Day of Wrath (16 page)

The one that had been sweeping Interstate 95 between Valdosta and the Florida border had been boasting to their leader of their magnificent run, not knowing it was about to come to its end. The broadcasts picked up by their phones and pads which had been so helpful in providing warning of attempts at road blocks and who was pursuing them, were now playing against them as well.
 

They saw a traffic jam of cars at an exit a couple of miles ahead, the computer map indicating there was a school just off that exit. More easy targets to dispatch.
 

There were a couple of police cars on the overpass; they would have to be dealt with but the drive could continue. The killing had been extremely good and between them, they still had over twenty magazines left. The two terrorists positioned themselves at the right side windows, one forward to engage the police and throw off their aim, the other to hit the drivers in the cars tangled up in the traffic jam.

Then, at two hundred yards out, it happened. The news reports of the murderers' progress down the interstate was being monitored as well by civilians and police. When the murderers were less than five minutes away, one of the parents, an Iraq vet, leapt out of his vehicle with an AR-15, shouting for anyone who was armed to help him set up a road block. There were three other veterans by his side in seconds, one of them a grandfather of a student at the school, who had fought street by street as a marine sergeant in the battle for Hue in 1968. He shouted his grandson’s name to the vet who had started the organizing, told him to convey his love, and with a cry of “Semper Fi,” got back in his truck. The elderly marine backed his pickup truck around to face toward where the enemy would come and other parents fell in behind the barrier of cars, armed with weapons ranging from a .22 derringer to an illegal automatic M-16.
 

They were ready and waiting.

In the final seconds, the jihadists saw that half a dozen of the cars at the end of the traffic jam were actually turned sideways and blocking the road ahead. One of them, a pickup truck, started to move at a right angle across the highway. From behind the parked cars, over a score of men and women, all armed, stood up, leaned across the hoods and trunks of the cars, and unleashed a hail of fire.
 

The driver was hit in the throat but he was still conscious and able to see that the driver of the pickup truck had swung onto the road, heading straight at them.

Suicide, for a cause that someone believes in, be it to murder innocents or to defend those who are innocent, could be done by both sides.

The killing along Interstate 75 in south Georgia was at an end. The aging marine had given his life to stop them in a head-on collision.

Joshua Chamberlain Middle School, Portland, Maine

The muzzle of the rifle was only inches from Bob’s eyes. A deafening bang exploded in the corridor and the man who had raped the child jerked upward, his face shattered, and then collapsed.

The hallway reverberated from the rifle shot and several more rounds slammed into the jihadist as he went down. Bob could hear screaming behind him. Children. Merciful God, did one of them get behind him? What was happening?

He tried to roll up onto his side to look back.

“Don’t move, don’t move a damn inch!”

He couldn’t tell who it was, what it was…? The last terrorist? Or a rescuer at last?
 

“I’m a teacher here,” Bob gasped.
 

The man behind him drew closer, half crouched, and raised his weapon unthreateningly.

“Okay, okay. Are you hit?”

“My back, I can’t move. You shoot that bastard?” and he nodded toward the body several feet away.

“Yeah.”

“I got the one in the classroom, behind me. I think there’s only one left holding the entry.”

“How many total?”

“Three, I think.”

His savior reached up to a mike strapped to his shoulder.

“This is Sergeant Roberts, State Police, I’m in the main hallway. Most likely three murderers, as reported. Two confirmed dead. At least one still holding the entrance. Get medics in here now, for Christ sake, there are dozens of kids down!”

He hesitated for a second, breathing in short shallow gasps.

“Side entry secured. Get the medics in that way! I’m going for the bastard in the foyer.”

He turned to Bob.

“Stay easy, don’t move,” Roberts whispered. “We’ll get you out of here.”

“The kids,” Bob gasped, “behind me, are they safe?”

“In six classrooms, I don’t think anyone is hurt. They’re secured.”

Bob broke down and began sobbing.

“Thank God, thank you, God…”

“Rest easy. You covered them. Now don’t move,” and there was a reassuring hand on his twice-wounded shoulder. He winced from the pain. The man who had saved his life drew his hand back, looked at it, and saw the blood.

Roberts clicked on his mike again, announcing that he was going up the hall to take on the last killer and to push medics in immediately through the side entrances.

“I've got a wounded teacher in the hall who held them off. Killed one of them and stopped a second one. I want him taken care of now!”

It was all going hazy for Bob. In a momentary lapse of memory, he forgot that he was paralyzed and tried to stand up, to stay with Roberts, to at least provide some sort of help. The state police officer moved forward, crouched low, moving fast. Bob could hear splashing behind him, cries, and shouts…

Someone was by his side, kneeling down.

“Bob Petersen?”

He looked back up. He couldn’t tell who it was.

“Craig Sullivan, you teach my son.”

The man was holding a pistol and looking about wide-eyed.

“Have you seen my boy?”

“I pushed him out a window over there,” and Bob nodded toward the room across the hall, “After my daughter. I think he made it.”

“Oh God, oh thank God,” and Craig began to sob with relief.

After a few short gasps for air, he composed himself enough to say, “Your wife was with me, she’s outside.”

“Kathy? My God, Where? What is she doing here? She should be home with Shelly!”

“I met her trying to get to the school.”

Rifle shots crackled from down the end of the corridor and Craig looked up and, without reply and crouching low, ran into the gloom towards the main entrance. Bob could see shadowy figures and bright flashes. It looked like Roberts was at the corner. There were sustained bursts of fire, Roberts was staggering backwards, but he continued to fire.

Then, a moment of silence. Roberts backed up, wavering like a tree about to fall, and lowered the muzzle of his rifle toward the body on the floor in front of him. He fired continually until his magazine was emptied. Then there was silence, though only stretching into seconds, it seemed an eternity to Bob.
 

“It looks clear!” someone finally shouted.

“Demolition and medics only, get in here now!” another cried. “There are IEDs all over the place!”

He could see several more people dashing through the front entry hall, crouched low, weapons raised. He felt a flash of fear. Were there indeed more lying in wait for the rescue teams to come in?

He heard several more shots, then cursing, then someone yelling that they were firing on their own people.
 

Someone was slowly walking back toward Bob. It was Roberts; his left arm was hanging limp and the M4 dangled across his chest, still attached to its sling.

Roberts half knelt down, grimacing.

“Your name?”

“Bob Petersen.”

“I’m getting a priority medic in here for you now, we’ll have you out in a few minutes.”

“No, the kids first.”

Roberts, struggling to control his emotions, looked about the hallway and then blessedly, the fire alarm stopped shrieking and the sprinkler system shut off.

“Are you certain you saw only three?”

“Yeah. I was in the faculty lounge, saw them rush the front entry. It was three, I’m certain.”

As he spoke, Roberts repeated the words into his shoulder mike.

“And you got one? How?”

“I shot him. They have body armor, I shot him in the face.”

“You shot him?” a bit of doubt in his voice.

“I had a gun on me.”

“How’s that?”

Bob hesitated. So strange this moment. He was about to admit to a crime that could land him in prison for five years.

“I always carried a Ruger with me to school, knew this would happen some day and it did.”

There was a pause on Robert’s part, then he reached out and put a reassuring hand on Bob’s shoulder, this time gently and in an almost fatherly fashion.

“This is the second one?” and he nodded toward the body that lay before them.

“I think I hit him. Had the rifle I took from the first one, that was after he shot me. Think I’m paralyzed. Tried to hold the hallway. You got him. Thanks.”

“You slowed him down enough for me to finish it, otherwise he’d have been in the next classroom full of kids.”
 

“The kids behind me, are they safe?”

“All of them. You did good, Bob.”

“My phone. I think it's still in my shirt pocket. Call my wife, Kathy, tell her I’m okay, and that our daughter got out of the building. She’ll be worried sick.”

Roberts took the phone out and looked down at him.

“Will do, once we get a back board on you. Okay?”

He could not reply, the world was starting to fade out again.

“I've got a priority here!” Roberts cried. “Back broken, bring a board. Get to him now!”

Bob did not hear that. He had done his job as a teacher this day and he could now let go at last.

CHAPTER TEN

New York City

“We are receiving a report that there has finally been a break with the school sieges. The school just outside of Portland, Maine, Joshua Chamberlain Middle School, the site of that horrific crime on the roof, has been secured.
 

“Steve Bruce, a reporter with our affiliate there on the ground, is reporting in via cell phone. The signal is not good. As you probably know by now, cell networks across the country are overloaded so it's possible that we may get cut off.

“Steve can you hear me?”

A flickering image was on the big screen behind the anchor. Steve was holding his earpiece with one hand, nodded, then turned his phone around to show the front lawn of the school. A score or more bodies carpeted the ground and ambulances were pulling up on the lawn. Law enforcement personnel were trying to form a cordon, shouting for people to stay back, that the building was rigged with explosives.

“I think you can see and hear what is going on here,” Steve began. “About fifteen minutes ago a rush of civilians and police was made on the building, spurred by what happened on the roof.”

He raised his phone to scan the roofline, the tail rotor of the crashed helicopter leaning over the side drunkenly, the aircraft burning fiercely.

“That was our station's news chopper. We fear that both the pilot and cameraman are dead.”

He paused then pointed his phone back toward the main entryway.

A SWAT team was, at last, dashing in, weapons raised, a heavy truck pulling up behind them, more personnel getting out.

“We believe that’s the bomb disposal unit from the city of Portland. We monitored a request for bomb disposal teams from the naval base in Portsmouth and they are en route by air. I overheard that it might take hours to clear what are dozens of small but deadly IEDs that the terrorists scattered throughout the building.

“Emergency medical teams are going in anyhow, in spite of the risk, to start evacuating the wounded children and teachers.”

As he spoke he was herded back farther from the entryway, someone shouting there was a live bomb in the lobby, only a few feet away.
 

“We’ve been ordered back. I don’t know if you are seeing this.”

“We can see it, Steve, just keep talking.”

“Oh God, oh God, several people are running out of the building. They look like parents who had been part of the crowd that charged the building. Oh God, they’re carrying bodies of children. I can’t show this, I can’t.”

A woman, zombie-like, was walking past him, sobbing and clutching a bloody limp child to her breast. A police officer rushed up to help her, putting himself between her and the building. A medic tried to take the burden from her arms, but this caused her to fight, to scream, and to hold the body tighter.

The world could hear her screaming but could not see it. It was a reflection of the anguish that hundreds were discovering at this moment, that would soon reverberate into the thousands, and then into the tens of millions more filled with empathy.

It sounded like Steve Bruce was arguing with someone. The camera's image moved and he was past the security line, a cop having let him through but saying it was at his own risk. The image came into sharper focus.