"As you can see," the ferry captain said over his bullhorn, "a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center."

The day was crisp and cloudless, giving us a clear view of the N.Y. skyline, even though we were still 40 minutes away.

As the ferry continued across the Hudson River from N.J. to N.Y, we watched smoke spewing from the north tower. At first, it seemed as if the crash had been some terrible accident. Then, just 17 minutes later, a second plane sliced through the top of the south tower. Everyone gasped. America, we realized, was under attack.

Still, we sailed on. We passed the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, all eyes glued to the two towers. While smoke billowed from one, huge orange fireballs ringed the other, and thick black soot coated much of the sky.

My brother Mike had joined his best friend, Michael Tucker, or Tuck, as an equities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald a week earlier. It soon dawned on me that their office was in one of those buildings. I tried Mike on his cell phone several times but couldn't get through. Service had already become sporadic, so I couldn't reach his wife Lynn or any other family members either.

When our ferry pulled into the pier in lower Manhattan, we were instructed not to get off. Instead, we would take on people able to get out of the Trade Center and nearby office buildings, and head back to New Jersey. I looked for Mike and Tuck in the crowd. If anyone could escape that building, I thought, it was those two guys — big, strong, athletic.

As we sailed back to New Jersey, nothing could prepare us for what happened next: the south tower collapsed in a massive swirl of ash. We watched in stunned silence. It was 10:05 a.m. Less than a half hour later, the north tower fell.

When our ferry finally returned to New Jersey that morning, I raced over to Mike's house to see his wife and their three young children — Cassidy, Regan, and Liam — who had been called from their classrooms like thousands of other kids along the East Coast. There had been no word yet about Mike, but we all feared the worst.