James Patterson: Step On A Crack

IN THE NAVE of the cathedral, “Jack” bit the antenna of his just-closed cell phone nervously as he gazed out at the dozens of Secret Service agents and private security and cops stationed around the church.

Would this scheme actually work? he thought for the thousandth, no, make that the hundred thousandth time. Well, no time like the present to find out. He holstered the phone and headed for the 51st Street exit.

Seconds later, he hustled down the marble stairs and unhooked the latch that was holding open the two-foot-thick wooden door. A female uniformed NYPD cop smoking a cigarette in the threshold glanced at him. She looked irritated.

“In or out?” Jack said with a smile. Though he was on the short side, he was capable of turning on the charm when he wanted. “Service is starting. We got to close ’em up.”

In the predawn security meeting, law enforcement personnel had been told to give the church security force deference in all matters concerning the ceremony.

“Out, I guess,” the cop said.

Good choice, flatfoot, Jack thought, pulling the heavy doors shut and snapping the key off in the lock. Choose life.

He hurried up the stairs and around the ambulatory along the back of the altar.

It was packed-standing room only-with white-frocked priests.

The organ started and the casket appeared from under the choir loft just as he arrived at the south transept.

Jack jogged down the stairs to the 50th Street side entrance and closed and locked the thick door there, too. He refrained from breaking the key in the lock because they’d need this exit in about a minute.

Next order of business . Jack took a deep breath.

Half of Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington was now boxed inside the cathedral.

Quickly, he went back along the ambulatory. Beyond one of the massive columns, there was a leather bank rope. It blocked off a small, narrow marble stairwell at the rear of the altar. He stepped over the rope and descended.

At the bottom of the marble stairs was an ornate green copper door. The sign above it read: crypt of the archbishops of new york.

Jack stepped in quickly and yanked the door closed. He moved inside the crypt, then tightly shut the door behind him. In the dimness, he could make out the stone sarcophaguses of the interred archbishops arrayed in a semicircle around the rough-hewn stone walls of the chamber.

“It’s me, idiots,” he said in a low voice after another second. “Hit the light.”

There was a click , and the wall sconces came on.

Behind the stone caskets were a dozen men. Most were wearing T-shirts and sweatpants. They were big, muscular, and not very friendly-looking.

There were rips of Velcro as the men strapped on bulletproof Kevlar vests. Smith amp; Wesson nine-millimeter handguns in underarm holsters went on next. The black, fingerless gloves they put on were known as “sappers” and had cushioned lead shot over the knuckles.

Then the mysterious cadre pulled brown-hooded Franciscan monk robes over the Kevlar vests. Into the pockets of these were placed what looked like remote controls but were actually the latest in electric shock weaponry.

They slipped big-bored riot guns up the billowing sleeves of their robes. Half of the guns were loaded with rubber bullets; the other half with canisters of extremely caustic CS tear gas.

Last, the men pulled black ski masks over their faces. It was as if they were made of shadow when they flipped up the hoods.

Jack smiled approvingly as he threw on his own vest, robe, and black ski mask, then pulled up his hood.

“Lock, load, and strap your nuts on, ladies,” Jack said, smiling as he slowly pulled back the heavy door of the crypt. “It’s time to put the fun back into funeral.”

MOVIE STAR and comedian John Rooney felt the breath rush out of him as the honor guard finally arrived at the front of the church with the flag-draped coffin.

Throughout the procession up the center aisle, they had stopped for a long, motionless moment after each step, the organ thundering from above. It was as if the casket weighed so much they needed to pause in order to carry it, Rooney thought sadly.

As the pallbearers laid down the coffin, Rooney remembered his own father’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Say what you want about the military, he thought, choking up. Flat out, no one knew better how to honor the dead.

He turned to his right when he saw the line of cowled, brown-robed monks appear. They walked with the same solemnity of the honor guard as they approached the altar. He could see another line of them walking down the aisle to his left.

In the dimness of the church, you couldn’t see faces beneath the hoods. He knew there was going to be a lot of ritual and ceremony today, but this was a new one on him. If the military knew how to honor the dead, leave it to the Catholics to put the fear of God into the living.

The organ was reaching a crescendo when the monks spaced themselves out and stopped suddenly in the side aisles.

Rooney jumped when he heard a series of muffled blasts under the rumble of the organ. Then smoke, white and enveloping, came billowing from all sides.

What had been the austere VIP section looked like a mosh pit as the people in there panicked, clawing at one another to get out of the pews.

Rooney thought he saw one of the monks setting off a shotgun into the crowd.

No, he thought, blinking hard in disbelief. He must have banged his head. That couldn’t be right.

He opened his eyes as a uniformed cop stumbled up the center aisle with blood pouring out of his nose and ears.

Beside Rooney, his bodyguard, Big Dan, had a handkerchief to his mouth as he cleared the.380 from his belt holster. It looked like Dan was trying to decide which direction to point it when one of the monks appeared like an apparition from the smoke and jabbed the bodyguard in the neck with a square of black plastic. There was an ominous clacking sound, and Big Dan dropped his weapon and was down on the seat, shaking like some huge spirit-struck worshipper.

Then the organ died!

Fear slapped through John Rooney. With the music gone, he could hear the screaming, the panicked shrieks of thousands soaring off the high stone vaults.

Someone had just taken over St. Patrick’s!

I HAD NO IDEA what was going on yet, which was my usual state lately, since Maeve had gotten sick. I was still groggy when I took a quick head count and pulled our van away from the hunter-green awning of my building. It was eight forty-one, and I had exactly four minutes to get us to Holy Name on Amsterdam. Or there was going to be at least one kid from every grade in detention.

From the top of my building, you could probably “roof” my kids’ school on 97th with a Spalding, but anyone who’s familiar with morning rush hour in Manhattan will tell you that if you planned on going two blocks in four minutes, you were taking your chances.

I knew I could have let them walk. Julia and Brian and the older kids had proved themselves more than capable of looking out for the pip-squeaks. But I wanted to spend as much time as possible with them right now, wanted them to know they weren’t on their own.

That and the fact that recently I had a terrible need to have them with me at all times.

In fact, the only thing that had stopped me from writing out ten bogus sick notes to share my day off with them was Holy Name’s principal, Sister Sheilah. My butt already had enough memories of the principal’s bench to last it a lifetime.

I got them to the school’s corner on Amsterdam Avenue with seconds to spare. I hopped out and threw open the door of our family vehicle, a twelve-passenger Ford Super Duty van I had bought at a police auction. Minivans were for 2.2-kid-toting suburban soccer moms. My NYC Bennett Nation required heavy troop transport.