Ten days after it happened, the city – the country – was still in a state of shock.
Who would have thought it possible that anyone would hijack civilian airliners filled with passengers and fly them into occupied buildings?
But, it had happened, and the reaction was, first disbelief, then shock, then anger. Politicians made speeches, some called for war, and I noticed that the loudest voices calling for an armed response, an attack on someone in retaliation for this heinous act, came from those politicians who had never worn a uniform or had a shot fired at them in anger.
Armed guards in combat gear were now around every government building in the DC area, and getting into buildings, even those with no real secrets to protect, was time-consuming and hardly worth the effort. I didn’t fly, but Quincy Chang, my friend and a senior partner in the law firm that had me on retainer, had to fly a lot in his work, and he’d told me that when airlines were permitted to fly again after September 11, the security checks were extensive, exhaustive, and embarrassing – but, in his view, not all that effective, designed more to reassure the flying public that the government was taking decisive action than to actually deter a determined hijacker.
I was as shocked at what had happened as anyone, but I had to make a living, so I tried to put the events behind me and get on with my life. It wasn’t easy. I’d known some of the 125 people who’d died in the Pentagon when American Airlines flight 77, bound to Los Angeles from Dulles International Airport, had been turned around and crashed into the building at 9:37 that morning.
Increased security checks at all of the military installations in the DC area had impacted me a little. I mean, I understood their concern, and I have no objection to measures to keep people on an installation or in a building safe, but having to raise my hood and trunk every time I entered Fort McNair to go to the Officer’s Club for lunch was a huge pain in the ass. Especially, since I had my military retiree ID card, and had been visiting the base for more than ten years. I decided that until things calmed down and people came to their senses, I’d just eat at the nearest Burger King.
Military personnel were on full alert, pulling long hours and being mostly confined to their places of duty. So, it came as a surprise when Colonel William Raymond called my office and asked to meet me at Adugna, an Ethiopian restaurant on Arlington Pike southwest of the Pentagon. He was quiet and rushed on the phone, as if someone might be listening in and he didn’t want them to hear. I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t invited me to meet him at the Pentagon cafeteria in the basement. The place would probably still be blocked off for repairs caused by the plane, which had penetrated the ground floor of the building on the west side from the outer E Ring all the way in to the C Ring. I still knew a lot of people working in the building, and occasionally met them for lunch – at the Pentagon, or at one of the nearby bases, like Ft. Myer in Arlington or Ft. McNair in the District, so it was unusual that Raymond wouldn’t chose one of them.
I decided not to press the issue, though. He sounded really worried, worried enough to pique my curiosity.
William Raymond had been a second lieutenant when I first met him. An infantry officer, he’d been a platoon leader in the First Infantry Division in Korea assigned to be aggressor against my Special Forces team during a special exercise. We’d whipped their asses soundly, and the young commander, rather than being pissed at us as many regular guys were when we aced them in exercises, had invited my team and me to the Division officer club for drinks. I’d run into him later at Ft. Bragg after he was promoted to captain and accepted into Special Forces training. We ran into each other from time to time after he graduated and was assigned to one of the A teams at Bragg, but because I was on special assignment to do highly sensitive missions, our contacts were infrequent.
