"Hey, man," was his answer as he put the clipboard down. Turning to his assistant, he said, "Sexton, take five. I'm gonna get a cup of coffee."
"I'm gonna go grab a smoke, then," the assistant answered.
Dominic put an arm around his buddy's shoulder and steered him down the passage in the direction of the break room. When they arrived, the room was silent and empty.
"The tugs are outside," Joe revealed as he slowly mixed his coffee. Dominic looked up in mild surprise, but then his eyes softened and he looked down at his own steaming cup of "fine Navy Joe". "I still haven't gotten Toni on the phone since earlier. I really need to tell her what's going on."
"I wonder what Emily's doing right now," Dominic asked into the air as he looked up at the blank television screen. Joe shook his head mechanically and then sipped his coffee.
"Probably with Toni right now."
"I gotta marry that girl, huh?" Dominic gazed over toward his friend who suddenly looked at him with a look of half-sincerity, half-comedy.
"Are you seriously still debating this, man?" Joe threw out toward Dominic. His friend smirked and continued to stare at the black screen of the TV.
"No, not really," he mused in response.
"Not really?" Joe burst out in a chuckle. "I mean, really, Dom…what the hell's the big deal? You love her, she's crazy enough to be carrying your offspring…and for that alone she should be awarded some sort of fuckin' medal…and she's an awesome catch!"
"Yeah, I know," said Dominic softly.
"You're an idiot if you don't marry her," Joe said casually as he raised the cup to his lips again. "That's all I'm saying."
Dominic reached up and turned on the television.
"Oh, don't," Joe protested. "I'm already depressed enough."
The screen came to life as the now-familiar scene of the World Trade Center billowing smoke loomed. Joe's eyes were naturally drawn to the television and, as he peered up at the screen, he began to stand slowly.
"Is that the World Trade Center? I mean, is that…" Then, he broke off, because he could not decide that what he was looking at was accurate according to the banner below the picture. The label stated "World Trade Center, Manhattan," but there was only smoke and no buildings. Dominic's eyes squinted as he stared as well, attempting to ascertain the facts. Turning up the volume, their answer came in a dreadful undertone.
"…you're seeing is frightening. The remaining North Tower of the World Trade Center has collapsed and there is nothing left except a massive billowing cloud of smoke and ash rising from the site of this once-iconic New York complex." The anchor's voice was quiet and reverent. "Estimates of the dead and injured keep coming in, but the fact of the matter is that we really won't know the extent of the damage of this event for weeks."
"My God…" Dominic whispered.
"This is it, Dom," Joe murmured.
There was a sudden alteration in the constant whirring of the internal engines of the Gulf and only those stationed upon a naval vessel could sense it.
"Are those the secondary engines firing up?" Dominic questioned as he stood.
"I don't know," Joe answered worriedly. "Let's get topside!"
The pair immediately made their way to the quarterdeck at top speed and were relieved to see that the ship was still in its preliminary checks for deployment. As they peered out across the base, Joe's cell phone came to life. He broke open the phone, nearly snapping it in two in his haste to catch the call.
"Hello?" Joe spoke quickly and urgently.
"Babe! Oh, my God!" Toni's voice came to him in a panic. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah!"
"Before we get cut off again, Joe, I'm on my way to the base!" she said in rapid bursts.
"What?" Joe asked, unbelieving.
"I've got Liam and Emily with me!"
Dominic could hear the urgency in Toni's voice, even though he couldn't hear her words.
"Where are you?" Joe asked as his anxiety built.
"We're like fifteen minutes away!" she answered. "Whoa, hold on!" Joe suddenly heard a commotion from Toni on the other end of the line. "Asshole! Shit!"
"What's goin' on?" he shouted into the phone.
"Is she all right?" Dominic inquired with concern.
"Toni and Emily are on their way here," he said to Dominic. "What's goin' on, Tone?" he yelped into the phone.
"What?" Dominic questioned, his eyes narrowing to slits.
"There's some big back-up on the highway," she came back. "I gotta find a way around it."
"Toni, they're not gonna let you on the post," Joe reminded her sympathetically.
"Hold the boat!" was all she could reply. "We're coming!"
"Hold the boat?" Joe repeated with a small chuckle escaping his lips, despite his worry. "Tone, we can't do that. I don't have any way to stop deploy – Tone? Toni?" But the line was dead.
"What's going on?" Dominic pressed.
"They want us to stop the ship from deploying," he answered as he stared off toward the distant front gate.
"We can't stop the deployment," Dominic said rhetorically.
"No kidding," Joe replied. As they stood there on the quarterdeck at the rail, Joe looked up again at the eerie emptiness of the skies. The tugs were now in place.
Toni swerved around a double-parked car on a narrow back road and kept going as Emily leaned over a crying Liam.
"Take it easy, girl!" Emily complained as she attempted to calm the baby down. "There's no way we're making it onto the base, Toni."
"Stop saying that!" Toni yelled toward the back seat of the Jetta.
"I'm just sayin' that maybe we should re-think this," she went on. "You're gonna get us killed driving this way."
Toni didn't care at this point. She was determined to reach Norfolk Naval Base and snatch her husband from the jaws of his command. He was too short in his enlistment to be traipsing off to some foreign country to fight some foreign people for the express purpose of getting even with the terrorists.
"You got any ideas on how to calm him down?" Emily tossed out desperately toward her friend after shushing the baby for the past ten minutes of this wild ride.
"Try singing to him."
"Oh, uh…all right…um…" she stammered. "My heart is like an open highway, like Frank, he said, 'I did it my way.'"
As Emily sang over the cries and sobs of the baby, Toni rolled her eyes, barely recognizing the song.
"Are you singing Bon Jovi?" she asked into the mirror. Emily looked up with a wrinkled brow in frustration as Liam continued to howl.
"Well, his dad's from New Jersey," she said defensively. Toni balked and turned to look at her friend.
"He's from Brooklyn," she corrected. Joe had always complained to her that most people who grew up somewhere other than New York or New Jersey typically thought of the two States as interchangeable, that somehow, some way, the people acted, spoke and lived the same way. Of course, if you watched reality television or relied in any capacity upon the perception of Hollywood scriptwriters, that was the unfortunate truth.
"Brooklyn, Jersey," Emily scoffed, "same shit."
"Watch your mouth around the baby, please," Toni warned sternly in a new-mom-like fashion. "Liam?" she called in a sing-songy voice. Readjusting her mirror and only able to see the back of his head, she focused on the small mirror on the rear seat that faced her son and perfectly framed his face. "There you are!" she cooed when the baby's eyes met hers. Toni then began to sing the theme from Dora the Explorer and saw Liam's mouth open in a huge toothless grin.
"There's the exit!" Emily yelped suddenly as she pointed. Toni deftly rotated the steering wheel and took the exit cleanly without missing a beat in the song.
Dominic's phone began ringing and he quickly opened it.
"Hey, baby!" he called out happily. "Yeah, yeah, we're still here, but the tugs are –"
"Is that Emily?" Joe interrupted loudly. "She with Toni?"
"Huh?" he asked into the phone, distracted
by the simultaneous conversations. "Yeah, baby, I love you, too!" At that moment, Joe could actually hear Toni's voice as she demanded the phone from Emily. Before Dominic could even reach his arm toward Joe, his friend had already taken the phone away from his ear. "You're welcome, asshole."
"Tone? Where are you?" There was a pause. Turning toward Dominic, he relayed the message, "They're five minutes away!"
"They'll never make it," Dominic intoned pessimistically.
"The gate's blocked, Toni," warned Joe. "They're not letting anybody through except military personnel." Another pause. "Honey, I can't," Joe whined sympathetically. "Listen, sweetie, they're not gonna – damn!"
"Dead again?" Dominic asked with a knowing nod. Joe handed the phone back to his friend. The ship's horn suddenly sounded, startling Joe, who cursed the noise.
Gazing expectantly toward the gate, Joe saw some commotion there.
"What the hell's that?"
Dominic squinted in the direction that Joe was looking and could see that a mass of men in "civies" were being ushered through the gates and were running at full speed along the empty road. Darting suddenly across the lawns of the facility buildings, it appeared that they were making a beeline for the piers.
"Son-of-a-bitch," mumbled Dominic. "Those guys actually came back for deployment."
"You're kidding," Joe replied as he observed the eight young men racing along the sidewalk, trying to keep pace with each other. "Stupid idiots. Betcha none of 'em are married."
Dominic chuckled as he watched them.
"Betcha most of them are," he countered, making Joe smile. "Oh, shit, they made it!" Dominic burst out and pointed. Joe knew that his friend was talking about the girls and his stomach muscles clenched.
Squinting toward the gate, past the fast-approaching late arrivals, he could see the white Jetta coming to a quick halt behind other parked vehicles. Then, Toni emerged and opened the back door to retrieve their son. Emily exited the vehicle as well and began to help her friend.
Then, moments later, they were dashing toward the front gate past all the parked cars.
"Oh, man, this is gonna be ugly if they don't let her through," Joe observed as he began dialing her cell. The automated message played, further frustrating him.
At that moment, the eight men burst onto the lot surrounding the docks and hoofed it across toward the ship's mooring pier. The sentry posted at the mouth of the pier waved them along and stood aside as they rushed past him. He obviously had been forewarned of their arrival.
Simultaneously, Toni, Liam and Emily had reached the gate and he could just barely discern his wife making wild and frantic gestures toward the ship. Again, he tried the phone and, again, the automated message came to his ear. The ship lurched and deck hands were casting off mooring ropes from the pier.
"Oh, crap, this is it," moaned Joe.
"They could always meet us in New York, bro," added Dominic as he tried his own phone.
"No way, man. The bridges and tunnels are closed," answered Joe. "Even if they could get into New York, would you want them there?" Dominic nodded slowly in understanding.
The eight men were approaching the area where the gangway had stood, but they slowed as they realized with utter dread that there was absolutely no chance that they would make it. One of the men paused, but then, in a moment of instantaneous and, perhaps, fateful decision, he shouted, Hell, no!" and leapt off the pier's edge, plunging feet-first into the chilly waters.
"Holy shit!" Joe and Dominic shouted together. "Man overboard!" bellowed Joe as he quickly and efficiently grasped ahold of a life preserver and rope and expertly tossed it downward toward the swimmer. He had momentarily forgotten about his wife at the gate as the adrenaline pumped through his body. To his left, he could see a mass of sailors and sentries rushing to the rail to witness and assist the rescue efforts.
Chief B. appeared as well, primed and ready as veterans usually are in situations like this. With a hearty shout, he began barking orders to the sailors so that the rescue could go off without a hitch. As luck would have it, the preserver float landed nearly on top of the swimmer's head and he deftly grasped onto the safety device.
The crew heaved the rope upward and brought the spluttering man of twenty in his sopping civilian clothing right to the rail. Leaning over, Burkowski reached down a burly arm and took the young sailor by the back of his jacket and yanked him up and over the railing. As he gained the deck on his knees, he took a deep breath, coughed, sniffed, and looked up at his shipmates.
"Please tell me that we're gonna fuck up whoever was responsible for this."
The Chief held out a hand and helped him to his feet.
"Bet your ass, you crazy son-of-a-bitch." The crew laughs around them. "Welcome aboard, son." Looking around for a familiar face, he spotted a sailor and shouted, "Reyes, get this suicidal bastard a real uniform."
"Right away, Chief."
Joe suddenly looked away toward the base and noticed that Toni was now standing still, holding Liam, and holding up an arm. Emily stood by her side. His eyes began to brim and burn with tears. Taking his phone out again, he pushed the numbers deliberately and slowly. The ship's whistle sounded and the sun shone down upon this day with a light that reminded him of the irony of life. Here was a day that would probably go down in history as one of the most terrible for the United States, yet the skies appeared to tell a story of complete diametric opposition.
"Please, God…" he whispered imploringly.
Toni was weeping openly and Emily joined her with silent, mournful tears. Liam was oddly quiet. She held up one arm in the hope that he would see her and remember that she made a most valiant effort to see him face-to-face before he was shipped off to God knew where.
As she watched, she could see the mass of sailors at the rail as the ship slowly moved away from the pier. She saw them pull a man to safety from the water and wondered briefly if the man had attempted to jump ship to stay behind. Then, Joe separated from the fray and she saw him looking at her. She waved her arm and sighed, sniffling through tears. Many other people around her, including Emily, were weeping and waving as well.
Her phone rang. She looked down and pulled the phone to her ear, almost doubting it could be Joe.
"Joe?" she sobbed.
"Babe, I can see you!" Joe shouted with a tearful smile.
"Don't you leave us!" she screamed toward the ship.
"Kiss Liam for me and tell him I love him!"
"Don't you leave us!" she repeated again even more loudly this time. Emily cried at her right side as her phone rang as well.
"Please, do it while I can see you, Tone!"
Her response was nothing he could understand.
"All circuits are busy at this time. Please try –"
Closing the phone, she cradled Liam close to her chest and kissed his forehead.
"Say 'bye-bye' to daddy," she whimpered through uncontrollable sobbing. Emily put her arms around both of them and hugged them tightly.
Joe leaned far out over the railing, his tears streaming down his face and dripping off his chin and into the waters far below.
Dominic touched his shoulder and patted it gently.
"C'mon, man," he consoled. "This is not the way you want to remember them."
Joe stared and resisted the urge to leave the rail.
"This is exactly how I want to remember them," he answered fondly.
Finally free from port, the Leyte Gulf was underway northward along the coast. The waters were choppy, but not as rough as she sped through the Atlantic, joined by a formation of other ships making up the primary strike group.
Circuits remained frustratingly tied up as the sailors on board continuously attempted to contact loved ones. Joe had attempted so many times that he finally just gave up, even when others on the ship had sporadically gotten through. It seemed that the farther from the East Coast you called, the more likely you were to get an open circuit.
The day continued to build te
nsion for Americans as another flight had crash-landed in an open field in a rural area of Pennsylvania. Rumors had swirled around this particular flight that it was being steered to its ultimate destination of either the Capitol or the White House. Concurrently, another story was beginning to surface that perhaps, the passengers on board Flight 93 had actually fought back and, in the scuffle, forced the crash-landing of the airliner in an unpopulated area. The news cycle continued on throughout their trip to New York, including a televised address from New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and news that the New York Stock Exchange had been closed. The Mayor then made a command decision to close all Manhattan Island south of Canal Street for safety reasons and order the evacuation of that district.
Meanwhile, the FAA was redirecting all in-bound flights from outside the U.S. into Canada. Borders on both the Canadian and Mexican sides of the United States were temporarily closed and due to a suspicious package left in the LAX baggage area in California, the entire airport was shut down. As early as four p.m., CNN's national security correspondent was already floating the name of Osama Bin Laden as a possible link to these attacks.
As the day wore on and Americans continued to remain on alert and on edge, reports poured in from every corner of the nation about suspicious activity. Soon, the grim news was announced that seventy-eight police officers and two hundred firefighters were either missing or presumed dead.
Messages of support from around the world were received in Washington nearly every fifteen minutes, as leaders the globe over expressed sympathy for the victims, anger at the culprits, and the promise to bring these people to justice while working with the United States in thwarting all future attempts of terrorist mayhem. In the spirit of all this apparent (and most likely temporary) solidarity, even the U.S. Congress vowed to come together under a tent of bipartisanship in order to protect its people and punish the evil, whether foreign or domestic.
But despite the multitude of calls by government officials and progressive and moderate news anchors or talk show hosts for American civility and tolerance of those who were either Muslim or who were of Middle-Eastern origin, it was difficult for some in the immediate New York metropolitan area to forgive massive public celebratory displays of support and glee by these very same people. During one particular shameful event, Muslims in great numbers entered the streets of Paterson, New Jersey to dance, revel and sing the praises of those villains who perpetrated these vicious, cowardly and hateful crimes against innocent Americans. Other similar displays took place in New York and Michigan and other pockets across the U.S. and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, too few of these celebrations were condemned by Middle East advocate groups, mullahs or Muslims in the media. This created an unprecedented and unnecessary tension between nations of people that promised to last for generations.
A SEA STORY: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE U.S. NAVY RESPONSE TO 9/11. Page 6