Chapter One

Some politician once described the Port Authority Police Department as a bunch of "glorified mall cops."  Well, he should have been there on September 11, 2001 when I watched my friends and colleagues charge repeatedly into one hundred stories of burning concrete and steel. 

For a lot of us, this was the second time we'd rushed into those towers following a terrorist attack. Back in 1993, it had been bad, but not like this. I saw things on 9/11 I wish I didn't remember; but, then again, I also saw things that day I hope I'll never forget. So I guess it's true that sometimes it takes the worst of circumstances to bring out the best of mankind.    

When the call came in, I was across the river at Newark Airport. I was behind a desk, working on my reports, just like I'd been for the past week. Swamped in paperwork, I hadn't been in the field much, so I hadn't given much more thought to the idea of killing myself in the line of duty. To be honest, my melancholy had lifted slightly, and I wasn't really sure I wanted to die anymore. At the same time, I still wasn't happy, and I didn't know if I wanted to live either. So I guess you could say I was between a proverbial rock and a hard place.    

As the radio squawked something about a plane hitting one of the Towers, a bunch of us ran to the carpool. As soon as we pulled out of the lot and came around a curve to where we had a good view of downtown, I saw smoke billowing from the North Tower. I immediately gunned the engine, and we accelerated onto the freeway and tore off toward the Holland Tunnel. 

I arrived at what would later be known as Ground Zero about 25 minutes later, by which time the second plane had crashed into the South Tower. I slammed the car into park and ran toward the temporary command center. Catching the eye of the first Captain I saw, I shouted that I had just arrived and asked where they needed me. He told me the situation was still evolving but that evacuations were under way and that I should head in and start helping people out.

Sprinting toward the lobby of the North Tower, I dodged people streaming from the building. The smoke was already thick, though not as bad as it got later. I saw Jack Rollins as I made my way toward the stairway, and he filled me in, ending with "It's real bad in there.  There are a lot of people trapped up top that we just can't get to. Right now we're just working on clearing the floors and helping people that need assistance down the stairs." Jack was a squad mate of mine, a ten-year veteran of the force, and not the kind of guy that spooked easily. But I knew him well enough to tell that, despite the outward calm he was trying to project, things weren't good. That was the point when I first started getting nervous.

But I just nodded and headed up stairwell B and began assisting with evacuations. Oddly, considering I had previously thought about dying in the line of duty, I wasn't thinking of this as a perfect opportunity to check out. Instead, I was damn near terrified that the whole thing was going to come crashing down before we could get everyone out. I might have been prepared to die myself, but I sure as hell didn't want anyone else going with me. And, truth-be-told, I wasn't even so sure I wanted to off myself anymore. Like I said, my melancholy had lifted, and I'd given the whole suicide thing some more thought over the previous week, and I was on the fence about whether the world would really be better off without me in it. 

Years ago, in an interview, someone asked me what kind of mindset I had when I went rushing into a building while others were running out. I didn't really know how to answer the question, and it made me a little bit uncomfortable that people would make me out to be a hero or something. The best I could tell the reporter was that when I went rushing into a dangerous situation I wasn't being reckless, but I also wasn't really thinking about the consequences. My mindset was just that people were hurt and that I had the training and the opportunity to help them, and so I had to go and do it. 

Anyway, on September 11, I went up and down the stairs a few times helping people out of the building.  At one point, someone told me that the other Tower had collapsed. I'd heard the noise of course, but maybe I was in shock or something because it kind of didn't even register with me. Everything seemed so impossible and surreal. I mean, I'd grown up with a view of the Twin Towers. They'd dominated the skyline my entire life. The possibility that one of them just wasn't there anymore was something beyond my ability to even begin to comprehend, especially right then and there, when I was still in the middle of the action. So I just started compartmentalizing things in my mind and completely shut off the part of my brain that was aware that one of the Towers was gone. With that out of the way, I gritted my teeth and went back to helping with the rescue. 

Eventually my Lieutenant, Barbara Richardson, and I helped an older woman across the lobby and out the double glass doors. This was later in the morning, and the smoke had gotten thick, and the air smelled of burning chemicals, and things were really confused. 

It had been maybe twenty minutes since I'd last been outside, and, by now, the air was so choked with soot that it was really hard to breathe, and the sun was blackened out, so it seemed almost like it was nighttime. Looking back, it's kind of ironic how that morning had dawned so brilliantly sunny, as if it were going to be one of those perfect fall days you remember forever. 

It turned out we'd all remember it forever, but not for the weather. 

Across the river in Jersey, it was still one of those top ten kind of days, but here at Ground Zero the scene resembled a movie set for some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare flick. Barbara took the woman to the medical tent, and I just stood there for a minute, staring up at the sky and trying to take it all in. 

There were people everywhere, covered in ash and soot, and it was only the hundreds of first responders that were keeping the scene from turning into complete chaos. For one moment, out of all those faceless bodies rushing around, I distinctly remember seeing a firefighter. By this point, the world had kind of quieted to a sort of movie-like slow motion, and I saw this firefighter just materialize from the smoke like an apparition. 

He held a young child in his arms, and, as they walked toward me, I glanced at the boy. The kid couldn't have been more than two or so, and now, thanks to the firefighter, he was going to be okay. One small victory on a morning of death. 

Then I looked up at the firefighter again and noticed that the visor on his helmet was raised, and I saw eyes and tears streaming from those eyes, so I looked down at the boy again, and, this time, I realized that his young form was lifeless and inert. They continued to come toward me, and I saw the boy up close; his beautiful, angelic face radiated a sense of peace I was certain his parents would never know again.

I tore my gaze away and focused on the firefighter, and I saw hell in his eyes. He'd saved countless lives that terrible morning, but the boy he couldn't save would haunt him till the day he died. And right then and there I knew the value of life. And right then and there I decided that I wanted to live. 

The problem was, now that I knew I wanted to live, I was afraid to die. And since I was standing outside and presumably safe, the idea of going into the Tower again terrified me. So I started to tell myself that I had already done enough that day and that there was no shame in staying outside and seeing whom I could help on the street.

Then I heard my father's voice in the back of my head telling me that doing the right thing is easy when it's easy, but that doing the right thing when the going gets tough is what shows real character. I'd often looked to my father for guidance in the years since his passing, but, ever since my partner's death, my father seemed to have stopped speaking to me. Now, at this critical moment, he was back. 

Still, I hesitated. Then a thought, "What would my father do if he were here?" Well, anyone that had ever met my dad knew the answer to that question, so without thinking too much more about it, I turned around and ran back toward the lobby. 

On the way in, I passed Freddy Reyes; he was a rookie and had been on the job like four months. He was only twenty-four and had a young wife and a baby on the way, and yet here he was heading in and out of the building and his face had been almost completely burned off on one side-I mean, the kind of damage that scars someone forever. And, instead of heading for medical assistance, he kept going back in to help more people. I shook my head, amazed at his courage.

Back inside, I saw a man crawling across the lobby. His left ankle was bent at an odd angle, and his face was contorted with pain. I rushed toward him and kind of scooped him up by the armpits. He muttered something about having broken his ankle on the stairs in the rush to evacuate, but other than that we didn't speak. I managed to support him enough that he could...