Fall and Rise

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  The calm in the cockpit was broken when, more than twenty minutes after takeoff, a Boston Center air traffic controller working alongside Peter Zalewski asked the Flight 175 pilots to scour the skies for the unresponsive American Flight 11. Saracini and Horrocks’s initial hunt for the American plane failed, but after a second request from air traffic control, at 8:38 a.m., the United pilots spotted the silver 767 five to ten miles away, two to three thousand feet below them.

  They reported their discovery, then followed the controller’s instructions to ease their jet 30 degrees to the right, to keep away from the American Airlines plane. Whatever was happening aboard Flight 11, Boston Center controllers continued to want other planes to give it wide berth.

  Saracini and Horrocks acknowledged the controller’s orders and turned Flight 175 to veer away from Flight 11. As they did, something nagged5 at the United pilots. They didn’t mention it to their Boston Center air traffic controllers, but shortly after taking flight, Saracini and Horrocks had heard a strange and troubling transmission on a radio frequency they shared with nearby planes, including Flight 11.

  Like American Flight 11, United Flight 175 had lots of empty seats, flying at about one-third capacity. The fifty-six passengers6 were in the hands of nine crew members: the two pilots plus seven flight attendants. Perhaps the biggest difference between the United and American flights to Los Angeles on the morning of September 11 was the sounds inside the cabins: only adults boarded Flight 11, while the high-pitched voices of young children rang through United 175.

  Heading home to California from a vacation on Cape Cod, three-year-old David Gamboa Brandhorst,7 who had a cleft chin and a deep love of Legos, sat in business class Row 8 between his fathers. To his left sat his serious “Papa,” Daniel Brandhorst,8 a lawyer and accountant. To his right sat his happy-go-lucky “Daddy,” Ronald Gamboa, manager of a Gap store in Santa Monica.

  Nestled in 26A and 26B of coach were Ruth Clifford McCourt and her four-year-old daughter, Juliana. They’d driven to the airport and spent the previous night with Ruth’s best friend and Juliana’s godmother, Paige Farley-Hackel, who was heading to Los Angeles aboard American Flight 11. Blond and big-eyed, with porcelain skin, Juliana loved creatures large and small. She’d tell anyone who’d listen that she had recently learned to ride a pony. That day she’d smuggled aboard9 an unticketed passenger: a green praying mantis she’d found in the garden of her family’s Connecticut home. It resided in an ornate little cage on Juliana’s lap, her companion for when they reached California. Her mother, Ruth, a striking woman who spoke with a trace of her native Ireland, carried a special item, too: a papal coin from her wedding at the Vatican, tucked safely into her Hermès wallet.

  The third little passenger of Flight 175 sat in Row 19: Lee and Eunice Hanson’s granddaughter, Christine Lee Hanson, flanked by Peter and Sue. Surrounding the Hansons and the other families on United Flight 175 were a mix of business and pleasure travelers.

  The Reverend Francis Grogan,10 heading west to visit his sister, occupied a first-class seat with a ticket given to him by a friend. After serving as a sonar expert on a Navy destroyer during World War II, Father Grogan had traded conflict for conciliation. He spent his life as a teacher, a chaplain, and a parish priest.

  In business class sat former pro hockey player Garnet “Ace” Bailey,11 a fierce competitor who spent ten seasons in the National Hockey League and won two Stanley Cups with the Boston Bruins in the 1970s. Hardly a delicate ice dancer, Bailey served a total of eleven hours12 in the penalty box during his bruising NHL career. At fifty-three, still tough, Ace Bailey had become director of scouting for the Los Angeles Kings of the NHL. He’d also cemented a relationship as friend and mentor to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, in part by helping Gretzky to overcome his fear of flying.13 When Ace wasn’t on the road, he treated his wife, Kathy, and son, Todd, to a dish he called “Bailey-baisse,” a medley of sautéed meats baked with onions and tomatoes. A few rows back, in coach, sat the Kings’ amateur scout, Mark Bavis, a former hockey standout at Boston University. Training camp would soon begin, and Bailey and Bavis were needed on the ice in Los Angeles.

  Retired nurse Touri Bolourchi14 expected to be home in Beverly Hills by the afternoon, after visiting her daughter and grandsons in Boston. An Iranian-born Muslim, she’d fled to the United States two decades earlier when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini closed the schools. Touri added to Flight 175’s international mix: also aboard were three German businessmen, an Israeli woman, and a British man.

  Among the crew members were two flight attendants in love: Michael Tarrou, a part-time musician, and Amy King,15 a onetime homecoming queen. They’d recently moved in together, and they had arranged to work the same flight so they could spend time together during a layover. All signs pointed to marriage.

  Two other flight attendants had recently switched careers: Alfred Marchand16 had turned in his badge and gun as a police officer to become a flight attendant a year earlier; and Robert Fangman17 had begun flying for United just eight months earlier. He gave up half his income and a job he hated, as a cellphone salesman, to follow his dream of international travel.

  Airplanes bring together people from different worlds and worldviews. On Flight 175, that held true for two strangers, Robert LeBlanc and Brian “Moose” Sweeney, one old, one young, one a pacifist, the other a U.S. Navy veteran of the Iraq War who considered himself a warrior and imagined himself to be the descendant of Vikings. The two men sat in window seats on opposite sides of the coach cabin.

  The previous day, with many miles ahead on a seven-hour drive, Robert LeBlanc gripped the steering wheel of his Audi sedan and prepared to pop the question. He was seventy years old, spry and fit, a snowy beard and tanned, craggy face giving him the look of an arctic explorer.

  After a weekend visiting Rochester, New York, Bob and his driving companion were headed home to the little town of Lee, New Hampshire. A retired professor, Bob would be leaving before dawn the next day, September 11, for a geography conference on the West Coast. Now he’d reached a decision: he knew how he wanted to spend his remaining seasons, and with whom. He turned toward the woman he loved.

  “I have a ten-year plan,”18 Bob said. “I know you might not be ready, but I want you with me.”

  Sitting in the passenger seat, Andrea LeBlanc understood what Bob was asking. After all, she’d been married to him for twenty-eight years. Bob hoped Andrea would dramatically scale back her busy veterinary practice so they could travel the world together. Bob’s ten-year plan involved “hard” trips to developing countries at the farthest corners of the globe, after which they’d ideally spend a decade visiting the “easy places.” That is, if Andrea would agree.

  Bob was asking a lot, and he knew it. Along with raising their children—two from her first marriage, three from Bob’s—Andrea’s Oyster River Veterinary Hospital had been her life’s work. Nearly fourteen years his junior, Andrea would have to choose between spending the bulk of her time with her four-legged patients or with her best friend. As they drove, Bob’s question hung in the air long enough for Andrea to consider the man she loved and the life they shared.

  Born in 1930, Bob grew up in the French Canadian neighborhood of Nashua, New Hampshire, at the time a spent mill city. A restless boy, he often rode his bicycle downtown to see trains pull in from Montreal. Bob grew fascinated by why people lived where they lived, and how their physical world shaped their culture, from language to music, religion to livelihood, relationships to diet.

  After high school, Bob enlisted in the Air Force. After a flirtation with geology at the University of New Hampshire, he earned a doctorate in cultural geography from the University of Minnesota. Then Bob returned to UNH as a professor and remained there for thirty-five years, until he retired in 1999. Along the way, he developed a reputation as a gifted teacher, frugal toward himself and generous toward others; a master cook who loved candlelit dinners; and a passionate traveler whose been-almost-everywhere map inclu
ded Nepal, Bhutan, China, Morocco, Peru, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Burma.

  On a 1999 trip to Java, Bob led Andrea to the world’s largest Buddhist temple, called Borobudur. While he explored, Andrea set off in search of a rare bas-relief panel that depicted the Buddha among animals. Ten Muslim teenagers followed her, inching closer in the hope of practicing their English. Eager to return to quiet contemplation and her search for the sculpture, she made a suggestion.

  “Go look for a man with a white beard,” Andrea told them. “That’s my husband. He’d love to talk with you.”

  Forty minutes later, as she neared an exit, she heard gales of laughter: Bob was leading an impromptu class, asking questions, drawing his new friends into his sphere. Andrea snapped a photograph of the Muslim teens squeezed against a smiling Bob.

  Two years earlier, in Chiapas, Mexico, they had watched as leftist Zapatista revolutionaries marched through the streets. Andrea asked Bob what drove the young men to take up arms. “When people aren’t heard long enough,” he said, “they’ll resort to violence.”

  During their just-completed weekend in Rochester, Andrea and her daughter Nissa had wandered around a craft fair. Andrea said: “It’s just so strange. I cannot even imagine being any happier.”

  “That is so weird,” Nissa said, stopping in her tracks. “Dad said the same thing to me last night.”

  In the car, drawing closer to home, Bob waited as Andrea weighed his question about their future travels together. Reflecting on the man behind the wheel, Andrea felt that he had given her so much, asking relatively little in return. She turned to Bob with her answer: “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  Bob woke before dawn to catch United Flight 175. As he left their bedroom, he promised Andrea that he’d call her that night. He put a copy of his California itinerary on the refrigerator, alongside newspaper clippings of recipes he intended to try. As he moved through the house, Bob looked sharp, his thick white hair freshly cut by Andrea the night before. On his desk were plans for no fewer than five trips, starting in ten days with leading a group of older travelers to Argentina, followed by jaunts to India and Norway.

  Waiting outside at 5 a.m. to drive him to Logan Airport was Bob’s daughter Carolyn. On the way, they became so lost in conversation they almost missed the exit.19 Bob loved airports the way some children love construction sites. Happy, he bounded into Terminal C, holding a boarding pass for seat 16G.

  On the other side of the aisle, the self-described warrior in 15A was named Brian David “Moose” Sweeney (no relation to Flight 11 flight attendant Amy Sweeney).

  Brian grew up in the little Massachusetts town of Spencer, where nothing much had happened since Elias Howe perfected the sewing machine there in 1846. He earned a football scholarship to Boston University, where opposing players noticed his bright blue eyes just before they saw stars.20 Known as Sweenz to his friends, Brian and a fellow lineman shared another nickname: the Twin Towers.

  After college, Brian searched fruitlessly for a challenge, until he saw an air show display by F-14 fighter jets.21 He enlisted in the Navy and graduated at the top of his class22 to become a naval aviator. Brian served in the Persian Gulf War, enforcing the “no-fly zones” in Iraq, then taught at the Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known by its movie title name, Top Gun. He convinced himself that generations earlier, Norse warrior blood had mixed with his Irish heritage, so he fashioned a two-bladed battle-ax and a Viking helmet, complete with horns. He wore it on Halloween and whenever the mood struck.

  While teaching at the Top Gun school, Brian twisted his neck during a flight maneuver and shattered two cervical disks, leaving him partially paralyzed while in midair. The military crash-and-burn team rushed out, but it left empty-handed when Brian somehow landed safely. Brian loved the Navy, but after surgery he faced an agonizing choice between a desk job and an honorable discharge. His commanding officer told him: “You have the heart of a warrior23 and the soul of a poet. You’ve proven your mettle as a warrior, now go find your spirit.” Brian stayed close to military service by working as an aeronautical systems consultant for defense contracting companies.

  In 1998, Brian strolled into a snooty Philadelphia bar crawling with Wall Street types in custom suits. At six feet three and a rugged 225 pounds, wearing jeans, a denim shirt, hiking boots, and a baseball cap, Brian stood out like a linebacker among jockeys. A fit, pretty young woman named Julie spotted him from across the bar. She told her friend: “That’s the kind of guy24 that I can marry and sit in front of a fireplace in the Poconos with, and be happy.” The attraction was mutual.

  Brian handed her a business card that read lt. brian “moose” sweeney—instructor, top gun fighter weapons school, miramar, calif. Julie thought it was a gag he used to impress women in bars. It was real, if somewhat dated. Julie was, in fact, impressed, and seven months later she became Mrs. Brian Sweeney.

  By the summer of 2001, Brian and Julie had bought a house in Barnstable on Cape Cod, where she’d been hired as a high school health teacher. They had two dogs, and their talks about parenthood had grown more frequent. More than two years into their marriage, the twenty-nine-year-old Julie remained awestruck by her thirty-eight-year-old husband. She admired his self-confidence; she loved how this large and powerful man had a gentle voice that calmed her; she treasured the way he made her feel safe; she marveled at the practical intelligence that enabled him to build a house, while his spiritual side gave him peaceful assurance about an afterlife.

  During the weeks before September 11, they’d talked about death. Brian told Julie that if he died, she should throw a party. “You celebrate life,”25 he said. “You invite all my friends and you drink Captain Morgan and you live. And if you find somebody, you remarry. I won’t be angry or jealous or whatever.”

  Julie looked straight back at him and said: “Well, listen, if I ever die, you are not to do any of that. You are not to find anybody else.”

  Brian laughed. “Someday you’ll figure that out.”

  Brian traveled to California for work one week per month, regularly aboard United Flight 175. He’d normally be gone Monday through Friday, but he’d decided to extend his summer weekend and instead leave on Tuesday, September 11.

  The night before the flight, they ate Chinese food, then Brian gave himself a haircut before starting to pack. Several weeks earlier, Brian found a photograph of Julie when she was five years old, with wet hair and a goofy smile. “This is the sweetest picture I’ve ever seen of you,” Brian told her when he discovered it. While Brian packed, Julie sneaked the photo into his suitcase, so he’d find it again when he reached California.

  The morning of September 11, Julie drove Brian to the Cape Cod airport in Hyannis for a connecting flight to Boston. He was dressed in the same “Sweeney uniform” of jeans, denim shirt, work boots, and baseball cap he’d worn when they met. Brian kissed Julie, then surprised her with news that he’d be back a day early, so they could spend the last summer weekend together.

  Amid the families, business travelers, and tourists were five Middle Eastern men who fit none of those categories. They selected seats almost exactly in the pattern Mohamed Atta and his four collaborators used aboard American Flight 11. Once again, the tactical arrangement placed members of their group close to the cockpit, while others could cover both aisles if anyone came forward to challenge them from the rear of the plane.

  The first two to board United Flight 175 were Fayez Banihammad, of the United Arab Emirates, and Mohand al-Shehri, from Saudi Arabia, who sat in first-class seats 2A and 2B. Four weeks earlier, Banihammad had bought a multitool26 with a short blade, called a Stanley Two-Piece Snap-Knife Set.

  Next came Marwan al-Shehhi, the native of the United Arab Emirates who’d met Atta and Jarrah in Hamburg and traveled with them to the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and then to Florida for flight training. Nine months earlier, Shehhi had received his FAA commercial pilot certificate27 at the same flight school, on the same day, as Atta, who sometimes
referred to Shehhi as his “cousin.”28 On the same day as Banihammad’s knife purchase, in the same city, Shehhi had bought two short-bladed knives,29 one called a Cliphanger Viper and the other called an Imperial Tradesman Dual Edge.

  Shehhi seemed the most likely person to have made the 6:52 a.m. call to Atta’s cellphone. The call was made from Logan’s Terminal C, from a pay phone located between the security screening checkpoint and the departure gate for Flight 175. Based on location and timing, the three-minute call to Atta might have been a final confirmation30 that they were ready to move forward with their plan.

  When he reached the plane, Shehhi sat in the middle of business class, in seat 6C, just as Atta had chosen a seat in the middle of business class on Flight 11.

  The last two to board Flight 175, Ahmed al-Ghamdi and Hamza al-Ghamdi, possibly cousins, came from the same small town in Saudi Arabia. Hamza al-Ghamdi had purchased a Leatherman Wave multitool the same day and in the same city where Banihammad and Shehhi had purchased their knives. Whether they carried those particular knives aboard Flight 175 isn’t known.

  Hamza al-Ghamdi apparently took to heart the instruction in the handwritten Arabic letter to “wear cologne.” Earlier that morning, his overbearing fragrance31 had made a lasting, unpleasant impression on the desk clerk when he checked out of the off-brand Days Hotel, a few miles from the airport. He made no better impression on the cabdriver who drove them to the airport when he left a fifteen-cent tip.32

  Upon their arrival at Logan’s United Airlines ticket counter shortly before 7 a.m., the Ghamdis had seemed confused.33 One told a customer service agent that he thought he needed to buy a ticket for the flight, not realizing that he already had one. Both had limited English skills, so they had difficulty answering standard security questions about unattended bags and dangerous items. The customer service agent repeated the questions slowly, and the Ghamdis eventually gave acceptable answers. Aboard Flight 175, the Ghamdis sat together in the last row of business class, in the center two seats, 9C and 9D.