Anthony Sadler - The 15:17 to Paris - The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train and Three American Heroes

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by PublicAffairs, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC,

a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. 2016

This UK edition HarperCollins Publishers 2018

FIRST EDITION

© Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone 2016

Motion Picture Artwork © 2018 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2018

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780008292294

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008287986

Version 2018-01-15

To my family —S.S.

To Zoe —A.A.S.

To my family —A.S.

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not want to sign.

—Théophile Gautier

Cover

Map

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

→ PROLOGUE: ANTHONY SADLER

Ayoub

→ PART I: SPENCER STONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Ayoub

→ PART II: ALEK SKARLATOS

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Ayoub

→ PART III: ANTHONY SADLER

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

About the Publisher

TUE, AUGUST 18, 11:03 AM

Anthony Sadler:

Still alive dad we’re in Amsterdam and staying at the A&O hostel. We will be here till Friday

Pastor Sadler:

Okay Son—how are you doing?

Anthony Sadler:

I’m great leaving wifi, talk to you in a bit

Pastor Sadler:

Okay

THU, AUGUST 20, 11:07 PM

Anthony Sadler:

Hi dad so it’s 8am on Friday here right now. We head out of Amsterdam to Paris today at 3pm and will get around 6pm. I’ll text you hotel info when I receive it

Pastor Sadler:

Okay son

FRI AUG 21, 4:43 PM

Anthony Sadler:

Call me dad

THALYS TRAIN #9364

Somewhere in northern France.

Five hundred fifty-four passengers on board.

Spencer is holding two fingers against a pulsing wound in Mark’s neck. As the train races through the countryside at over 150 miles per hour, he’s trying to plug the carotid artery because if he doesn’t, Mark dies.

Anthony watches from above.

If there are screams, Anthony doesn’t hear them; if the sound of wind rushing by the windows is loud, he doesn’t register it. He is totally focused. The terrorist is bound, hog-tied on the floor. Mark groans. Anthony feels as if the people lying there below him are the only other people in the world.

The carpet is covered in blood. There is so much blood. It is astoundingly quiet.

The bell that signals the train doors opening and closing is the only other noise, an eerie, antiseptic chirp. Anthony might as well be in the hushed corridors of a hospital. None of it feels real. Did we just do that?

The train moves along quickly, smoothly—normally—as if they’ve imagined everything that just happened. The motion is almost soothing. No one seems afraid. No one seems here. There are no extraneous people around Anthony except the ones who took part in the drama that just played out. No one except the ones he’s immediately concerned with. He seems to have blocked the rest from his mind.

He’s blocked a lot of things from his mind. Including some important things, like the notion that the terrorist might not have been acting alone—that there might be two more, or five, hiding somewhere on board, about to attack. There’s no good reason to think there’s only one. Still, as far as Anthony’s concerned, there’s only one. He’s become wholly absorbed with only this man, solving the problem that is immediately in front of him, and at the moment it is impossible for him to think about anything he cannot immediately see. His brain has walled itself off like a vault, only occasionally letting light in through the cracks and seams in the metal.

Alek is back—where did Alek go? He disappeared with the machine gun, but he’s back now, collecting ammunition and putting weapons in a bag.

Did that all really just happen?

Alek tried to kill a man. While Spencer was trying to choke him. Alek held the machine gun right up to the terrorist’s temple so that the bullet would have opened his head up and passed right into Spencer. Anthony had been trying to help subdue the terrorist when one of his friends almost killed the other. But the gun didn’t go off. Anthony doesn’t know why.

NO ONE WILL BELIEVE IT. Anthony’s not sure he believes it. It doesn’t feel real; it feels like he slipped into a video game character, his own thoughts not wholly relevant here, as if he were mostly a spectator of even his own actions. It is so quiet, and so calm, it is not yet possible to comprehend the fact that his life has just changed forever.

He takes out his phone and begins filming. He needs proof. For his friends; for himself.

He is not thinking about evidence. What he’s doing doesn’t feel like thinking at all really, it’s more like reacting.

He’d been reacting a moment ago when they were all tying the terrorist up and he heard a noise behind him. A groan? He turned, registered three distinct things all at once—a man in a soaked shirt, blood geysering across the aisle, and the man’s eyes moving toward the ceiling as if something important had gotten stuck up there.

Then the neck slackened, the chin collapsed into the chest, and the man rotated forward out of the seat.