A Long December

by Donald Harstad

  Not ten seconds later came the burst of fire that blew the nail fragment into Hester’s face.

  CHAPTER 23

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 17:39

  MY CELL PHONE RANG. IT WAS LAMAR.

  “Okay, Carl. The ambulances are startin’ up towards the barn. Don’t come out yet, but get ready to go after they leave.”

  “Okay.”

  “The two officers with ‘em are TAC team members. Just so’s you know.”

  “I feel better already,” I said, lying.

  “Yeah,” said Lamar, “me, too.”

  I turned to Hester. “Better get ready, the ambulances are on the way.”

  She got to her feet slowly. “It hurts really bad when I stand,” she said. “Give me a minute.”

  “Take your time,” I said. I could see a flickering shadow on the far wall of the barn as the ambulance headlights shone through all the cracks. “They’re just coming up the lane now.”

  I motioned Sally over. “You stay with her, too. We don’t go out with her if she can do it herself.”

  “I’m just fine now,” said Hester. “You guys be careful. Don’t take chances.”

  “We’ll be just fine. We get to split just as soon as the HRT gives us the word. They’re here, probably gettin’ set up. Don’t worry about us.”

  She nodded. The three of us stood back a bit and watched the shadows move as the ambulances came closer. When I thought they might be nearly in place, I walked over to the east wall and peered out through the crack in the door.

  “They’re getting into the area under the yard light now,” I said. “Let’s get ready to move.”

  My cell phone rang. It was Marty, the TAC team leader.

  “Okay, as soon as the ambulance closest to you stops, you can start Hester to the rig. The officer will go toward the other ambulance. The EMTs will come to meet her as soon as they have her in sight.”

  “Good,” I said, and broke the connection. Marty was going to be busy.

  I watched the ambulance roll to a stop, and the passenger door for the cab open. The floodlights came on, and the back doors began to swing open. The driver angled the rig toward the road, so that the back was facing us, and came to a stop.

  An officer got out the passenger side and began to walk toward the second ambulance. The driver stuck his arm out of his window and motioned for Hester to come out. We opened the door, and I accompanied her for about ten steps, as the EMTs in the back got out and broke out the stretcher. We met about halfway between the barn and the back of the rig.

  They had Hester on the stretcher and were strapping her in before I could really say goodbye to her.

  “We’ll get you where it’s warm,” said Diane, one of the EMTs from the Maitland ambulance. “Let’s see that…” she inspected the wound. “I’ll bet that hurts, yeah? It looks pretty good, though. The docs will…”

  I stopped listening, and out of habit, grabbed one side of the stretcher and helped them over the rough ground. I knew I was breaking a rule, but I didn’t think it could be too damned important. I’d just go back into the barn when we were done.

  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.

  On the way, I handed my cell phone to one of the EMTs and asked her to dial my home number and tell Sue I was all right. Then I began to feel very, very tired.

  I must have dozed off, because I remember being shaken awake as the ambulance pulled up to the ER.

  I was answering the questions of the admitting ER nurse when Henry walked in.

  “Did they really blow up an ambulance?” he asked.

  “Yeah, they sure did. Suicide bomber, for God’s sake. Got three EMTs and the driver, and I believe two officers alongside.”

  The ER nurse stopped what she was doing. “What?” She hadn’t had a chance to talk to the ambulance crew that had brought me in, at least not about the details.

  I told her what had happened.

  “Which ambulance?”

  “I think it was the Battenberg unit,” I said.

  “Do you know who was on it?”

  “Terri Biederman,” I said. “She’s the only one I know for sure. It was dark.”

  “Isn’t she the paramedic who came back from Milwaukee? “she asked.

  “That’s the one.”

  “I met her…” She shook it off, and started with the admissions questions again.

  I could hear most sounds now; it was just that they were buzzy sometimes, and I felt like I had a head cold.

  “How close were you to the explosion?” asked Henry.

  “How close? “I saw him nod. “Oh, about twenty-five, thirty feet.”

  “Which side was to it? “he said, loudly.

  “My back, I think.”

  “Lucky,” said Henry. “Probably no ruptured eardrums.”

  “Good.”

  “Okay, my man,” he said cheerfully, his professional manner taking over.

  “How many fingers do you see? “He held up two fingers about a foot from my face.

  “Six,” I said.

  “Very funny.”

  “Okay, seven.”

  “Humor gets you a night in the hospital,” he said, “and lots and lots of tests.”

  “Two.”

  “Much better…now let me have a look in your ears…”

  After making certain that I wasn’t dizzy, didn’t have any hypersensitive reaction to light, and wasn’t experiencing any nausea, Henry assured me that I could be released. He also said that my hearing would return to normal. Or, at least, almost normal.

  “Henry, you know if Hester Gorse came up here, or did she go to the clinic in Battenberg?”

  “She’s here,” he said. “We fixed her up pretty well, and she’ll be going down to Dubuque tomorrow for a little oral surgery after the swelling has gone down.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Sure, come on with me.”

  We went through two sets of those bang-and-they-open doors designed for gurneys, and down a long, brightly lit corridor.

  “She seemed to be in a lot of pain,” I said.

  “X rays showed two teeth sheared off, and one other cracked. Must have been very painful. She’s lucky it missed the nerves in there. She could have had a permanent paralysis of the facial muscles on that side.”

  That had never occurred to me.

  “I was worried that it broke her jaw,” I said. Just making hospital conversation.

  “If her teeth hadn’t gotten in the way,” said Henry, as cheerful as ever, “she could have had very severe bleeding in the oral cavity. She’s pretty lucky.”

  It’s all in your point of view, I guess.

  To see Hester in the light-blue hospital gown was a surprise. She looked a lot smaller and more, well, delicate that I’d ever imagined her. She was very pale, and had an enormous dressing on her cheek.

  They had an IV drip going, and her eyes were closed.

  “Hester,” said Henry, and her eyes snapped open, “you have a visitor.”

  She smiled with the half of her face that wasn’t covered in gauze. “How’d it go, Houseman?”

  “You knew about the ambulance?”

  “Yeah, I heard it go up.” Her speech had improved greatly.

  “No survivors. Suicide bomber. Can you believe that? A Goddamned suicide bomber.”

  She shook her head. “I’m glad you made sure I got a separate ambulance,” she said softly. “Thanks.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”

  “Did we get everybody?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” I said. “HRT was doing its thing when I got out, so I don’t expect too many of the bad guys made it. I think they were being dumb enough to try to shoot it out with our troops, so they probably got flattened. I don’t know, though. I’ll find out what’s happening down there. I’ll let you know. You better get some sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  I think she was asleep before I left the room. I glanced at my watch. It was only 21:51 hours, 9:51 P.M.

  CHAPTER 24

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 22:08

  MY CAR WAS DOWN AT THE HEINMAN BOYS’ FARM, just the first o
f several complications that were to crop up in the next hour or so. I called the office on my cell phone and asked for a ride.

  The Maitland officer was at a domestic call, and their other car was down at the old Dodd place, where all the action was. I asked Dispatch to make sure that somebody drove my car back, and decided to walk up to the office. It was about fifteen degrees by now, and the fresh air would wake me up. I also wanted time to think. Things had started happening too damned fast after the ambulances got into the yard, and I need some time to try to figure stuff out.

  My biggest question had to do with what the hell all those terrorists had been doing there in the first place. It looked like they’d sure been there when we arrived, and just didn’t see us until we were standing around in the farmyard. What the hell could they have been up to that they didn’t even have a lookout posted?

  My house was only a half-block out of my way to the sheriff’s department. I figured the county could afford the extra overtime if I stopped and saw Sue.

  She was really glad to see me. We talked for about five minutes, mostly about how I was safe now, and how frightened she’d been when she’d seen the explosion on TV. One of the reporters had kept saying that the barn had blown up.

  I told her that I had to go to the office for a while, but that I’d be very safe.

  “You said that last time.”

  “Well, now I’m a witness,” I told her. “We always take better care of witnesses.”

  It was about three-quarters of a mile to the office, almost all residential, with the last third being up a rather steep hill with cracked and tumbled sidewalk. I took my time in the dark, not wanting to break my ankle at this late date.

  I passed a house with a dog in the yard. I was just about under a streetlight, and the porch light was on, but he didn’t notice me because he had his head in the bare branches of some bushes, hot on the scent of a rabbit. It was kind of cute, because from my angle he was mostly wagging tail. I even stopped for a second, but thought better of whistling. I didn’t want him to start barking.

  I knew what was distracting the dog. Not because I could smell the rabbit, too, but because I knew about dogs. What did I know about terrorists? Not much. But I knew a lot about criminals, and people of that mind-set. Most of the people we were dealing with down at the old Dodd place, I reminded myself, were not terrorists in the strictest sense. They seemed to be criminal types recruited to fill gaps. Second-stringers, but controlled by a terrorist “boss.”