The Towers

by David Poyer

  She blinked and was thinking again about the offer when a hurtling roar vibrated the windows and the back of the North Tower seemed to … open up … and things … strange moving things … began to emerge.

  Her eyes still sent the raw video, but her brain seemed unable to ratify what was actually happening. The other tower was opening up, glass blowing out of the windows, a slow-mo effect, the windows and walls bulging, shattering, followed and mixed with a writhing, almost liquid haze, expanding toward her across less than a hundred yards of space. No, not directly at her; angled slightly to her left.

  Giory must have caught her puzzled shock because he twisted in his seat just as the murky haze turned a bright white and then instantaneously into a hot, expanding orange-yellow flash.

  She pitched forward, dragging him down from the window as the plate glass dented in and out like a shaken sheet of steel and the building shook. The boom came an instant later. It went on and on, trickling down into the mass of concrete and steel below them that flexed and crackled and shuddered, distributing and absorbing the transmitted energy.

  Giory whispered something in a language she didn’t know. She didn’t reply. Just untangled from him and the chair, noticing a yellow peanut M&M lying all alone beneath his desk, and scrambled up off the carpet. They crowded side by side at the window, peering out through the narrow frame. “A bomb,” he said, breathing fast. “That’s Marsh and McLennan over there. I got a friend with ’em. He—”

  “A bomb? No, I saw something—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I’m not sure. Should we leave?”

  He didn’t answer, staring across to where flame was beginning to stream out of the floors opposite, pulsing, as if pushed out by some immense wounded heart.

  Interpretation arrived seconds late. Some of the things shooting out of the building had been bodies. Human beings, still alive, if their open mouths and thrashing limbs, trying to run, to gain purchase on empty air as they curved out and down and then fell away, had been any indication.

  She felt pain in her hand and realized she was biting it. She looked down. How high they were. The building her body resided in had flexed, bent, moved. How far down those tiny streets, those minuscule cars actually were. Then reassured herself: it had been the other building. Not theirs.

  Something terrible had happened over there. But here, they were alive, and safe.

  8:58 A.M, THE NAVY COMMAND CENTER, PENTAGON

  Dan stopped outside the conference room, stretching his fingers out of the fists they formed each time he confronted the intractable face of the Navy. Like God, it had many personas. The warrior. The seaman. The comradely uncle who took care of his own. This was the one he liked least, the brazen Shiva visage of inexorable rejection. His head felt as if it were swelling, about to come off.

  Someone nearby cleared his throat. Dan glanced up to see an older fellow, gray-bearded, offering a wrapped candy. Dan popped it into his mouth, bemused, as the guy wandered off, putting a candy on this desk, then on that. Butterscotch. Good quality too.

  He sucked a deep breath. So the voyage was over. Annapolis, career, command. Not as long a cruise as it might have been, but one he could take pride in. He could think, now, of what came next. What he and Blair could do together, for the rest of their lives.

  When he looked up again, everyone was getting up from desks and consoles, men and women, leaving keyboards and screens and papers and drifting toward the wall of televisions. He rubbed his face. Then stepped around a desk and joined them as they stood almost touching, watching. The images were chaotic, confusing: quick cuts of a city glimpsed from what seemed to be a helicopter. “What’s going on?” he asked a female chief who stood hugging herself. “What happened?”

  “They don’t know. Airplane in New York.”

  “A small plane hit the World Trade Center,” someone else said.

  Dan blinked, still thinking about Niles, then suddenly made the connection. “Holy shit,” he muttered, and pushed his way through to the front, staring up. The screen changed, became a silver obelisk, foreshortened, glittering, until three-quarters of the way up smoke seeped from a jagged rent. The announcer spoke about a light plane. “That wasn’t any light plane,” someone said.

  “How could you hit the World Trade Center?”

  An older officer shrugged. “A bomber hit the Empire State, back during the war. Pilot had a heart attack, that’s all. Let’s get back to work, people. Back to your desks.”

  Dan fumbled with his cell, wondering as he punched in Blair’s number whether it would penetrate the concrete and reinforcing steel around them. He caught gazes directed his way; stepped into an empty cubicle. Listened to it ring.

  She’d said World Trade Center, hadn’t she? He glanced over his shoulder at the televisions.

  The chief, at the door of what was obviously her cubicle. He tried to smile. “I think—I, uh, think my wife might be there, Chief. At the Trade Center. Could you check something on your computer for me?”

  “Sure, sir. What?”

  “Look up Cohn, Kennedy. An investment firm. They must have a Web site.”

  The address was 2 World Trade Center. He felt relieved, then worried again; was that the North Tower? The chief keyed again and said, no, 2 was the South Tower. “Thanks,” he said. “She’s in the other tower, then. That’s great. I mean, well—thanks.”

  “No problem, Commander. Glad she’s not there. It didn’t look good, where that thing hit.”

  When he went out, the breaking news was that it had been an airliner. A huge jet engine lay in the street. The camera cut to upper floors bleeding a blackish gray thickness that looked solid. The tower’s mast rose out of that black plume streaming across the sky. The officers had gone back to their cubicles. Some of the enlisted were still watching.

  Dan was still standing with them when the camera, down at street level, suddenly slewed away, then came back and up and caught a wiping bloom of orange blossoming.

  “That’s a different plane,” someone murmured.

  “No, it’s a replay.”

  “There’s only one plane.”

  “There’s two. That’s the other tower it just hit.”

  “That’s Blair’s tower,” Dan said half aloud.

  Officers and more enlisted were pouring out now, joining him and the others. Dan stared, the eerie unreality coating his skin like a cold film of something sticky. Melted ice cream? He fumbled with the cell again. “God damn it,” he muttered. Each time it tried to connect, he got a busy signal. It almost succeeded once; but there was no answer.

  He stared at the tiny device in his hand, alone amid a rising tumult of raised voices and, suddenly, many ringing phones.

  9:00 A.M., THE SOUTH TOWER, 2 WORLD TRADE CENTER

  Blair pressed the END button. Around her, phones were ringing. Televisions were coming on. She considered calling Dan back, then tucked the cell into her purse. She needed to think about what to do next.

  Giory was still staring out the window. Past him, smoke kept rising, thick and dark and somehow ashy, then thinning and turning gray.

  “It was a plane,” somebody shouted, not far away, audible through the thin office wall. “A jet hit the North Tower.”

  Giory walked to his desk, then wandered back. He smoothed his hair without looking at her. She felt ice rising from her toes. She’d been in a hotel bombing and barely gotten out. She remembered the DoD summer conference, the “hard problems” program. About the likelihood of a major terrorist strike. This didn’t seem like one, but the possibility couldn’t be discounted.

  On the other hand, she might be overreacting. It was the other building, after all. “Should we evacuate?” she asked Giory again.

  “We should stay here, I’m thinking.”

  “Are they still trading?”

  “Well, the market just opened.” He walked to the door. The noise level was much higher with it open. Phones were ringing, scores, maybe hundreds
. “Is the ATS up?” he called, then turned back. “Everything’s still online. CNN says it was a plane.”

  A distinguished-looking older gentleman walked past. He announced, “A plane hit the North Tower. Call your families; let them know you’re safe. No danger to us, but if anyone wants to leave, you’re free to go.”

  “Except for the traders,” someone else yelled.

  “Except for them. If you go, shut down everything properly and log out. The traders stay. If anyone else wants to leave—”

  The bad feeling got worse. She picked up her purse. “I think I’ll head down to the lobby. Until the situation clarifies. I’ll give you a call from there.”

  “But—Mr. Kennedy, don’t forget—”

  “I don’t think we’ll be having lunch. Not over there.” She inclined her head toward the burning tower. Noting a thin graphite-gray streaming out of the windows on the top floor, which meant smoke was flowing up through all the floors between. “You don’t need to come.”

  “You need an escort.”

  A gaggle milled in the lobby. The elevator took a while to arrive, but when it did, more had joined them. By no means a lot, though. They all fit comfortably. She blinked at the back of Giory’s head, wondering if her jumping ship was making a bad impression.

  They stepped out into the Sky Lobby at 78 as a group of Japanese, or Japanese American, executives filed into the express elevator, which promptly closed its doors. They stood waiting in the lobby with about forty others in a subdued hum of speculation. A woman was talking on her cell. “It was a light plane,” she announced to everyone. Blair tried hers again, tried her parents’ number, Dan’s, but didn’t connect. Giory looked put out. The lobby lights shone brightly. Air sighed through the ventilators.

  “They’re evacuating Tower One,” a man said from the far wall. He was on some sort of intercom console, she saw. “But we’re okay here. No need to get excited.”

  The woman with the cell yelled, “People are jumping over there. My sister says it’s on all the channels.”

  Jumping? Blair’s stomach muscles hardened. Should they not be using the elevators? Were there stairwells? She remembered the way debris and then flame had blasted out of the other building. How would those above that impact point get down? Through fire and smoke? Could they escape? How would firemen reach them?

  But she wasn’t over there. She was here, where everything was normal. She was overreacting. Not a good signal. If she looked weak, it would get around faster than light.

  Above their heads a PA system came on. “Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen. Building Two is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building Two. If you are in the midst of evacuation, you may use the reentry doors and the elevators to return to your offices. Repeat: Building Two is secure.”

  She cleared her throat. “Harry? Let’s go back up.”

  “Ya sure? We can go down to the lobby, no problem. See what’s goin’ on.”

  “Whatever it is doesn’t seem to be affecting us. If there was an emergency here, they’d announce it, wouldn’t they?”

  “Sure. They’re always yelling on that PA, during the drills.”

  Another local pinged. The doors scooted back. Only two got off, though. The elevators were still running. Surely they’d shut them down if there were any problem.

  She hesitated again, then forced herself back through the doors. Giory followed. Two others stepped in with them, a large African-American woman in late pregnancy and a heavyset white man in a gray suit and light blue tie with a blue-and-white lapel pin. They punched their buttons and the doors closed.

  They were already at speed and she was reaching to pinch her nose to adjust her ears when the floor jolted to a huge bang like an electrical substation shorting out. The car rocked to one side, hesitated, canted there; then seemed to sway back, but reluctantly. The shock knocked them all to their knees. The lights flickered, went off, came on. Dust seethed in the air. The car coasted upward, then shuddered to a screeching stop. She sprawled, head lowered, waiting for whatever came next, flame or blast. When all that followed was an ominous creaking and settling, she crept to her knees, then her feet. “That sounded just like a hand grenade,” the man in the gray suit said.

  Giory was shaking. “That was the other building,” he said, swallowing.

  “What you saying?” said the black woman. “The other building?”

  “Only thing it could be. Didn’t ya feel the lean? It collapsed, fell over, hit us.”

  Blair shook her head. Buildings fell down, not sideways. But she couldn’t think of anything else but a bomb. Her knees itched. They’d been burned, at the hotel. She didn’t want to get burned again. Above everything, she didn’t want that.

  Giory was jabbing the OPEN button, without result. The man in the suit pulled at the seam in the doors with his fingernails, then jammed a pen into them and pried. Its barrel snapped off. “Won’t open,” he grunted.

  An acridity of burnt wiring tinged the air. She found an emergency phone in the console, but there was no sound on it. Not even static.

  The pregnant woman moaned, holding her stomach. When Blair followed her lowered gaze, she saw why. Smoke was bleeding up through the floor. White and thick and slow, gradually rising along the walls of the elevator car.

  “It was another plane,” the man said. He had a small handheld, some kind she wasn’t familiar with, not a Palm but something else. “Present from my wife,” he said, catching her look. “Like a two-way pager. I can get texts on it even when my cell won’t work.” When he held it out she read

  2nd plane hit tower 2 - gt out fst as u cn

  “That’s what—you mean it hit us?” She felt sick. A second plane … one was an accident. Two planes … two were something else.

  where are u r u ok

  She handed it back. He took it and started clicking, then began coughing. The smoke was getting thicker. He thrust the device back into his coat.

  She examined the ceiling. Nothing resembling a way out there. But there had to be an exit. A maintenance hatch. They couldn’t stay in here, they’d die of smoke inhalation. She reached past Giory and stabbed the door OPEN button five or six more times. It was dead.

  The lights went out. She had a moment of sheer breathless panic, then remembered: she had a flash in her purse.

  When it came on, it only carried a foot or two, the smoke was that thick. They were all coughing now. She pressed a tissue over her mouth. It didn’t help. When their hotel had been bombed, she and Dan had gotten through by staying low, below the smoke. But here it was coming up from below.

  From below. If a second plane had hit below them, they were trapped. Whether or not they could get out of this steel box. She followed the shaking beam to the console and hit the OPEN button again. Nothing, and a crackle was growing below their feet and the air was getting steadily hotter.

  “There’s a fire down there,” the executive said, breathing hard, coughing. “We got to get out.”

  Giory was hammering on the door with his shoe. “We’re stuck,” he shouted. “Help. Help!” The clamor was deafening, but there was no response.

  “We got to pry that door open,” the heavy woman said. “Got to find something to pry with. Or something we can hammer in there, pry it open.”

  Blair bent and slipped off her shoe. Wasn’t there steel in the heel? In good ones, anyway? These were Christian Louboutins. She set the spike in the seam and hammered it in with the heel of her fist. The edges where the doors met were slightly rounded and with her third blow the spike began to drive between them. The executive took over and with powerful strokes drove the heel deeper, wedging the doors apart till a thin line of darkness swallowed her flashlight’s beam.

  “We got to hurry,” the woman said.

  Blair fully agreed; the metal floor was searing her nylon-stockinged foot. The choking smoke stank of jet fuel, a smell she was more than familiar with. Giory and the executive were trying to lock their fingers in the half-inch
gap her spike heel had opened, to pull in opposite directions. The door didn’t give, and she bit her lip; if it had buckled, warped, it might not be possible to unseal it. “Let’s all get on it,” she suggested, and set her flashlight down to shine where they worked.

  They bumped into each other, maneuvering, and got four hands on each door. Giory counted and they pulled for all they were worth and the doors grated and sprung. They hauled again, wheezing in the smoke. Blair’s muscles were tearing but she barely registered it, and the gap widened. Four inches. Six. A foot. The car shifted and popped, the metal heating like a cheap saucepan. The woman sobbed and prayed aloud to Jesus. Smoke streamed in through the floor and sucked out through the gap. It was getting thicker, changing its smell from fuel to something darker, more laden. A barbecue stench of charred meat.

  Giory slipped his shoulder into the gap and braced. They all pulled again and the doors came apart six more inches and he stepped through, hand stretched into the dark. She slipped her shoe back on and took the woman’s sweat-wet hand and went through next, stepping carefully. “I’m Blair,” she muttered.

  “Cookie.”

  “You work in the building, Cookie? D’you know where we are?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve worked here five years now. Ninety-second floor, I think. Or close to there.” She was breathing hard through a handkerchief pressed to her face. Her voice came muffled. “I don’t walk so fast. Sorry. This’s my second.”

  “That’s all right, don’t worry about that. Do you know where the stairwells are?”

  “There’s three egress stairs. A, B, and C. But there’s other stairs between the floors, where they goes between offices. We shouldn’t take those, unless we have to. They’ll be locked, a lot of them.”

  “Harry,” she called to the men, who were some distance ahead down the hallway. “We need to close these elevator doors. Keep the smoke contained.”

  “Let ’em go,” Giory called back. “We just need to get out.”

  Yes, that was the priority. They were marooned in the sky, with a fire below them. Her skin crawled. In the dimness she pulled Cookie over heaps of what felt like ceiling tile. Doors stood open. “Is there anyone here?” the executive was yelling. They were in the central core, what had been the lobby area on the other floors, but this place was deserted, no one was answering. Around the beam of her light the darkness was impenetrable. Shouldn’t there be emergency lights? “This here’s a machinery floor,” Cookie said behind her. “Right there, that’s the stairs!” she called to the men.