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.”
