"Get his gun! Quick, get his gun!"
He realized in horror that when Carlisle had kicked him, he had dropped his weapon. He opened his eyes and saw the brand-new Krupp lying some six feet away on the sidewalk. He had only been issued it half an hour earlier. He tried to move, but the pain redoubled. There were footsteps coming toward him. He tried dragging himself. Hands reached for the gun. He stretched for it, too, but his arm was kicked aside. Then, right on top of him, there was a thunderous explosion of gunfire. Rogers was standing, straddling him, firing over the heads of the crowd. They were backing away, and some had turned tail and run. Rogers' first burst had been aimed at the scum who had been trying to get the HV. Four of them lay sprawled on the sidewalk. There was a lot of blood.
Rogers moved quickly forward, picked up the fallen gun, then stepped back to Winters. "Can you walk?"
"I don't know."
"You'd better."
Meredith, the team leader, was yelling to them. "Everyone move back inside the gates! Move back!"
Rogers slung Winters' machine pistol over his shoulder and put a hand under his armpit. "Come on, I'll help you."
Winters found that his legs were working again. With Rogers holding him up, he hobbled back to where the other deacons were slowly retreating to the vehicle entrance. That withdrawal made the crowd a good deal bolder. They were closing in again. Meredith had found himself a bullhorn somewhere. He faced the mob. He cut a heroic figure, the ramrod-straight embodiment of authority facing the milling forces of darkness and disorder.
"There will be no more warnings. If you don't disperse, I will order my men to open fire."
Winters dropped to one knee. He took his Krupp back from Rogers. The ring of angry faces stopped coming on, but the crowd showed no inclination to disperse.
Meredith looked grimly at the other deacons. "They've had their chance. Fire at will."
The muzzle flashes spat into the night. Winters' gun vibrated in his hand. The Krupp HVs made an angry, high-pitched sound. Winters was surprised at how easy it was. They went down like mown corn. Bodies kicked and contorted on the street and sidewalk. The ones who were not hit in the first withering fire took to their heels, scrambling for their lives. They immediately ran into the crowds behind them who were still pressing forward. All of Thirty-third Street was choked by terrified, struggling humanity. On the far sidewalk, the front window of Toots Shor's bar exploded.
"Hold your fire. Back through the gate, right now."
As he moved back with the others, Winters had almost forgotten about his pain. He felt breathless and light-headed. That'll show the bastards. That'll show them who gives the orders. That'll show those inferior scum what kind of God we worship.
Kline
There had been a chorus of protests when they had been told that they could not leave the VIP lounge. Everyone had something to do or someplace to be. They had parties and dinner dates to go to, or lovers waiting for them. The Yorkshire terrier that was clutched under the arm of the overweight wife of the president of Good Shepherd Inc. started yapping. Maybe it, too, had plans, Cynthia reflected wryly. Only the senior deacons had left, after making a curt announcement that, because of possible street disturbances, everyone should remain where they were. Only official vehicles would be going in and out of the Garden until it was considered safe. They had left Longstreet to take the flak, with a couple of junior aides to do spin control on the disgruntled guests. Longstreet immediately had the waiters push out the booze as if it were New Year's Eve, and then he got on the phone to his department at Astor Place.
"What the hell is going on?"
During the lengthy pause that followed, Longstreet's face had grown increasingly disbelieving.
"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Has the world gone completely insane?"
There was a shorter pause.
"Why, in God's name, weren't we told about it? Was it supposed to be a surprise?"
Pause.
"What do mean you just got it from NBC? Do you realize how that makes us look? Who authorized this?"
Pause.
"What is Dreisler's office doing authorizing sky spectacles? I'm getting a little tired of the assumption that he can do exactly as he pleases. In the meantime, I'm bottled up in here with a party of extremely miffed bigshots. If this Four Horsemen thing is happening, they might as well see the damn thing. I want you to get on to somebody at the Garden and have a video picture piped in here. In the meantime, I'll do my best to smooth the feathers."
He hung up and turned to the circle of impatiently waiting guests.
"Well, we may not be going anywhere for a while but at least we'll be able to see what's happening."
His words were not greeted with any degree of enthusiasm. The detainees did not want to see what was happening – -they wanted to get on with their planned evenings.
After about five minutes, the monitor screens came to life. Some, apparently being fed from a camera mounted on the roof of the big post office building on the other side of Eighth Avenue, showed an upward-angled shot of the Four Horsemen. A second view was provided by a camera crew in a helicopter hoveling over the Hudson. A third set of images came from a mobile unit down in the crowd. The video hookup, far from calming the protesters in the VIP lounge, actually started a new round of complaints.
"How big are those things?"
"I heard that they were over a hundred feet high."
"Why can't we go out and see them?"
"You want to be down in among those people?"
"They don't look too bad."
Indeed, at that moment the crowd was orderly and quiet, simply staring up at the huge images.
"Crowds can change very quickly. A mob like that may look okay, but there's always a proportion of criminals and sickoes in among them."
"What about the roof? Why can't we go up to the roof and watch things from there?"
Longstreet was quick to squash that idea. "The images are being projected from the roof. There's too much equipment up there for it to be safe."
"The real question, Deacon Longstreet, is how long do you intend to keep us cooped up in here?"
The vocal leader of the complainers was the president of Good Shepherd Inc., whose fat wife was now feeding canapes to the Yorkshire terrier. Cynthia figured that he had probably been planning to dump the wife and dog and go to see his mistress. That was no doubt why he was so agitated. Longstreet's amiable concern was showing signs of strain. He started enunciating his words very carefully, as if he were explaining to a fractious child that he could not have his own way.
"All I know is that people much more important than me have decided that we'd be better off staying where we are. I think the best thing we could all do is to go along with them."
"You deacons have to remember that you don't run everything."
An irresistible nastiness was starting to twist Longstreet's bland, public smile. "Oh, we do, sir, we do. Except, in this instance, we're doing our best to protect your lives and health."
"But there's nothing going on out there."
"Actually, there is."
Everyone turned. The voice belonged to the rather strange figure in the voluminous cowled overcoat who had come in with Matthew Dreisler. When Dreisler had left, a few minutes after the rest of the deacon brass, he had taken his aide and bodyguards with him, but for some inexplicable reason he had left the tall, thin individual there. This was the first time that he had spoken. The other guests looked from him to the monitor screens.
"He's right."
People were running past the camera. It shook and went out of focus as the camera car was jostled. Then there was the sound of gunfire. The ground-level crew were down with their micro-cams and pushing toward the source of the disturbance. The screen was streaked with afterburn from the lights. Suddenly the cameras were jerked aside as a squad of police pushed through. The president of Good Shepherd Inc. was immediately demanding answers from Longstreet.