Harry Coyle, who inhaled war 15 years ago, clears his throat in chunks of history now known as “The World Trade Center Cough.” He wheezes slightly and rattles with New York resilience. He can still taste death and dust and see the carnage of a new century’s horror as he bounded off Ladder No. 18 that day everything changed.
An airplane engine in the middle of the street. Jet fuel cascading down elevator shafts. Death leaps from the windows above. The chaplain of the New York City Fire Department wading through the blown-out lobby soothing them before they climbed the smoking stairs to hell as if they were invading a beachhead.