Fall and Rise

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  Then came the words, “Stop, stop, stop, stop!”

  Someone pleaded, “No! No, no, no, no!” And again, “No, no, no, no!”

  A hijacker answered: “Down! Go ahead, lie down. Lie down! Down, down, down!”

  The back-and-forth continued with shouted demands—“Down, down, down!”—and desperate pleas—“No more. . . . no more.”

  At 9:34 a.m., the recorder captured the voice of a native English-speaking woman,20 possibly one of the first-class flight attendants. She beseeched her abusers: “Please, please, please . . .”

  A hijacker shouted: “Down!”

  “Please, please, don’t hurt me,” she moaned.21

  “Down! . . . No more.”

  The woman cried out: “Oh God!”

  “Down, down, down!” a hijacker answered.

  “Sit down!” said Jarrah.

  “Shut up!” said another hijacker.

  More commands followed. With them came the sounds of a warning bell that indicated Jarrah was trying to disconnect the autopilot, to change the plane’s destination to one of his choosing. A knock on the cockpit door by another hijacker briefly interrupted the abuse. Jarrah answered in Arabic: “One moment, one moment.”

  Then, “No more.”

  Then, “Down, down, down!”

  Someone begged, “No, no, no, no, no, no . . .”

  The answer came: “Sit down, sit down, sit down!”

  “Down!”

  “Sit down! Sit down! You know, sit down!”

  Next came a question from the woman that might have indicated that she wasn’t the only hostage in the cockpit. She asked, “Are you talking to me?”

  The answer: “Down, down, down, down!”

  Almost four minutes into the assault, the woman pleaded for her life: “I don’t want to die!”

  But the hijackers had decided her fate.

  “No, no. Down, down!” one of the terrorists answered.

  “I don’t want to die,” the woman repeated. “I don’t want to die.”

  “No, no. . . . Down, down, down, down, down, down.”

  She pleaded again, “No, no, please.”

  A snap reverberated in the cockpit, captured on the voice recorder.

  The woman cried.

  “No!”

  Her crying continued. She struggled for her life. Ten seconds passed, then twenty, then thirty. More than a minute went by after the woman began to cry, the longest gap without anyone speaking in the cockpit. Finally, in Arabic, Jarrah broke the silence. He said, “That’s it. Go back.” Then, in English, “Back.”

  “That’s it!” a hijacker, possibly Jarrah, said in Arabic. Then, in English, he gave an indication that the hostage still refused to surrender: “Sit down!”

  Nine minutes had passed since the takeover of United Flight 93. At 9:37 a.m., a hijacker reported in Arabic that they wouldn’t have any more problems from their hostage: “Everything is fine. I finished.”

  The woman’s voice wasn’t heard again.

  In the final section of the four-page instruction letter in the hijackers’ possession, a passage read:

  [A]pply to them the prisoners law. Take prisoners and kill them.

  As the Sublime said, “There is not a prophet who takes prisoners

  And goes forth with them on the earth.”

  Beyond Flight 93, chaos reigned. The violent silencing of the woman in the cockpit coincided with the moment that American Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. President Bush was en route to the airport in Sarasota, Florida, and Vice President Cheney had almost reached the entrance to the emergency bunker under the White House. Major Kevin Nasypany and his team at NEADS struggled to position fighter jets to find hijacked planes and to protect and defend against more disaster. The North Tower of the World Trade Center had been burning for nearly an hour, the South Tower for more than a half hour. Ron Clifford, the businessman in the yellow tie waiting for his big meeting at the North Tower, had already become a hero, but he didn’t yet know that tragedy had struck closer than he could have imagined.

  Police and other first responders streamed toward Lower Manhattan, while Twin Tower workers rushed down stairwells and fled uptown or toward bridges and waiting ferries. Grim-faced, determined, burdened by gear and buoyed by a rescuer’s code, scores of New York firefighters climbed the stairs of both towers, helping those they could, even as some trapped workers on upper floors jumped or fell to their deaths, or floated a plea for help in a note tossed from a broken window, or made desperate phone calls seeking rescue or solace.

  Amid the apparent murder of the woman in the cockpit, terrorist pilot Ziad Jarrah pulled back the control wheel and brought the plane into a climb, reaching 40,700 feet.22 He dipped the wing and began a left turn, first heading south and then, as the turn continued, southeast. Within minutes Jarrah completed a sharp U-turn, pointing the 757 back toward the East Coast on a heading that would take it north of Washington, D.C.

  Jarrah hadn’t turned off the transponder, so FAA controller John Werth saw the turn on his radar screen. The turn was so abrupt, Werth thought anyone at the back of the plane who wasn’t strapped in must have been tossed like a rag doll.23 He moved westbound planes out of the way to avoid midair collisions. He called Flight 93 again and again, at one point hoping that the original pilots remained in control and could punch in a transponder code of 7500, to confirm the hijack.

  “Ah, United Ninety-Three, if able, ah, squawk ‘trip,’ please,”24 Werth radioed.

  Jarrah ignored him.

  At 9:36 a.m., less than ten minutes after the hijacking began, a supervisor at Cleveland Center followed Werth’s original instructions and called the FAA’s Command Center in Virginia. He reported that Flight 93 was over Cleveland and asked whether anyone at the FAA had asked the military to scramble fighter jets. If not, he suggested that he’d be more than willing to call a local military base. He was told not to do that, because “that’s a decision that has to be made at a different level.”25

  At the same moment, after FAA controllers belatedly and haphazardly told the military about hijacked American Flight 77 as it bore down on Washington, D.C., Major Nasypany ordered the Langley F-16s to fly supersonic—“I don’t care how many windows you break”—to be in a position to protect the nation’s capital.

  Despite Cleveland Center’s suggestion about involving the military; despite the crash one minute later of American Flight 77 into the Pentagon; despite the World Trade Center crashes; still no one at the FAA’s Command Center in Virginia or at FAA headquarters in Washington informed Nasypany or anyone else at NORAD, NEADS, or the Defense Department that a fourth transcontinental passenger jet had been hijacked and was heading toward the capital.

  At 9:39 a.m., Jarrah delivered another threatening message on the cockpit radio, again thinking incorrectly that he’d be heard by the plane’s passengers and crew members: “Ah, here’s the captain.26 I would like to tell you all to remain seated. We have a bomb aboard and we are going back to the airport, and we have our demands. So please remain quiet.”

  Controller John Werth tried to engage him: “Okay, that’s United Ninety-Three calling?” And then, “United Ninety-Three. I understand you have a bomb on board. Go ahead.”

  Jarrah didn’t respond. As Werth tried repeatedly, Jarrah pushed forward on the control wheel. The plane descended sharply, at a rate of 4,000 feet per minute.27

  “This green knob?” one hijacker asked the other in Arabic.

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  With that move, Flight 93’s terrorist pilots followed Atta’s script and turned off the transponder. Nevertheless, Werth continued to track the plane using primary radar, although he had to rely on reports from other planes in his sector to estimate its altitude and speed.

  As the descent continued, shortly before 9:42 a.m. the cockpit voice recorder captured another person speaking. A native English-speaking man said two words in a low-pitched tone, perhaps a moan: “Oh, man!” Apparently, someone else
remained in the cockpit with the hijackers. Before the woman was silenced, she’d asked: “Are you talking to me?” The sudden emergence of the voice of an English-speaking man gave new meaning to her question. The woman’s inquiry might have indicated that someone else, most likely either Captain Jason Dahl or First Officer LeRoy Homer Jr., remained alive in the cockpit and also refused to follow Jarrah’s commands to “sit down.”

  Far more than the passengers and crew members on the other hijacked planes, men and women aboard Flight 93 almost immediately recognized that their seatback Airfones28 could be lifelines to call for help and advice. Many also understood that they could use the phones as a source of comfort, for themselves and for the people they cared about most.

  Without interference from the hijackers, over a span of a half hour, passengers and crew members attempted to make at least thirty-seven phone calls to United Airlines, to authorities, and to their loved ones and friends. Two calls were made using cellphones, but the rest were made using built-in Airfones from the last twelve rows of the plane. The technology allowed only eight outgoing calls29 at a time, and poor reception caused twenty Airfone calls to drop immediately or within seconds. The calls that connected formed a spoken tapestry of grace, warning, bravery, resolve, and love.

  The content of many of the calls from Flight 93 reflected the fact that the hijackings were no longer nearly simultaneous. The forty-two-minute delay before takeoff, plus the forty-six minutes of flight prior to the hijacking, meant that word of the earlier attacks and the terrorists’ suicidal tactics had spread widely on the ground. Almost as soon as telephone calls began to flow from Flight 93, passengers and crew members learned that their crisis wasn’t unique. They also learned how the earlier hijackings had ended.

  That knowledge became a powerful motivator. It transformed them from victimized hostages into resistance fighters.

  Around 6 a.m. Pacific Time, or 9 a.m. Eastern, Deena Burnett padded around her home in San Ramon, California, wearing the robe of her husband, Tom,30 as she always did when he traveled as a top executive for a heart pump manufacturer. She watched television as she made cinnamon waffles for their five-year-old twin daughters, Halley and Madison, and three-year-old Anna Clare.

  When the screen showed a second plane hit the World Trade Center, her mind raced to her husband, who she thought was still in Manhattan on business: “What hotel is he staying in, anyway?” she wondered. “Is he at the Marriott in Times Square this time? How far is Times Square from the World Trade Center?”

  Deena’s mother saw the same terrifying scenes and called her with the same fears about Tom. Deena reassured her, but then Deena remembered that Tom said he’d take an earlier flight if he could, to be home by noon. Creeping worry set in. Tom’s mother called next, then the call-waiting beep sounded. Deena answered the pending call.

  “Hello?”

  “Deena.”

  “Tom, are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked.”31

  He gave her a few details: the hijackers claimed to have a bomb and had knifed a passenger. Tom asked her to call the authorities. He hung up and Deena called 9-1-1. Tom called back minutes later. Word that Flight 93 wasn’t the only hijacked plane had apparently filtered through the cabin from other calls. Speaking in a quiet voice, Tom went into analytical mode. He asked Deena if she’d heard about any other planes.32 She said yes, two planes had flown into the World Trade Center. He asked if they were commercial planes, and she replied that specifics hadn’t been released. Tom told Deena the hijackers were talking about flying the plane into the ground somewhere.

  At 9:35 a.m.,33 flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw grabbed the Airfone in Row 33, the second-to-last row in coach. She speed-dialed “f-i-x” and reached the United maintenance center in San Francisco, just as a flight attendant aboard United Flight 175 had done forty minutes earlier.

  Sandy’s call was the first notification to United from inside the plane. Composed and professional, she told a maintenance manager that hijackers were in the cockpit and had pulled closed the curtain in first class, which was emptied of passengers. She said the terrorists claimed to have a bomb. They had a knife, she said, and had killed a flight attendant whom she didn’t name.

  In the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, Alice Hoglan woke to a ringing phone in her brother and sister-in-law’s house, where Alice was staying after giving birth to triplets34 as their surrogate. Her sister-in-law ran to Alice’s room with the phone. Alice heard her son’s voice, clear and strong, but the first words he spoke revealed that something had rattled the former collegiate rugby star.

  “Mom, this is Mark Bingham,”35 he said, using his first and last names. “I want to let you know I love you. I love you all.” Based on what he’d heard or seen, Mark told her that three men had hijacked his flight and that they claimed to have a bomb.

  “Who are they, Mark?” asked Alice, a longtime United flight attendant. Mark didn’t answer. A few seconds later, he said, “You’ve got to believe me. It’s true.”

  “I do believe you, Mark. Who are they?”

  After another pause, Alice heard voices and murmurs in the background. The line went dead.

  Alice called 9-1-1 and was connected to the FBI. Meanwhile, her brother Vaughn turned on the television, where replays of the South Tower crash played in a seemingly endless loop. Word of the Pentagon attack soon followed. Alice and Vaughn understood: the hijackings were suicide missions, and Mark’s plane would almost certainly be next. Vaughn urged Alice to call Mark’s cellphone,36 to let him know the situation and to urge him to take action.

  Mark didn’t answer, so Alice left a message: “Mark, this is your mom. . . . The news is that it’s been hijacked by terrorists. They are planning to probably use the plane as a target to hit some site on the ground. If you possibly can, try to overpower these guys, ’cause they’ll probably use the plane as a target.” In her fright, Alice couldn’t find the word “missile.” She told Mark that she loved him and said goodbye. But first Alice repeated her message: “I would say, go ahead and do everything you can to overpower them, because they’re hell-bent.”

  Mark didn’t retrieve his mother’s voicemail, but the call to action came through nevertheless, from other telephone conversations happening all around him.

  At the same time that Mark Bingham spoke with his mother, former national collegiate judo champion Jeremy Glick called his in-laws’ white clapboard farmhouse in upstate New York. He knew that’s where he’d find his wife, Lyz, and their infant daughter, Emerson. Lyz and her parents watched the World Trade Center burning on live television when the phone rang. His mother-in-law, JoAnne Makely, answered the call.

  “Jeremy,” she said. “Thank God. We’re so worried.”37

  “It’s bad news,” he replied. He asked to speak with Lyz.

  “Listen, there are some bad men on this plane,”38 he told her. Lyz began to cry as he shared details. They repeatedly told each other “I love you.”

  Jeremy interrupted and told his wife, “I don’t think I’m going to make it out of here. I don’t want to die.” Through her tears Lyz reassured him that he wouldn’t die that day. Jeremy was doubtful. “One of the other passengers said they’re crashing planes into the World Trade Center,” he said. “Is that true? . . . Are they going to blow up the plane or are they going to crash it into something?”

  “They’re not going to the World Trade Center,” Lyz said.

  “Why?”

  “Because the whole thing’s on fire.”

  As Jeremy and Lyz spoke, JoAnne called 9-1-1 and reached a New York State Police dispatcher. After confirming Jeremy’s name and flight number, the dispatcher coached JoAnne into helping Lyz to pump Jeremy for information. Jeremy told Lyz—who relayed the information through JoAnne to the dispatcher—that the hijackers were “Iranian-looking” men who’d put on bandannas when the hijacking began. He said one had a “red box” that he claimed contained
a bomb and had threatened to blow up the plane.

  Like Mark Bingham and several other callers, Jeremy said he saw only three hijackers. It’s not known why they didn’t count all four, but it’s possible that Ziad Jarrah didn’t participate39 in the initial attack, to avoid potential injury that would have prevented him from flying the plane. In that scenario, Jarrah might have slipped unseen into the pilot’s seat after the three other hijackers seized the cockpit and forced remaining passengers and crew to the rear of the plane before closing the first-class curtain.

  Jeremy asked a question, relayed by Lyz, that signaled deliberations had already begun among passengers and crew members about fighting back. “Okay,” JoAnne told the dispatcher, “his question to you is—he’s a big man; he’s thirty years old; he’s a big athlete. They want to know whether they should attack these three guys, rather than . . . Hello?”

  The dispatcher remained on the line, but he didn’t answer the question. If the passengers and crew members chose to strike back against the attackers, they’d have to decide for themselves. To do so, they’d have to be relatively certain that this was unlike any hijacking any of them had ever heard about. They’d also need to believe that the possibility of success outweighed the risk of the hijackers’ detonating a bomb or crashing the jet before the counterattack could succeed.

  As JoAnne spoke with the dispatcher, she kept one eye on CNN: “Oh, no,” JoAnne blurted to Lyz. “Turn off the television. . . . They just crashed one into the Pentagon.”

  Standing beside her, Lyz shared news of the third crashed plane with Jeremy. JoAnne pulled away from the 9-1-1 call and comforted Lyz, who only three months earlier had become a first-time mother. “I know,” JoAnne told her. “Be brave. The police are trying to do what they can.”

  Jeremy remained calm, but Lyz could hear confusion in his voice. In the midst of a spreading crisis, in the sky, in New York, outside Washington, and now in her own home, JoAnne displayed a presence of mind and a maternal instinct that she used to guide Lyz through her fear so she could give Jeremy the boost he needed.