A loud, popping noise. Moans. The sudden, urgent shout of “Gun!”

Smith poked his head over the cubicle’s partition and saw an extraordinary
sight: An Army officer with two guns, firing into the crowded room.

The 21-year-old Fort Worth native quickly grabbed the civilian worker who’d
been helping with his paperwork and forced her under the desk. He lay low for
several minutes, waiting for the shooter to run out of ammunition and wishing
he, too, had a gun.

After the shooter stopped to reload, Smith made a run for it. Pushing two
other soldiers in front of him, he made it out of the Soldier Readiness
Processing center — only to plunge into the building twice more to help the
wounded.

Smith had survived the worst mass shooting on an American military base, a
rampage that left 13 dead and 30 wounded, including the alleged shooter, Army
psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

It could have been much worse, but for the heroics of Smith and others — like
the 19-year-old private who ignored her own wounds, and the diminutive civilian
police officer who single-handedly took down Hasan.

“Unfortunately over the past eight years, our Army has been no stranger to
tragedy,” said a somber Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff. “But we are an
Army that draws strength from adversity. And hearing the stories of courage and
heroism that I heard today makes me proud to be the leader of this great
Army.”

Home of the 1st Cavalry and 1st Army Division West, Fort Hood has seen more
than its share of deployments and casualties in the past eight years.

As a psychiatrist, Hasan, 39, had listened to soldiers’ tales of horror. Now,
the American-born Muslim was facing imminent deployment to Afghanistan. In
recent days, Hasan had been saying goodbye to friends. He had given away many of
his possessions, including copies of the Holy Quran.

At 2:37 a.m. Thursday and again around 5, Hasan called neighbor Willie Bell.
Bell could normally hear Hasan’s morning prayers through the thin apartment
walls, but Hasan skipped the ritual Thursday.

Bell didn’t pick up either time, but Hasan left a message.

“Nice knowing you, old friend,” Hasan said. “I’m going to miss you.”

About an hour later, surveillance cameras at a 7-Eleven across from the base
captured images of a smiling Hasan, dressed in a long white garment and white
kufi prayer cap, buying his usual breakfast — coffee and a hash brown.

At the processing center on the southern edge of the 100,000-acre base,
soldiers returning from overseas mingled with colleagues filling out forms and
undergoing medical tests in preparation for deployment.

Around 1:30 p.m., witnesses say a man later identified as Hasan jumped up on
a desk and shouted the words “Allahu Akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” He was
armed with two pistols, one a semiautomatic capable of firing up to 20 rounds
without reloading.

Packed into cubicles with 5-foot-high dividers, the 300 unarmed soldiers were
sitting ducks. Those who weren’t hit by direct fire were struck by rounds
ricocheting off the desks and tile floor.

When he decided that Hasan wasn’t close to being out of ammo, Smith made a
dash for the door. He’d made it outside when he heard cries from within.

“I don’t want to die.”

“This really hurts.”

“Help me get out of here.”

Smith rushed back inside and found two wounded. He grabbed them by their
collars and dragged them outside.

His second time through the door, he ran into the shooter, whose back was to
him. Smith turned and fled, bullets whizzing by his head and hitting the walls
as he rushed outside.

Around this time, Fort Hood Police Sgt. Kimberly Munley got the call of
“shots fired.” The SRP isn’t on Munley’s beat; she was in the area because her
vehicle was in the shop.

Munley, 34, was on the scene within three minutes.

Just over 5 feet tall, Munley is an advanced firearms instructor and civilian
member of Fort Hood’s special reaction team. She had trained on “active shooter”
scenarios after the April 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech University. She
didn’t wait for backup.

As she approached the squat, rectangular building, a soldier emerged from a
door with a gunman in pursuit. The officer fired, and the uniformed shooter
wheeled and charged.

Munley was hit at least three times in the exchange — twice through the left
leg and once in her right wrist. Hasan was hit four times.

From the first shots to the last, authorities say the whole incident lasted
less than 10 minutes.

Pfc. Jeffrey Pearsall, 21, from Houston, was waiting outside in the parking
lot for Smith. He was talking to his brother on a cell phone when a group of
soldiers ran out the door and a window shattered.

It was only then that he heard the gunshots.

He pulled his pickup truck forward, then hopped out and helped the wounded
into the bed. He loaded as many as he could and sped off to the base
hospital.

Next door, at the Howze Theater, Spc. Elliot Valdez was filming a graduation
ceremony for soldiers who’d completed correspondence courses. Several proud
scholars were posing for a group shot when Valdez heard a pounding at the side
door.

The door burst open and the theater filled with shouts of “Medic!” and “Stay
in the building!” A combat videographer who returned from a 15-month Iraq tour
in January, most of it in the notorious Sadr City slums, Valdez ran out into the
sunlight.

Crouching as he continued to roll tape, Valdez could see windows broken by
fleeing victims. A soldier in his Class A dress uniform lay on the grass, a
gunshot wound in his back. Soldiers in flowing black graduation robes and purple
sashes rushed to help.

Pfc. Amber Bahr, 19, of Random Lake, Wis., tore up her blouse and used it as
a tourniquet on a wounded comrade. It was only later that she realized she’d
been shot in the back, the bullet exiting her abdomen.

Sgt. Andrew Hagerman, a military police officer, was patrolling a housing
area when word of shootings crackled over his radio.

As he arrived at the processing center, bloodied soldiers, some shirtless,
were already treating each other on the grass outside, ripping pant legs off and
tying off wounds. Munley — with whom Hagerman had exchanged small talk on
patrols — was being loaded into an ambulance.

Hasan lay on the ground, his two handguns beside him, as medical personnel
struggled to remove his handcuffs to treat his wounds.

Hagerman entered the building, took a deep breath and asked himself: “What do
I need to do?”

He picked his way around the room’s edges, careful not to step in pools of
blood or to kick any spent shell casings. He had seen death during his two tours
in Iraq, but nothing that compared with this.

In the confusion, Army Reserve Spc. Grant Moxon, 23, lost his cell phone. He
borrowed a comrade’s phone to send a text to his family in Lodi, Wis.

The message stated simply: “Grant. I was shot in the leg. I’ll be OK.”

Sgt. Howard Appleby, 31, was at the hospital for his regular meeting with a
psychiatrist. Appleby, who was born in Jamaica and grew up in New York City,
sustained a traumatic brain injury and has post-traumatic stress disorder from a
roadside bomb blast during a tour in Iraq.

His appointment canceled, Appleby found himself pulling the dead and wounded
from ambulances. In combat, he was used to one or two casualties a day. “This,”
he thought, “is crazy.”

Lt. Col. Larry Masullo, an emergency room physician from Farmingdale, N.Y.,
was heading into a monthly meeting to review new doctors’ credentials when he
heard of the shootings.

“Yeah, OK,” he said. “Multiple gunshot wounds. Is this a drill?”

In the next hour and a half, he would treat nearly two dozen soldiers.

For several hours, authorities feared there were several gunmen. By the end
of the day, it was clear Hasan had acted alone, they said.

Hasan, hooked up to a ventilator, was moved Friday to a military hospital in
San Antonio. The woman who stopped him, Munley, awaited surgery Friday to remove
the bullets from her leg. Her husband was flying in from Fort Bragg, N.C.

Her boss, Chuck Medley, was thankful. “If an officer had to be close by to
respond,” he said, “Kim Munley is someone we’d want to be there.”

Marquest Smith says some of the people he helped made it. But he knows others
did not.

Afterward, Smith noticed a hole in heel of his right combat boot. A bullet
had entered the boot, but he had somehow escaped injury — at least the physical
kind.

After the adrenaline wore off, Smith was overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal,
because this assailant who spilled so much blood was a soldier.

“We’re supposed to be a family,” he said.