Donald Harstad: A Long December

We got to the rig and had Hester inside and the stretcher secured in five seconds. “Take good care of her, Diane,” I said.

“You bet,” she said, and the back doors closed.

I turned and started toward the barn, watching the activity around the other ambulance. I could see the injured terrorist being set down by two of his buddies. As they got close to the floodlight area from the ambulance, I saw they had used an old door for a stretcher. The injured man was all wrapped up in a winter coat, with a huge, blood-soaked bandage on his left leg. It looked like they’d used anything they had to try to stop the bleeding, and I had the distinct impression of a large towel being the outer layer. It, too, was reddish brown with blood. He had to have a severed artery, I thought.

While one of the TAC officers stood with his eyes locked on the two terrorists who’d brought the wounded man down, the other TAC officer patted him down for weapons before any of the EMTs were allowed to approach. I noticed that one of the EMTs on the terrorist rig was Terri Biederman. I wondered if anybody had told her where her friend Linda was. It had gotten very quiet.

The officer motioned the EMTs over, and as they began to lift the wounded terrorist from the door to the real stretcher, the two officers spread apart a bit, providing better coverage.

One of the bad guys said something, but I have no idea what it was. It didn’t sound like English. He slowly raised his hand and waved at the wounded man. Then he and the other man just turned around and walked briskly back into the shadows.

I saw the wounded terrorist being hoisted into the back of the ambulance, and the two officers moving slowly backwards, keeping their eyes on the shadowed area where the men had faded back into the darkness. I breathed a sigh of relief. Smooth as silk. Now we could get out ourselves.

I walked back to the barn and gave a thumbs up to the dark area where I knew Sally and George were.

“Perfect,” I said as I slipped through the door. I looked back, and saw the taillights of Hester’s ambulance begin to turn onto the roadway.

The second ambulance was turning in the yard, with both TAC officers trotting alongside.

“I wonder if I should leave my pack?” said George, half to himself.

“You can always come back for it,” I said, turning back into the barn.

The force of the blast knocked me to my knees. I only remember seeing the floor come at me, and catching myself with an outstretched arm, Sally letting out a yell, and George running by me and out into the yard.

The pressure wave had felt like getting slapped with a good-sized couch. I got to my feet as fast as I could and turned toward the barnyard.

The second ambulance had blown up. The sides of the modular body had bulged out, the rear doors had blown open, and the rear corner of the top was peeled up. The access doors were blown across the yard. The whole rear body was off the chassis, about five feet away from it, and at an angle. There was an enormously bright flame, like the back of a jet engine, and a shrieking sound as the big onboard O2, bottle vented and burned. The flame was so hot, I could literally see the opposite side of the ambulance begin to distort and melt.

It was raining tiny little pieces of plastic and Styrofoam and paper-wrapped medical supplies.

The driver’s cab had come off, and there was nothing left of the front except the engine and the steering column that had been bent forward by the force of the explosion.

There was no fuel fire. Diesel fuel tends not to go up like gasoline would.

There was not only no sign of life, there wasn’t even a sign of a body.

“Jesus Christ!” yelled Sally.

I could hardly hear her because of the blast effects, but I got the message.

George turned and motioned us back into the barn. He said “Hurry!” and I guess he must have shouted at the top of his lungs, because I heard that all right. It was just that the cobwebs wouldn’t go away, and I was having a hard time turning thoughts into action.

He grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, and pushed me back toward the collapsed barn wall. It was then that I saw fragments flying all around. It took me a second to figure out that these weren’t fragments from the ambulance, but dirt and wooden fragments being thrown up by gunfire.

They were shooting at us.

That finally got me going. We both grabbed Sally and pushed our way into the barn.

The old building had partially collapsed, so we were now in what amounted to a three-story lean-to with a big kink at the level of the first floor.

I pressed against the stone wall and moved toward my right, toward the silo. It was the last place I’d seen terrorists, so it seemed to me to be the logical place to look. I peered out. Nothing moving. Nothing. But I did notice puffs of dust popping up all over the silo. Somebody was returning fire, and I didn’t think that anybody in that area had much of a chance. Good.

I felt something touch my back and I jumped six inches.

It was George. I only heard the phrase “suicide bomber.”

It had never occurred to me. Not once, in all the time I saw the terrorist being loaded into the ambulance. Not once. Even after watching all the suicide bombers on CNN, taking out buses and restaurants. It was something every Israeli would have assumed. But this wasn’t the Middle East. This was Iowa.

In about five minutes, George tapped me on the shoulder again.

“Yeah?”

“Your phone! Answer your phone!”

I pulled it out of my pocket, and sure enough, it was lit up. I opened it and handed it to him. “I can’t hear well enough yet. You take it.”

He did. I saw him nod twice, and then he shut the case and handed it back to me. “They’re coming for us now,” he said. “Don’t shoot at anything. They’re friends!”

“Okay.”

He moved over to Sally, and I assumed he gave her the same message.

About a minute later, three black-clad members of the FBI HRT just sort of appeared in the barn. They had kneepads, which was the first thing I noticed. I would have given a lot for a set of those. They also had night-vision goggles, automatic weapons, and lots of gear I’d only seen in equipment catalogs.

“Hostage Rescue Team, FBI,” said the first one in the barn. “We need to ID you,” said one. “Which of you is Pollard?”

George raised his hand.

“Houseman?”

I raised mine.

“Wells?”

Sally’s hand went up.

“All of you okay?”

We were.

“Glad you’re in good shape here,” said one of them, quite loudly and distinctly. They were trained to deal with hostages who had been close to gunfire and “flash-bang” grenades, and therefore had temporary hearing impairment. “We have lots of people outside, just stand fast for a second, then we ‘re going to move you out. We’re going to take out the yard light, and then we’ll escort you to the roadway.”

He said something into his mike, then there was a sudden darkening in the barn. The yard light was obviously now gone.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Move as quickly as you can.”

Outside, the smell of hot plastic, lube oils, and medical supplies was very strong. We walked right past the ambulance, and in the dim light cast by all the vehicles down on the road, it looked like so much Kleenex scattered around the yard. Little fragments of aluminum and plastic were everywhere. I stepped on a twisted piece of stainless-steel grab rail and just about fell down. Then it was just hustle down the ever-lightening lane to the waiting vehicles.

Lamar, Volont, and a whole bunch of people were waiting for us. My hearing problem got me bundled into an ambulance and on the way to the Maitland Hospital before I really had a chance to say much of anything to anybody. I hate it when they do that. I had to stall them while I unloaded my rifle, and gave it to Lamar. I hate to be rushed.