he first known phone call came from Tom Burnett of San Ramon, California, a father of three little girls and an executive for Thoretec, a health-care company. A big man who had quarterbacked his high school football team, Tom was seated in the first-class cabin next to Mark Bingham, a San Francisco publicist who was on his way home. Mark had overslept that morning and had run down the A-17 gangway just as the flight attendants were about to close the plane's door. Had he been a few minutes later, he would have missed the flight.

Tom Burnett called his wife, Deena, at their home. A former flight attendant herself, she immediately picked up on the fact that something was wrong. "Are you okay?" "No," Tom replied. "I am on the airplane, United Flight 93, and it has been hijacked." He spoke quickly and quietly. "They've knifed a guy and there's a bomb on board. Please call the authorities, Deena." And he hung up.

Lisa Jefferson was at work at the GTE Airfone Customer Care Center in Oakbrook, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, when she first heard news of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. A supervisor with more than 18 years of experience at her job, she came out of her office to get more information. Just then, at about 8:45 a.m. CDT (9:45 EDT), the operator at Station 15 received an urgent call. The operator signaled for Lisa's assistance.

"She told me she had a real hijacking situation on her line," Lisa says. "I asked her what airline and the flight number. She told me it was United Flight 93. She appeared to be traumatized, so I told her I would take over.

"When I took over the call, there was a gentleman on the phone. He was very calm and soft-spoken. I introduced myself to him as Mrs. Jefferson and told him, ‘I understand this plane is being hijacked. Can you please give me detailed information as to what is going on?'" Then Lisa began going through her GTE Distress-Call Manual, asking questions such as, "How many people are on board? How many hijackers? Are they armed? Are there any children on board?"

The man answered Lisa Jefferson in an equally calm manner. He was sitting next to a flight attendant who helped him relay the information: 27 passengers in coach, 10 in first class, five flight attendants, and no children that he could see. "He told me that three people had taken over the plane," said Lisa, "two with knives and one with a bomb strapped around his waist with a red belt. The two with knives had locked themselves in the cockpit. They ordered everyone to sit down, as the flight attendants were still standing. One of the flight attendants just happened to sit next to Todd in the back of the plane. The hijacker with the bomb pulled the curtain that divided first class from coach so the passengers in the back couldn't see what was going on."

But Todd did see two people on the floor. "He couldn't tell if they were dead or alive," said Lisa. "The flight attendant told him she was pretty sure it was the pilot and the copilot.

"I asked the caller's name and he told me, ‘Todd Beamer.' He told me he was from Cranbury, New Jersey.

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"At first I thought Todd was whispering or keeping his voice down low to prevent detection, so I told him that if at any point he thought his life might be in jeopardy for being on the line with me to put the phone down but try not to hang up—to keep the line open so I could at least hear what was going on.

"But he didn't seem to be concerned. He said he was fine. At first he said, ‘Maybe I should try to call my wife.' Then he said, ‘No, I just want to let someone know this is happening.' He thought the terrorists were going back to the airport and the plane would land safely."

Lisa Jefferson later told me, "He didn't want to call you and give you bad news if he didn't have to. I offered to try and connect him with you. He went back and forth on it several times before he decided against it."

I'm so glad he didn't. Had I learned about Todd's circumstances by hearing his voice from the plane, I no doubt would have lost it. I have tremendous respect for those family members and friends who received calls from hijacked flights that day and were able to maintain their composure. But I honestly don't think I would have responded so well. And Todd knew that. Todd was a smart guy. He knew I was home by myself with the boys and would have been powerless to help; moreover, he may have been concerned about our unborn baby had I gotten too upset. So I wasn't surprised to learn from Lisa that he had considered calling me and had chosen against it. Nor was I offended or hurt. In the only way he could, Todd was still looking out for me, protecting me, even in such awful circumstances.

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At first, most likely, Todd thought that this hijacking would end similarly to other hijackings in our history, with the hijackers making demands, landing the plane in some location amenable to their cause, and negotiators hopefully being able to find a solution. While he recognized the danger, he didn't seem desperate.

"Todd was calm all the way through our conversation," Lisa told me. "He asked me, ‘Do you know what they want? Do they want money, or ransom, or what?'

"‘I really don't know,' I told him. I didn't have a clue what they wanted. I didn't tell him about the other hijackings at that point, and I don't think he was aware of them yet. I didn't want him to get upset or excited or lose control, and I still felt that he had hope."

By now the FBI was on another line, listening in, since part of GTE's Distress procedure is to notify them.

"Suddenly Todd's voice inflection went up a little bit and he said, ‘We are going down! We're going down. No, wait. We are coming back up. No, we are turning around, we are going north... I really don't know where we are going. Oh, Jesus, please help us!'"

Just about 10 minutes ago, at 9:36 a.m. EST, the air-traffic controllers on the ground had just watched their radar screens in horror as the plane made a hairpin left turn just above Cleveland, veering sharply off course and turning south at first, then east. Where was this plane going?

What actually happened in the next several minutes is unclear. Apparently the plane's autopilot and transponder—the device that emits a signal by which radar can track a plane—were switched off, and the hijackers were flying erratically. The plane began plunging, lurching, and bobbing from the altitude it had maintained previously. Perhaps the hijackers were simply trying to keep the passengers off guard by jolting them around. Todd had always talked about "flying below the radar"; now, with the transponder turned off, he literally was.

Tom Burnett called Deena a second time. "They're in the cockpit now!" he told her. He asked Deena about the World Trade Center. "Were the planes that hit it commercial, passenger airliners?"

"I don't know," Deena replied.

"We're turning back to New York," he told her. "No, we're heading south." Tom said he had to go and hung up again.

Three minutes later the Pentagon was hit. The FAA ordered all airports in the country closed immediately and all airborne planes to the ground, but Flight 93 maintained its new course, heading southeast… straight toward Washington, D.C.

Seated somewhere near Todd was Jeremy Glick, a new father from Hewitt, New Jersey, an hour and a half from where Todd and I lived. A strong, athletic-looking guy at six feet, one inch, and 220 pounds, Jeremy was a former NCAA judo champion with a love for waterskiing. Just the type of guy with whom Todd would have struck up an instant friendship under different circumstances. As it was, the two men quickly found some common ground. Todd specifically mentioned Jeremy's name to Lisa Jefferson.

Jeremy had planned to fly out to San Francisco for a business meeting the day before, but because of the fire at the airport, his flight had been rerouted to Kennedy International. Jeremy chose instead to return home and take Tuesday's early flight out of Newark—United Flight 93.

Since Jeremy had planned to be gone, his wife, Lyz, had taken their three-month-old baby, Emmy, to visit Lyz's parents in Windham, upstate New York. Jeremy had called Lyz around 7:30 that morning before boarding, just to say a quick hello. Lyz's dad had picked up the phone and told Jeremy that Emmy had been fussing the night before, so Lyz was still sleeping. They decided to let her sleep.

"Have a good trip," Lyz's dad told Jeremy.

Now Jeremy was calling back, this time from somewhere above Cleveland. "Three Iranian-looking men wearing red headbands, one with a red box strapped to his waist, say they have a bomb and have taken control of the plane," he told Lyz.

When Lyz heard Jeremy mention a bomb, she panicked. Jeremy calmed her down, and the couple stayed on the phone for nearly 20 minutes. They told each other, "I love you," over and over.

Jeremy must have sensed the situation wasn't going to turn out well. He told Lyz he wanted her and Emmy to be happy, and that he'd respect any decisions she made in the future.

Then Jeremy said, "Lyz, I need to know something. One of the other passengers talked to his wife and said that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. Is that true?"

Lyz was afraid to tell Jeremy what she was seeing with her own eyes. Standing in the living room, watching the television, she could see the smoke from the World Trade Center that had just collapsed. She hesitated for a moment and then said, "Please be strong, but yes, they are doing that."

"Is that where we're going, too?" Jeremy asked. Lyz told him she didn't think there was anything left of the World Trade Center.

When Tom Burnett called Deena a third time, she told him, "Tom, they just hit the Pentagon. They seem to be taking planes and driving them into landmarks all over the East Coast."

Tom told Deena he was suspicious about the hijackers' bomb. "I think they're bluffing," he told his wife. "We're going to do something. I've got to go."

About that same time, Jeremy Glick told Lyz that some of the guys in the back of the plane were talking about rushing the hijackers.

Meanwhile, other people aboard Flight 93 were calling friends and loved ones as well. Earlier that morning, Lauren Grandcolas had been delighted to learn that she could get a standby seat aboard Flight 93; it would get her home earlier than expected. She'd called and left a message for her husband to that effect. Now she called again and left another message. "We are having a little problem on the plane, but I am fine and comfortable… for now."

Joseph DeLuca called his dad. His girlfriend, Linda Gronlund, called her sister, telling her the combination to her safe-deposit box and how much she loved her. Marion Britton borrowed a phone to call a friend, telling him that she was sure she was going to die. She said, "They already slit two people's throats."

Mark Bingham, at six feet, five inches, was a former rugby player on a national championship team. He had once faced down an armed mugger on the streets of San Francisco. A gutsy guy and a risk taker, he had run with the bulls in Pamplona a few months previously. But when Mark called his mom, Alice Hoglan, from the plane, he seemed distracted and rattled. "Mom, this is Mark Bingham," he said. "I just want to tell you that I love you in case I don't see you again." Mark's mom heard somber voices in the background during the call, possibly laying the initial plans for a counterattack.

Flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw called her husband, a USAirways pilot, from the coach-class galley. "We've been hijacked," she told him. She also said she and some other flight attendants were filling coffeepots with boiling water to throw at the hijackers.

More than two dozen phone calls were placed from the plane that morning. Why had the hijackers permitted such easy access with the outside world? Some people have speculated that the terrorists actually wanted passengers to call, to increase the fright they felt they were inflicting and to create even more widespread havoc. Possibly they overestimated their control of the situation, or perhaps they underestimated the Americans on board, considering them too weak and timorous to fight back. For whatever reason, the terrorists made no effort to thwart the outgoing phone calls. None of the people who connected with family or friends on the ground gave any indication that they feared being caught, punished, or killed if seen making an attempt to communicate with the outside world.

It's not known whether the passengers aboard Flight 93 truly knew what a formidable force they represented that morning, and how good their chances of landing the plane safely may have been if—and what a large if it was—they could regain control of the cockpit.

Besides having an assortment of athletic colleagues such as Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, and Mark Bingham, several other passengers were well able to take care of themselves. CeeCee Ross-Lyles, one of the flight attendants, was a former police officer. Lou Nacke was a human fireplug at five feet, three inches, and 200 pounds. A company manager for K.B Toys and a weight lifter, Lou had a Superman tattoo on his shoulder. When he was a little boy, he once attempted to crash through a glass window while wearing his Superman cape.

Rich Guadagno was an enforcement officer with California Fish and Wildlife and had been trained in hand-to-hand combat. Linda Gronlund, a lawyer, had a brown belt in karate. Although he was 60 years of age, William Cashman was a former paratrooper with 101st Airborne, and he was still in good shape. Alan Beaven, over six feet tall, was a former Scotland Yard prosecutor who enjoyed rock climbing as a pastime. He had a sign on his desk: "Fear—who cares?"

And then there was Todd—strong, athletic, a gamer, the go-to guy.

In addition to sheer strength, the small number of passengers had a surprising amount of aeronautical acumen. Don Greene had flown single-engine planes before he was old enough to vote. He was the vice president of Safe Flight Instrument Group, a company that made safety devices for airlines, and with some coaching from air-traffic controllers on the ground, probably could have landed the United jet. Andrew Garcia was an air-traffic controller for the Air National Guard. Working together, they could probably have brought the plane down… if…

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Lisa Beamer, a homemaker and mother, has become a national symbol of grace and courage in troubled times. Recently she was selected by People magazine as one of the "25 Most Intriguing People of 2001" for the way she has spoken "eloquently of the need to move on in life without hatred." She lives in New Jersey with her two young sons and infant daughter.

Ken Abraham is a professional writer with world-class credentials. Recent projects include Payne Stewart, the New York Times best-seller he coauthored with golfer Payne Stewart's widow, Tracey, and Zinger!, the autobiography of Paul Azinger.