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More Than Meets the Eye

By Carrie Daws

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PROLOGUE
SEPTEMBER 2001, ANCHORAGE, ALASKA

“YOU TWO NEED TO SEE THIS.”
Lori Braxton’s brain struggled to process the blunt interruption to her sleep. She and her husband, Jonathan, a senior airman in the United States Air Force, had gone to bed late in a friend’s spare bedroom. Yesterday had been spent cleaning the house on Elmendorf Air Force Base that they’d called home for the last seventeen months. Everything they owned was either on a ship heading for their new duty station at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, or packed tightly in a small flatbed trailer her husband had added plywood walls and a roof to just two weeks prior. They were ready to sign out of housing, sign off the base, and head to the lower forty-eight.
Her friend appeared at their door again, but not as quietly as before. “Come on. It’s important.”
This time the urgency slammed into Lori’s brain. “What time is it?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes.
Her husband, Jonathan, shifted beside her. “It’s 6:13.”
Groaning, she stood up and shook out her pajama pants, unfolding the bottom cuff of one leg. Cautiously she stepped over four-year-old Kay sleeping peacefully on the floor through the disturbance. After covering two-year-old Charlie with his blanket, Lori ran her hands through her medium-length, hickory brown hair. Wondering what was up, she walked across the small upstairs landing to her friend’s bedroom. The light from the television assaulted her eyes, the sound just barely loud enough to hear.
Lori yawned. “What’s so important at six o’clock in the morning?”
“Pastor called,” her friend said without taking her eyes off the TV. “Friends in Virginia woke him with the news, and he knew we’d want to know.”
Strange was an understatement for this behavior. The hour alone was enough to cause concern for her normally late-sleeping friend, but the lack of eye contact and the drone of news on the television peaked Lori’s interest. She stepped farther into the room, turning so she could see the screen. A lone skyscraper dominated the landscape, dark smoke billowing out from its top, lighter gray smoke rising from the ground.
Lori knelt on the floor near the television. “What is that?”
“New York City,” her friend replied. “Two planes flew into the World Trade Center.”
Lori struggled to process what she was seeing. “World Trade Center? But aren’t there two skyscrapers?”
Her friend barely moved her head from side to side. “Not any more.”
Jonathan appeared in the doorframe, his closely trimmed dark hair still disheveled from sleep. “What’s going on?”
“The first tower fell just as I turned on the TV,” her friend said.
Jonathan walked over to stand behind Lori. “You said planes did that? Like kamikazes?”
“Like United Airlines passenger planes,” came the quiet reply.
Lori shook her head in disbelief. The rest of America had likely been glued to the news reports for hours while they had peacefully slept, unaware of the chaos happening on the east coast. Two planes full of people going about their normal lives had been taken over and forced into two buildings full of people going about their normal lives. “God help us,” she whispered.
“There’s more,” their friend said.
Lori met her eyes, not sure she wanted to hear it. “A third plane hit the Pentagon. The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded all flights.”
Lori gasped. “All flights? Nationwide?”
Her friend nodded. “All fifty states. And someone on the news right before I woke you suggested they might close the borders until they get a better handle on this thing.”
Lori’s mind swirled. They were supposed to drive out in three days, crossing the border into Canada and then again into Montana. Would Canada let them in? And if they did, would the United States allow them re-entry? And if they were trapped here, what would they do with all their household goods in crates on a ship headed to Seattle?
Jonathan touched her shoulder. “Come on, get the kids up. We’ve got to get to the base. The Shirt knows we’re signing out of housing today, but he doesn’t know how to reach us here.”
Lori’s mind raced. The Shirt was charged with keeping up with all his troops and dealing with any personnel issues. Surely, he would be one of the first to know if their orders to move had been canceled.
“I’ve got to check in,” Jonathan continued. “It’s probably too soon after the attacks, but I have to see if they know what’s going to happen with me.”
Lori took a deep breath before standing. Military installations around the world would be on high alert, but civilian casualties took security to a new level. Their whole world, the life Americans had known, had just changed forever.

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