Cathedral

by Nelson DeMille

  “Thanks. Let me call you right back—”

  “Fine.”

  He heard a click and spoke to the police operator. “Don’t put that asshole through again.” He dropped the receiver on the floor.

  The Sixth Assault Squad of ESD rappelled from police helicopters into the open attic hatches. They ran across the foam-covered catwalks to the south tower and split up, one team going up toward Devane’s position, the other down toward the triforium and choir loft levels.

  The team climbing into the tower fired grenades ahead of them, moving up level by level until they reached the copper-louvered room where Devane had been posted. They looked for the body of the Fenian sniper in the dark, smoke-filled room but found only bloodstains on the floor and a gas mask lying in the corner.

  The squad leader touched a bloodstain on the ascending ladder and looked up. “We’ll go with gas from here.”

  The men pulled on gas masks and fired CS canisters to the next level. They moved up the ladder, floor by floor, the gas rising with them, into the narrowing spire. Above them they heard the echoing sounds of a man coughing, then the deep, full bellow of vomiting. They followed the blood trail on the rusty ladder, cautiously moving through the dark levels until they reached a narrow, tapering, octagonal room about fifteen stories above the street. The room had clover-shaped openings, without glass, cut into the eight sides of the stonework. The blood trail ended on the ladder, and the floor near one of the openings was smeared with vomit. The squad leader pulled off his gas mask and stuck his head and shoulders out of the opening and looked up.

  A series of iron rungs ran up the last hundred feet of the tapering spire toward the copper cross on top. The squad leader saw a man climbing halfway up. The man lost his footing, then recovered and pulled himself up to the next rung. The squad leader dropped back into the small, cold room. He unslung his rifle and chambered a round. “These fucks blew away a lot of our people—understand?”

  One of his men said, “It’s not too cool to blow him away with all those people watching from Rockafeller Center.”

  The squad leader looked out the opening at the buildings across the Avenue. Despite orders and all the police could do, hundreds of people were at the windows and on the rooftops watching the climber make his way up the granite spire. A few people were shouting, making encouraging motions with their hands and bodies. The squad leader heard cheering and applauding and thought he heard gasps when the man slipped. He said, “Assholes. The wrong people are always getting the applause.” He released the safety switch, moved toward the opening, and looked up. He shouted, “Hey, King Kong! Get your ass back here!”

  The climber glanced down but continued up the spire.

  The squad leader pulled his head back into the room. “Give me the rappelling line.” He took the nylon rope and began hooking himself up. “Well, as the homicide detectives say, ‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’ That is the question.”

  The other half of the Sixth Assault Squad descended through the south tower and, following a rough sketch supplied by Gordon Stillway, located the door to the long southwest triforium. One of the men kicked the door in, and the other four rushed down the length of the long gallery in a crouch. An ESD man spotted a man dressed in kilts lying crumpled at the corner of the balustrade, a bagpipe sticking out from under his body.

  Suddenly a periscope rose from the triforium across the transept, and a bullhorn blared. “Get down! The loft! Watch the loft!”

  The men turned in unison and stared down at the choir loft projecting out at a right angle about thirty feet below them. A muzzle flashed twice, and two of the five men went down. The other three dove for the floor. “What the hell … ?” The team leader looked wildly around the long dark gallery as though it were full of gunmen. “Where did that come from … the loft?” He looked at the two dead men, each shot between the eyes. “I never saw it…. I never heard anything….”

  One of the men said, “Neither did they.”

  The fifteen men of the 69th Regiment had moved back into the Cathedral after the carrier had stopped burning, and they lay on the floor under the choir loft, sighting their rifles down the five wide aisles toward the raised sanctuary. Major Cole rose to one knee and looked over the pews with a pair of binoculars, then scanned the four triforia. Nothing seemed to be moving in the Cathedral, and the loudest sound was the striking of bullets from the Fenian sniper overhead. Cole looked at the smoking armored carrier beside him. The smell of burnt gasoline and flesh made his stomach heave.

  A sergeant came up beside him. “Major, we have to do something.”

  The major felt his stomach heave again. “We are not supposed to interfere with the police in any way. There could be a misunderstanding … an accident …”

  A runner came up the steps, moved through the battered doors, and crossed the vestibule, finding Major Cole contemplating his watch. The runner crouched beside him. “From the Governor, sir.”

  Cole took the handwritten report without enthusiasm and read from the last paragraph. “Father Murphy still missing. Locate and rescue him and rescue the other two hostages beneath the sanctuary pews….” Cole looked up at the sergeant.

  The sergeant regarded Cole’s pale face. “If I found a way into that loft and zapped the sniper, you could dash up the aisle and grab the two hostages—” He smiled. “But you got to move quick because you’ll be racing the cops for them.”

  Major Cole said stiffly, “All right. Take ten men into the loft.” He turned to the runner. “Acknowledge message. Have the police command call their men in the triforia and tell them to hold fire on the loft for … five minutes.” The runner saluted and moved off. Cole said to the sergeant, “Don’t get anyone hurt.”

  The sergeant turned and led ten Guardsmen back into the south vestibule and opened the door to the spiral staircase. The soldiers double-timed up into the tower until they saw a large wooden door in the wall. The sergeant approached it cautiously and listened, but heard nothing. He put his hand on the knob and turned it slowly, then drew open the door a crack. There was complete blackness in front of him. At first he thought he wasn’t in the loft, but then he saw in the distance candlelight playing off the wall of the long northern triforium above, and he recognized the empty flagstaff. He drew open the door, crouched with his rifle held out, and began walking in one of the cross aisles. The ten soldiers began following at intervals.

  The sergeant slid his shoulder along the pew enclosure on his left as he moved, blinking into the darkness, listening for a sound somewhere in the cavernous loft. His shoulder slipped into an opening, and he turned, facing the wide aisle that ran up the center of the sloping loft. The entire expanse was pitch black, but he had a sense of its size from the massive rose window looming in the blackness, larger than a two-story house, glowing with the lights of Rockefeller Center across the Avenue. The sergeant took a step up the rising aisle, and he heard a sound like rustling silk in the pews above him.

  A woman stood a few feet in front of him on the next higher step. The sergeant stared up at two points of burning green light that reflected the candlelight rising from the Cathedral behind him. The piercing eyes held him for a fraction of a second before he raised his rifle.

  Megan screamed wildly and discharged a shotgun blast into his face. She jumped up on a pew and began firing down into the aisle below. The soldiers scrambled back along the aisle, buckshot pelting their helmets, flak jackets, and limbs as they retreated into the tower.

  Leary shouted, “Keep them away, Megan! Keep me covered. I’m shooting like I never shot before. Give me time.” He fired and moved, fired again and moved again.

  Megan picked up her automatic rifle and fired quick bursts at the tower doors. Leary saw a periscope poking over the parapet in the southeast triforium and blew it away with a single shot. “I’m hot! God, I’m hot today!”

  Burke heard the shotgun blasts from the loft, followed by the short, quick bursts of the M-16 and then the whistling of
the sniper’s rifle as rounds chipped away at the balustrade over his head.

  The ESD man beside him said, “Sounds like the weekend commandos didn’t capture the choir loft.”

  Burke picked up the field phone and spoke to the other three triforia. “At my command we throw everything we’ve got into the loft.” He called the sacristy stairs. “Tell Malone and Baxter we’re putting down suppressing fire again, and if they want to give it a try, this is the time to do it—there won’t be another time.”

  Burke waited the remainder of the five minutes he had given the 69th, to be sure they were not going to try again to get into the loft, then put the field phone to his mouth. “Fire!”

  Twenty-five ESD men rose in the four triforia and began firing with automatic rifles and grenade launchers. The rifles raked the loft with long traversing streams, while the launchers alternated their loads, firing beehive canisters of long needles, buckshot, high explosives, gas grenades, illumination rounds, and fire-extinguishing gas.

  The choir loft reverberated with the din of exploding grenades, and thick black smoke mingled with the yellowish gas. The smoke and gas rose over the splintering pews, then moved along the ceiling of the Cathedral like an eerie cloud, iridescent in the light of the burning flares below.

  Megan and Leary, wearing gas masks, knelt in the bottom aisle below the thick, protruding parapet that ran the width of the loft. Leary fired into the triforia, moved laterally, fired, and moved again. Megan sent streams of automatic fire into the sanctuary as she raced back and forth along the parapet.

  Burke heard the sounds of the grenade launchers tapering off as the canisters were used up, and he heard an occasional exclamation when someone was hit. He stood and looked over the balustrade, through the smoke, and saw small flames flickering in the loft. From the field phone in his hand came excited voices as the other triforia called for medics. And still the firing from the loft went on. Burke grabbed an M-16 from one of the EDS men. “Goddamned sons of bitches—” He fired a full magazine without pause, reloaded and fired again until the gun overheated and jammed. He threw the rifle down savagely and shouted into the field phone, “Shoot the remaining fire-extinguishing canisters and get down.”

  The last of the canisters arched into the loft, and Burke saw the fires begin to subside. Impulsively he grabbed the bullhorn and shouted toward the loft, “I’m coming for you, cocksuckers. I’m—” He felt someone knock his legs out from under him, and he toppled to the floor as a bullet passed through the space where he had stood.

  An ESD man sat cross-legged looking down at him. “You got to be cool, Lieutenant. There’s nothing personal between them and us. You understand?”

  Another man lit a cigarette and added, “They’re giving it their best shot, and we’re giving it our best shot. Today they got the force with them—see? And we don’t. Makes you wonder, though…. I mean in a cathedral and all that …”

  Burke took the man’s cigarette and got control of himself. “Okay…. okay…. Any ideas?”

  A man dabbing at a grazing wound across his jaw answered, “Yeah, offer them a job—my job.”

  Another man added, “Somebody’s got to get into the loft through the towers. That’s the truth.”

  Burke saw the dial of the other man’s watch. He picked up the phone and called the sacristy stairs. “Did the hostages make it?”

  The commo man answered, “Whoever’s behind that M-16 up there wasn’t shooting at you guys—it was raining bullets on the floor between the pews and the stairs—Christ, somebody up there has it in for these two.”

  “I’m sure it’s not personal.” Burke threw the phone down. “Still, I’m getting a little pissed off.”

  “What the hell is driving those two Micks on?” an ESD man asked. “Politics? I mean, I’m a registered Democrat, but I don’t get that excited about it. You know?”

  Burke stubbed out a cigarette and thought about Bellini. He looked down at the coagulated gore on his trousers that had been part of Bellini, those great stupid brains that had held a lot more knowledge than he had realized. Bellini would know what to do, and if he didn’t, he would know how to inspire confidence in these semi-psychotics around him. Burke felt very much out of his element, unwilling to give an order that would get one more man killed; and he appreciated—really and fully appreciated—the reason for Bellini’s erratic behavior all night. Unconsciously he rubbed at the stains on his trousers until someone said, “It doesn’t come off.”

  Burke nodded. He realized now that he had to go to the loft, himself, and finish it one way or the other.

  Maureen listened to the intense volume of fire dying away. The arm of the policeman who had fallen from the triforium above dangled between the pews, dripping blood into a large puddle of red. Through the gunfire she had thought she heard a sound coming from the pulpit.

  Baxter said, “I think that was our last chance, Maureen.”

  She heard it again, a low, choked-off moan. She said, “We may have one more chance.” She slid away from Baxter, avoiding his grasp, and rolled beneath the pews, coming out where they ended near the spiral pulpit staircase a few feet across a patch of open floor. She dove across the opening and flattened herself on the marble-walled steps, hugging the big column around which the steps circled. As she reached the top she noticed the red bloodstains on the top stairs. She looked into the pulpit and saw that he had dragged himself up to a sitting position, his back to the marble wall. His eyes were shut, and she stared at him for several seconds, watching the irregular rising and falling of his chest. Then she slid into the pulpit. “Brian.”

  He opened his eyes and focused on her.

  She leaned over him and said quietly, “Do you see what you’ve done? They’re all dead, Brian. All your trusting young friends are dead—only Leary, Megan, and Hickey are left—the bastards.”

  He took her hand and pressed it weakly. “Well … you’re all right, then … and Baxter?”

  She nodded, then ripped open his shirt and saw the bullet wound that had entered from the top of his shoulder. She moved her hands over his body and found the exit wound on his opposite hip, big and jagged, filled with bone splinters and marrow. “Oh, God …” She breathed deeply several times, trying to bring her voice under control. “Was it worth it?”

  His eyes seemed clear and alert. “Stop scolding, Maureen.”

  She touched his cheek. “Father Murphy … Why did you … ?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “We never escape what we were as children…. Priests awe me….” He drew a shallow breath. “Priests … cathedrals… you attack what you fear … primitive … self-protecting.”

  She glanced at her watch, then took him by his shoulders and shook him gently. “Can you call off Leary and Megan? Can you make them stop?” She looked up at the pulpit microphone. “Let me help you stand.”

  He didn’t respond.

  She shook him again. “Brian—it’s over—it’s finished—stop this killing—”

  He shook his head. “I can’t stop them…. You know that….”

  “The bombs, then. Brian, how many bombs? Where are they? What time—?”

  “I don’t know … and if I did … I don’t know … 6:03 … sooner … later … two bombs … eight … a hundred…. Ask Hickey….”

  She shook him more roughly. “You’re a damned fool.” She said more softly, “You’re dying.”

  “Let me go in peace, can’t you?” He suddenly leaned forward and took her hands in a surprisingly tight grip, and a spasm shook his body. He felt blood rising from his lungs and felt it streaming through his parted lips. “Oh … God … God, this is slow….”

  She looked at a pistol lying on the floor and picked it up.

  He watched her as she held the pistol in both hands. He shook his head. “No…. You’ve got enough regrets … don’t carry that with you…. Not for me….” She cocked the pistol. “Not for you—for me. ”

  He held out his hand and pushed her arm awa
y. “I want it to be slow….”

  She uncocked the pistol and flung it down the steps. “All right … as you wish.” She looked around the floor of the pulpit, and from among a pile of ammunition boxes she took an aid kit and unwrapped two pressure bandages.

  Flynn said, “Go away…. Don’t prolong this…. You’re not helping….”

  “You want it to be slow.” She dressed both wounds, then extracted a Syrette of morphine from the kit.

  He pushed her hand away weakly. “For God’s sake, Maureen, let me die my way…. I want to stay clearheaded … to think….”

  She tapped the spring-loaded Syrette against his arm, and the morphine shot into his muscle. “Clearheaded,” she repeated, “clearheaded, indeed.”

  He slumped back against the pulpit wall. “Cold … cold … this is bad….”

  “Yes … let the morphine work. Close your eyes.”

  “Maureen … how many people have I done this to … ? My God … what have I done all these years … ?”

  Tears formed in her eyes. “Oh, Brian … always so late … always so late….”

  Rory Devane felt blood collecting in his torn throat and tried to spit, but the blood gushed from his open wound again, carrying flecks of vomit with it. He blinked the running tears from his eyes as he moved upward. His hands had lost all sensation, and he had to look at them to see if they were grabbing the cold iron rungs.

  The higher he climbed, the more his head throbbed where the ricochet had hit him, and the throbbing spread into his skull, causing a pain he wouldn’t have believed possible. Several times he wanted to let go, but the image of the cross on the top drew him upward.

  He reached the end of the stone spire and looked up at the protruding ornamental copper finial from which rose the cross. Iron spikes, like steps, had been driven into the bulging finial. He climbed them slowly, then threw his arms around the base of the cross and put his head down on the cold metal and wept. After a while he picked up his head and completed his climb. He draped his numb arms over the cross and stood, twenty-eight stories above the city.