It came over the news that something new and terrible had emerged in the world. Three different aeroplanes taking off from JFK airport that morning had gone down en route to Miami, Chicago and Dallas. Further planes from this airport had been quarantined on landing at Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, Geneva, Stockholm, Madrid, Milan, Istanbul and Moscow.

I had sat in my apartment that evening and watched the news footage of police and army personnel at the different locations maintaining safe zones around the planes - the news channel flipping between locations with rapid regularity. The initial burst of information was terrorism. A mass co-ordinated event to rival that of 9/11.

Various commentators arriving on the news set gave their commentary on what they believed had triggered this outrage. Fingers were pointed at Islamic fundamentalists, but as the evening wore on the narrative slowly began to change. It wasn’t that new information was being released regarding the quarantined airplanes simply that the news channel stated that all news regarding the airplanes from all official sources had ceased.

JFK airport had long since been quarantined and as the night wore on I turned down the babble from the television and watched in silence the constant cutaways from studio sets to the long range camera shots from the different airports around the world, the crash zones from that mornings series of disasters, and the lengthy multi-shot locations from JFK where most media attention now seemed to be focused.

At some point the numbness arising from watching the same talking heads, and seeing the repetitive loop of external and interior shots overwhelmed me, and during the late evening my eyes closed and I dozed in front of the tv and did not wake again until the break of dawn.

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I woke with a start. My head was pounding and I felt my hands reaching out blindly for a cup of juice only half drunk from the night before. The sweet liquid felt cool in my mouth and I rubbed my eyes to look back at the screen. It was 5:45AM UK time, and my mind instantly turned to thoughts of the work day ahead. I leaned back on the sofa, working out the kinks in my back, and my focus returned once more to the television. Across the bottom of the screen was the usual breaking news scrolling ticker banner. The sound was still turned down and so I read the news headlines without at first seeing the moving images above them:

Horror in the skies. Thousands killed in airplane crashes across the USA. John F Kennedy airport now considered a major mass casualty event with army forces in combat with unknown assailants throughout the complex. Multiple emergencies announced at airports throughout the world with planes and airports placed in quarantine.

I looked up from the ticker tape news reel to watch what appeared to be an aerial shot of what the screen said was JFK airport. The picture changed to an overhead shot that showed multiple individuals in miniature that could now be seen on the screen.

The east coast of the US was five hours behind and so it was still night time there and so the night vision cameras only showed monochromatic images with their heat sources glowing bright on screen. Some appeared to be running while others, much dimmer, appeared to be lying down on the ground.

The camera panned across to show three US military planes sweeping in from a distance flying in a v formation. I grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume. I watched as the planes drew closer, the microphone capturing the thunderous roar as they approached. And then, as if in slow motion, I watched as their deadly payload was dropped from their fuselage. On the screen the camera followed the descent of the bombs as they struck the airport building and runway and then the screen was filled with the tremendous glare and flicker of multiple incendiary explosions going off in rapid succession as the bombing of the building and airport saw the location devoured in a wall of flame.

My tired brain struggled to understand fully what I was seeing. The US military was carpet bombing US soil. What the hell was happening?