6:50 am September 12th, 2001
WTC site nicknamed "The Pile"

After being relieved by firefighters and police from different station houses and precincts the previous night, Kate Beckett and Jillian Stedner were sent to the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Inside there were cots set up that could sleep about one hundred police and firefighters. Yesterday Kate and Jillian were at the pile assisting rescue six personnel that did make it out of the North Tower before it collapsed. There were hot zones and the FDNY did the best they could to extinguish the fires before they went in to search for personnel. As it stood, by the time seven p.m. came they had only rescued four survivors, one of whom died on the way to the hospital. The air was still thick with smoke and debris from the collapse of the buildings. Most of the rescuers wandered around aimlessly, just trying to find someone who was still alive in the mess. The next morning, Kate and Jillian waited at the Borough of Manhattan's Community College gym to be transported back to the Pile, as it was starting to be called.

Both police and fire departments mutually agreed that after thirty-six hours theirs would no longer be a search and rescue mission; it would become search and recovery. What had been One and Two World Trade Center was reduced to a very large pile of rubble. Many of the facades that came down with the building were actually driven into the street, still standing upright. It looked eerily like a graveyard. And it was a graveyard for 2,996 men and women and children who perished there. She had heard later in the day that the FAA grounded all flights in and out of the country. Anything coming into the U.S. was diverted to either Mexico or Canada.

She wasn't sure what happened to Slaughter or Ryan. All she knew is that they were on one of the floors where all hell was breaking loose when the building came down. A white GMC pickup truck with Port Authority markings on it pulled up with returning fireman and three cops. The bed was filled with firemen and the cab with firemen and cops; the sight draws her from her thoughts.

"Are you Beckett and Stedner?" a cop asked as he got out of the front seat of the pickup.

"That's us, Sarge."

"Good saves me the trouble of finding your asses. Okay, listen up; this isn't going to be pretty and you're probably going to hate it, but during the night the FBI constructed a viewing stand of sorts. It's made of scaffolding on each side of a path cleared out so the dump trucks that are leaving this site and heading to Staten Island can drive through it and be inspected before they leave."

"Okay, what are we looking for?" Stedner asked.

"Yeah, are we looking for airplane parts, specific evidence, or debris?" Kate asked.

"No, nothing like that. You and a lot of FBI agents are going to be looking for human remains. Most of them are no bigger than a dime, but some are torsos, arms, legs, heads, and other assorted body parts. If you see anything in one of the dump trucks you have less than thirty seconds to advise an FBI agent working with you before that truck leaves. When you tell him what you've seen, the truck will pull over to a parking lot to get dumped and inspected. Your only job is to find body parts. The FBI will handle the rest."

"But how are they getting in there…" Kate wondered.

"You don't want to know."

Kate and Jillian walked the planks that elevated them above the dump trucks that drove through their posts. In the four hours that they'd been looking for human remains, they had stopped seventeen trucks. Every time the truck dumped its contents of concrete, steel, and other debris, the FBI agents gave them a thumbs up from the parking lot where they were bagging those remains in evidence bags.

Nights - or really any time - were especially hard for everyone there. During the search and rescue operations, anybody who was recovered from the pile automatically had an American flag draped over their body bag. Work for everybody came to a dead stop. All work completely ceased. Contractors, police, fire, EMS, Port Authority workers, everybody stopped what they were doing. The West Side Highway was the route that took these bodies directly to the morgue. Once the American flag was draped over the body bag, it was escorted by six New York City Police officers to a waiting hearse. Once the hearse was on the Westside Highway, eight NYPD motorcycle units along with eight Port Authority motorcycle units flanked the hearse, four in front and four in the back. When they were in place, eight NYPD Patrol units (four in the front and four in the rear) were joined by two Port Authority cruisers. Once the motorcade was in place the pace was slow up until 19th Street. The patrol cars returned to the Pile and the motorcycle units escorted the hearse to its final destination. While the motorcade was being set up all personnel would be summoned to the sidewalk to start lining the route. As the first Port Authority patrol car drove past civilians, firefighters, PAPD, and NYPD on or off duty rendered a salute to the passing motorcade. The salute was not released until the last unit passes. This was especially hard for Kate because most of the people that they were bringing out of there were first responders. The day before, while digging around in the Port Authorities police headquarters, they recovered five officers. All five were in the process of changing for their shift at the WTC. Everything personal was taken and cataloged and their sidearms were returned back to the Port Authority. They would never patrol again. In all, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would lose 37 police personnel. The FDNY lost 343 fire department personnel. And the NYPD lost 23 officers. There were other people lost as well but these losses hit home because they were men and women who served the city.

The command structure tried to alternate workers' tasks at the pile. One week they could be working with the FBI checking for human remains, the next week they'd be working the pile with search and rescue dogs and did not having much luck finding anything anymore. And then they went on details that made Kate wonder about the world she lived in.

The Canadian government had been in talks with the US government about the gold, platinum, and silver they still have in vaults where Four World Trade Center used to stand

The vaults were massive and they covered sixteen acres in total. If they were all added up, those sixteen acres would surpass the entire usable space in the entire Empire State Building alone. Kate had been partnered with Stedner from the beginning and now three weeks later they were posted with AR-15s guarding the FDNY who were removing gold bars, silver bars, and platinum bars from the vault once used by the Swiss bank but now used by the Bank of Nova Scotia. They were working with a security team from Kroll Incorporated. Last week it looked like someone had tried to rob the vaults. They had tried to gain access to the main corridor from the street level but were unsuccessful. They couldn't get further into the vault because it was probably the most secure location amid all this rubble. The Bank of Nova Scotia provided the FDNY with four dual axle armored cars. The entire transfer of bars took over seven hours. Once every armored car was filled they were escorted individually by the NYPD to the US border. Once safely at the border and in Canada then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took over.

Xx

Rick looked foolish and he knew it. But ever since the collapse of both towers and the surrounding buildings around the site, he wore a surgical mask over his mouth and nose just to keep away whatever was in the air. And today he found himself walking down Bleecker Street towards West 10th Street to see about a certain policewoman.

He opens the doors to the 6th precinct and then walks into the lobby where the desk sergeant who sits there looks at him like he's got three heads.

"I got news for you, buddy - that mask isn't going to help you with anything. If you were in your apartment or building when the Towers came down I can guarantee you that your air intake system injected whatever was outside inside your home. Other than that, what can I do for you, sir?"

Rick pulled the mask off his face to be heard clearly.

"I'm looking for somebody. Someone who is very important to me and was down on the pile on 9/11," Rick told him.

"Sir, I can't do much. 1PP is just keeping a tight lid on where our manpower is. But if you have a name or badge number I could tell you their status and that's about it - just their status. Their status being if they are dead or alive."

Rick would take any information to find out about Kate Beckett. He wanted to know if she was alive. He didn't want her to have gone through what happened down there on the 11th.

"Her name is Kate Beckett. NYPD badge number 0334."

The desk sergeant leaned back in his chair with the roster for today's placement of personnel. It was alphabetical and Beckett's name was six from the top. He could jerk this guy around but he seemed like an honest kind of guy, so he gave him what he could.

"Sir, I can tell you that patrolman Beckett it is alive and working the pile downtown. I can also tell you that they are working 24-hour shifts starting at 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and she is on that shift. That is all the information I can give you; now is there anything else?"

"Sergeant, is there any way I could leave a note for her? Does she ever come back here to the 6th?"

"Sir, she has accommodations downtown. She does not leave the pile at all. They predict they will be down there around the clock until sometime in December. So, while we could take your note, I'm not too sure when it would be delivered or if she would get it. But you're welcome to try."

Rick sat down on the bench across from the desk sergeant and started to write…