{"id":25,"date":"2026-09-10T02:45:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/65.110.86.41\/2\/?p=25"},"modified":"2026-09-20T12:47:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T19:47:27","slug":"chapter-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=25","title":{"rendered":"1000 Years For Revenge: The inside story of the terrorist who designed the 9\/11 plot and the two American heroes who tried to stop him."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"1000%20Years%20For%20Revenge%3A%20The%20inside%20story%20of%20the%20terrorist%20who%20designed%20the%209%2F11%20plot%20and%20the%20two%20American%20heroes%20who%20tried%20to%20stop%20him.\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/1000-Years-Revenge-International-FBI\/dp\/0060597259\/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._AiBQ2cejdT7aLRQp9dkV-TuNNzz0pkdMRb0bbW5PfI.lGc1ler4bcPg-ZFTZz66ZFEWcwLzxWUQ6u_LQ1YFL_E&amp;qid=1789077287&amp;sr=8-1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-5999\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-02-09 at 1.05.09 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Screen-Shot-2015-02-09-at-1.05.09-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"209\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Screen-Shot-2015-02-09-at-1.05.09-PM.png 246w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Screen-Shot-2015-02-09-at-1.05.09-PM-196x300.png 196w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 209px) 100vw, 209px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">By Peter Lance 9.11.26<\/span><br \/>\nChapter One BLACK TUESDAY<\/strong><br \/>\nOn the morning of September 11, 2001, the greatest would-be mass murderer since Adolf Hitler was locked down in solitary confinement in a Colorado prison. In a seven-by-twelve-foot cell at the Supermax, the most secure of all federal jails, <strong>Ramzi Ahmed Yousef<\/strong> sat waiting like a bird of prey. Small, gaunt and reed-thin, with close-cropped hair and two milky gray eyes, he looked across his cell at the stainless steel toilet and sink, below a shelf supporting a thirteen-inch TV. It was Yousef\u2019s only link to the outside world. As CNN played silently in the background, his eyes darted across the dog-eared pages of his Koran.<\/p>\n<p>Yousef may not have known the precise moment of the attacks, but he was sure they would come. After all, he\u2019d set them in motion six years before in Manila. The idea of hijacking jetliners laden with fuel, and using them as missiles to take down great buildings, had come to the bomb maker after he\u2019d tried to kill a quarter of a million people with his first Twin Towers device in 1993. He\u2019d gone on to plot the deaths of President Clinton, Pope John Paul II, and the prime minister of Pakistan, while hatching a fiendish plan to destroy up to a dozen jumbo jets as they flew over American cities. But his most audacious plot involved a return to New York to finish the job he\u2019d started in the fall of 1992. In one horrific morning, suicide bombers trained as pilots would take the cockpits aboard a series of commercial airliners and drive them into the Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a series of other U.S. buildings.<\/p>\n<p>Now, just before 6:45 a.m. Mountain Time, as Ramzi Yousef sat in the Supermax reading the Koran, he heard muffled noises on the cell block: inmates shouting. One of the prisoners down the corridor had been watching CNN and now he was screaming. A guard rushed to his cell, went inside and saw the devastation.<\/p>\n<p>He yelled, \u201cSome plane just hit the Trade Center.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yousef quickly looked up at the black-and-white TV above his head. His eyes wide at the site of the North Tower burning, he turned up the sound and hear the voice of an eyewitness:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-22442 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.11.59\u202fPM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"208\" height=\"284\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.11.59\u202fPM.png 249w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.11.59\u202fPM-220x300.png 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 208px) 100vw, 208px\" \/> \u201cI just saw the entire top part of the World Trade Center explode.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yousef rocked back, amazed <em>himself<\/em> at the execution of his plan. He stared at the news footage of racing FDNY engines, terrified evacuees, and bodies dropping from the towers. Then, from the Battery, a camera captured UA Flight #175 slamming into the South Tower.<\/p>\n<p>Another onlooker described it as \u201ca sickening sight.\u201d But Yousef, the master terrorist, saw it as the culmination of a dream and the end to some unfinished business. He dropped to the floor, bent over, and gave thanks. \u201cPraise Allah the merciful and the just, the lord of the worlds. We thank you for delivering this message to the apostates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Later that morning, his cell door swung open and a pair of FBI agents from the Colorado Springs office came in. They stood in the three-foot-wide anteroom between the solid steel cell door and the bars to Yousef\u2019s cell. The convicted terrorist got up from his bed and approached the bars as the two agents presented Bureau IDs and identified themselves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy do you come here?\u201d he demanded.<\/p>\n<p>One of the agents nodded to the TV behind Yousef, still tuned to CNN.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you have anything to do with that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yousef shot back: \u201cHow would I possibly know what was going on from in here? Besides, I am represented by counsel. You have no right to question me without my attorney present.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The two agents eyed each other. Now they were facing Yousef the lawyer, the man who had represented himself throughout the entire three months of the Manila airline bombing trial.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have nothing else to say to you,\u201d snapped Yousef. He turned up the sound on the TV and sat back down on his bed.<\/p>\n<p>The agents withdrew, but within minutes the steel door swung back open and two Bureau of Prison<strong>s<\/strong> guards stormed in.<\/p>\n<p>As one began to unlock Yousef\u2019s cell bars, the other one shouted, \u201cGet up and face the wall.\u201d Yousef stared at him defiantly for a moment, but then the guard slammed a black box and a belly belt chain against the bars, so Yousef got up. Now<strong>,<\/strong> as he faced the wall, one guard came in and quickly put the belt around his waist. The other one bent down and snapped on ankle irons and a chain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is this?\u201d shouted Yousef. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChanging cells,\u201d said one of the guards. He turned off the TV. \u201cHands clasped in front of you.\u201d Yousef ground his teeth, but complied, as the guard snapped the black box onto his wrist\u2014a six-inch long solid restraint that rendered the prisoner\u2019s hands completely immobile. The guard locked the box onto the belly belt, making it impossible now for Yousef to strike out with his arms or fists. The guards turned him around and shuffled him out of the cell, moving him down the corridor of \u201cD\u201d wing, past the cell of the infamous Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. (For a time, this so-called \u201cbombers row\u201d had also housed convicted Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.)<\/p>\n<p>One of the guards unlocked the door to an empty cell and moved Yousef inside as he continued to rant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are you moving me? My papers\u2014you have to let me take my Koran!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But when the guards had him locked behind the cell bars, they slammed closed the steel door and went back to Yousef\u2019s cell. There they began to toss it, searching around the mattress and on the shelf beside the bed, throwing Yousef\u2019s letters, papers, and drawings into a plastic garbage bag. The units on the maximum-security \u201cD\u201d wing are supposed to be soundproof, but as the guards worked to clean out Yousef\u2019s cell, they could still hear him screaming down the corridor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are you doing this? Why would you think that I could have any knowledge of this thing that happened? I\u2019ve been in this place locked down for years. <em>Do you hear me?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In fact, Yousef\u2019s knowledge of the plot was quite precise. He had designed it with his uncle and his best friend back in 1994. It had now been executed almost exactly as he intended. Only the details of the timing had been unknown to him.<\/p>\n<p>Another thing Yousef couldn\u2019t possibly know was that across the country, earlier that morning, a woman who\u2019d almost stopped him had watched the devastation first hand. She had put all of this behind her years ago, or so she thought. But now the terror she\u2019d been so close to preventing, was back. For <strong>FBI Special Agent Nancy Floyd<\/strong>, an old wound had just been ripped open<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>She had come within weeks of breaking Yousef\u2019s bomb cell in the fall of 1992, but her investigation had been shut down by a Bureau superior in New York. Now, just before 9:00 a.m., as she drove west across the George Washington Bridge on her way to an off-site surveillance assignment, SA Floyd heard a report on her car radio about an explosion at the Trade Center.<\/p>\n<p>She hit the brakes. Dozens of cars in front o<strong>f<\/strong> her skidded to a stop<strong>, <\/strong>and traffic on both sides of the bridge ground to a halt as the morning commuters heard the news. Nancy shoved her gun into a holster on her belt, threw a jacket, on and got out of the car. She quickly crossed the center median and moved with dozens of other onlookers to the south side of the bridge.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-22454\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.51.59\u202fPM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"192\" height=\"194\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.51.59\u202fPM.png 238w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.51.59\u202fPM-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 192px) 100vw, 192px\" \/>Down the Hudson River, at the tip of Lower Manhattan, smoke billowed up from the North Tower<strong>. <\/strong>Nancy listened to a radio broadcast from a nearby car. It was still early in the attack, and the onlookers around her were speculating: \u201cAre they sure it\u2019s a plane?\u201d \u201cMaybe a gas leak?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Standing there on the bridge, though, the forty-one-year-old special agent from Texas knew in her gut what it was: an attack by Middle Eastern terrorists\u2014and not just <em>any <\/em>attack, but one hatched in the brilliant but deadly mind of Ramzi Yousef.<\/p>\n<p>Minutes later, UA Flight #175 roared down the river a few thousand feet above them. For a moment it looked as if the 767 was pointed toward the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor; then it turned to the left, and slammed into the upper floors of the South Tower.<\/p>\n<p>Back in 1992, through<a href=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/Peter_Lance_Spy_PLAYBOY.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong> Emad Salem,<\/strong> <\/a>an Egyptian informant she\u2019d recruited, Nancy Floyd had come so close to the men around Yousef that she could almost smell them. By then, Ramzi Yousef was hard at work at an apartment in Jersey City, building the 1,500-pound urea-nitrate-fuel oil device he would soon plant on the B-2 level beneath the two towers.<\/p>\n<p>Now Nancy watched those towers as they burned, knowing that though he\u2019d been in federal lockup since 1995, this was somehow the fulfillment of Yousef\u2019s plan. For SA<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Floyd it was a vindication, but she took little comfort in the thought.<\/p>\n<p>Her attempt to expose the first Trade Center plot had almost cost her career. Only now, years later, had she begun to recover. She\u2019d put in for a transfer to a small FBI regional office in the far West; her request was granted, and now Nancy was only eighteen days away from leaving New York.<\/p>\n<p>Long ago she\u2019d tried to bury thoughts of Yousef and the 1993 bombing, but now she couldn\u2019t stop thinking about him\u2014especially after a call she\u2019d received that past August from her old informant Salem. He\u2019d been in the Federal Witness Protection Program ever since testifying against the cell around Yousef and Sheikh Abdel Rahman. Largely on Salem\u2019s word, the blind Sheikh had been convicted of a plot to blow up a series of New York landmarks, including the tunnels leading into Manhattan and the very bridge Nancy Floyd was now standing on.<\/p>\n<p>But years before, Floyd had been prohibited by the Bureau from taking Salem\u2019s calls, or ever discussing the details of the original bombing with him. In all the years since, even when Salem had been diagnosed with cancer in 1998, Nancy had never broken the silence.<\/p>\n<p>Then, a few weeks before 9\/11, Nancy was working an FBI undercover assignment when Salem sent word that he wanted to talk to her. They never connected. So she never heard what he wanted to say.<\/p>\n<p>Now, as she stood watching the towers burn, Nancy Floyd felt a cold throb at the base of her spine. <em>Could Emad have been calling to warn me about this?<\/em>, she wondered. She would never know. Only in the summer of 2002, months after the attacks, did Nancy Floyd become aware that another investigator had been on a parallel course.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Along with the word \u201ctragedy,\u201d September 11 was the day the word \u201chero\u201d took on new meaning<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>For the FDNY, the statistics were numbing: 343 members of service lost their lives. Ninety firefighters in the Department\u2019s Special Operations Command were wiped out. Rescue One, the preeminent heavy rescue company in the world, lost eleven men in a house of twenty-five. 9\/11 was a day full of terrible ironies, but one of the cruelest involved a man who was already a bona fide legend in the FDNY, fifteen years before he ever roared down to Liberty Street and raced up the stairs of <strong>t<\/strong>he South Tower.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ronnie Bucca<\/strong> was a forty-seven-year-old fire marshal with the FDNY\u2019s Bureau of Fire Investigation. A veteran firefighter himself, Bucca had investigated the original WTC bombing in 1993\u2014and had come away convinced that the perpetrators would return to finish the job. <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-22446 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.19.21\u202fPM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"281\" height=\"185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.19.21\u202fPM.png 435w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.19.21\u202fPM-300x197.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Over the next six years, as he educated himself on Islamic fundamentalism, Bucca found himself continually frustrated by the FBI\u2019s inability to appreciate the bin Laden threat or share the intel. Despite the fact that he had a Top Secret security clearance as a Warrant Officer in a high level Army Reserve intelligence unit,\u00a0Bucca was repeatedly frozen out by members of the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force, one of the key Bureau units hunting Yousef. His frustration reached a fever pitch in 1999, after he uncovered startling evidence that a mole with direct ties to the blind Sheikh was actually working inside FDNY headquarters.<\/p>\n<p>Now, astonishingly, on that morning, as Nancy Floyd watched from the George Washington Bridge, Ronnie Bucca was on the 78 floor of the South Tower with a hose in his hand, trying to beat back the flames.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE FLYING FIREFIGHTER<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fifteen yers earlier, just after noon on September 16, 1986, Ronnie Bucca was working as an outside vent man on the day tour at Rescue One, the busiest heavy rescue company in New York City. Ronnie, his lieutenant, and four other firefighters had just knocked down an electrical fire in the West 20s and were \u201ctaking up,\u201d heading back to the house on West 43rd Street, when they got the call from Dispatch. A 10-75, the FDNY code calling for backup assistance from a rescue company, had been transmitted for Box 22-1138 at 483 Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. 40 Engine and 35 Truck had responded. Dispatch indicated that the \u201cfire ground\u201d was on the fourth floor, moving toward \u201cexposure two,\u201d the right side of the building.<\/p>\n<p>In the cab of the company\u2019s big Mack R truck, Lt. Steve Casani, a blue-eyed Irish-Italian bear, turned to his driver (known as the chauffeur) and said,\u00a0<em>\u201cHit it.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nThe siren roared and the enormous \u201ctoolbox on wheels\u201d headed up Eighth Avenue to the Upper West Side. Heavy rescue companies like \u201cOne\u201d were created to provide backup for working fire suppression units. Their job was to get inside, help move the hose, help vent the flames, and look for bodies, both civilians and Members of Service (other firefighters).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy the time we got there,\u201d recalled Casani, \u201cThe fourth floor was engulfed. 40 Engine needed help, so we went to work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hydrants were tapped, hose lines were pulled, and 35 Truck\u2019s ladder rose toward the roof of the five-story old-law tenement. As the men from Rescue One jumped off the truck, they quickly pulled their Scott Air Packs over their Nomex turnout coats.<\/p>\n<p>Ronnie Bucca, a darkly handsome ex-Green Beret Reservist who\u2019d made dozens of jumps with the 101st Airborne, was known for his attention to the gear. He took an extra second to buckle his harness so that the thirty-five-pound compressed air bottle on his back would stay secure.<\/p>\n<p>It was a move that would soon save his life.<\/p>\n<p>Ronnie grabbed a Haligan forcible entry tool and took off with firefighter Tommy Reichel into 485 Amsterdam, the tenement next to the fire building. A five-mile-a-day runner, Bucca took the steps two at a time. At 5\u20199\u201d and 165 pounds Bucca was slightly built compared to some of the \u201cbeefalos\u201d in the house, but what he lacked in size he made up for in tenacity and heart.<\/p>\n<p>At the roof, Ronnie burst through the door and was immediately pushed back by the heat. Even under his mask he felt it. Next door, the fourth floor at 483 Amsterdam was an inferno. Just then, over the Handie-Talkie radio clipped to his turnout coat, he heard a Mayday from Lt. Dave Fenton from 35 Truck, who was trapped on the 5th floor. There was a fire escape outside, but in a classic New York irony, the windows were covered by security \u201cscissor gates.\u201d Designed to keep predators out, the gates had locked the lieutenant in, and he was running out of time.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-22447\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.23.32\u202fPM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"267\" height=\"238\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.23.32\u202fPM.png 363w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.23.32\u202fPM-300x268.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 267px) 100vw, 267px\" \/>Ronnie climbed through a gooseneck ladder onto the fire escape. As soon as he hit the rusted metal he slipped. The broken glass on the grid was like ice. Worse, smoke thick as pea soup was coming out of the windows behind the gates. Ronnie tightened his mask and switched on the Scott\u2019s bottle. Compressed air filled his lungs. He moved cautiously to the edge of the fire escape and leaned over to smash the glass.<\/p>\n<p>The smoke rushed out. Ronnie leaned over again and made a stab with the Haligan tool, trying to hook the gates and pop them free. But as he swung out, he slipped on the glass and went over the edge, going down past the fourth floor, then the third, falling face up as he dropped. Miraculously, at the second floor level, the Scott\u2019s Air Pack he\u2019d so tightly cinched hit a metal conduit &#8211;a two-inch pipe across the alley that delivered electricity to the building. The force of the impact flipped Bucca 180 degrees and partially broke his fall.<\/p>\n<p>He landed hard in a pile of debris on the ground level. The last thing he remembered was hearing a cracking sound.<br \/>\nAt that moment, Lt. Fenton broke free. He moved to a fifth floor window, which he smashed to help vent and get air. But when he looked down, Fenton saw Ronnie\u2019s body lying in the alley. His boots were twisted outward as if his legs had snapped. Bucca wasn\u2019t moving.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJesus,\u201d Fenton thought as he clicked on the Handie-Talkie. \u201cMayday.\u00a0<em>Mayday.<\/em>\u00a0Man down in the alley.\u201d He didn\u2019t wait for a response. Fenton took off down the stairs.<\/p>\n<p>Now, as he fought the blaze with firefighter Tom Reilly on the fourth floor, Lt. Steve Casani heard the distress call. The two of them rushed to the window and looked down. \u201cChrist,\u201d said Casani. \u201cI just lost my first guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fenton was first to hit the alley. When he saw Ronnie he was sure he was dead. But he leaned down, felt Bucca\u2019s neck, and got a pulse. There was respiration, but maybe not for long. Fenton quickly pulled off his own turnout coat and covered Ronnie as Casani and Reilly burst into the alley from upstairs.<\/p>\n<p>Right away, Casani jumped on the radio. \u201cI need a Stokes basket and a bus,\u201d he said, using FDNY speak for a rescue stretcher and an ambulance. Roosevelt Hospital was closest, but Casani demanded they head to Bellevue, which had a trauma unit. The only problem was, Bellevue was fifty blocks south and clear across town. Reilly didn\u2019t think he heard right.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLieu, East 31st?\u00a0At noon on a Tuesday? We\u2019re on the fuckin\u2019 West Side.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen call the fuckin\u2019 P.D.\u201d growled Casani. \u201cHave \u2018em clear Fifth.\u201d He looked down at Ronnie. \u201cI am\u00a0<em>not<\/em>\u00a0gonna lose this kid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Minutes later the siren roared. Casani was in the back of an FDNY rescue unit gripping Ronnie\u2019s hand as the ambulance cut through Central Park and did sixty behind Rescue One\u2019s Mack R, cutting a swath through the noon traffic down Fifth Avenue. As the chauffeur looked left and right, virtually every intersection had been blocked off by an NYPD sector car, an FDNY ambulance, or a piece of fire apparatus. It was perhaps the greatest single midday hospital run in FDNY history, and soon the radio stations got word.<\/p>\n<p>The anchor on WINS Radio said that traffic was being blocked on Fifth Avenue between 96th\u00a0and 34th\u00a0streets. Mayor Koch and Cardinal O\u2019Connor were on their way to Bellevue. A firefighter had been badly injured after a five-story fall; his name was being withheld pending notification of next of kin.<\/p>\n<p>Ronnie\u2019s brother Robert, a former medic with the 82nd\u00a0Airborne who was then a cadet at the Police Academy, got the first call. He asked the FDNY to patch him through to Ronnie\u2019s wife, Eve, who was in the kitchen of their modest home north of the city. Eve\u2019s father, Bart Mitchell, had been an FDNY Battalion Chief with the 12th in Harlem.\u00a0 Her grandfather was a retired FDNY lieutenant who\u2019d worked the Bronx. Growing up, she\u2019d heard the phone ring dozens of times before, but never for something like this. Robert told her not to worry. He\u2019d pick her up in an NYPD sector car for the trip downtown.<\/p>\n<p>When they roared up to Bellevue with siren and lights flashing, there was a small crowd of reporters outside keeping the deathwatch. Ronnie\u2019s older brother Alfred, who worked for the Transit Authority, was outside along with Ronnie\u2019s parents, Joe and Astrid, and a few of his buddies from the 11th Special Forces. Together they moved past the press gauntlet.<\/p>\n<p>In the hallway outside ICU, Eve could feel her heart pounding until the door opened and Lt. Casani walked out, still in his bunker coat. She hesitated, studying his face. Then he grinned. \u201cIt\u2019s gonna be all right.\u201d He opened his coat and hugged her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt that moment I knew we had a miracle,\u201d said Eve, thinking back. She moved quickly inside toward Ronnie\u2019s bedside and saw that though he was lying flat, barely moving, he was conscious. She bent down and kissed him. Ronnie lifted a finger and Eve squeezed it. He motioned for her to come close and whispered, \u201cWasn\u2019t my time, Hon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Eve bit down on her lower lip, holding back tears. Just then, a young female resident came up behind her. Dr. Lori Greenwald-Stein was holding a set of X-rays. She motioned Eve aside and put the X-rays up on a light box. Ronnie had sustained multiple contusions and lacerations. He\u2019d broken his knee and the first lumbar vertebrae in his back. It was a compression fracture; otherwise Ronnie would have been paralyzed.<\/p>\n<p>Eve closed her eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLucky to be alive,\u201d said the doctor. Then she leaned in and whispered, \u201cBut if he walks, it\u2019ll probably be with a cane.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Grateful as she was, Eve rocked back at the news. Her husband had been a firefighter for nine years, and was planning to go the distance. Her father had done thirty-five, and so had his father before him. \u201cRonnie was always first into the burning building,\u201d said Eve, thinking back. \u201cAs a paratrooper he was the first one out of the plane. The idea that at the age of thirty-two he might spend the rest of his life as a cripple, didn\u2019t even occur to him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Later, when some of the family members had left, Eve moved close to Ronnie\u2019s bed. Eyeing the monitors measuring his vitals, she tried to cope by using her Irish. \u201cHmmm,\u201d she said. \u201cPretty cheesy way to get out of the house painting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ronnie tried to smile, but his face ached. He gestured her closer. Eve bent down next to him and he whispered, \u201cI\u2019m goin\u2019 back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou mean Rescue?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ronnie nodded. Eve was stunned. As well as she knew her husband\u2014how he\u2019d made it out of the Queens projects to qualify for the Green Berets; how he\u2019d earned a position in an elite Screaming Eagles air assault unit; how he\u2019d been cited for bravery by the FDNY\u2014she couldn\u2019t quite believe what she was hearing. Rescue One was the Special Forces of the FDNY. They went on seven to nine hundred runs a year. The idea of qualifying back into that house after suffering such trauma was unthinkable. Besides, after a life-threatening injury that was sure to leave him at least partially disabled, Ronnie could retire with a three-quarter tax-free pension. A thousand other men would have opted out. Now, looking down at him in the half-body cast, Eve was apprehensive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat about light duty?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d said Ronnie. \u201cIt\u2019s Rescue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-22445 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.11.43\u202fPM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"326\" height=\"222\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.11.43\u202fPM.png 357w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-10-at-2.11.43\u202fPM-300x204.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 326px) 100vw, 326px\" \/>And a year later, almost to the day, Ronnie Bucca was rappelling down a wall at The Rock, the FDNY\u2019s Fire Academy on Randall\u2019s Island. After months of rehab\u2014he began walking slowly, with a cane, then graduated to a treadmill and moved on to weight training\u2014Ronnie Bucca had shed his body brace and completed the \u201crope course.\u201d It was the last phase of re-training, allowing him to qualify back into Rescue One.<\/p>\n<p>He had finished each of the course evolutions: moving the hose, working the ladder, proving he could lower himself on a rope down the side of a building or lower an injured victim. Even the Mask Confinement Course, where he had to wear a Scott\u2019s mask with its face plate blackened and get through a complicated maze with a limited amount of air in the bottle. This was the one phase of rescue training where most firefighters washed out. But Ronnie did it under the clock, with seconds to spare.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to emphasize what an achievement this was for him,\u201d said Paul Hashagen, a big 6\u20195\u201d Rescue One chauffeur who had gone through Probie School with Ronnie. \u201cYou\u2019ve got eleven thousand men in the department. A few hundred of the most competitive guys make it into Special Operations Command (SOC) which comprises the Squads and a Rescue company in each of the five boroughs. But everybody wants Manhattan, and there are only twenty-five spots in Rescue One. To re-qualify back into that house after a five-story drop where you broke your back\u2014 I\u2019ve got to tell you, that\u2019s astonishing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Ronnie Bucca was half Sicilian and half Swedish on his mother&#8217;s side. Eve always said he got his stubbornness from both of them. Now, as he rappelled down to the bottom of the wall, a half dozen of his \u201cbrothers\u201d surrounded him and let out a war whoop. One of them pasted a joke shipping label on the back of his helmet. It said, &#8220;This side up,&#8221; but the arrow was pointing down.<\/p>\n<p>The men cheered and lifted him up on their shoulders. Ronnie Bucca, henceforth known throughout the FDNY as \u201cthe flying firefighter,\u201d was back.<\/p>\n<p>Months later, Ronnie raced into a burning \u201ctaxpayer,\u201d a one-story corner building down on Avenue D in Alphabet City. It was a three-alarm response. Heavy flames licked out of the first floor windows of an abandoned paint store where squatters had come to live in the frigid cold. The old paint cans left in the store were giving off a lethal combination of volatiles, creating a toxic cloud so black that Bucca couldn\u2019t see his hand in front of him. He clipped a Nomex search rope with a carabiner onto a metal door jamb so he could find his way out. He donned his mask and gave himself air from the Scott\u2019s pack, feeling his way on his hands and knees. It was the Mask Confinement Course all over again, only this time he was crawling past thousand-degree flames. As he inched his way into the store, Ronnie heard a faint whimper. The sound of a little girl.<\/p>\n<p>Feeling his way along some old shelves, he found a door to a back room. Ronnie reached up and tried the knob but it was locked, so he used a modified Haligan tool to pop it open. Searing heat came out as he crawled inside. He could hear the little girl moaning. Ronnie pushed forward and shined his light.<\/p>\n<p>There, huddled inside an old storage cabinet, he saw her two little eyes. She couldn\u2019t have been more than eight, the same age as his daughter Jessica. She was dressed in a urine-soaked oversized Knicks T-shirt. The little girl was half-dead. So Ronnie reached into the cabinet and grabbed her. She was gagging, coughing.<\/p>\n<p>He took off the Scott\u2019s mask and put it around her face, giving her air. The child\u2019s respiration was starting to slow, so Ronnie quickly doubled back along the search rope until he could feel the chill from the outside air.<\/p>\n<p>He was barely out the door when a woman screamed and rushed over. It was the girl\u2019s grandmother. She threw her arms around Ronnie and hugged him for dear life as he passed the child into the hands of an EMS medic. Ronnie dropped down on the curb. The pain in his back was throbbing, but he\u2019d refused to take any medication beyond aspirin; he didn\u2019t want to let on to Lt. Casani or the other men how much the broken back still dogged him. He was about to get up and go back inside when the lieutenant came over and motioned for him to stay down. \u201cThey\u2019re all out,\u201d he said, and Ronnie nodded.<\/p>\n<p>He unclipped the buckle on the strap of the Scott\u2019s harness\u2014the one that had saved his life. As he watched the old lady jump into the ambulance with the little girl who was alive because of him, Ronnie knew that all the retraining and the rehab had been worth it.Later, half a world away in a terror camp near the Afghan-Pakistani border, a fierce young jihadi would begin another kind of training. Ronnie Bucca had dedicated his life to putting fires out. Soon, it would be Ramzi Ahmed Yousef\u2019s mission to start the m.<\/p>\n<p><strong>COPYRIGHT 2003 Peter Lance<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"1000%20Years%20For%20Revenge%3A%20The%20inside%20story%20of%20the%20terrorist%20who%20designed%20the%209%2F11%20plot%20and%20the%20two%20American%20heroes%20who%20tried%20to%20stop%20him.\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>By Peter Lance 9.11.26 Chapter One BLACK TUESDAY On the morning of September 11, 2001, the greatest would-be mass murderer since Adolf Hitler was locked down in solitary confinement in a Colorado prison. In a seven-by-twelve-foot cell at the Supermax, the most secure of all federal jails, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef sat waiting like a bird [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[125,301,144,123,122,1223,277,279,278,165,124,227,224,229,114,1211,223,304,226,160,109,234,110,119,113,225,303,108,305,162,296,299,228,163,111,115,298,276,118,167,161,370,300,126,230,170,231,233,1219,302,1220,158,306,297,232,307,121,112,1214,117,120,166,164],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22494,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/22494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}