Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8 9:00 A.M. Dad once told Lucas that what he liked most about fighting fires was that everyone had a job to do. "If you don't work together, you don't put out the fire." Now, Lucas looked around the firehouse. He needed a job, he realized. Something he could do to help. He went into the kitchen. The table was covered with plates of half-eaten bacon and eggs. The sink was overflowing with dirty pots.

He got to work, clearing the dishes and glasses from the table. Every few minutes the alarm box squawked, and the dispatcher came on with a new alarm. "All units meet at Vesey and West streets…." The TV was on the counter, the sound turned down. The picture on the screen showed the burning tower. Lucas reached out and turned the volume up so he could hear it over the voice of the dispatcher. "If you're just joining us, ladies and gentlemen," the TV man's voice said, "you're looking at an extraordinary sight. Just a few minutes ago, a plane crashed into Tower One at New York's famed World Trade Center. We have no official information about what kind of plane it was, but witnesses report it was a commercial jet." Lucas picked up Georgie's huge cast-iron skillet and started scrubbing. "The towers were built in 1970," the man continued. "At 110 floors each, they were once the tallest buildings in the world. There are hundreds of firefighters on the scene. We have reports that firefighters have been entering the building and

heading up the stairs to reach people who might need assistance. It's an amazing sight." The smoke was thicker now, painting the blue sky a dirty brown. There were white dots floating in the smoke — almost like confetti. Paper, Lucas realized. Millions of pieces of paper, swept out through the hole in the building. The man kept talking about the towers — that they took four years to build, that they could withstand winds of 140 miles per hour, that 50,000 people worked there. His voice was calm, almost like a teacher giving a history lesson. Lucas was reaching up to hang the heavy skillet on the hook over the sink. Suddenly the man on the TV gasped. "Oh, my God! What was that? Another explosion! Ladies and gentlemen — it looks like a second plane… yes, another jet. It has just crashed into the second tower." The heavy skillet slipped out of Lucas's hand and into the sink, shattering plates and glasses. Lucas barely noticed. His eyes did not move from the TV screen.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the man said again, his voice shaking. "We're going to replay the video of what we just saw…." The screen flipped. It showed the North Tower burning. And then suddenly, on the left side of the screen, another plane appeared. Just like the first, it was a big jet. And quick as a blink, it slammed into the other tower, exploding into a fireball. Fire erupted out of all sides of the building, a ring of flaming blackness. Now there were two clouds of churning black smoke. Lucas's heart pounded. It was hard to breathe. There were more people talking on the TV now, not just the man. "Oh my… oh my… that looked…" one woman said. "What did we just see?" said another. "Ladies and gentlemen," the man said. "We have just witnessed the horrific sight of a second plane hitting the other tower — the South Tower…. There was a massive explosion." "There must be a computer problem, a complete failure of the air traffic control system," said the first woman.

What the man said next made Lucas's entire body start to shake. "That did not look like an accident," he said. "It looks like that plane flew into that tower on purpose. I think this is some kind of attack."