Excerpt of Chapter 1: The Second Plane

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This book exists because of people like Stephen Siller—individuals whose instinct was to move toward responsibility rather than away from it.

New York was a carefree place before September 11, 2001.  Mayor Giuliani's multiyear cleanup was a home run. A grimy Times Square had a fresh coat of paint and was eagerly welcoming tourists. Many of those tourists were fans of Sarah Jessica Parker's Sex and the City show and New York was abuzz with energy. With the decades of neglect now over, firms were racing to establish new Midtown headquarters. It was quite a scene. From the street, you had to crane your neck. Giant television screens, nearly a hundred feet wide, rose many floors overhead, playing moving images above the traffic and noise below.

40 blocks north, in Dustin's Upper East Side apartment, 1010 WINS babbled on: “An airplane hit the World Trade Center this morning… smoke and confusion. FDNY is on scene. Next up, traffic on the 1's but first a word from our sponsor, Hey, Culligan Man!”

For jaded Manhattanites, "an" airplane colliding with "a" building was simply another event. It could just as easily be the President visiting the UN, or a parade, or a sporting event. Same category: adjust your travel and move on.

If the East Side subway had a problem, you just hopped a crosstown bus to Central Park West and took a different line. Five extra minutes, no delay. The rerouting was subconscious.

The 8 AM call ended, and Dustin Grae had a few minutes to get downstairs for stamps from the post office across the street. He popped on his headphones & MP3 player and jammed to some new zero7 while he was in the waiting line.

The 9 AM call was half done when the calm, composed voice of a British banker cut through the routine:

“Another plane has hit… this isn’t an accident.” It was the kind of carry on regardless mindset Dustin had come to expect from his counterparts overseas—British understatement. The banker could have been calling out rising water levels on the Titanic: “That’s fourteen feet now,” in a flat, steady voice. Calmness rises above all in a crisis. The tone never changed, but the call ended early—something that almost never happened. Normally these twelve weekly calls with Citibank were an exercise in precision: a 1,200-line project plan meticulously coordinated across the Atlantic. Edit, paste, type, cut. 

He fit his monthly London flights around the work. It was a quiet blessing that British Airways had introduced lay-flat seats to the world the year before. BA even managed to get him onto the Concorde last month, at a discount, no less—right after service resumed, when most people still wouldn’t board that airframe. Dustin didn’t hesitate. He jumped at the chance to fly supersonic at 51,000 feet.

Having all four front-row seats on the Concorde to himself was less about privilege than timing and a dash of fatalism—a convergence of the unrivaled Valerie Wilson Travel and their pale pink envelopes, a thin passenger manifest, and his willingness to accept risk. There’s a motto from a very quiet, elite unit: Who dares wins. It wasn’t that he expected another opportunity like this; it was precisely because he didn’t. Once the Concorde route was fully restored, jet-setter anxiety would recede, confidence would return, and fares would snap back to their usual altitude. As a West Point graduate, Dustin viewed systems the way engineers do—not as abstractions, but as living mechanisms that grow more disciplined after failure. He had no doubt the aircraft was safe; if anything, it was now more closely watched, more rigorously maintained, and better understood than before. Dustin had complete confidence in the system.

Earlier in life, in 9th grade, he learned to type 80 words per minute despite the distraction of sitting behind Kid Rock’s stunning sister—you know, cheerleader & future prom queen who floated above the hallway hierarchy yet treated everyone with small town humility and kindness. Their typing teacher, Mr. Thummel, enthusiastically charged onward: “F-J-F Space. F-J-F Space” with an almost lyrical cadence in northern Michigan. Leonard Thummel also loved a hand-keyed m dash deftly built using the half-space on the manual typewriter. Like so many students Dustin foresaw no benefit from this "useless" skill he hadn't requested.

Fast-forward to Manhattan: Dustin's job was straightforward—keep the plan moving between SoHo (NY), Long Island City, and London’s bankers in Bayswater and Hammersmith. Secretarial, except performed by someone who could type fast, keep multiple dimensions straight, had 2,000 hours of prior project management, never needed something repeated, and what was the word—interpolate yes interpolate—heavy global accents on the fly. Dustin's visits to 23 countries meant he could usually parse the comment when a conference room of people looked over at him "What was the....?"

The call's early end galvanized Dustin. Years later he realized the British already knew a great deal about having your city bombed out from underneath you. A year later, on the first anniversary of 9/11 they offered simple advice: You need to go to the memorial. He didn’t understand why until a couple years after that when he saw a service let out from St Mary Abbots in London—every lapel bearing a poppy, every face quietly carrying decades of loss.

That morning, the bank's plan took a back seat. Everyone’s lives were about to as well.

Dustin had done well after moving back to the city of his birth. He was a boy from the Bronx and now his Manhattan starter apartment on 85th Street and 2nd felt like a transition between lives—two leases, two sets of keys, general disorder—as he got ready to move. 

On instinct he decided to head downtown and stepped onto East 85th Street.

The military trains you to move toward the sound of the guns. Get to where you can influence events. Never thought those skills would see use at home.

Cab drivers, however, don't have that instinct built in. Quite the opposite. It is still obtainable but it will require different tactics. Imagine a roll of bills in your hand and comedian Jimmy Failla driving up front. With a little discussion to ensure you're reasonable from the perspective of his business, a yellow cab can go almost anywhere imaginable—and at a fair price, all things considered.

Manhattan’s one-way streets made alternate routing a daily art form. Catching a cab was a negotiation with the city itself. Like standing at the correct subway door to beat the crowd to the exit. This morning, there was no crowd. Not many people were heading downtown.

The cab ride was effortless—a rarity. Negotiation began: “Downtown” as he stepped into the cab. Lights turning green cued up by the "green wave" as they began slicing south on Lex. Both passenger and driver then kept quiet until the driver had caught into the face of the wave and could relax a notch. Once the driver was surfing the synchronized traffic lights, Dustin added in a calm voice, “I’m actually trying to get all the way downtown.” Not a normal request today.

The driver: “You know it’s a mess down there.”

Dustin: “Just do the best we can.”

Code for: we both know this isn't a regular ride, the price will be fair and there will be a good tip.

Then they reached 34th Street. Police barricades. The route blocked. 6 NYPD officers with hard faces stood in front of barricades. One gave a single small wave to the left. The kind of wave that expects an immediate response and also says my brother is on duty downtown and this isn't the day to test me.

They pivoted east on 34th, then back north on Third Avenue. From the hill, downtown was visible: a plume of smoke stretched across the sky. The uptown light was red and drivers ahead had gotten out of their vehicles and were staring backwards towards downtown. Dustin and his driver did the same. 

The people struck him most. Crowds gathered in silence, facing south. Each had heard about the second plane; now they were seeing the towers with their own eyes.

A homeless man held a cardboard sign: The End is Near.

He smiled—radiant, almost joyful. His long-awaited truth had arrived. The image stayed with Dustin for years.

Parents clutched children. Some people cried. One person screamed at a dead phone. Everyone stared south. No one needed to be told this wasn’t an accident.

The cab driver’s curiosity had turned to fear, then silence. He drifted north again.

Dustin thought: Londoners lived through bombings and I haven’t.

“Where to now?” the driver asked softly.

Dustin needed his gear. No uniform, no plan—just instinct.

They cut across 79th Street, towards his new apartment in the tiny, tony corner of the city where Mayor Bloomberg and Eliot Spitzer also both lived.

“Madison and 80th, near left.” Precision drop-off in front of L'Occitane and near the new apartment. In fast-paced Manhattan if you got dropped at the wrong corner and cost everyone 90 seconds your friends would give you grief. Dustin got out, double-checked the backseat, and paid cash through the driver's window.

He entered the half-moved-in apartment on the second floor of 14 East 80th—quiet, courtyard air like the moment before a lightning strike. It was a staid block with the rarified vibe of old money "pre war" NYC. He changed quickly. West Point uniform drills had given him superhuman prep speed.

He changed into running gear: black nylon running shorts known as 'Ranger panties', black dry-fit shirt, Thorlos, black ASICS. Military ID, 1 overly complicated door key, tiny single led blue penlight, his monthly metro card and a $100 bill in the pocket. The items somewhat fit into the small key pocket sewn into the waistband. As far as the clothes, all black everything in 2000s New York was half about looking cool and half about not displaying city grime on them.

The ID was an anomaly. He wasn’t supposed to still have that ID after Army outprocessing—“INDEF” as the expiration date didn't mean it was yours forever. It was only the Army’s way of saying: you’re never entirely out. It was also the Army's pre-graduation opening point for careers that could continue for 2, 3 and even occasionally 4 decades. We don't want our Lieutenants envisioning an end date after all this investment in their schooling.

Dustin stepped out onto East 80th. Seven miles from the World Trade Center, there was more staring than movement.

At 80th and Fifth, his mind turned south.

Go time.

He crossed Fifth into Central Park and settled into an easy eight-minute pace.

The NY Road Runners evening training sessions made the loop feel like home. Between West Point and 10th Mountain he had run and hiked thousands of miles, but NYRR had refined him—taught him things West Point had not—vertically pumping hill arms, THR thresholds, biomechanics. No ruck, no Infantry loadout today. Footfalls in rhythm. Cool air, light sweat.

No fear. No planning. Only what Patton called “military reaction.”

Objective: the tunnels of Times Square

A perfect sky-blue morning. Early fall trees curving in framed the road. A single plume rising ahead.

He exited at Artists Gate, jogged onto Central Park South, heart rate at 170–173—strong, sustainable, nowhere near redlining. Sirens streamed southward in the distance both ahead and behind him. Gawkers leaned toward the avenues.

I’m heading toward something I can’t see yet, he thought.

He turned down Seventh Avenue and kept running.

The plume grew.

The street narrowed.

He didn’t look back.

Seventh Avenue became a corridor of silence, broken only by southbound sirens in the distance on both sides. Store gates mostly locked down. The slightest downhill grade quickened his pace. People frozen with phones at their ears. A stray thought: Would the next hit be Midtown? Unfortunately plausible.

He steadied his pace. No overcooking his heartrate. No thought. Just movement toward the unseen.

At 57th Street he drifted into the deserted center lane of 7th Ave, the asphalt radiating warmth from the morning sun, and let the city fall in behind him.

Whatever waited downtown was already set in motion.

He kept running.

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