Avenue. He looked up and saw the shamrock flag waving from the window on Sixty-fourth Street. He took a deep breath and moved behind the reviewing stands where pedestrian traffic was allowed to pass under the scrutiny of patrolmen. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke blow southward, over his shoulder.
O’Connor reached his right hand into the pocket of his overcoat, slid the elastic off the handle of a grenade that had the pin removed, and held the handle down with his thumb. As he moved through the closely pressed crowd he pushed the grenade through a slit in his pocket and let it fall to the sidewalk. He felt the detonator handle hit his ankle as it flew off. He repeated the procedure with a grenade in his left pocket, pushing quickly through the tight crowd as it fell.
Both seven-second fuses popped in sequence. The first grenade, a CS gas canister, hissed quietly. The second grenade, a smoke signaling device, billowed huge green clouds that floated south into the stands. Brendan O’Connor kept walking. Behind him he could hear the sounds of surprise as the CS gas rose to face level, followed by the sounds of fear and panic as the smoke and choking gas swept over the crowd on the sidewalk and up to the reviewing stands. O’Connor released four more canisters through his pockets, then walked through an opening in the stone wall and disappeared into the park.
Patrick Burke vaulted the low stone wall of Central Park and barreled into the crowd on the sidewalk near the reviewing stands. Billowing green smoke rolled over the stands toward him, and even before it reached him his eyes began to tear. “Shit.” He put a handkerchief to his face and ran into the Avenue, but panic had seized the marchers, and Burke was caught in the middle of the confusion. The banner of the unit had fallen to the pavement, and Burke glimpsed it under the feet of the running men—BELFAST IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY VETERANS. As he fought his way across the Avenue, Burke could see that their ranks were laced with agitators and professional shriekers, as he called them.
James Sweeney put his back to the streetlight pole at Sixty-fourth Street and held his ground against the press of people around him. His hands reached through the pockets of his long trench coat and grabbed a long- handled bolt cutter hanging from his belt. He let the skirts of his coat fall over the cable connections from the mobile headquarters van as he clipped the telephone lines and then the electric power lines at the base of the pole.
Sweeney took three steps into the shoving crowd and let the bolt cutter slide into the storm drain at the curb. He allowed himself to be carried along with the flow of the moving mass of marchers and spectators up Sixty-fourth Street, away from the Avenue and the choking gas.
Inside the mobile headquarters van the telephone operators heard an odd noise, and the four telephones went dead. All the lights in the van went out a second later. One of the operators looked up at George Byrd silhouetted against a small side window. “Phones out!”
Byrd pressed his face to the small window and looked down at the base of the streetlight. “Oh Christ! Sons of bitches.” He turned back and grabbed at a radio as the van driver started the engine and switched to internal power. Byrd transmitted: “All stations! Mobile at Sixty-fourth. Power line cut. We’re operating radios on generator. Telephone lines cut. Situation unclear—”
Burke burst through the door and grabbed the radiophone from Byrd’s hand. “Mobile at Fifty-first—do you read?”
The second mobile van beside the Cathedral answered. “Roger. All quiet here. Mounted and scooter units headed your way—”
“No! Listen—”
As the nineteen bronze bells in the north spire of St. Patrick’s Cathedral chimed five o’clock, the timer on the box resting on the crossbeam above the bells completed the electrical circuit. The box, a broad-band transmitter, began sending out static over the entire spectrum of the radio band. From its transmitting point, high above the street, the transmitter jammed all two-way radios in the midtown area.
A high, piercing sound filled Burke’s earphone. “Mobile at Fifty-first—do you read? Action will take place at
“I hear it—shit!” Byrd grabbed at the radio and switched to alternate command channels, but they were all filled with static. “Bastards!”
Burke grabbed his arm. “Listen, get some men to the public telephones. Call Police Plaza and the rectory. Have them try to get a message to the police around the Cathedral. The mobile van there may still have telephone communication.”
“I doubt it.”
“Tell them—”
“I know, I know. I heard you.” Byrd sent four men out of the van. He looked out the side window at the crowd streaming by and watched his men pushing through it. He turned around to speak to Burke, but he was gone.
On the steps of the Cathedral, Maureen watched the plainclothesman standing in front of her trying to get his hand radio to work. Several policemen were running around, passing on messages and receiving orders, and she could tell by their manner that there was some confusion among them. Police were moving in and out of the van on the corner to her right. She noticed the spectators on the sidewalks; they seemed to have received some message that those on the steps had not. There was a murmur running through the crowd, and heads craned north, up the
