work spaces were sequestered from the rest of the department in a suite with a dozen other officers. Outside, more than one hundred people worked the cubicle farm, long rows of desks and filing cabinets that stretched through the D and C rings. Inside, Karen took one of ten cubes. But Sargent’s paperwork was even more closely guarded, so within the small, windowless space, she actually had an office with a door. Sargent had noticed Karen on her first day, the tall new co-worker with a public chocolate bowl and screen saver that read “Dance like nobody’s watching!” Then Sargent learned they were members of the same African American sorority. Since the two of them preferred the comfort of sweats and T-shirts for the ride into work, they started meeting most mornings in Sargent’s office, where they changed from their street clothes into their green class Bs.
Karen liked to get there with enough time to gab, and somehow the conversation always got around to children. She might start by grousing about her boyfriend, the topic of conversation with a lot of her girlfriends. She’d gotten close to remarrying a couple times but never quite made it, and unfortunately this latest guy wasn’t working out either. For one thing, he wasn’t military. Just as bad, he didn’t have a car. “What am I supposed to do with him?” she’d say. “Tell him, ‘Let’s get on the bus and go to dinner’?” Or if she’d had one of her long phone calls with Kim the night before, she might be thinking about her retirement dream, to get out at the twenty-year mark in 2004 and teach Army kids with Kim on an overseas base. But no matter what might prompt her, she talked often to Sargent about feeling her age and missing Saundra, about how much she’d enjoyed putting pretty dresses on her in the short time they’d had together. She wanted another child badly, and though she didn’t mention it to Sargent, she’d actually started looking into adopting a baby. But who knew? Maybe her girlfriends were right. Maybe the perfect man was waiting in the Pentagon. She’d reboot her smile and go about her day.
On the morning of September 11, Karen was already at her desk when Sargent arrived at the Pentagon. Karen had a full day slated. First there was last-minute prep for a meeting with General Maude, and then she planned to cut out at lunchtime to attend a retirement party at Walter Reed for her old brigade first sergeant. Sargent stopped to visit on her way to her office. She had a new diet she wanted to try. They popped a couple chocolates in their mouths while discussing the benefits of taking up carrots.
A little before nine, Sargent rushed to Karen’s desk and asked if she’d heard the news from New York: A plane had flown into the north tower at the World Trade Center. Since General Harry Axson was traveling, people were watching reports on the TV in his office in the B ring, and Sargent was headed to join them. Karen told her that she’d already seen the news on the web. But as she tried to explain that she had too much work to leave her desk, Chief Warrant Officer Bill Ruth, Karen’s counterpart for the Army Reserves, leaned around from his cube and shushed them. He was on the phone trying to find out what was happening. Karen motioned for Sargent to go on.
Just as Sargent got in front of the TV, the second plane hit the south tower. She called Karen and told her to get down there. This time Karen came and stood in stunned silence with some twenty other officers. A new reality settled over the room. This wasn’t an accident; this was an act of war. People started to react. The colonel in command of Karen and Sargent showed up in the doorway and calmly explained that an emergency operations center was being set up in the basement. But Karen wasn’t assigned to the EOC. She looked around the room and said, “Okay, let’s get back to work.” As she walked off down the hall, Sargent turned and watched her go.
The initial flash of sound was deafening, unreal. The officers still in Axson’s office didn’t know what had happened. Some thought there might have been an explosion at the helipad. Others were certain it was part of the attack. Karen, who was sitting at her desk, never got to wonder. American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the building on the first floor, buckling the concrete floor of the second as it barreled underneath her like a freight train. In an instant, she and the others at their desks were thrown across the room. Everything came crashing down—cabinets, bookshelves, wall lockers, ceiling tiles, overhead lighting—and the windowless office went absolutely black. Before any of the living had a chance to get their bearings, the jet fuel exploded about four feet from Karen’s cubicle. The room temperature soared from 75 degrees to 1,700 as a fireball engulfed the office, leaving behind a toxic black cloud. There was no way to see it in the endless, unnatural dark, but if you lifted your head, you could feel it. And if you tried to breathe, it felt like you were inhaling fire.
Major John Thurman, who had been sitting two desks down from Karen, lay on the floor and called out to see if anyone else was alive. Only Karen and Bill Ruth answered back. Thurman put his head as close to the floor as he could without burning his face, forced in a deep breath, and stood. He moved some file cabinets to make a path to Karen and then another to pull Ruth to them.
“We’ve got to crawl to the door and get out of here,” said Thurman. But Ruth was too injured to move, so Karen and Thurman told him they’d come back for