Step On A Crack

Chapter 14

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!