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 I need about eight minutes to get the hell out of here and into the rectory basement. So at 5:55, no matter what’s coming down, I say adios.”
“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….”
Bellini let a few seconds pass, then said, “This sniper is going to take awhile…. I’m not positive Hickey or anyone is down there…. You’ve got to get to the other column.”
The squad leader hung up and turned to the dog handlers. “Okay, drag those stupid mutts along, and don’t stop until we get to the other side.” He called to his men. “Let’s go.”
The three teams—ESD Assault Squad, Bomb Squad, and the dog handlers, twenty people in all—began moving. They passed the rear wall of the crypt and turned left, following the line of columns that would lead them to the main column flanking the sacristy stairs and what they hoped would be the last bomb.
They dropped from their hands and knees to a low-crawl position, rifles held out in front of them, the squad leader scanning with the infrared scope.
Peterson looked at her wristwatch as they moved. 5:47. If the mechanism on this side wasn’t tricky, if there were no mines, if there were no other bombs, and if no one fired at them, then she had a very good chance of keeping St. Patrick’s Cathedral from blowing up.
As she moved, though, she thought about triggers—all the ways a bomb could be detonated besides an electric clock. She thought about a concussion grenade that would set off an audio trigger, a flashlight that would set off a photo trigger, movement that would set off an inertial trigger, trip wires, false clocks, double or triple mechanisms, spring-loaded percussion mechanisms, remote mechanisms— so many nasty ways to make a bomb go off that you didn’t want to go off. Yet, nothing so elaborate was needed to safeguard a time bomb until its time had come if it had a watchdog guarding it.
John Hickey knelt beside the main column, wedged between the footing and the sacristy stairwell, contemplating the mass of explosives packed around the footing and bedrock. His impulse was to dig out the clock and advance it to eternity. But to probe into the plastic in the dark might disconnect a detonator or battery connection. He looked at his watch. 5:47. Sixteen minutes to go. He could keep them away that long—long enough for the dawn to give the cameras good light. He grinned.
Hickey pushed himself farther back into the small space and peered up through the darkness toward the spot where the bronze plate sat in the ceiling. No one had tried to come through there yet, and as he listened to the shooting overhead, he suspected that Leary and Megan were still alive and would see to it that no one did. A bullet struck the bronze plate, and a deep resonant sound echoed through the dark. Four more bullets struck the plate in quick succession, and Hickey smiled. “Ah, Leary, you’re showing off now, lad.”
Just then his ears picked up the sound of whimpering. He cupped his ear and listened. Dogs. Then men breathing. He flipped the selector switch on his rifle to full automatic and leaned forward as the sound of crawling came nearer. The dogs had the scent of the massed explosives and probably of him. Hickey pursed his lips and made a sound. “Pssst!”
There was a sudden and complete silence.
Hickey did it again. “Pssst!” He picked up a piece of rubble and threw it.
The squad leader scanned the area to his front, but there was not even the faintest glimmer of light for the infrared scope to pick up and magnify.
Hickey said, “It’s me. Don’t shoot.”
No one answered for several seconds, then the squad leader called out in a voice that was fighting to maintain control. “Put your hands up and move closer.”
Hickey placed his rifle a few inches from the ground and held it horizontally. “Don’t shoot, lads—please don’t shoot. If you shoot … you’ll blow us all to hell.” He laughed, then said, “I, however, can shoot.” He squeezed the trigger and emptied a twenty-round magazine across the ground in front of him. He slapped another magazine into the well as the reports died away, and he heard screaming and moaning. He emptied another full magazine in three long bursts of grazing fire. He heard a dog howling, or, he thought, perhaps a man. He mimicked the howling as he reloaded and fired again.