Chapter 1
September 11th 2001
8:46.26 a.m.
A thunderous roar rattled my ears and I heard a man behind me state, “Wow, that jet sure is low!”
A woman screamed, “It’s going to hit us!”
I had stopped on the 97th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower to visit my friend Rick, who happened to be late at his job as a consultant for Cantor Fitzgerald, and was just stepping into the express elevator to the sky lobby to head up to Windows On The World, when a nearly deafening explosion of sound blasted through the complex of office cubicles. Hot concussion threw me and the two people beside me into the elevator. The building lurched violently to one side and the car banged against the shaft as the elevator doors started to close. They didn’t seal, leaving about a one inch gap.
“Everyone okay?” I asked.
The two people with me gripped the handrail as the car carried us up. One was a young, twenty-something woman wearing tan pants, a white blouse, and an embroidered red scarf. I’d seen her many times having lunch at The Odeon on West Broadway where I worked. She was attractive, polite, and a good tipper. The other person, a man, was tall and broad-shouldered. He looked about sixty, handsome, with a shock of white hair. I had never seen him before but by the looks of his tailored suit I assumed he was someone of importance.
They nodded with grim faces.
A second explosion rocked the elevator. It jolted to a stop and shuddered. The woman screamed. She fumbled to retrieve her cell phone from her purse.
“We’ve gotta get out of here!” I stated.
“I can’t get a signal!” she cried. “There’s no phone signal!”
Explosions boomed inside the building followed by a severe, earthquake-like shaking. We crouched lower and braced. Smoke blew up the elevator shaft and engulfed us. Heat increased.
“Oh, God!” the young woman sobbed, and started coughing.
Instinct told me to act. I hopped to my feet and looked around in exasperation.
“C’mon!” I hollered to the businessman, coughed, and then grabbed at the thin space between the elevator doors. “Help me open these!”
The businessman stood up and grabbed at the other side. We pulled; heaved; coughed. My muscles swelled. Slowly, the doors pried apart to face a wall of sheetrock stamped with 102nd floor. I looked down the slim area between the car and the shaft. Below us was all fire.
Panic hit. I kicked at the sheetrock. Over and over. I slammed the heel of my foot with all my strength. It didn’t make a dent.
“We’re never gonna bust through this!” I stated. Ideas jumped into my brain. “We’re gonna have to dig out!” I turned to the businessman. “You got anything sharp?”
“Dig out!” the young woman cried. “We can’t possibly!”
“We’ve gotta do something!” I coughed. “Or we’re gonna die in here!”
The businessman’s eyes were huge O’s of fear.
“All I have is my car keys,” he said.
“Give them to me!”
Smoke thickened. The young woman tried to dial her cell phone again. A series of coughs overtook her.
“Get some cloth!” I stated, and pulled off my white Perry Ellis button down shirt. “Spit into the fabric and then wrap it around your mouth. It’ll help you breath!”
The businessman removed his shirt. The young woman used her scarf.
Driven by panic, I gouged the keys into the sheetrock. My hands moved fast but made little progress. The businessman climbed up on the handrail and tried to push out the ceiling. He hammered with his palms to no avail. The panels were made of steel and screwed in tight.
Heat intensified. Smoke stung my eyes and scratched my throat, smothering my ability to think clearly. Sweat ran down my forehead and soaked my T-shirt. I puffed and wheezed, poking and jabbing with the keys until my arms and shoulders ached. Pieces of sheetrock chipped off. Two of the keys bent. My fingers cramped. Breathing came in lung-pinching, hot gasps. My eyes went unfocused. Faintness swept over; light headed and winded.
I thought about dropping the keys, closing my eyes, and going to sleep.
Suddenly, the key poked through to the other side. The hole was no larger than what a worm bores into dirt, but it was enough. Fresh air drooled in. I put my lips to the hole and breathed oxygen free of ash and smoke, but tasting of jet fuel.
“I’ve done it!” I stated.
I quickly sawed and made the opening about the diameter of a quarter. We took turns gulping fast breaths.
Infused with energy, the businessman and I started kicking at the hole, kicking for our lives. Chips of sheetrock flaked off. And then bigger chunks. Finally, his foot punched out a huge, chair-size panel. A drafty inrush propelled the smoke to the ceiling.
“We’re free!” the young woman gushed, nearly overcome with emotion.
“Go and clear the way ahead!” I said to the businessman. “I’ll kick the hole big enough for me.”
He nodded, squatted down, and wiggled through the space, then knocked out a thin sheet of drywall on the other side and disappeared through that hole. The young woman crawled out next.
I kicked at the sheetrock until I could fit my large frame and then squeezed through both holes, emerging in a deserted conference room. Except for the lack of activity and the strong odors of smoke and gasoline, everything appeared strangely ordinary: desks, computers, cluttered stacks of paper, a copy machine in the corner.
The young woman’s hands trembled as she attempted to dial cell phone again.
I stepped toward the window.
Below us, flames rolled upward in massive orange streamers. Thick, black smoke gushed into the sky. My eye caught a flaming object free-falling to the ground. And then another flaming object jumped from a broken window. And then another. My mind reeled with horror as I realized they were people leaping from the building.
I whipped out my cell phone and tried for a signal. Amazingly, one bar came up.
“We’ve got phones!” I stated.
Shaking and reeling inside, I pressed Amber’s number. She answered on the second ring.
“Are you okay? Are you alright?” I blabbered.
“I’m fine,” she replied. Her voice cracked as it often did when she was nervous. “Where are you?”
“I’m on the 102nd floor.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I’ll tell you later.” I swallowed hard, trying to keep the adrenaline staccato and tension from my voice.
“Did you feel the building shake? Someone said the lower floors are on fire. What happened? All I can see out the windows is smoke.”
My mind warred to recapture its sanity and jerk my senses back to some semblance of normal.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “How are you feeling?”
“The baby’s kicking, but I’m good. No nausea.”
“How about everyone else?”
“They’re fine.”
“I’m heading to the stairs,” I said. “I’m coming up now.”
“No, don’t. Someone said Emergency Services wants everyone to stay where they are. They don’t want people to clog the stairwells in a panic. The safest thing for us to do is to wait for the fire department to get here.”
“I don’t care what Emergency Services said! I’m coming up!”
“Nathan, no! You’ll only worry me. Stay where you are until the building is safe. Please. I’ll see you at home when this is all over. We’ll be fine.”
I sighed into the receiver. “Guess I should have picked a different place for breakfast, huh? I’m sorry, this was supposed to be such a special day.”
“Like any of this is your fault,” she replied, lightheartedly. “We’ll celebrate next week. Someplace on street level. We… then— ”
The call dropped and the signal cut out.
“Amber…Amber… Shit!”
I snapped my cell phone shut. The young woman closed hers.
“My mom told me the city is sending every fire precinct in Manhattan over here,” the young woman said with a shaky voice. “She said I should stay put until they get the situation under control. She said a plane hit the building.”
We all looked at each other.
Stony silence ensued.
I cracked it with; “I think we should get out of here.”
“I think we should stay,” the businessman contradicted. His face was still pale but he looked immensely relieved to be out of the elevator. He mopped the remaining traces of sweat from his forehead and smoothed his hair. “It seems safe.”
“I don’t feel safe,” I said. “The fire’s only a few floors below. Fire burns up. If they can’t get this out quickly it’s going to burn its way here.”
“I doubt that,” he replied. “This building has adequate sprinklers and fire retardant systems. For all we know most of the fire may already be out. I’m staying.”
“We don’t know what’s going on down there!” I stated. “The systems may be knocked out! It could be total chaos!”
The young woman shifted uneasily.
“I’m staying!” the businessman affirmed. “You can do whatever you want.”
“I… I agree,” the young woman said, her mind in an obvious state of uncertainty. “I… I think we should stay.”
I looked at them both and thought perhaps that I was the one making a mistake. Surely, the building was equipped to contain this type of emergency. Surely, the New York Fire Department, the best in the world, could quickly remedy this situation. We were out of the elevator and safe. Why put myself in more danger by trying to evacuate?
But something deep inside of me said to get Amber and our families and get out. This was no ordinary accident. I sensed something extraordinarily horrible had happened.
“I’m leaving,” I said, and started toward the emergency stairwell. “I’m not going to sit around here and hope to be rescued.”
“Wait!” the young woman called, her voice quavering. She looked about in alarm and then nervously licked her lips. “I… I changed my mind. I’m coming with you. I want to get out of this building.”
I nodded, and turned to the businessman. “How about you?”
“I’m staying,” the businessman affirmed. “I’ll take my chances.”
The businessman sat down in a leather executive chair, leaned back, and rested his hands across his lap as if none of this was really happening.
“Okay then,” I replied. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too.” He paused, and looked at me in an ethereal, brotherly way. “And thanks.”
I nodded, and forced a thin smile. I turned to the young woman. “Ready?”
We headed past a maze of identical cubicles toward the emergency stairwell located in the core of the building. I pushed open the thick steel door and held it for the young woman. Phosphorescent lights glowed feebly in the tunnel-like space. The door closed with the solid, echoing click of engaging metal.
“I’ll see you on the street,” I said, and turned to head up the steps.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m getting my fiancé.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I have to.”
A small pod of people looking annoyed came trudging down the upper flights and passed us on the landing.
“Don’t bother heading to the roof if that’s what you’re thinking?” said an older, overweight woman wearing a blue office dress. “A piece of concrete fell from the ceiling on 105 and is blocking the stairwell. There’s no way around it. Guess we’ll be getting our exercise today.”
My heart sank as the group continued their descent.
“Come on,” the young woman urged, and pulled at my sleeve. “You heard her! You can’t go up! It’s a waste of time!”
I thought about Amber trapped at Windows On The World; hoped and prayed that she’d be okay (in the back of my mind I knew she would) and then reluctantly turned around and started down the stairs.
We encountered more people, a few dozen, walking, not hurrying. Some were even joking about the situation. Others were noticeably angry about the hassles of the lost workday.
The more floors we descended the more people poured into the stairwell. It got crowded. Heads and shoulders stirred and jostled for space; a rustling tide toward the freedom of the first floor. Temperature and the biting odor of gasoline increased.
The line nearly stopped moving because someone ahead needed assistance, but the atmosphere remained relatively calm and orderly. The young woman turned to me. She gathered herself, making a visible effort to keep her emotions under control. I met her anxious gaze with a reassuring grin.
“I’m sorry I freaked out back there in the elevator,” she said, and cleared her throat. “I was just so scared.”
“We all were,” I replied. “But we’re safe now.”
I nudged her arm and pressed my hand against her stiff shoulder in understanding. Her shoulder loosened a little.
“We’ll be on the street in an hour getting a cup of coffee,” I added.
“I hope so. By the way, my name’s Lea. Lea Kramer.”
“Nathan Cruz,” I said. “I’ve seen you at The Odeon on West Broadway. I work there.”
“That’s where I recognize you,” she said. “I thought I knew you from somewhere.”
“Today’s my day off. I was supposed to meet my entire family and my fiancé’s entire family for brunch to celebrate our recent engage—”
The foundation shook from a huge explosion. Steel shrieked, concrete cracked and shattered. Dust and smoke encased us. Emergency lights shut off pitching the stairwell into total darkness.
The crowd broke into a panic and started to run, stampeding down and over each other. Lea grabbed hold of my arm. Her grip tightened and we held our positions with our backs against the wall until the crush of people passed and the chaos subsided.
A few moments later, the emergency lights flicked on.
A flight below, I saw an older man crouched on the stairwell in obvious distress. I hopped down three steps at a time to reach him. Lea followed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I… I… can’t breathe.” His eyes bulged from a face the color of bruised fruit. “I… I…”
“Lay back,” I said. “Help is coming. It won’t be long.”
“You… doctor?”
My head swooned. “No, I… I’m just trying to help.”
He lost consciousness.
The building trembled and groaned. A large piece of the stairwell came crashing down and smashed against the flight above us scattering large chunks of debris like marbles. Sprinklers came on and rained down lukewarm water.
“Let’s go!” Lea said, and panic rose in her voice. “It’s not safe here!”
“You go,” I replied. “I’m gonna get this guy out of the stairwell and into an office.”
Lea’s hand trembled as she wiped it across her forehead.
“That’s very brave,” she said. She looked down the stairs. “I’ll help. But let’s do it quick.”
We both reached down, me at his head and she at his feet, and tried to lift him. It was like trying to lift a two hundred pound sack of wet sand. We strained against his limp weight and barely got him off the floor when we had to put him down again.
Another chunk of the ceiling fell. Lights fluttered. Jets of steam whistled from burst pipes.
“Hurry!” Lea cried, and struggled again to lift his legs. “It sounds like this whole place is gonna collapse!”
I leaned down and laid two fingers against the man’s neck.
“I don’t feel a pulse,” I said, and put my hand over his mouth. “He’s not breathing.”
Lea drew back a little; one hand went up to cover her lips. “He’s dead?
I nodded.
“Dear God,” she gasped, and made the sign of a cross over her chest.
“We’ll tell emergency services he’s here,” I said. “Let’s go!”
A flight down, we passed two more people sprawled on a landing, dead, battered, and bloody, as if crushed by a giant fist. The residents of these floors must have put them out there for the firemen to find.
“Look how messed up they are,” Lea said. “What could have happened?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the ceiling fell on them.”
“How awful.”
I stooped down to get a closer look. One of the injured had massive head wounds that disfigured the face. The other was another young woman I recognized as one of my regular lunch customers. Revulsion rolled and knotted my stomach.
A long, deep thundering sound shuddered the building. Fluorescents fell from the ceiling and shattered. Sections of the above stairwell broke away and crashed onto the landing behind us. Lea screamed.
Every fiber in me flashed into action. I grabbed Lea’s arm and took off as fast as I could, hopping over chunks of debris and passing more dead. Most looked in their twenties and thirties, badly charred or busted up, business suits and blouses torn and frayed.
An older, badly burned, heavy-set woman wearing the tattered remnants of a blue office dress, and in obvious shock, came barreling up the steps with her arms open wide so we couldn’t pass her. The expression on her face looked absolutely horror-stricken. Her eyes, all black pupil, were wild and nearly spinning in their sockets.
She sidestepped, putting herself directly into our path.
Puffing with exertion, she screamed and sobbed; “Go back! Go back!” She gesticulated madly “You gotta go back! The floor below is all fire! Everyone’s dead. Every single one!”
“You’re injured!” I said. “We’ll help you. But we must go down!”
“Noooo!” Her scream intensified to an anguished wail. “They’re all dead!”
Lea flashed me a look of desperation. A look that said we have to get out of here immediately. I moved to detour around the woman.
Another explosion shook the building and the stairwell groaned an unnatural, unearthly sound. Cracks slithered along the walls. Suddenly, fire blew through the floor below and a tremendous cloud of thick, black smoke whirled up. The wall splintered and a large piece fell down. Sheets of drywall crumbled in a blaze of sparks. Pipes burst.
The hefty woman scuttled up the steps away from the pandemonium. I found Lea’s hand, whisked her along with me to the next landing, and barreled through the reinforced door onto the 94th floor. Heat slammed into us. Hot, gluey air burned my eyes and lungs.
I stood a moment fixated in shock and horror. The entire floor was nearly gutted. Large pieces of blazing airplane wreckage littered the buckled interior. Concrete support columns were crumbled and broken. Steel beams were blistered and blackened. Light fixtures, speakers, and wire dangled from the fractured ceiling. Half the area was consumed by raging fire that careened out a massive hole in the side of the building causing a strong wind to blow through the area.
Bodies lay sprawled on the floor and against the walls; severed heads, limbs, and torsos tossed over broken office furniture and chunks of construction material. Chopped up. Knocked out. Thrashing. Burned beyond recognition. Smoldering. Those few still alive cowered in the fire-free sections, screaming hysterically and crying, or crumpled on the floor in pain. Some sat trembling, in all-consuming shock, oblivious to their injuries and the devastation surrounding them.
“God help us,” Lea muttered, and coughed.
A young man whose abdomen was crushed under what looked like a piece of airplane fuselage was flailing his arms and calling desperately for his mother. A woman burned over most of her body sat with her hands around her knees sobbing into raw fingers. A few yards away, I recognized a man who frequented the gym where I exercised. His name was Larry. He lay twisted on his back, legs awkwardly akimbo, motionless, and moaning.
A hand whacked my shoulder from behind. I spun around and faced a nude woman, hairless and burned over most of her body. My stomach nearly revolted.
“Billy?” she asked, her expression completely lost. “Billy, that you?” Her eyes shifted to a dead man sprawled a few feet away. She wobbled toward the body. “Billy…”
I stood immobile, slack-jawed and stunned, breathing the fiery air in shallow gasps to maintain my sanity.
“Let’s go!” Lea urged. “There’s no helping these people! We’ve gotta get out of here!”
