Baby," I said, "they’re flying planes into buildings. Go home. I have to
go to work."
I was able to drive then knowing that Kat, the woman I would marry in a month
and a flight attendant with United Airlines, was flying to Boston that morning
and was not on one of those planes.
The trip into Arlington was an odyssey against standstill traffic. State
troopers had locked down road after northbound road, and I drove on the
shoulders, sidewalks and grass as needed. At Fire Station 1, my brothers were
forming groups large enough to crew hastily equipped vehicles or were being
transported by bus.
The scene was almost indescribable. The monolithic Pentagon sat under a
crystalline sky, split by a massive column of oily black smoke. The grounds were
strewn with debris and chaos, which would later become snapshot-vivid memories
as clear today as they were five years ago.
Outside, crews swarmed in every direction as commanders organized the rescue
effort, and men and equipment arrived. Military personnel and civilians tried to
help as much as they could. A line of ambulances waited to transport the wounded
to hospitals. Too few of them would be needed.
As we neared the entrance to the Pentagon, my feelings were surprisingly clear
and analytical: "I must wait until the last possible moment to use the limited
amount of air I carried in the bottle on my back. I must make sure to remember
the way in, because getting out quickly will be necessary. Use only one
flashlight at a time because they too will only last a while."
At the doorway to the maze of acrid darkness, I asked God to help us find
someone we could save, and thanked him for the safety of my wife.
At that moment, we looked at one another, adjusted our equipment and went to
work.
It would be a day or two before we would extinguish the last remnants of fire.
Longer still, before the job of finding and marking bodies and body parts would
be complete. The path of the plane through the Pentagon would be peppered with
tiny yellow flags, each representing the piece of a person who was alive a short
time ago.