A SEA STORY: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE U.S. NAVY RESPONSE TO 9/11.

by Joseph Pignataro

  "I expect that we'll be underway within the next two hours." Macleod then paused. "Let's be safe out there, people." Joe could suddenly hear the worry in his voice as well. This did not sit well with him. If Macleod was anxiety-ridden, it meant that this was really serious. "Dismissed!"

  There was sudden movement everywhere. Sailors began scattering in all directions. Some were making their way to the quarterdeck, others were heading down into the ship's lower quarters, others were being directed toward waiting groups of sailors that were being assembled by supervisors. Looking around at the chaos, Joe saw that Hahn had already disappeared and Wakefield was wandering around like a baby calf that had just lost its mother. Dominic locked eyes with Joe and they began to work their way toward each other in the maelstrom.

  "What the hell're you doing, Pigz?" came a loud and obnoxious voice through the crowds. Joe swung around to see Chief B. heading in his direction. Joe quickly took the initiative and met him halfway, sidestepping a rather large sailor in a blue hardhat looking as if he was about to piss his pants.

  "Chief, I can't get underway! I—"

  "The fuck you can't, Pigz!" came the supervisor's terse reply. "Do you realize what's going on here, son?"

  "Yeah!" Joe answered angrily. "I'm probably the only one who was watching the friggan news when the plane slammed into the building!"

  "Well, then, you get that this is serious."

  "I know it's serious," was Joe's reply in frustration. Did this guy actually think he was as dumb as most of these sailors who got blitzed every other night at the local clubs? "Chief, I've got a newborn at home with my wife—"

  "All the more reason to do this, Pigz!" Chief B. responded as he took Joe by the shoulder, steering him toward a wall in order to get him out of the traffic.

  "I can't go, Chief!" Joe implored. His tone was desperate. He just wanted this guy to get it through his thick, Neanderthal brain the irresponsibility to have him along on a jaunt to wherever, for however long, in order to shore up a few recruits who were absent from the ship. He considered them the luckiest of all, these sailors who were home right now, because they were not about to make it back to the base on time if the ship would be deploying. Most of them would claim "traffic" and be, thankfully, left behind. Joe immediately thought how insensitive he was to wish that this incident had actually occurred an hour earlier in the morning so that he would still have been home at the time.

  "Pigz," the Chief began as he grasped both of his shoulders and lowered his voice. Dominic, who had followed them over toward the wall, was listening as well to the supervisor's words. "You're a Tomahawk missile tech on a U.S. battle Cruiser and terrorists are flying planes into skyscrapers." His eyes were intense and directly looking to Joe's for emphasis. "There is no way in hell that you're not coming with us." Joe's spirit left him and he was struck dumb for a moment. "We don't know what's going on out there. As far as we know, it's the opening day for World War Three."

  Joe gazed over at Dominic whose mouth was slightly hanging agape.

  "Chief, my wife and son…" Joe came back softly.

  "Will be safe if every sailor does his duty," the Chief finished. Joe met his supervisor's gaze again. "Pigz…every person who's on this ship as of this moment is in for the long haul. You get me?" Joe continued to stare. "If this was your last active day in the Navy, it wouldn't matter. In other words, you've been extended until this is deemed by the President to be over."

  Joe's eyes widened and his face went numb. Dominic's face had turned stony. Suddenly, another shout rang out.

  "Seputa!" Their eyes turned in the direction of the voice. It was Senior Chief Harold Simms, standing in the middle of the mostly empty helo hangar with his hands on his hips and staring with daggers in Dominic's direction. "Get your ass outa your shorts, boy! We're at Threatcon Delta and you're still standing around?" Dominic stammered in answer, but the tall supervisor with the Hitler moustache continued. "We need to start arming people and put reliefs on post. Get your ass down to the armory and start doing your job!"

  Turning quickly toward his friend, Dominic said, "Later, Joe!" Then, he ran off toward one of the hangar doors where he caught up to Daniel Sexton, an eighteen-year-old from the deep South, who also worked in the armory.

  "C'mon, Sexton!" Taking him by the shoulder and turning him, they disappeared from the hangar.

  "Chief," Simms called over toward Burkowski. "Chief’s mess with Master chief in five minutes."

  "Right," answered Chief B. to his superior. Simms turned smartly and quick-walked toward an exit.

  "This is fuckin' nuts," Chief B. whispered. Meeting Joe's gaze again, he spoke. "Listen, Pigz, I don't like this anymore than you do. But we're sailors. It's our duty."

  Oh, I hate those words, Joe thought with fear and anger welling up inside him.

  "When we raised our right hand, we made a promise to defend this country," Chief B. said in earnest. "Think about your family. Then, take a moment to think about all the wives, sons, daughters, fathers and mothers who just lost their families in these crashes in New York." He nodded his head in Joe's direction in order to make his point. "Get what I'm sayin'?"

  Suddenly, Joe did. It struck him like a piano falling on his head. Amazingly, Chief Burkowski made perfect sense (a miracle in and of itself) and now, Joe understood that the flurry of activity on the ship and why it was so important for him to "do his duty." No one said he had to like it, though.

  "Okay, Chief," Joe replied quietly.

  Chief B. smiled and patted his shoulder.

  "Good man." He then walked away from Joe and, as usual, had to get in a parting shot. "Why isn't the system up and running?"

  Joe balked for a moment and then began laughing and shaking his head. Springing into action, he burst out of the hangar and began running along the deck. Almost as suddenly as he began running, watching the many sailors in busy activities all over the ship, he was stopped by a random officer wearing a white safety hardhat and holding an armful of blue helmets.

  "Put this on," the officer said roughly as he shoved one of the helmets into Joe's chest. "Get down there to the gangway and help with the work detail getting supplies onto the ship."

  "Sir, I've gotta get to the—" Joe began to protest, but was cut off by the officer.

  "Just get down there, sailor!"

  Without another word or argument, Joe made his way quickly down to the gangway where a slew of sailors had created a long chain from the bottom at the pier to the top, passing, hand-over-hand, boxes of supplies. There were three "deuce-and-a-halfs", large military vehicles meant for carrying troops, equipment and supplies, waiting in line as post sailors in their dress whites unloaded them and began the process.

  As Joe removed his cap and donned the blue helmet, he thought about Toni and Liam. How was he going to explain this to her? He could try using Chief B.'s line about the New York City events, but knew that Toni would never buy it. She didn't care about all that. Not that she was insensitive or anything. He just knew that the prospect of her husband being shipped out for God knew how long would be something she wouldn't understand, no matter what the reason. She had an infant son and her husband was being called up for a stupid act of terrorism. That's how she would view it.

  Joe jumped into the line and began handing boxes to the next person behind him as he pondered how he would make that phone call. Peering across the naval complex, he noticed that the USS Vella Gulf was involved in the same activity. He wondered if, indeed, this was World War III.

  Joe finished the work detail and immediately headed down the deck to make a quick call to his wife. As he lifted the cell phone to his ear, he heard a familiar voice calling his name.

  "Pigz!" Hahn's voice came to him. Turning, he noticed his friend approaching rapidly and he was out of breath. "The President just gave a statement on the T.V.," he explained. Catching his wind, he continued. "He was really brief, looked real scared…" he said through jagged breathing, "…never saw anything like it, m
an. They are definitely concerned about this."

  "Well, what'd he say?" Joe asked quickly.

  "Basically, he said that we've been attacked and that we're gonna hunt down these assholes."

  "Duh," Joe answered and looked around at the skies, already paranoid that another airliner might be hurtling out of the blue toward them. All around them were armed sentries as they began taking posts near anti-aircraft guns and equipment stations. Looking over at the piers, he could see that there were MPs now checking, vehicle by vehicle, all the license plates of the autos in the personnel parking lot area. Additionally, he could hear sirens and see flashing lights as emergency vehicles motored from here to there all over the base. "We are goin' to war, aren't we, Hahn?"

  Looking around him, Hahn nodded.

  "No doubt about it." Then, as if just remembering in a jolt of his synapses, Hahn spouted, "Oh, shit, and they closed down the airports, the bridges, the tunnels…everything in New York. I even heard one of the news guys say that there's another plane heading south and they believe it might be headed toward the White House or the Capitol."

  "Get the fuck outa here!" Joe bellowed as his eyes snapped back onto Hahn's face. "There are more of them?"

  "Yeah, man," he replied with wide eyes, "and another plane is missing somewhere else. It's bad."

  "Holy shit, I gotta call Toni," Joe murmured with grim sadness in his voice.

  "You didn't call her yet!" shouted Hahn as he pushed Joe by the shoulder.

  "Dude, they had me on work detail bringing shit onto the ship! She called me a couple of times, but the circuits keep cutting out!"

  "You better call her now, man! Before some other officer comes by and snatches you up for more shit detail!"

  Joe nodded and pulled his phone out again.

  "I'm nervous, Hahn," he added as he dialed the number

  Hahn stared back at the armed sentries as they watched the skies intently.

  "Yeah, me, too." Hahn backed away and waved. "See ya' later, man!"

  Joe nodded again as he put the cell phone to his ear and peered after Hahn jogging away.

  "Hello? Joe?" Toni's voice came out in an urgent way through the phone speaker.

  "Tone! Oh, my God, I gotta talk to you!"

  "Did you see the stuff on tee-vee? Joe, they hit the World Trade Center!" she cried in desperation. He could tell that she had been anguishing about this for a while.

  "I know, babe, I know—"

  "What's happening? Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm okay—"

  "This is crazy, Joe," she continued as if she had been waiting for a year to talk to him. "The Pentagon was just hit, too! There's smoke pouring out of—"

  "What? The Pentagon?" Joe yelled into the phone. He noticed that some of the sentries nearby were looking at him now.

  "Yeah, it's on the news!" she affirmed through tears. "It's smoking and they don't know if it was a bomb or something else!"

  Joe went numb again as he imagined what else was going to happen.

  "Joe, they grounded every airplane in the country!" she shouted when she didn't hear him respond.

  "What?" he whispered.

  "Every plane, hon," she confirmed. "They said that if you see a plane, it's probably hijacked, because no planes are supposed to be flying right now."

  "Oh, my God."

  "When are you coming home? I'm so scared, Joe!"

  Then the reality of this situation hit him. He had to be blunt and had to be honest.

  "I'm not coming home right now, Toni—"

  "NO! NO! NO! Don't say it, don't you dare say it!" she screamed in denial, as if she already knew what he was going to say. "You're supposed to be out! You're supposed to be home with me and Liam! You are not going to do this! They can't take you—"

  "Toni, I don't have a choice!" he began as hid eyes filled with tears. Her tone was breaking his heart. Then, he heard Liam whimpering in the background and that sent him nearly over the edge.

  "Your son is calling for his daddy," she wailed through bouts of weeping.

  Tone, I—" he started, but the line went dead. "No, no, no!"

  As he screamed at the cell phone, the sentries looked away, knowing the anguish he was experiencing.

  "They hit the fuckin' Pentagon!" he shouted out to them.

  "Are you fuckin' kiddin'?" one of the guards answered.

  "They hit the fuckin'…the fuckin' Pentagon," he finished with a deep pain in his chest. "The fuckin' Pentagon."

  Brian watched the television in horror as the smoke continued to billow from the tops of the World Trade Center towers. With a cell phone to his ear, he was listening to his mother as she relayed a message from his brother.

  "He said that the plane came in real low over Battery Park and—" she was explaining when Brian exploded into the phone, temporarily removing it from his ear and screaming into it.

  "Tell him to get the fuck outa there!"

  Brian was speaking to his mother through her cell phone, who was in turn, speaking to his brother, Darren, through her home phone. Brian was currently living in Warrington, Pennsylvania, which was about ten miles north of Philadelphia. He was originally from New York City and his entire family still lived there in Queens. Brian knew that Darren was working in Manhattan at this moment. He was a carpenter in the union and always worked in the City. But when he just discovered through this disjointed phone call that his brother was literally working across the street from the World Trade Center and had watched the second plane hit the South Tower, he had a feeling of dread come over him.

  "Get the fuck outa there!"

  "You don't have to talk like that!" came his mother's terse response.

  Brian laughed with a scoffing sound.

  "Mom, do you wanna lose a son?" he shouted into the cell phone. "Please, just tell Darren to go home!"

  Brian was a restaurant manager and had opened the store early today. His usual routine was open the doors for the cooks when they arrived, make coffee, turn on the television in the office and do his morning paperwork. This was exactly his routine this morning as well, only to be flabbergasted when he saw the smoking North Tower on the screen.

  Why this scene was particularly disconcerting to Brian, however, was due to his personal relationship with these buildings. As a child, he could remember them being built. His entire youth had been spent being acutely aware of the skyline and its local significance to the inhabitants of the City. For instance, he grew up with the commonplace knowledge that the Empire State Building changed the colors of its lights at the top for each holiday; red and green for Christmas, red, white and blue for Labor Day and the Fourth of July, green for St. Patrick's Day, and even orange, yellow and white for Halloween (to mimic a candy corn treat). He also knew, like all the locals in the tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, that the lower level of the George Washington Bridge was called the Martha Washington. He even knew that SoHo, the eclectic artsy-fartsy district of New York City's Greenwich Village, stood for South of Houston (pronounced "House-ton" by New Yorkers, of course).

  Remembering the one day that he looked up at the skyline from his bedroom window and sighted a strange looking metal skeletal structure rising from the very tip of Manhattan island was unremarkable; it was the year or so later when the second structure had risen next to it, mirroring its twin, that he suddenly took special notice. He recalled how detested these structures were, as well, by the local populace. They didn't like the fact that the towers were identical. Why did they need two? Also a subject for debate and abhorrence was the fact that they were taller than the exalted and adored Empire State Building; not just by a floor or two, but by nearly ten! This was an unforgivable act of treason to New Yorkers.

  However, as usually happens with time, the old wounds were healed. The longer New Yorkers had to look upon these permanent fixtures of the skyline, the more distant those outcries became. Until finally, one day, everyone forgot that they hated these buildings and accepted the
m fully and, sometimes, fanatically; sort of like the New York Mets. When one looked upon the skyline, it was inconceivable to think that these Twin Towers should be absent.

  Not that this thought ever occurred to Brian. He had watched them go up and he remembered how the terrorists had tried to take down the North Tower with a bomb in the 1990s. That blast shook the tower and made a lot of people scared, but the strength of the structure was tested that day…and it passed with flying colors. Brian was sure that these fires would burn out, the damage would be repaired, the masterminds responsible would be brought to justice, and everything would go back to normal. He was concerned, though, that his brother, who was atop the building next door, would be the unfortunate victim of yet another errant flight.

  "Please, mom, just tell him to get out of there," Brian begged. "It's not worth it. My nephew is waiting at home for him!"

  That last line seemed to do the trick. His mother suddenly began speaking into the other telephone to his brother, imploring him to go home.

  Then, the inconceivable happened. The South Tower began to collapse!

  Brian's eyes widened in horror and despair as, floor by floor, the structure fell straight down upon itself. Suddenly, the phone line went dead.

  "Mom?" Brian yelped into the phone. "Mom! Hello?"

  The cooks that had been watching the television behind Brian muttered to themselves. Brian put his phone down on the desk and gazed at the decimation on the screen.