Jones lined his plane up behind Flight 143 with the other F-15. The commercial jet was descending steeply – far more steeply than it should be. It looked like it was down to around 5,000 feet and still dropping. Jones knew the hijackers had told passengers they planned to land the plane at Kennedy, so he couldn’t understand why he’d received orders to shoot the plane down. He had said he was ready to fire, but every fiber in his body twisted at that idea. He knew that a direct hit on the jet from his AIM-7F/M missile would tear that plane apart, causing fiery death for what had to be at least 150 passengers and crew. Businesspeople heading to work; families off to visit relatives; grandparents on vacation. All just innocently taking a trip. All in the direct sights of his weapon. His military mind was trained to simply follow orders, but the civilian inside him wondered what in the world the Defense Secretary could be thinking. “Holy shit,” he whispered to himself as he locked in on the target and prepared to fire if ordered. He hoped he wouldn’t have to. His hands shook and every muscle in his body pulled tight.
• • •
Back in Harry’s office, Harry listened to the radio transmissions as Virgil fumbled with his phone, dialing frantically.
“Pilots, state your positions,” came the order from NMCC.
“We’re about 15 miles out from the city, 3,000 feet up,” the F-15 pilot radioed. “We’re heading right for Manhattan.”
• • •
Just after 5 p.m., German time, the cell phone Alev had forgotten about began to ring. She wasn’t in her apartment – she was coming up the stairs on her way back from work – she had the 7 to 4 shift. She unlocked her door and heard the unfamiliar sound, trying to place it. Then she remembered and froze. Should she get it? It must be the American government – no one else had this number.
She stood in the doorway, trying to decide what to do. The phone kept ringing, and robotically she paced across the room and picked it up.
“Hello?” she whispered, heart pounding.
The voice on the other end sounded surprised and breathless.
“Thank God you answered!” the male voice said. “This is Virgil Walker, with the U.S. government. We have a hijack situation here! You called us several weeks ago warning of a possible attack. Do you know Hani Hanjour or Ziad Jarrah?”
Alev fell to her knees in the middle of her room. “Hello? Hello? Talk to me!” the voice on the phone sputtered as she knelt there, her unseeing eyes on the blank wall in front of her.
Guilt and shame flooded her body. Ziad had indeed gotten wrapped up in something dangerous, and she hadn’t tried to stop him. She fought the urge to press the end button and throw the phone across the room. She summoned her reserves of courage and spoke into the phone.
“My name is Alev. I’m Ziad’s girlfriend,” she said quietly.
“Look – there’s no time for any formalities,” Virgil’s voice said. “We believe your boyfriend is one of the hijackers. Can you get in touch with him? Could you do anything to stop him?”
Alev closed her eyes. This all seemed like a dream.
“I can try,” she said.
“Stay on – don’t go anywhere!” came the voice on the other end. She heard conversation as the caller talked to someone else in the room. She couldn’t catch anything but a few words. Then the caller came back.
“Do you have Ziad’s cell phone number?” the voice said.
“Yes,” Alev replied. She had it memorized.
“OK – here’s the situation,” Virgil said. He spoke for a moment and then fell silent. “Well?” he asked after a few more seconds.
“I’ll try,” she replied.
• • •
In the cockpit of Flight 143, things continued to go smoothly. Jarrah and Hanjour no longer could see the fighter planes, but assumed they were being followed. Even so, they weren’t worried too much. No one knew their intentions, so no one would stop them.
The altimeter showed 2,500 feet, and the plane was about 10 miles across the harbor from the towers. Hanjour aimed straight for the north tower, with its antenna. That was the one the Jews had made condominiums out of, which so amused the Director. “Allahu Akbar, Allah is the greatest,” Hanjour chanted methodically, and for once, Jarrah felt the call of his religion. Maybe it was death approaching just moments away, but Jarrah took up the chant as well, and found it very soothing. “Allahu Akbar, Allah is the greatest,” they both chanted, as Hanjour continued edging the plane lower. Two thousand feet, 1,500 feet…
Jarrah’s cell phone rang. Distracted by the sound, Jarrah stopped praying, grabbed the phone and glanced at the number displayed on the screen. It was a familiar one.
“What’s going on?” Hanjour asked, turning toward him. “What are you doing? Is it the Director?” Out the window, the towers loomed, several miles ahead.
Jarrah glanced back at Hanjour. “No…not the Director,” he said. “It’s Alev.”
“You can’t talk to her – don’t answer!” Hanjour tried to grab the phone from Jarrah. The plane dipped as Hanjour’s hands momentarily left the wheel. From behind them in the cabin came muffled screams through the cockpit door. Someone pounded on the door again. More than one person, from the sound of it. “Let us in!” came a yell.
The phone kept ringing and Jarrah clutched it tightly. Hanjour kept trying to paw it away, and instinctively, Jarrah pushed Hanjour back and Hanjour fell half off his seat, wedged between the seat and the wall panel, cursing, the plane swerving. As he’d pushed Hanjour with his left hand, Jarrah’s fingers on his right hand brushed against the answer button.
“Ziad? This is Alev. Can you hear me?” Jarrah and Hanjour heard the disembodied voice in speaker mode coming from the phone even as Hanjour struggled to get back into his seat. The plane – with no one in control, continued to dip and weave. The pounding on the door and screams from the cabin grew louder, more persistent.
“Ziad,” Alev’s voice said. “Please don’t hurt anyone. Land the plane safely.”
“No!” Hanjour cried, fumbling to re-settle into his seat and reaching for the controls.
“Ziad, can you hear me?” Alev asked in her sweetest voice. “Ziad, remember, I told you you’re not like those other ones, the ones who hate everybody. You’re just not. Please don’t hurt anyone.” Jarrah froze in his seat. The voice took him back to the restaurant meal in Chicago, his bedroom. For a moment, he was there, not in the cockpit of a plane descending toward its target. Toward death.
“Put the phone down!” Hanjour screamed. “We must kill them all! It’s Allah’s will!” He used one hand to control the plane and with the other began reaching toward Jarrah, once again trying to grab the phone.
Hanjour managed to pull the plane up out of its dive even as he struggled for the phone. They were about 1,000 feet above New York Harbor, rapidly approaching the towers just a few miles away. In less than a minute, their mission would be accomplished.
In the cockpit, Alev’s voice continued to plead. The plane arched through the sky, directly on course to hit the tower.
The struggle in the cockpit continued. Images flashed through Jarrah’s mind as he fought with Hanjour, whose free hand stayed on the wheel, keeping the plane flying nearly straight. He saw the Director’s stern face, frowning, disapproving, and he flinched subconsciously at the memory. Then he saw his bedroom, the morning Alev had left. He could almost smell her perfume. He was back in his cab, watching through the mirror as the elderly couple held hands. Alev’s voice brought all this back to him, and suddenly he felt a desire not only to live, but a revulsion at the horror he was perpetrating and at those who’d led him to this point. What was he doing here? Why was he hurting people? Who was he, really? The smell of the dead co-pilot’s blood penetrated his senses, and he grunted a moan of disgust at his own actions, even as he pulled the phone out of Hanjour’s hands. “Please, Ziad,” Alev’s voice pleaded. “You’re a good person; I know it.”
Jarrah lifted the phone and brought it down forcefully on Hanjo
ur’s head. Alev’s voice abruptly got cut off. A glut of blood shot from Hanjour’s skull and he went limp. His hand fell off the wheel. Jarrah grabbed it and started to steer the plane away from the tower.
• • •
From his perch high up in the North Tower, Pete Gladstone stood admiring the expansive view from his luxury apartment. He’d earlier done a quick walk-through of the condos, glad-handing the new celebrity residents and inviting them to join him later for a “move-in luncheon” in the tower’s 106th-floor conference center. Already, caterers scurried around preparing for what would be a glittery affair, adding to the numbers of people already clogging the hallways. The new residents were busy directing entire crews of workers to this place here and that one there in their luxury suites.
Everything was perfect.
He sipped a second hot espresso from a delicate porcelain cup, his eyes sweeping along the waterfront and then up to the sky. At first he wasn’t sure what he saw. He’d seen the high silhouettes of numerous aircraft passing overhead in the past, but this couldn’t be an aircraft, it was too low. Then he realized he was staring straight at the nose and wings of a jet airliner dead ahead!
His mouth dropped wide open and his espresso trembled in his hand, spilling hot drops onto his fingers, as he watched the 737 approach, heading straight for his apartment. He tried to scream but nothing came out.
• • •
“They’re less than two miles away from downtown,” the lead pilot reported to Harry. “They’re over the harbor. Heading right for the towers.”
“Where is it headed? Direct line of site,” Harry barked.
“Sir… the pilot’s voice held a quiver as he reported, “they’re heading straight for the World Trade Center’s North Tower.”
Harry turned to Virgil and shook his head. “Nothing more we can do, Virgil,” he said. “Sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Fire on the plane,” Harry ordered.
“Understood. Firing on the plane,” the F-15 pilot replied.
Virgil slumped into a chair, a hand over his wide-open mouth. This isn’t happening, he thought.
• • •
As Jarrah struggled to turn the plane away from the towers, he saw a flash of light – the brightest light he’d ever seen - and heard the loudest noise he’d ever imagined. The noise and light seemed to explode in his head. Then he was in the air, alone, flying, a rush of wind in his face. Something hit his head, he blacked out, and never woke up.
There were no survivors as the 737 exploded 1,000 feet above New York Harbor in a massive ball of fire. It took weeks to recover all the bodies. But the towers and the 20,000 people inside them were safe.
Epilogue
When recovery crews fished the plane’s black boxes from the shallow harbor bottom, they listened to the cockpit voice recordings, which made clear that the terrorists had targeted the World Trade Center. Etched in history would forever be the words, “I see them! The towers! We’re on target! We’re going to destroy the infidels’ monument!” Five years after the original Al-Qaeda operation to destroy the two buildings had failed, the world finally realized what the terrorists had been up to. It was a new era, with iconic U.S. buildings under threat. Measures that should have been taken five years earlier – such as installing air marshals on jet planes, forcing ground crews to go through metal detectors and treating hijackings as potential suicide bombing attempts – all went into effect.
Hardaway, the rogue BWI security officer who placed the weapons on the plane, ran from law enforcement but eventually got tracked down and arrested at a New Jersey casino, where he was trying to convert the few leftover dollars he had from the terrorists into enough money for a flight to South America. He received 20 years in prison for aiding and abetting terrorism, but escaped the prosecution’s murder charges.
Hanjour’s and Jarrah’s shredded remains received Muslim burials in unmarked graves in New York City’s potters field. No one knew, or would have cared, if they’d learned of Jarrah’s last minute change of heart and his decision to steer the plane away from the towers. It would always remain a mystery to Jarrah’s family and friends how the talented, fun-loving man had ended up in a terror operation.
President Bush and Defense Secretary Harry Deaver received high praise for their calm, intelligent approach to dealing with the hijacking, and the F-15 pilots, in particular, received commendation for their actions. But it was bittersweet, because the nation knew that its leaders, in order to prevent thousands of deaths, had caused hundreds. The victims of Flight 143 received heroes’ funerals, and flags flew at half-mast for weeks.
Alev’s and Nancy’s roles in trying to prevent the terror act never became publicly known.
March, 2007, Washington, D.C.
It was a gorgeous, sunny spring day, and the cherry blossoms had started to bloom near the Potomac. Virgil Walker, recovering from his hip surgery, was walking with crutches along the hiking path that meandered between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, being passed again and again by young joggers and bikers, as well as swarming crowds of tourists carrying brochures and wearing baseball caps. A light breeze blew from the river, tickling Virgil’s neck as he walked. He was thinking about Nancy, who had recovered from her wound and been welcomed back to her old job at The New York Times. Her family had never forgiven him and Harry for the raid, and Virgil couldn’t blame them or the other victims’ families for their anger. None of them would probably ever understand how the raid may have actually saved far more lives than it took, thanks in part to Nancy’s shrewd observations as a hostage.
After the thwarted terrorist attack of Jan. 9, Virgil decided to get his surgery over with while he still could do it on the government’s dime. No one except Harry knew his role in combatting the events of that horrible day, but that didn’t bother Virgil too much. He’d never been one to seek glory. And anyway, he didn’t consider his job over – yet. The shadowy figure who had planned the hijacking was still out there somewhere. Khaleed Sheikh Mohammed. They’d scoured Pakistan and Afghanistan for the man, and were now searching Iraq, figuring he must be holed up in one of those countries. They’d found traces of his presence in Karachi, but the evidence was rather old and dusty. He seemed to have left Pakistan some time ago, but they couldn’t determine where he had gone. Virgil didn’t intend to rest until he found the son of a bitch. This operation on his hip was just a minor hitch in the plan. He’d be back in the office, working seven days a week, as soon as he was able. He thought again about his son’s advice to get a hobby, and realized he had one. His hobby was tracking terrorists. Not a bad one to have, and certainly not a waste of time. At least Harry appreciated him.
Now, as he walked along the path, his cell phone rang. He stopped and looked at the familiar number as joggers scampered past him. He paused for a moment, thinking, and then pressed the answer key.
“Mr. Walker, it’s Alev,” the voice on the other end said.
“Yes, Alev, I know,” Virgil replied. He walked to a nearby park bench and sat down. “I’m glad we finally got back in touch.”
“I know,” said Alev. She paused for a moment. “I’m…I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I’m so sorry about what happened that day.”
“You did your best, Alev,” Virgil replied. “From what we could tell, the plane started turning away from the buildings at the last moment, but by then it was too late.”
Alev looked out the window from her apartment at the evening traffic rolling by. But her head was in another place, thinking back to that phone call on Jan. 9. She’d heard someone’s voice yelling at Jarrah to end the call, along with the noise of engines and screams in the background. Screams that haunted her every night and would for the rest of her life.
“Do you really think Jarrah tried to turn the plane away because of me?” she finally asked.
“Well, we can’t be absolutely sure,” Virgil replied. “But that’s my belief. Please, try to rest easy. I know you feel this was
all your fault, but it wasn’t. There really wasn’t much more you could have done.” Deep inside, he felt a bit differently, of course. If Alev had followed through on her initial call several weeks before the hijacking, perhaps he and Harry could have tracked down the terrorists and prevented it. But it was no use rehashing what he was sure Alev already knew.
“It helps to know that,” Alev said, and now tears flowed down her face as she talked. “You must believe me – Ziad was a good man. He was good. Down deep. Those men – they polluted him with their ideas. He wanted very much to please them. More than he wanted to please me.”
“Until the very end, and then he changed his mind,” Virgil replied. “Rest easy, Alev. I’m here if you ever want to talk.”
Alev put down the phone and sat on her couch, head in hands, weeping.
Spring 2007 – New York City
The bodies had all been pulled from the wreckage at the bottom of the harbor; the aircraft parts lifted out by cranes. New Yorkers now knew just how close they’d come – not once, but twice – to epoch disaster. Once this year and once in 2001. Never again would living in New York feel quite the same. Everyone felt watchful. Real estate prices plunged, particularly in the most prominent skyscrapers. Gladstone’s $100 million WTC penthouse wouldn’t sell, and eventually the price was cut in half. Finally, it was snapped up by a Chinese billionaire, but he never moved in. The purchase was only for show. Gladstone kept his own condo, but he never could look out the windows again without remembering the helpless, shocked feeling he’d had that morning when the plane headed for his tower exploded into flames and plunged into the harbor in pieces.
Though the people of the city had changed, the skyline remained the same as ever. The two World Trade Towers remained in their prominent place near the tip of the island, still sentinels over the harbor, unbreakable despite three terrorist attempts to take them down. Perhaps they would continue to loom over the city for many decades and perhaps even centuries to come – who knows what eventually happens to 110-story skyscrapers? Could such an edifice ever be torn down? Maybe. Or perhaps global warming would eventually raise the waters of New York Harbor, flooding downtown Manhattan and leaving its buildings empty, with the tallest just peaking above the waves in some future century. If that were to happen, the two towers could be the last buildings to disappear before joining their brothers in a watery grave.
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