Suddenly the roar of a jet engine rumbled above the ensuing scene of destruction. “No!” Josselyn heard herself cry out. She was screaming, denying what was already unfolding. This plane came in low, dipping one wing and then deliberately flying toward the South Tower. Time stopped as she watched the plane crash head-on into the tower. The smash of concrete and steel was punctuated by another sound, weirdly similar to the thundering roar of rushing water: the simultaneous shattering of thousands of panes of glass.

It wasn’t surreal any longer, just gruesomely, inconceivably horrible. New York—America—was under attack. That spire of sky between the towers—always taking her breath away because it looked as if somehow the towers created that piece of sky; sometimes blue, sometimes pink and violet, sometimes velvety black—now was filled with vile smoke so thick that it seemed the sky had been destroyed.

People on the street screamed, cried, and gasped, but also gaped in a silent horror worse than any sound. More-distant screams from the victims in the burning, smoking towers mingled with those of the onlookers in a soul-piercing cacophony that would echo through all their nightmares for as long as they lived … if they survived this Armageddon.