Our Next Great War

by Martin Archer

  I could hear more steps coming up fast. At least two more, I thought as I bounded down the stairs three at a time and swept up the stubby little submachine gun the guy had been carrying. I dropped the Marine captain’s pistol as I picked up the submachine gun and kept going until I reached the next landing. It looked like an ancient Uzi from Israel.

  The stunned would-be shooter was obviously wearing a vest. He was already gathering himself to get up as I passed by on my way down to the next landing. Accordingly, as I dropped the pistol and picked up his weapon, I made it a point to step on his neck instead of jumping over him. I stepped as hard as possible and I think I might have felt something snap. Probably just wishful thinking.

  It was an old Uzi and I was already aiming it and ready to fire as I bounded on down the stairs. The man in the ski mask coming up next was not quite so ready. When he came around the corner below me, I hit him with a three or four round burst right in the ski mask; and he got off a two round burst into the wall as his finger instinctively tightened when he got hit. The wall behind him was instantly splattered with blood and body parts.

  And I suddenly realized I couldn’t hear anything. Shit. I’m deaf. So I bounded on down past the almost headless shooter and hunkered against the concrete wall a couple of landings down. All I could do now was wait and be ready to shoot.

  “Captain, I need you down here now,” I shouted up the stairs. “Hurry.”…. “Hurry.”… “Annie, you stay there. Do not move.”

  It seemed like forever and time was standing still but it was actually only a couple of seconds later that the Marine captain slid in behind me like a ball player stealing second base.

  “Grab that Uzi” I shout over my shoulder just as I realized he’ already scooped up the second shooter’s weapon. “Good man.” The name on the Marine captain’s uniform was Shapiro.

  “Watch the front, Captain. They’ve got vests. Be ready to fire. I'm deaf. Can you hear anything? Footsteps?”

  I was looking back up the stairs towards Annie when Captain Shapiro suddenly fired an ear shattering sustained burst. There was no answering fire. Dick, I sure heard that. Then there was absolute quiet. I couldn’t hear a goddamn thing.

  “Sergeant,” I shouted up the stairs to the other man on the protection detail. “Watch our rear. Cover our rear.”

  There was an answer but I couldn’t make it out.

  “Bill, any casualties? There was another answer and I couldn’t make it out either. Shit. I’m really deaf now.

  Then I followed Captain Shapiro as he slowly crept down the stairs to the third shooter. He obviously wasn’t wearing a vest—Shapiro's sustained burst had virtually cut him in half. Then I watched as Shapiro moved down past the guy he shot to take a position on the next landing further down. Very smart move.

  After a couple of seconds I shouted, “No casualties here. Everyone stay down.”

  Seconds later a wide-eyed and red-faced Bill Hammond inched down the stairs towards me. He had a questioning look on his face and a blood covered Uzi the third shooter no longer needed. I shook my head. Then the staircase and the entire building literally shook from what was obviously a massive explosion.

  Ceiling tiles rained down on top of us and the emergency lights flickered and went out. Almost instantly the battery powered emergency lights came back on again. They were in the corner of the staircase above each floor’s emergency exit door.

  “Time to hunker down and wait,” I told Bill. “Can you cover the rear and send Ann and Marjorie down a bit so they’re between us?”

  “Right,” Bill snapped as he nodded and began to move cautiously back up the stairs. I heard him faintly. Good.

  “Captain Shapiro, are you okay? Can you hear anything?” I shouted as loud as I could.

  “No Sir. Nothing” I could barely hear him even though he was only about ten feet away on the next staircase landing and shouting. “I think it’s clear in front of us.”

  “Don’t take any chances,” I said in a stage whisper. “Hold your position.”

  It was quiet as I cautiously started to move back up the stairs towards Ann and the Hammonds. Then suddenly the door on the landing started to open two feet away from me. I whipped the Uzi around and a young woman in a hotel bathrobe screamed and leaped back as the gray painted metal door slowly began to close. It was obviously a self-closing door.

  I stepped to one side as I pulled the door open and darted a quick look. The hall was rapidly filling with terrified people and some of them had multiple cuts and were bleeding. They must have been looking out the window when the second bomb went off and got hit by the glass. Oh fuck. What if there’s another blast or the damn building collapses?

  “Get in here…Hurry…It’s safer inside the staircase,” I ordered loudly with a beckoning motion at the walls of the stairwell. Then I repeated the explanation and command in German and French. I know about collapsing buildings from Alaska and its earthquakes. Stairwells are the safest place to be.

  A dozen or more very confused people poured into the narrow stairwell between me and Ann. Many of them appeared to be stunned. Then a woman screamed a short little scream and began sobbing deep choking sobs, almost hiccups; she was looking up the stairs to the next landing and saw the blood running down the metal stairs from what was left of the mostly headless shooter who’d supplied Shapiro with his Uzi.

  Then everyone started talking at once. “Silence,” I roared in my best drill sergeant’s voice. The talking abruptly stopped. For a few seconds there was no noise except for two women who were quietly sobbing. A couple of steps up the staircase two absolutely terrified children with bright eyes and tears streaming down their faces were holding on to a white-faced woman with bleeding cuts on her face. She looked to be in shock and so did the kids.

  Several of the men looked like military types. Probably came in for the reception.

  “Who is military?” I aske loudly in English and then quickly again in German. Several hands waved. I pointed to the one nearest the door, a stout fiftyish man with very short graying hair.

  “Open the door just a little and watch the hallway,” I ordered in German. “Shout and move well away from the door if you see an enemy.”

  “Captain Shapiro,” I shouted. “I’m going to check things out up above.” I’m going to get Ann and Marjorie… “Hold that position,” I ordered. I could smell smoke; electrical wires were burning somewhere.

  ******

  I walked quickly up the stairs through a rapidly widening puddle of blood from the almost headless shooter. Ann and Marjorie were two landings up with Bill crouching on the stairs just above them with his Uzi aimed upward.

  Ann and Majorie were watching me anxiously as I climbed the stairs up to them. Marjorie looked particularly haggard and confused. I could see the Marine sergeant further up. He was crouched on the landing above the one Bill was on with his pistol pointing up the stairs. Our rear was covered. Ann’s okay. Thank God.

  “Okay,” I said loudly so the sergeant could hear me. “I think we’re good to go. Time to start down. Let’s go.”

  I led the way and we began slowly moving down the stairs towards the rapidly increasing number of new arrivals on the staircase. They were jammed together on the landings and stair below below us and talking loudly. I pushed right on through them with Ann and Marjorie following right behind me. The other people began following us and we all began to walk down the stairs together.

  Ann was horrified and began trembling as I led her and Marjorie down past the two attackers I’d killed, and then past the man Shapiro killed. Unlike the two I killed, the third guy didn’t appear to be wearing a vest. The long burst Shapiro fired literally cut him almost in half and messed his face up pretty good too. And rightly so.

  I looked back as Marjorie gagged and threw up against the stairway wall after she stepped over what was left of him. The next time I looked back Ann was holding Marjorie up with her right arm and carrying a child with her left.

  I d
id not take any chances as we walked down. We became a compact little combat unit on the move. Bill and the Marine sergeant, Teniers according to his name tag, brought up the rear walking backwards with their guns pointing up the stairs behind us; Captain Shapiro and I took the lead, leapfrogging each other from one staircase landing to the next, each time waiting for the other to get into position and nod. Ann and Marjory were walking down behind us along with the people I had ordered into the staircase.

  Almost immediately terrified and injured people start entering the staircase both ahead of us and behind us and the shouting and noise in the narrow little stairwell got louder and louder. Or maybe it’s always been that loud and my hearing’s starting to come back.

  "Keep going, goddamnit, keep going."

  About four floors down we were able to relax slightly as we began to run into more and more people and could hear others moving down ahead of us. So I began helping an elderly lady who seemed to be confused and let others go past me as I waited for Ann and Marjory to reach me.

  Many of the people on the staircase seemed to have been injured—lots of bloody faces and upper bodies cuts. It was quickly apparent from the loud conversations and the type of injuries I was seeing that most of the casualties were the result of the second explosion.

  People heard the first explosion and opened the drapes of their rooms to see what was going on when the second and much bigger explosion occurred. Just as I had done moments earlier. The second blast took out most of the windows in the front of the hotel and sent shredded glass into the rooms and the people in them.

  Despite the increasingly crowded staircase we continued to move down the stairs cautiously even though the staircase has become so crowded that Shapiro and I were no longer alternating in the lead. It was a real mess with those who were not seriously injured trying to do their best to help those who were. There were lots of groans and sobs and much loud talking. Most of the children were crying hysterically and so were several of the women.

  After a while, I don’t know how long, there was a lot of shouting and police with their pistols drawn came puffing up the stairs. I heard them coming and put my Uzi down on the step I was standing on. As soon as I saw them on the stairs below me I shouted up to Shapiro, who was on the landing above me, that police were coming up the stairs and he should put his weapon down so they did not mistake him for a terrorist.

  “And go back up and make sure General Hammond and Sergeant Teniers put theire weapons down and before the police reach them,” I shouted. We don’t need any accidents to make things worse than they already are.

  A policeman coming up the stairs, an anxious looking tall skinny gray haired guy in a green uniform with a pistol in his hand, saw the Uzi on the stairs and looked me over carefully for a split second. But I was in pajamas, barefoot, and with Ann on one arm and using the other to hold up an elderly woman wrapped in a blanket with blood streaming out of a bad scalp wound.

  Two floors later I turned the unknown woman over to a big German fireman who promptly swept her up into his arms and began carrying her down the steps ahead of me. We followed him down. The smell of smoke was getting worse.

  Ann and I stopped and stood back against the stairwell wall to let others pass until the Hammonds reached us. Ann and Bill were now each carrying a crying and totally naked young child. Girls. There was an anxious and bloodied woman in a nightgown clinging to Bill’s arm who looked like she might be their mother.

  Marjorie Hammond had a wild look in her eyes and seemed to be clutching Bill’s other arm for dear life. The two women were using the staircase railings to steady themselves as they came down with Bill in the middle carrying the child and the women hanging on to his arms for dear life.

  I started to take the child Ann was carrying but she was clinging so desperately to my wife that I stopped trying and satisfied myself by taking Ann’s arm to help hold them both up and guide them down the stairs. I left the Uzi on the stairs. Hopefully no one would trip over it.

  As we got down towards the bottom of the stairs I could see over the heads of the people in front of me and saw periodic puffs of smoke coming in from an open door leading to the outside. As I got closer to the bottom I could see the people coming down the stairs ahead of me exiting through the door into a narrow smoke-filled and dimly lit alley.

  We slowly and gingerly walked in the crowd through the doorway to what we hoped would be safety. It wasn’t.

  As soon as Ann and I cleared the door we could see by the flickering light of an emergency light somewhere above us that people were having trouble walking. Little wonder. The alley was filled with debris and broken glass and most of us had bare feet.

  “Watch where you walk but keep going,” I shouted unnecessarily to caution everyone as I tried to pick my way forward in the jostling crowd. “The damn alley is filled with glass and debris.”

  I knew that because the first thing I did was step on something sharp. Goddamnit.

  We could somewhat see the ground in the red and flickering glare of a fire somewhere above us. We were engulfed in smoke in a dark and dingy alley running between the hotel and the building next to it. The shouts and noise were almost overwhelming.

  It was absolute chaos as we hobbled down the alley towards the sidewalk and the relatively fresh air in front of the hotel. Firemen and rescue workers were flooding past us in one direction to enter the alley and get into the building from the alley door we came out of; fleeing guests and hotel workers, those with shoes on, were going in the other direction and desperately pushing past us in a frantic effort to escape.

  What we saw when we finally limped out of the alley was enough to make me want to turn around and go back inside. A police emergency truck with mobile lights was illuminating a scene of unspeakable horror. Bodies and body parts, injured people, and rescue workers were everywhere. The distinctive rising and falling whooping sound of German police and fire sirens was overwhelming and growing louder and louder amidst the shouting and the screams and cries of the injured. Bill was carrying Marjorie.

  The second bomb, the really big one, had obviously been in the garbage truck. It caught the hotel guests exiting the hotel and assembling in the street and the park in front of the hotel. The truck had disappeared and so had some of the guests; replaced by a hole in the road.

  Ann suddenly screamed and sat down in the middle of the street still clutching the child as the rest of our little party gathered around her. Her foot. I ran my hand over it and felt a protruding shard of glass.

  “Hold on,” I told her as I pulled it out and nicked my hand in the process. She gasped deeply as I pulled it out, but didn’t say a word. “Sorry,” I grunted.

  We were about ten yards out of the alley and I could hardly walk due to the cuts and punctures on my bare feet.

  Captain Shapiro came up behind me and I started to hand him the girl Ann had been carrying, She was still clinging desperately to Ann and refused to let go.

  “Captain, you and the sergeant are to go on with the children and their mother. Get all three of them to a hospital.

  “But whatever happens, you two stay together and don’t let the kids be separated from you or their mother or from each other. Not by anyone for any reason. Go with them in the same ambulance and stay with them until you are absolutely sure they’ve been treated and won’t be separated. I don’t care how long it takes.

  “When you’re absolutely sure they’re together and safe, I want you two to report to me or Colonel Peterson at my headquarters at Brussels as soon as you are able. Both of you. Together. And call me or my aide, Brigadier Hart, instantly if anyone fucks with you or tries to separate them or delay you.”

  It was the kind of unexpected order, although no one realized it at the time, that changes a man's military career and destiny.

  Shapiro nodded as he reached down and gently pried the crying child out of Ann’s arms. Then he hurried on towards the ambulances and their flashing blue lights. The sergeant followed clos
e behind carrying the other child and holding their mother by the arm.

  ******

  We sat there for at least a minute with Bill and Marjorie standing next to us—Bill leaning over to catch his breath with his hands on his knees and an obviously shocked and disoriented Marjorie clinging desperately to his left arm and looking like she might keel over at any moment. My feet hurt and Ann couldn’t stand up because of her foot. Well we can’t stay here.

  I pulled myself to my feet and picked up Ann and, in one big move, swung her over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

  “Up you go, Love. It’s time to get your foot fixed. Hold on. We’re almost there.”

  Bill grabbed my arm to steady me and help hold me up as we staggered off to the less congested left side of the little park where we could see a rapidly growing number of ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars. Marjorie was clinging to Bill’s other arm. For a few moments I could see Captain Shapiro and the children ahead of us until they disappeared into the growing crowd. My feet felt numb. What happened? Who did this and why?

  That’s what I was thinking when off somewhere off in the distance I heard Bill. “We’re here, Dick. Let them take her.”

  Things were a bit hazy at first but then I realized Ann was holding my hand and we were careening through the streets in an ambulance with a whooping siren. Bill and Marjorie were sitting opposite us with some kind of attendant on his knees in front of Marjory. Bill had his arm around her and she had a blank and almost relaxed look on her face as she laid her head on his shoulder.

  ******

  Chaotic is the only way to describe the hospital emergency room. Ann’s a doc and her terse words of medical jargon to a harried German nurse caused her to turn away to find someone more seriously injured to help. We had been triaged and rightly so.

  Ann and I sat on the floor with our backs against the wall with Marjorie between us while Bill rushed off to find a phone. He needed to report our whereabouts and, more importantly, find out whether this was an isolated incident or something else. My feet began to hurt.