Featured Excerpt: Ash and Honor

From the pilots in the cockpits of the fighter jets on a suicide mission to stop the hijacked planes to the secret service agent in charge of keeping President Bush safe on Air Force One, authorJeffrey Robinson reveals the stories of more than 60 never-told-before people in this minute by minute account of the military, national security, and aviation response to the devastating attacks against the United States. Read an excerpt below of Ash and Honor, published just in time for the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Chapter 1

American Airlines 11.

In the cockpit of the Boeing 767-223ER that morning, scheduled to fly from Boston to Los Angeles with seventy-six passengers and eleven crew, was fifty-two-year-old Captain John Ogonowski from Dracut, Massachusetts, who had a wife and three daughters. The first officer was forty-two-year-old Thomas McGuinness Jr., from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who had a wife and two daughters.

Air Traffic Control: “American eleven, if you hear Boston Center, ah, recontact Boston Center on one two seven point eight two, that’s American eleven one two seven eight two.”

ATC: “American eleven, American one one, Boston.”

ATC: “American eleven, if you hear Boston Center, ident please.”

ATC: “American eleven, Boston.”

ATC: “American eleven, American one one, how do you hear the center?” The voice of hijacker Mohamed Atta, now flying the plane: “American eleven, Boston.”

ATC: “Is that American eleven trying to call?” Mohamed Atta: (garbled)

Mohamed Atta: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport.”

ATC: “And uh who’s trying to call me here? American eleven, are you trying to call?”

ATC: “American eleven, are you trying to call?”

Mohamed Atta: “Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

Mohamed Atta: “Nobody move please. We are going back to the airport. Don’t try to make any stupid moves.”

Time stamp: 8:46:40

Silence.

***

On Monday, September 10, President George W. Bush gave a speech at a Republican fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. When it was over, he flew to Sarasota, then went by motorcade twenty miles to the exclusive Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico, where he had dinner with friends and spent the night.

The Tampa office of the Secret Service did most of the advance work to prepare for the visit, but the day before the president arrived in Sarasota, Dave Wilkinson—the agent who would be second shift supervisor for the visit—flew down to walk through every minute of the president’s stay. And it didn’t take long before Wilkinson realized they had a problem.

The beach stank.

Bush was a runner and, when he traveled, he always got up early to go at least three miles. The idea at Longboat Key was that he’d run on the beach. But there’d been a red tide, which was a fairly common occurrence at this time of year. A harmful algae bloom discolored the water and killed sea life, lining the shore with rotting fish.

And the smell was unbearable.

Instead, Wilkinson arranged for the president to run on a nearby golf course. He surveyed it with a golf cart, decided where agents would be posted along the fairways and greens, and when he was convinced that it would be safe, he radioed the senior shift supervisor with the president, Eddie Marinzel, that the golf course was ready.

Monday night, after dinner, when Bush was ready to go to bed, Marinzel asked him, are you running tomorrow?

Bush said, yes, of course.

Marinzel asked what time.

Bush said, six.

Both Marinzel and Wilkinson had been part of the Presidential Protective Division for many years, going all the way back to Ronald Reagan. And with other presidents, they could almost always count on six meaning six.

Not with Bush.

In the nine months since Bush’s inauguration, Marinzel had learned that, with him, six might mean 5:45. Or maybe 5:30. That’s why Marinzel and the detail that would run with the president were ready at 5:15.

Bush appeared at 5:20.

Colonel Mark Tillman’s official title was commander, VC-25, Special Air Mission.

But whenever the president of the United States was on board, Tillman was the chief pilot and VC-25 was Air Force One.

Raised in Hollywood, Florida, Tillman was commissioned into the Air Force through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corp (ROTC) at Tulane University, where he’d studied to be a chemical engineer. Accordingly, the Air Force assigned him to the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (AFB), where he was the junior officer with twenty-two civilians in the propulsion shop. But when he met another guy doing a staff job there who also happened to have been a C-5 cargo plane pilot, Tillman started thinking that getting his wings might offer him the chance to travel the world. So he applied for pilot training, was accepted, and graduated as what the Air Force called late rated.

Unlike his classmates, who were usually first lieutenants, that meant he’d already been in long enough to be a captain.

Then again, unlike many of his classmates who opted for fighters, he decided he wanted to fly heavies, hoping for a seat in a C-130 Hercules cargo plane. But before he could start flying Hercs, because he’d left pilot training rated FAR—which means fighter attack, recce-rated—the Air Force assigned him back to flight school, this time as an instructor.

When he eventually got into C-130s, his ambitions for travel came to fruition and he began flying around the world. But because these were the Iran-Contra days—arms secretly sold to Iran and the money illegally diverted back to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua—instead of getting to know Paris, London, and Tokyo, he found himself spending most of his time flying in and out of Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

Confused about the mission there, he grew impatient with the assignment. When he heard there might be an opening with the Eighty-Ninth Airlift Wing out of Andrews AFB, he applied for the job, interviewed well, and won an assignment with their VIP Unit. He spent the next two years flying government Gulfstream IIIs around the world, getting to know more exciting places than the jungles of Nicaragua.

Then came an opening with Air Force One.

Again, he interviewed well and got it. Built specifically to carry the president, in reality VC-25 was just a souped-up Boeing 747-200. The engines were more powerful—which meant the airspeed was faster—plus it was capable of midair refueling. There were communications upgrades, and it was fitted out with various self-defense systems should it ever come under attack. Other than that, the planes were so similar that Air Force One pilots trained with the airlines on commercial 747s.

It carried a crew of around twenty-nine. There were ten flight attendants, five radio operators, two navigators, and three pilots. Plus, the plane’s own eight-man security detail.

For what it’s worth, VC-25 only becomes Air Force One when the president is on board. The call sign stays with him, not the plane. Therefore, any plane that carries the president is designated Air Force One.

By protocol, the plane that carries the president never lands with the president on board anywhere that the pilots have never landed before. If the plan is to take the president to some remote spot, the pilots who will fly him there first take themselves to the intended destination to get the lay of the land and to practice takeoffs and landings.

Also, wherever Air Force One flies with the president, there is always a backup. Often it’s another 747. But not always. That morning, September 11, 2001, it was a Boeing 757, which had been parked at Patrick AFB near the Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s east coast. It would take off around the same time as Air Force One and shadow it one hundred miles away. It’s always within reach should the president’s 747 suffer some sort of mechanical problem.

As important, the backup served as a decoy should someone be tracking Air Force One, looking to do harm.

Then, not often spoken about publicly, there is usually a tanker somewhere close to Air Force One if it needs to refuel. And an E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, offering added surveillance, command, and control. There is also, often, an E-4B nearby—the so-called Doomsday Plane—which is equipped to become a flying White House should the president need to assume airborne command and control of the military.

Amusingly, one quirky difference between Air Force One and the airlines are split meals.

If the captain on a commercial flight orders the beef, then the first officer gets the fish. It’s standard practice that meals are sealed and labeled for pilot A and pilot B because commercial cockpit crews don’t know the source of their food. The concern is that if they both eat the same meal, food poisoning could create a dangerous situation for the plane and its passengers.

Not true in Air Force One.

Food was always prepared on board by chefs trusted by the Secret Service to feed the president. They were also, obviously, trusted enough that everyone in the cockpit could have the same meal.

But Tillman never worried about what the other pilots were eating. He was only concerned with President Bush’s menu. That’s because, early on, he discovered that he and Bush shared the same taste in down-home cooking—as Tillman put it, nothing frou-frou—meaning that when he was asked what he wanted to eat, he answered, whatever President Bush is eating.

When Tillman arrived at the plane that morning, while the rest of his crew were already going through the necessary preflight requirements, he was greeted on the tarmac by Senior Master Sergeant Will Chandler.

Known as Big Will, standing around six foot four and weighing nearly 240 pounds—others joked he was six foot twelve and weighed 300 pounds because he looked that intimidating— Chandler was in charge of the plane’s security team.

Adding to his image as someone not to tangle with, he had a prominent scar from his ear all the way across his neck, the result of a knife fight when he was a teenager. And if that wasn’t enough, he once told Tillman that he was different from ordinary men.

He wasn’t afraid to die.

In return, Tillman often said, Big Will was the guy you wanted running your security detail, the guy you wanted with you day after day.

Nicely enough, President Bush and Big Will had a special relationship. Whenever the president was boarding or exiting, Big Will would position himself at the bottom of the stairs, making sure that nobody got too close to the plane or the president.

Bush liked to tell people that when he saw Big Will at the foot of the stairs, he knew everything was right with the world. This morning, everything was about to go very wrong with the world.

***

Barbara Ritchwood of Jersey City, New Jersey, a thirty-two-year-old, bright-eyed, smiling, and articulate woman who loved to travel, woke up at her usual time of 5:30 and went through her usual routine of telling herself, I don’t want to get up. But after a minute or two of arguing with herself about that, as usual, she forced herself out of bed to make ready for the day.

She showered, dressed in her violet-blue scrubs, grabbed a granola bar, kissed her Pomeranian, Baby Botev, goodbye, left her apartment, crossed the street, and, as usual, hopped onto the 6:06 PATH train, which brought her into the station, four stories below the World Trade Center on the New York side of the Hudson River.

Once she was in the shopping mall—the only way in and out of the PATH station—she stopped, as usual, at the window of the still-closed Rolex store to look at the watches on display and dream for a moment.

She came out of #5 World Trade Center onto Church Street. She walked past the Millennium Hotel and stopped, as usual, to look in the window of the still-closed Century 21 department store, wondering if there might be something new that took her fancy.

After that, she ducked down into the subway to catch the #4 express train to Forty-Second Street, then transferred to the #6 train, getting out at Sixty-Eighth Street, the Hunter College stop.

The sun had just come up and the sky was a crystal-clear blue.

She headed four blocks east to York Avenue and the twelvestory Greenberg Pavilion of the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Upstairs on 8 West—the Burn Intensive Care Unit—the day shift was beginning to arrive, planning to swap out with the night staff, as usual, at 7:30 to begin their twelve-hour day.

Ash and Honor. Copyright © 2026 by Jeffrey Robinson. All rights reserved.