I like writing short stories. When I was teaching JROTC at the local high school we were always working to insure that our students were safe. One of the most dangerous events sound be an an armed intruder intent on harming students or faculty or trying to take something of value from the school. My NCO and I always war-gamed various scenarios and tried to develop plans in advance to potential protect our students in case of a variety of events. This short story is based upon one the scenarios that we discussed and fortunately never had to actually respond to, but if was food for thought – how to repel invaders!
REPELLING THE INVADERS!!
It was a beautiful late winter day in Tilden Indiana. The sun was up, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. School started the way it normally did with the buses arriving and all the students assembling in the gymnasium until Gloria Bennett opened up the cafeteria for breakfast. After breakfast the students went to their classes and school began as normal. It was a typical Friday. Everyone was looking forward to a weekend.
Jenny Backster, the school Secretary and Principle Lenny Fischer had just finished reviewing the morning’s attendance when a van pulled up in front of the school. A man got out with a teenage boy in tow and pressed the buzzer for admission into the school. Ms. Backster answered the buzzer and asked, over the intercom, his business. He indicated that he was delivering his son to school; he had tried to skip out of classes today.
Jenny opened the door and as she did the man held the door open and five other men armed with weapons jumped out of the van and raced through the open door of the school.
Jenny yelled a warning to Lenny and hit the panic button.
The panic button immediately dropped the large garage doors that separated the student areas from the rest of the school. It also immediately alerted the police that there was an emergency at the high school.
Jenny fled to the ‘safe room’ and locked the heavy wooden doors as Lenny did the same to his office area and immediately notified the police of the incident. The armed men began roaming through the school. The only place they could go was down towards the cafeteria in the gymnasium.
The cooks had locked themselves into their ‘safe room’, the large dry storage locker. The only one that they could find in the cafeteria area was the janitor, Claude White.
The gunman grabbed Claude and demanded to know where all of the guns were stored. They had read in the paper that there was a ‘Rifle Team’ and they knew that there had to be weapons in the building. Claude indicated that the only weapons that could be found in the school were in the JROTC area but that they were not militarized weapons. One of the gunmen was angered by his comments and hit him in the head with a butt of the rifle knocking him unconscious.
The minute that the alarm had gone off Colonel Tyler and Master Sergeant Chapman had locked themselves and their cadets in the Supply Room behind two heavy oak doors and locked it with a heavy lock. The cage was sealed with a 22 gauge steel mesh door They heard the gunman opened the door to their area and cursed because they found no one.
It was then that they observed, in the darkened room, the sign over the top of the door that said, “Supply Room”. With the butts of the rifles, they started beating on the heavy wooden doors trying to gain admission hoping that they could find the weapons that they were looking for.
Meanwhile the police arrived and Lenny explained to them the situation. From Claude White’s questioning he indicates that they were probably trying to breach the JROTC class room and get to the weapons that were stored there. Claude indicated that he thought from their tattoos that the y were members of a militia group that was involved in an attempted bombing of the near by FBI facility.
“I told them that they were all demilitarized and of no value; but they were certain that he JOTC area contained military weapons and that’s what they were after!”
As the police converged on the area they found that three of gunman had positioned themselves in some hidden areas in the hallways that allowed them to control the access to the area. Without overwhelming force, the police could only hold them at bay until reinforcements arrived.
The local SWAT team was called but their response team would be about 9 or 10 minutes.
Up in the Drill Hall the attackers were frustrated to see heavy wooden doors. One of them placed an improvised explosive device on the lock which tore the right-hand door off of its hinges. But all this did was display the steel gate still blocked their entrance.
They fired wildly through the door hoping to hit anyone that might be still in the room.
While they were trying to breach the door Hank opened up the weapons rack that contained the high-powered pellet rifles. He armed every cadet with the rifle and the special ammunition that they used during competitions. These pellets were more along the lines of a bullet they were aerodynamically designed rather than having the normal flat head of a pellet. These rifles had the capacity of speeds of up to 1,100 feet per second, similar to a 22-caliber rifle. Eighteen cadets were now armed and positioned on top of the supply shelves to defend themselves in the Arms Room.
Master Sergeant Chapman, a combat veteran, aligned these 14-, 15- and 16-year-old cadets in such a way that if their attackers actually managed to breach the room they could volley fire into the doorway and hopefully stop the intruders.
Colonel Tyler was armed with the only other potential weapon that they had available – the fire extinguisher that was located in the Supply Room.
When the outer door was breached the first intruder was standing close to the gate looking in when Colonel Tyler fired a burst a foam from the fire extinguisher blinding the intruder. The man screamed in agony as the CO2 froze his face seriously injured his eyes.
The next man fired indiscriminately into the supply room, bullets bounced all over the place; but no one was injured. As the second intruder attempted to cut the lock he was hit with another burst of CO2 and he ran screaming towards the back of the drill hall. One intruder, their leader, was left.
Colonel Tyler’s ‘weapon’ was ‘out of ammunition’. When the determined attacker finally cut the lock he raced into the room firing his weapon indiscriminately. Master Seargent Champman commanded the first firing order to fire; the intruder was hit with a barrage of pellets. He screamed in pain. At that point Master Sergeant Chapman ordered the second order to fire which seriously injured the attacker.
With the demilitarized M1 rifle in hand Hank Chapman leapt forward and hit him in the chin with a butt stroke knocked him unconscious.
With their leader down the other blinded men staggered from the Drill Hall down the stairs into the hands of the awaiting SWAT team.
Colonel Tyler grabbed another chain and relocked the doors and rearm the cadets. They head back to the back of the supply room area and reorganized their defense.
The SWAT team commander came to the JROTC area and saw the door torn off the hinges he looked inside the gated area and observed the unconscious man lying on the floor bleeding profusely. As he started to enter the battered Supply Room Master Sergeant Chapman yelled:
“Who are you, state your business and approach very carefully we are armed and ready to fire.”
“I’m Officer Pete Danson of the SWAT team. I’m here to rescue you. But it appears you don’t need rescuing.”
“Approach carefully and throw your badge into the room so we can see it. I will not exit this safe area until I’m convinced that you are who you say you are,” demanded Colonel Tyler.
With that officer Danson opened his vest pulled his badge and tossed it into the room.
Colonel Tyler ordered the officer to stand at the front of the door. When he recognized the man they ordered the cadets to ‘stand down’.
It was over, their years of practicing the ‘Code RED’ drills had paid off. Other than Claude White, and the attackers, there were no other casualties within the school.
Claud’s condition was considered to be dangerous but not critical.
All of the gunman had been killed or captured. The two men that have been hit with CO2 had been blinded, one permanently. The man who had broken through had been ‘butt stroked’ was found to have been hit by 18 pellets one of them had actually pierced his skull.
As they were being examined none of the cadets had been physically injured. It appeared that Master Sergeant Chapman had been slightly wounded by a ricocheting bullet the grazed his shoulder. All were shaken by the attack but physically they were all right.
It was now up to the psychologists To handle the young cadets. They’ve been through combat, but they’re training and discipline had resulted in their survival.
Their defense of the “Supply Room” would be covered in the national news. Their resilience, their discipline, their training and their ability to comply with the orders of their JROTC officers had stopped the vicious attack.
When the attackers were interrogated it was determined that they were convinced that the JROTC area contained military weapons. They had seen the cadets carrying these rifles in parades and Color Guards. They had heard that the school had a rifle team and that meant that they had weapons and ammunition. It appears they’ve never read the fine print that indicated that these were pellet rifles and demilitarized M-1 rifles.
Their objective was to seize the weapons so that they could arm other supporters that they might find.
As a result of his wounds that had resulted in a terrorist attack Master Sergeant Chapman was presented the Purple Heart as well as the Bronze Star for Valor.
The award of the Bronze Star was initially challenged, but since the two instructors were sill members of the strategic reserve and paid by the US Army the initial objections were disregarded.
It was a large awards ceremony conducted at the school. The Commanding General of the Training and Doctrine Command came to Tilden to make the presentation.
He commended Colonel Tyler and Master Sergeant Chapman on their superb planning and executing their plan to perfection. He praised the two men for their efforts and awarded each one of the cadets who had participated in the repelling of the attack with the Cadet Gold Valor Award, the highest award that could be given to any cadet. The ceremony and awards made the national news.
Afterwards Paul and Lenny Fisher sat there talked about what had happened. They were shaken by the events but the planning and practice that they had conducted, in advance, paid off. The majority of the student body had been protected, and the attackers had been subdued.
The school had been quickly secured. The police been notified and reacted immediately. Paul and Hank’s planning to evacuate the Supply Room and lock it down had paid off in the long run. Hank’s quick reaction and arming the cadets and Paul’s reaction to grabbing the only other ‘weapon’ that they could find, the fire extinguisher, had paid off.
Everyone came through the event safe and sound.
Monday, they hoped, would just be another school day at Tilden High School.
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