Glenn Beck - Miracles and Massacres - True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

“Yes, Jer. Planes have crashed into both,” Lyz said.

Glick was silent a moment, stifling a sob as he soaked in the full magnitude of what was happening.

“You need to be strong, Jer,” Lyz said.

“I know.” But at that moment Glick wasn’t thinking about himself. “I just need you to be happy,” he said. “I love you and Emmy so much.”

They spoke quietly for a few more minutes, professing their love for one another. Then Glick said, “Whatever decisions you make in your life, no matter what, I will support you.” It was the ultimate act of love: having the courage to see past his immediate danger and into his family’s future.

“We’re taking a vote to rush the hijackers,” he said. “Do you think the bomb is real?”

“No. I think they’re bluffing. I think you need to do it. You’re strong. You’re brave. I love you,” Lyz said.

A long pause.

“I think we’re going to do it. I’m going to put the phone down. I’m going to leave it here and come right back to it.”

Glick and the other men who voted to overtake the hijackers huddled and introduced themselves to each other: Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, and Tom Burnett.

Glick was listening for skill sets as the men spoke. Bingham played rugby, Burnett was a quarterback in college, and Beamer played baseball. Good, four athletes , he thought.

Glick saw Beamer go back to his seat and pick up the air phone he’d left hanging. He spoke into the receiver for a moment and then turned to Glick and the other two men. “You guys ready? Let’s roll.”

Kandahar, Afghanistan

September 11, 2001

Qahtani paced nervously. The television room in the guesthouse was still full of revelers rejoicing in Al Qaeda’s successful attack on America.

Yet, there still had been no word on United Flight 93. And then, hours later—it finally came: a breaking report from Al Jazeera. An airliner had crashed in a farmer’s field in someplace called Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

“The initial reports,” the anchor said, “are that passengers of United Flight 93 overpowered the hijackers, preventing them from striking their intended target, which is believed to be either the White House or the U.S. Capitol.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed turned toward Qahtani and said, “You stupid Bedouin.”

As he lost control and began to sob, Qahtani ran from the guesthouse and hid inside one of the tunnels of the obstacle course. He hugged his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth inside the sweltering culvert. The encounter at the Orlando airport five weeks earlier kept running through his mind.

Nineteen others had made it. He had not. Bin Laden and Zawahiri had recruited him, selected him, and trusted him.

And he had failed.

Tora Bora Mountains, Afghanistan

Three months later: December 2001

After the reports of United Flight 93 reached the training camp, Qahtani thought he would be killed immediately to send a message to the other fighters. “Each plane with five men was successful,” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had said. “The one plane with four men—the one you should have been on—was not. So you tell me, Qahtani, what should be the price for your failure?”

He expected death, but what he got instead was a one-way ticket to Tora Bora to fight the Americans. Now, cowering with thirty others in a dark cave, he sat, waiting for the moment that an American daisy-cutter bomb would carry out the sentence he’d been spared just months earlier.

But the bomb never came.

A few days into his stay in the mountains, Qahtani’s commander gathered the men. “Our position has been compromised,” he said. “The Americans and Northern Alliance are just over the ridge. We must go.” They left the cave in a rush and fled toward Pakistan.

Less than thirty minutes after their departure, Qahtani saw the explosion before he heard the sound. Their cave had taken a direct hit from an American bomb.

• • •

Hours later, as night fell, Qahtani heard machine-gun fire in the distance, followed by the thump of two mortars. The echoes of combat reverberated from the mountains onto the valley floor near Parachinar, Pakistan. The Americans were closing in from the north.

He pressed forward quickly through the narrow streambed. The other fighters followed behind him in single file, sometimes turning to spray random rifle fire at the advancing enemy.

With his senses deadened from lack of food and sleep, Qahtani at first missed the noise. By the time he realized that he was hearing engines idling, they were too close. And it was too late.

Automatic weapon fire began to ping overhead as armored vehicles closed in around them. Qahtani’s first instinct was to flee. He ran toward a canyon about a hundred yards away. Reminded of his escape from Panjshir, he was encouraged. This was an opportunity for redemption directly from Allah. He may have failed in Orlando, but he would not fail here.

The thought was just beginning to take hold in his mind when he was tackled from behind and handcuffed by a group of Pakistani soldiers. He and his comrades were dragged along the ground and loaded onto the backs of several trucks.

The soldiers placed a burlap bag over his head and he was soon transferred to the Americans. He heard their voices. Crisp and authoritative. He felt someone with large hands grab his fingers. One by one they were pressed into something soft and cold and then rolled from side to side.

Camp X-Ray

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

January 2002

Sergeant Raul Romeo watched the military C-17 Globemaster airplane taxi and then drop its ramp. Military personnel escorted the prisoner onto the hot tarmac. The man wore an orange jumpsuit, white shoes, black socks, earmuffs, and a black cloth over his eyes.

An experienced interrogator, Romeo was excited about the inbound package. He was a fresh capture and rumored to be a highly placed Al Qaeda operative. He waited with his hands clasped behind his back until the man was directly in front of him.

“This is prisoner number 063,” the escort said. “Says he was in Afghanistan as a falconry expert.”

Romeo smiled. “Falconry? That’s what they all say.”

The handler returned the grin. “He was captured with an AK-47 and twenty-nine of his best falconry buddies.”

For all the details the handler seemed to know about this man, he still could not answer the most basic question: What is his name ?

Camp X-Ray

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Ten months later: November 17, 2002

On a warm November morning, Sergeant Romeo’s commander called him into his office. Romeo reported with a sharp salute. “Sergeant Romeo reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Two things,” the major said. “Look at this.”

Romeo took the piece of paper from his commander and saw that he was looking at a fingerprint analysis between a set of prints taken on August 4, 2001, at Orlando International Airport and a set taken in December 2001 in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

“Your guy was the twentieth hijacker,” the major said.

Romeo read the report and looked up. He and his friends had heard all of the speculation about a missing hijacker, but it had just been rumor.

The major continued, “Detainee 063 is Mohammed al Qahtani. Nothing he has told us since he’s been here is true.”

Sergeant Romeo gathered himself. “You said there were two things.”

“Right,” the major replied, handing him another sheet of paper. “New interrogation techniques, hot off the press—and approved all the way up the food chain. How’s that for timing?”

Romeo scanned the sheet. Restraint on a swivel chair, deprivation of sleep, loud music, prohibition of praying, threats of rendition to countries that torture .