Shadow Of Fear

(2 of 3)

Fear conscripts its own armies, takes its own prisoners. Even people who appear to be calm will privately confess: I won't go to the mall anymore. I ask for a low floor at the hotel, near a staircase. I throw up every morning before I get on the train. I thought I heard a crop duster in the middle of the night. The strain of these weeks, the psychiatrists say, is especially hard on people who are already on the edge, and so, day by day, people began to snap. Last week it was the man on an American Airlines flight to Chicago who stormed the cockpit screaming, "Save the towers! Save the towers!" A Delta plane made an emergency landing in Shreveport, La., escorted by fighter jets, after a passenger passed a threatening note to a flight attendant. Washington's Reagan National Airport finally reopened, but if you so much as get out of your seat to go to the bathroom, you risk having the plane diverted to Dulles.

The rest of the nation's airports, however, were full of people who are quick to remind you that it's a big country, it's a long walk from Miami to Seattle, and flying is safer than driving. Some say they think it is now safer than ever. And besides, passengers note, if anyone tries anything now, the guy in 9A will go low, 11C will hit high and the hijacker will end up stuffed in an overhead bin. "The rules have changed," says a banker from St. Louis, Mo. "Everybody is ready to get vigorously involved if anyone tries anything on a plane." He's spending extra time on the firing range these days. A bartender from New York City with tattoos up and down his muscled arms packed a pair of heavy construction gloves for his flight to Los Angeles--just in case he has to confront someone with a box cutter.

Can America limit itself to one carry-on bag? What are the absolute essentials we can't leave home without anymore? A book of Scripture and a pair of sneakers, a cell phone, a picture of the people we love, a canary to send into the mine. In Chicago a maintenance man on the 90th floor of the Sears Tower takes his flame-resistant drag-racing suit to work with him. "At least I'll have a chance of running through the fire," he says. An elegant Manhattan woman cuts her hair suddenly short. "It reflects how I'm feeling," she says, "and besides, if I have to leave town fast, who wants to worry about hot rollers?"A Wisconsin office manager prepares letters to the people she loves most because "I think of all of those people who died with 'what ifs' and regrets." A Los Angeles mother talks about writing a letter to her children "so they know what I want for them in their futures."

It's a brew you can choke on, ingenuity and grit filtered through a nightmare. People share fantasies and game plans, revealing what is sloshing around the back of their minds while they pretend to work. "I would break into the marina and steal a boat, heading straight north," says a Chicago real estate lawyer who is worried that traffic will congeal in the event of an attack. "Usually the wind blows in from the lake, so toxins should not be over the water. I already have a life jacket and wet suit. My parents have a place in way north Michigan that is our family's designated meeting place, and I would try to make my way there." He's no expert, but he figures that if he's in immediate danger, he won't be criminally liable for theft.