Smoke, gunfire, then a knock

Brockton couple survive Mumbai hotel siege

Willy Stadelmann and his wife, Gerrie, greeted their daughters upon arriving at Logan International Airport yesterday. (Mark Wilson/Globe Staff)

From Room 322, amid the smoke and the darkness, Willy and Gerrie Stadelmann listened to the gunmen, moving down the hall, room to room, pounding on doors, then shooting.

Off and on all night, they came and they went, the Brockton couple recalled yesterday, at times coming just a few doors away. But despite being trapped inside the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower in Mumbai, India, the Stadelmanns did not panic.

They kept quiet, they said, and stayed down, tucked between their king-size bed and the wall. They made a rope out of sheets in case they needed it to escape their third-floor hotel room. They pressed wet towels to their faces to help them breathe through the smoke. And finally, 14 hours later when a knock came at the door, the Stadelmanns made the right decision.

In answering it, they saved their lives.

"The scariest part wasn't the gunfire," said Willy Stadelmann, a Brockton electrician. "It was the pounding into the doors. When were they going to get to your door? That was the question."

Back in Massachusetts yesterday, Willy, 66, and Gerrie, 65, recounted the harrowing events of the past few days: how terrorists stormed their hotel Wednesday night, killing one member of their tour group; how the couple waited out the siege in the dark and the smoke; and how they ultimately escaped, walking down hallways flooded with water from the sprinkler system and streaked with blood.

The Stadelmanns had been at the end of their tour of India, where, with a 26-person tour group, they cruised on the Ganges River, visited the Taj Mahal, and dined on the shores of the Arabian Sea. Even as they arrived home yesterday, the siege at the hotel continued with still more gunfire and explosions.

Indian authorities said they had killed the remaining militants this morning.

At least five Americans are among the more than 195 dead from attacks throughout the city.

But the Stadelmanns, who raised five children in Brockton and have been married for 45 years, said they never believed they would die in Room 322.

"We just kept hanging in there, hanging in there," said Gerrie, who said the prayers of the rosary, counting on her fingers during the attacks when she was unable to reach her beads packed away across the room. "I said, 'Please, dear God, I don't want to jump out that window.' "

The Stadelmanns, who have traveled in recent years to China, South Africa, and Russia, planned their Indian vacation several months ago, booking an 18-day trip organized by Connecticut-based Tauck World Discovery tours.

By plane, they jumped all over the country, making new friends within their group, celebrating an Australian couple's 42d wedding anniversary, and ending their journey with a stay at the Taj, a posh, waterfront hotel. There, the group, made up mostly of seniors, gathered one last time Wednesday night in a lobby bar to recount their adventures together over "farewell cocktails."

Most were headed to the airport, but the Stadelmanns were staying one more night, bound for Nepal in the morning. They didn't want to leave Asia without getting a look at Mount Everest. And that, Willy Stadelmann said, may have been what saved them.

They were not downstairs like other couples when the terrorists launched their attack, but upstairs preparing for bed. And while others on the ground floor ran for cover, the Stadelmanns sat in their room. They would not find out for hours that one of their fellow travelers - the 71-year-old man who had just celebrated his wedding anniversary - was dead. At first they weren't even sure what they were hearing was gunfire.

"The hotel called and said, 'There are gunmen in the hotel. Security is taking care of it. Stay in your room,' " Willy Stadelmann recalled. "Well, that's fine until you heard the bombs go off. That ain't gunmen."

With the hotel on fire now and smoke rolling down the halls, hotel guests began jumping down to a rooftop about two stories below, the Brockton couple said. But seeing how many people injured themselves in the fall - and not wanting to expose themselves to terrorists' gunfire - the Stadelmanns said they stayed put, stuffing their comforter under the door.

Still, in the dark, the smoke crept in. It became hard to breathe, the Stadelmanns said, and soon they could hear the gunmen moving down the hall, room to room. While Gerrie prayed, Willy sent brief e-mails to his children back home on a laptop he had set up under the bed. His message: They were OK - for now.

"I didn't know what to do," said Kristin Stadelmann, their daughter, who got word of the attacks from her father while shopping at the Prudential Center on Wednesday and scrambled to contact embassy officials. "I had no family around me. I was crying hysterically and people were looking at me like I was a maniac. I was just thinking, 'They're going to die - that's it.' "

Her parents, however, were a bit more optimistic.

Wednesday night felt like it would last forever, Gerrie said, with the gunmen wandering the hotel and explosions sounding in the night. But with the sunrise Thursday morning, came "new hope," Gerrie said. And soon, for the first time, there was also a knock at the door.

Gerrie wasn't sure they should answer it. But hearing commotion outside the door - as if there were many people standing there, not just one - Willy decided they had to take a chance. Maybe, he figured, it was help.

"I said, 'We've got to try it,' " Willy said. "You've got to make that decision, you know?"

And so, inside Room 322, the Brockton man called out.

"Who are you?" he recalled saying.

"Army," came the reply. "Army."

He opened the door to find six Indian soldiers and a hotel security officer standing there. Armed with guns, the men escorted the tired, shaken couple out of the hotel and onto the streets of Mumbai. By ambulance, they were taken to a police station. And a short while after that, Willy and Gerrie Stadelmann were on an airplane bound for Delhi, Chicago, and then home.

"I see them!" shouted daughter Tara Stadelmann about 28 hours later, turning to her sister Kristin as they waited for their parents inside the terminal at Logan International Airport. "I see them!"

And then, a moment later, the weary parents fell into the arms of their children.

"You're so brave," Kristin kept telling them as she hugged and kissed them. "We're so glad."

Her mother just looked at her and smiled.

"We're glad, too," she said.

Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.