Free Gates of Hades by Gregg Loomis

the world’s ugliest office building as though experiencing rapture.
    Along the west side, a single charred capstone was the only marker. In front of it were flowers, singly or in bunches, but Jason had no trouble recognizing the long green stems of white gladioli, her favorite. He had a dozen placed there every week.
    The simple gold band he wore on a chain around his neck was the only trace of her found. There was no grave for him to visit, no other physical place to vent his grief. It was here, across a busy street around unattractive architecture, where she had spent the last seconds of her life, that he came to be as close to her as the living might get to the dead.
    If you weren’t looking for it, the repairs would go unnoticed.On that bright late-summer morning that had become America’s darkest day, an airplane had slammed into the building.
    It was like recalling an incident from childhood, so far away did 9/11 seem. First Lieutenant Peters, J., of the little-known and less discussed Delta Force, had been on temporary assignment here. His wife, Laurin, junior partner in one of the multitude of D.C. law firms specializing in lobbying activity, was in the building for an early morning meeting with the firm’s largest client, the army.
    The experience of going to work together was unique. Jason frequently was in places with classified names for indefinite periods of time. Laurin missed him, and the assignments were rarely to locales that could be described as garden spots. His paintings were acquiring a regular market, and her real estate investments, inherited from her mother, had become too large and profitable for her to manage and continue to work full-time.
    They had decided to quit their present jobs in the next twelve months, spending the cold, wet Washington winters in the British West Indies and enduring the hot, equally wet summers in their Georgetown home. They built the house on North Caicos and spent an idyllic month there. They both loved it.
    They were already counting the days.
    Shortly before eight A.M. on September 11, 2001, he had shown her his temporary office in the Pentagon’s second ring. She had a few minutes before her meeting.
    â€œCan I bring you something from the canteen?” she’d asked.
    It was much later he realized that most last words were probably equally banal.
    â€œSure. A large cup of coffee.”
    Nodding, she had set off, never to be seen again. Had she remained with him for the next five minutes, she would still be alive. The thought tortured him on nights he could only toss and turn with survivor’s guilt.
    It had taken a minute or two after the crash for Jason to learn what had happened and where. A number of firemen suffered varying degrees of injury from a wild man trained to kill before MPs had succeeded in pulling Jason away from the inferno that had consumed his wife.
    Once the adrenaline flow stopped, he had sobbed like a brokenhearted teenager. His rage was one of loss and impotent fury. Delta Force kept a more or less current brief on the world’s nasties. Even before the presidential announcement, he had no doubt one or more of the terrorist groups had done this. He would, by God, get even.
    But how?
    His reverie in front of the Pentagon was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. He spun around to look into the sympathetic face of a cop.
    â€œLook, mister, I know you probably lost someone there, ’cause I see ’em all the time. But your cab’s blockin’ th’ road. If you want, I’ll hold up traffic an’ let the taxi get to the parkin’ lot. You can at least argue with them military assholes to let you stop there for a few minutes. Besides, you look like you’re freezin’.”
    Jason, clad in only a T-shirt and a pair of light cotton trousers, had been oblivious to the mid-thirty-degree temperature. Even his moth-eaten overcoat would have provided some warmth had it not been consumed in