Authors: William R. Forstchen
It was an attack designed to terrorize a nation and the next step transcended anything even the Nazis had done to cower a population. Girls as young as ten were dragged to the roof of the building, over which news helicopters were hovering and reporting on the attack. Several terrorists held a child down as one of their fellow “freedom fighters” raped the child and then while raping her, cut her throat. The Russian government, which still controlled its mass media, immediately shut the media links down with the concern that, whether it was right or wrong, the sight of this depravity might trigger a frenzied counter-response. The intent of the terrorists was to arouse a religious war between Orthodox and Muslim, and to instill panic across the entire nation.
Children caught up as pawns in that nightmare hell were then herded into a gym for what became a standoff of several days. The hostages were trapped in sweltering heat with no food or water so that many turned to drinking their own urine to slake their thirst. In the final conclusion of the horror, when security forces stormed the building, the terrorists, with a final cry of Allahu akbar, detonated explosives ringing the roof of the gym, collapsing the structure. Over three hundred innocent victims died.
It was a nightmare scenario that had lingered with Bob across the years. He had warned of it, and with the shouts of triumph out in the hallway, he knew it had indeed come to his school outside of Portland, Maine.
He scanned the classroom. Children were sobbing, one girl was screaming hysterically, cradling a shattered arm as a young boy, who seemed so calm, was wrapping a belt around her upper arm to make a tourniquet. A kid with some boy scout training, he thought.
Another explosion of shots, rapid fire, echoed and there was more screaming out in the hallway. He looked about, still clutching Wendy to his side. The Ruger was in his right hand, still unused. Six shots of a lightweight pistol against what they were carrying? It might have worked against some damn crazed bastard like the one who had shot up the school in Connecticut, but now?
There was more gunfire; the main lights in the hallway flickered off, a fire alarm began to shriek, and seconds later sprinklers in the hallway came on. Emergency lights switched on and flashed, adding to the terror and confusion.
Clear, clear your thoughts, he kept repeating to himself.
A glimpse out the window of the classroom door revealed a child lying in the hallway, twitching spasmodically. Another child started to get up and then the back of her head just exploded.
“God in heaven, where are You?” he cried.
More shots went off in the corridor; it sounded like one of the killers was coming closer. He stepped away from the door, checking the room.
The windows. The classroom faced west to the open playing yard and ball field. There were children out there in gym clothes, a teacher, one of the coaches, herding them together.
God, don’t bring them back in, run the other way!
He went to a window. The upper part was standard safety glass and a small hand crank controlled a lower window that could not open more than a foot wide.
More gunfire reverberated in the hallway, then screams. The gunfire sounded as if it were receding, then was followed by a long rapid burst. My God, they’re beginning to move room to room!
The decision was near instant.
“Out the windows!” he shouted.
Patty, standing in the corner, surrounded by nearly a score of trembling children stared at him wide-eyed.
“We’re supposed to lie down, Bob.”
“Out, get out!” he screamed, trying to pick Wendy up with one arm and force her into the narrow escape of the crank-opened window. She was kicking in panic, refusing.
He pulled her back, set her down, pocketed the pistol, then picked up a student desk and slammed it against the plate glass window. It recoiled back in his hand but the window cracked. The children flinched.
“Damn it, break!”
He hit it again, slamming the desk in, and the window finally shattered, safety glass breaking apart, a few fragments still clinging to the frame.
Wendy ran to him and clung to his neck.
“Wendy, get out and run! Run and don’t stop. Don’t look back, just run for the woods over there on the far side of the field!”
“Daddy?”
“Go!”
He struggled to break her grasp around his neck and then to his horror saw that the coach out in the field, with safety only a hundred yards away, had actually rounded his students up into a group and was standing in the play yard, hesitating, looking toward the building as if some part of it would still give safety. A long burst of fire erupted, and the children outside began to drop. The group broke apart, running in panic. As they scattered, several ran to the parking lot but were cut down, collapsing into small bloody heaps. One tried to get up and was hit yet again, the shot demonstrating the utter lack of mercy. Wendy saw it all, twisting, writhing to get out of his grip, screaming that she did not want to go outside.
The months of training were now making it all so easy for the holy warriors of the caliph. Two were to first hit the main entrance, kill the staff in the central office area and any ridiculous security man who might have a pistol locked away in his office. One of the two would then hold the entrance while the second covered the back entry, shooting down any who tried to flee that way, and keeping their prey pent up in the building. The emergency exits out of the gym and dining hall were then easily blocked by hanging several fake IEDs on the doors and announcing that as long as they stayed put, no one would be hurt. That if any tried to open the doors, they would all be blown apart.
The third would then methodically begin to work his way down the two main classroom corridors, the wings of the building that contained five hundred and thirty-eight students and thirty-seven staff and teachers. Once the classrooms were wiped out, attention would then be focused on those cowering in the gym and dining hall for the second stage of their plan.
All of the information they needed in laying out the plan for this school had been garnered from the school district’s website, from photographs of the interior posted by students, by a new math teacher proudly showing off her classroom, and by photographs and video clips of school plays, festivals, and sporting events. How these Americans loved to film and post their children’s sporting events and provide so many details for a trained eye planning to kill them all! There were even blueprints and photographs of the newly-built classrooms from sixteen years ago, showing the design and layout of their new school.
After seizing the main office complex they knocked out the electricity and activated the fire alarms, setting off sprinklers to add to the confusion.
With that done, the work now commenced of moving from classroom to classroom.
A local police car pulled up to the curb in less than four minutes, summoned by the frightened call of the principal's secretary, who did as she was drilled to do: get that call out immediately. And then she died.
The officer clambered out of his vehicle and saw old Charlie sprawled out on the walkway. There had been intense debate in the years since Columbine, renewed after Newtown, as to how the first officer on the scene of a school shooting should react. Wait for backup or charge straight in? The argument had shifted to rushing the building, since most of the killers, at the sight of a police officer, often shot themselves and ended the madness. The local police chief told his personnel that they’d have to make their best judgment call when they arrived on the scene. As for himself, if he knew children were about to die at the hands of some damn lunatic, he would go in and to hell with waiting for backup. Every second meant a life saved or lost.
So the first officer there, hearing the gunshots and screaming, knew he had to go in. The call from the secretary had not been clear, just a scream that there was a “shooter in the building,” then the sound of gunfire was followed by the signal cutting off and the near-hysterical 911 dispatcher shouting the news onto the police circuit. So he moved forward, the jihadist waiting for him chuckling at how amateurish the man was. The jihadist switched his weapon from full auto to single shot and put a well-aimed round into the man’s head, dropping him next to the foolish old security guard.
The sight of the two dead bodies would give the next approaching officer reason to pause. In order for the plan to work well, to achieve all that they wished to achieve, they needed the next hour free of interference.
The leader of the three holy warriors clicked on the phone he was carrying, no more need for security regarding that, selected the website to the local news station, and smiled as he saw that their regular programming had been interrupted. They were already reporting “an incident that appears to be unfolding at Joshua Chamberlain Middle School.” It truly was going according to plan.
Bob clutched Wendy, watching as the children outside scattered across the playground area, while out in the hallway he could clearly hear the gunfire erupting in a classroom across the corridor and one doorway down from the faculty lounge area.
He heard loud screams, prayers, begging, relentless shooting, and repeated cries of “Allahu akbar!”
If they were following a pattern, this room would be next. He hugged Wendy fiercely and kissed her on the cheek.
“Wendy, you've got to run. You've got to run as fast as you’ve ever run. Go to the woods across the field. Now run!”
He tried to force her slender body through the shattered window. She began to kick and struggle, slicing her knee open on the edge of the shattered glass in the window frame.
“Daddy, no! I want to stay with you.”
He forcefully pulled her loose from her deathlike grip around his neck.
“I love you. Tell Mommy and Shelly I love them. Now RUN!”
He threw her out the window so that she landed sprawling, scrambling to her hands and knees, sobbing, a look on her face as if he had brutally rejected her. She actually started to try to climb back in.
“Damn you Wendy! Listen to me! I am ordering you to run. Do it!”
He tried to force an angry gaze as if furious with her, to frighten her even more than the horror of what was around her. She looked at him, shocked, and stepped back, then winced as the sound of gunfire echoed around her.
“Run!”
She turned away and finally began to stagger across the play yard.
“I love you, sweetie,” he whispered, then turned back to face the others in the room.
“Patty, listen to me, we've got to get all these kids out.”
“Bob, we shouldn’t. We can’t.” Her face was stunned at what she had just witnessed.
“Damn it Patty, do it!”
“Bob, we’re not supposed to.”
She was in shock, beyond the ability to reason and crucial seconds were ticking by as brutal death approached.
He glanced around the room, saw the boy who had struggled to put a tourniquet on his bleeding classmate.
“Your name, son?”
“Johnnie O’Sullivan.”
“You a boy scout?”
More gunfire out in the hallway, then the sound in the distance of a siren, at last.
“Yes sir.”
“Son, I want you to run, tell the police there are three gunmen. They are Muslim terrorists most likely armed with automatic weapons who plan to kill everyone inside. You got that?”
Before the boy could make a reply, Bob picked him up and unceremoniously dumped him out the window.
Then the gunfire hit the door of the classroom, the rounds easily piercing it. More screaming, a child in the middle of the room was cut down.
He stepped up against the wall alongside the doorway, drawing his weapon back out, trying to remember if he had chambered a round in the semi-auto he was holding. He pulled the slider back and an unfired bullet popped out. Damn it! He had chambered a round but in the confusion forgotten he had done so. A damn amateur move. The bullet, one of only six rounds in his possession, rolled across the floor. Damn it, pick it up later; you've only got five left. He waited for the door to swing open…
Near Portland, Maine
“My God, oh my God!”
Kathy Petersen stood transfixed, watching the local news feed.
“We repeat, there are reports of a shooting incident unfolding at Chamberlain Middle School. Our eyecam helicopter is racing to the scene and should be there any moment.”
The video feed from the helicopter was on, focused forward as the pilot swung northeastward, flying parallel to I-95. The highway was filled with police cars responding to the terrified calls coming in from the school.
“We also now have a confirmed report of a fatal shooting at a hotel by the Falmouth exit that may be related.
“This appears to be a frightful tragedy unfolding just outside of Portland, Maine.”
The reporter paused, touching her earpiece, nodding.
“As soon as we have a helicopter over Chamberlain Middle School we will come back on but we now have this urgent news release from our main studio in New York.”
The image shifted, but Kathy was no longer watching it. She was running into Shelly’s room to rouse her from her nap.