Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

To Derek Brogan, McCabe’s companion, it “looked like it was raining bodies.” The bodies spelled danger. “We started to get hit,” said Lieutenant Steve Turilli. “You would get hit by an arm or a leg and it felt like a metal pole was hitting you. It was like a war zone.”

Cascading humanity.

JUST FORTY-NINE MINUTES had passed since the hijacking aboard Flight 11 had begun, seventeen since the great airplane roared over Manhattan to bring mayhem and murder to the North Tower. Now, in the sky high above the carnage, a police helicopter pilot spotted something astounding. “Christ!” he shouted into the microphone. “There’s a second plane crashing …”

THREE

“WE HAVE SOME PLANES. ”

More than three quarters of an hour earlier, as air traffic controller Pete Zalewski tried to get a response from the hijacked Flight 11, he had suddenly heard an unfamiliar voice on the frequency—a man’s voice, with an Arabic accent. Zalewski had trouble making out the words, but moments later a second, clearer transmission persuaded him and colleagues that a hijack was under way. The hijacker, they would conclude, had been trying to address the passengers and—unfamiliar with the equipment—inadvertently transmitted to ground control instead.

A quality assurance specialist then pulled the tape, listened very carefully, and figured out what the Arabic voice had said on the initial, indistinct transmission. “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport.”

This was a giveaway that—had the U.S. military been able to intervene in time—could have wrecked the operation. The hijackers had seized not two but four airplanes. What remained unknown, until even later, was that there may have been plans to seize even more.

AS AMERICA’S FLIGHT 11 had been boarding, United Airlines Flight 175—also departing from Boston—had been readying for takeoff. Copilot Michael Horrocks, a former Marine, called his wife about then, joking that he was flying that day with “some guy with a funny Italian name.” Flight 175’s captain was Victor Saracini, a veteran like Flight 11’s Ogonowski. The team of flight attendants included Kathrryn Laborie and Alfred Marchand—a former police officer—in First Class; Robert Fangman in Business; and Amy King and Michael Tarrou—a couple thinking of getting married—in Coach.

Their fifty-six passengers were the usual mix: a computer expert, a scout for the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, a commercials producer, a senior marketer for a software company, a systems consultant for the Defense Department. There were also foreigners: three Germans, an Israeli, a British man, and an Irish woman—and five young Arabs, three Saudis and two Emiratis. All the Arabs had booked seats in First or Business Class.

As they had in the case of Flight 11, ground staff were to recall odd details about the passengers from the Middle East. Two Arabs bungled the boarding process—one of them boarded using his companion’s boarding card, and a new one had to be printed. One man asked twice in poor English if he could purchase a ticket, when he already had one. Two waiting passengers, possibly the same man and a companion, behaved strangely at the gate ticket counter. They stood in line, only to walk away on reaching the counter, line up again, and walk away again. In all, they went through the process three times. They seemed nervous, “looked down at the ground as if they were attempting to avoid eye contact.” Nevertheless, they both eventually boarded successfully.

Captain Saracini took United Flight 175 into the air before 8:15 and climbed steadily to 31,000 feet. Twenty-three minutes into the flight, a controller looking for the missing Flight 11 asked him and his copilot to see if they could spot it. They did, and were told to stay out of its way. Three minutes later, as 175 entered New York airspace, Saracini came on the air to report to controller Dave Bottiglia:

S

ARACINI

: We figured we’d wait to go to you[r] Center. Ah, we heard a suspicious transmission on our departure out of Boston, ah … sound[ed] like someone keyed the mike and, ah, said, ah, “Everyone, stay in your seats.”

B

OTTIGLIA:

Oh, okay. I’ll pass that along …

Saracini had probably decided to wait a while before reporting the suspect transmission from Flight 11 because—surmising that it indicated a hijack—he wanted to avoid being overheard. United passengers using headsets could listen in on the cockpit chatter simply by listening to Channel 9—it was a form of entertainment. It is possible that on Saracini’s plane, unbeknownst to him, some of those listening in were the men planning to hijack the aircraft.

Whether or not they overheard the cockpit chatter, hijackers struck Flight 175 within five minutes of the captain’s report about the sinister transmission. At 8:47 the transponder code—the signal that identifies an aircraft—changed twice in the space of a minute. Four minutes later, when ground control asked the pilots to readjust the transponder, there was no response. In the same minute, the airplane deviated from its assigned altitude, climbed, and then—near Allentown, Pennsylvania—began a turn to the southeast. Pilots Saracini and Horrocks were silent now.

Others on board found a way to communicate. Five minutes after the change of course, the phone rang at Starfix, a United facility in California assigned to handle crew calls about minor maintenance problems. The mechanic who took the call, Marc Policastro, found himself talking to a male flight attendant aboard Flight 175, probably Robert Fangman. He said the flight had been hijacked, the pilots killed.

On another phone, a passenger named Peter Hanson got through to his parents’ home in Connecticut. He described the hijack, speaking in low tones as his father made notes. “I think they’ve taken over the cockpit,” Hanson said. “An attendant has been stabbed. Someone else up front may have been killed. The plane is making strange moves.”

On the ground at New York Center, the silence from 175 by now had controller Dave Bottiglia thoroughly alarmed. He alerted an air traffic manager, Mike McCormick. The turn Flight 175 had been making became a U-turn, until the plane was pointed directly at New York City. “We might,” Bottiglia heard McCormick say, “have multiple hijacks.”

At 8:58, another phone began ringing. Passenger Brian Sweeney, the Defense Department consultant on the plane, was trying to reach his wife, Julie, in Massachusetts. She was a teacher, already at school, so he left a voice message. “Hey Jules, it’s Brian. I’m on a plane and it’s hijacked, and it doesn’t look good. I just wanted to let you know that I love you, and I hope to see you again. If I don’t, please have fun in life. Please be happy. Please live your life. That’s an order.”

Sweeney, a former Navy lieutenant who had taught at the Top Gun Fighter Weapons School, did get through to his mother, Louise—with a very different sort of message. He and other passengers, he said, were thinking of storming the cockpit. “I might have to hang up quickly, we’re going to try to do something about this.”

Peter Hanson, meanwhile, managed another call to tell his father, who again made notes: “It’s getting bad, Dad … They seem to have knives and Mace. They said they have a bomb. It’s getting very bad on the plane. Passengers are throwing up … The plane is making jerky movements … I think we are going down … Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll be very fast.”

Hanson Sr. had heard a woman’s scream in the background. His son said, “My God! My God! …” Then the call ended.