The words were calibrated precisely to the task. De Martini was issuing a warning; then he continued what he, Pablo Ortiz, and a few others had been doing for the past half hour, methodically freeing scores of people trapped from the 90th floor down, in offices and elevators just below the impact zone in the north tower. They had been efficient, De Martini and Ortiz, working with a crowbar and a long flashlight, as if rescuing people were the jobs that they had been hired for. The truth was that neither man had a role in the official evacuation or emergency plans for the buildings.
