The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train and Three American Heroes. Anthony Sadler

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10.

      SPENCER MANAGED TO convince himself that things would work out. On the bus ride east to Fort Sam in San Antonio, he told himself that he still had some direction. He had some purpose. But his stomach dropped when he arrived. This base was different. The environment back with all the special forces had been like what he’d always imagined the military would be like. People knew they were elite and didn’t have to prove it.

      Here people were all marching in unison, singing air force tunes. People cared too much. Worse, people had to conform. Now he had a curfew. It felt like daycare for adults.

      Still, he did his best to find some pleasure in it, because what else was there? Be miserable for the rest of his life? So he rolled up his sleeves and dug in. He got on okay. It wasn’t thrilling, but he was using his hands. At first, things made sense. If a person stopped breathing, you pumped their chest to make the blood flow. If a person started bleeding, you found a way to stop it.

      After EMT training, he moved on to the second phase, five weeks of nurse training. This was more civilized; no more trying to figure out how to handle a wounded soldier in the field. Now you had a hospital around you; you had all the resources and civility of an actual building. He just needed to learn how to use them. He had to learn bedside manner. He had to learn things he’d never have to do in the field: how to use all the things that hummed and buzzed to keep a hurt person alive.

      And even though nursing was mostly learning how to work in a hospital, it turned out you had to spend a lot of time in a classroom, too. Whole days studying in a schoolhouse, which activated his reflex against authority, but he tried to keep it in check. He still had no love for books, still wanted to be out in the action, and spending all day in a room with a teacher wasn’t his idea of glory but still, he’d found his way into a field he felt fine about. He wouldn’t be jumping out of planes like the men on the high-gloss posters, but he’d be useful.

      One afternoon as Spencer sat in class, letting his mind wander to the battlefield, a fifty-two-year-old retired army sergeant major approached his wife at the army medical center, just down the street from the classroom. The sergeant major wanted a word about her decision to leave him. The two spoke, the conversation turned into an argument, the argument escalated; she led him outside to a veranda, where he pulled out a .45 caliber handgun and began firing. She fell to the ground and tried to crawl away, but he kept shooting, firing eight rounds before he was done, including one bullet that missed vital organs only because it hit a key fob in her pocket.¹

      Spencer heard the sirens first. Police cars, base security, and state troopers raced by his classroom window.

       What the—

      An active shooter alert went out over the base PA system and popped up on computer terminals but didn’t specify that the shooter was involved in a lovers’ quarrel rather than, say, a terrorist attack on a military target, so the thirty thousand civilian and military personal on the base were ordered to follow the “shelter in place” protocol.

      Spencer received the order from a nursing teacher who looked up midsentence with panic in her eyes.

      “Okay, listen, we have an active shooter on base.”

      A moment of nervous laughter.

      “Guys, listen, you two, get that desk to the door and make sure it can’t open. Now! Everybody else, under your desks, this is not an exercise.”

      It was something in the way she said it, in the cars rushing past—Spencer thought the shooter might be right outside, right there in the schoolhouse. A man walking through the halls maybe just a few dozen yards from where he stood, about to kick in a door and start mowing people down. So why were they being made to hide under their desks? They were military! Who better to disarm a shooter?

      There were protocols for this, since a concentration of military personnel was an attractive target to a man motivated in a particular kind of way, especially if the concentration of military personnel wasn’t actually armed and was, instead, sitting in classes, rather like civilians. All the symbolism of attacking the American military, with none of the challenges. So the protocol was rehearsed, and it was very clear. You escape; you do not engage. If you cannot escape, you “shelter in place.” You hide. Because if you engage, you create the opportunity for more violence. When first responders come, they might mistake you for the attacker. The idea is that the only people moving are the bad guy and the security forces. So if you can’t escape, you find a hiding spot from which you can observe the way in; you “mitigate the room vulnerabilities.” You barricade the doors, the windows if you can. You take out radios, turn the volume down, and monitor them closely. You shut off lights so that it looks like the room is unoccupied.

      You act, in Spencer’s mind, precisely like a coward. He didn’t buy it. The notices posted everywhere had clear instructions: how in the case of “immediate danger” you try and “escape/evacuate,” and if you can’t, you “assess situation/location—what can protect you (stop bullets)—look for way in/way out routes—leaders TAKE CHARGE.”

      This, as far as Spencer was concerned, was what he should do. Take Charge. His own instinct was up against these orders holding him back like a caged animal.

      The students barricaded the doors, and the staff sergeant kept yelling for them to get under the desks. He moved slowly, grumbling to himself as he got down on his hands and knees, shimmying under his desk, submitting yet again to the senseless edicts of some undeserved authority. Here was a moment of excitement, and he was being instructed to cower. Under the fucking desk. We’re fish in a barrel.