"I know I'm not going to get out of this."
"I want to tell you I love you."
"I know we're going to die. Some of us are going to do something about it." "We're going to rush the hijackers."

The phone calls made by Todd Beamer to a GTE Airfone operator, Mark Bingham to his mother, and Tom Burnett Jr. and Jeremy Glick to their wives constitute a remarkable chronicle of death foretold and a gripping record of heroism rising. United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark, N.J., originally destined for San Francisco, was in the air longer than any of the other three hijacked jets—an hour and 18 minutes in all—and that time allowed several strong young men to form a unit of resistance that would, finally, foil the hijackers' evil intent.

There may have been more than just the four. Lorne Lyles, a police officer in Fort Myers, Fla., believes that his wife, flight attendant CeeCee Lyles, herself a former cop, would have been part of any plot to jump the hijackers. But we have evidence regarding the four men, evidence supplied by phone conversations. If the hijacking of Flight 93 was a low-tech affair done with knives, boxcutters and the threat of a bomb, then the counterattack on the hijackers, as well as the subsequent uncovering of what might have happened, was postmodern, with information being shuttled to and from the plane via cell phones and Airfones.

Tom Burnett, CEO of a medical research company and a father of three, called his wife, Deena, in San Ramon, Calif., not long after the plane had been hijacked. "How are you?" she asked. "Bad," he said, and told her the news. "This is my flight number. Call the authorities." Deena did so, then received another call from Tom. This time, she told him what she knew about the horror in New York City—planes being flown into both of the Twin Towers. Tom, for his part, reported: "They've knifed a guy. They say there's a bomb." He again told her to pass along the information to law enforcement.

Lyzbeth Glick had been watching the Trade Center drama on her parents' TV at their home in upstate New York. She had grown apprehensive even before her husband, a sales manager for a California Internet firm and the father of a three-month-old daughter, called and confirmed her worst fears: "There are bad people on the plane." Jeremy Glick had heard the incoming reports and rumors, and now said, "I need to know, are they crashing planes into the World Trade Center?" Lyz considered for a moment, surmising what her husband might do with the information, then told him that, yes, it was true. "Do you think we should attack the hijackers?" Glick asked his wife, indicating that there had already been some talk. She didn't know what to say, and then she did: "You do what you have to do, Jeremy. Be brave."

Jeremy Glick was on an Airfone, and so was Todd Beamer. "I know I'm not going to get out of this," the sales account manager for Oracle, who lived in Cranbury, N.J., told Lisa Jefferson, a GTE Airfone operator. He asked her to pray with him and told her that some passengers might make a run at the hijackers. At one point the father of two, whose wife—now widow—is due in January, said, absently, "Lisa."

"Yes," said Jefferson.

"Oh, that's my wife's name. I would like you to call her if I don't make it through this."

"That's my name, too, Todd."

"Oh, God."

Mark Bingham, head of his own bicoastal PR firm, called his mother, Alice Hoglan, in Saratoga, Calif. This was not to seek or disseminate critical information; Bingham knew what was happening, and what might happen next. "I want to tell you I love you," he said.

The four men were all in their thirties and were all athletic. Bingham, a six-foot-five surfer and rugby player, had ridden the horns of a bull this summer in Pamplona, Spain, and lived to tell about it. The publicly gay San Franciscan had once wrestled a gun from a mugger's hand, then beat up the mugger and his accomplice. He was tough as nails, and so was Glick, six foot two, burly and skilled. At the University of Rochester (N.Y.) in 1993, he was the national collegiate judo champ in the 220-pound division. Beamer had been an infielder for the Wheaton (Ill.) College baseball team, and Burnett had been a star quarterback for Jefferson High's football team in Bloomington, Minn. This gang of four was the hijackers' worst nightmare.

Jefferson, the GTE operator, said the Lord's Prayer with Beamer, then promised him that she would call his wife and tell her of their conversation, should things not turn out right. She heard Beamer ask someone, "Are you ready?" then heard him say, "Okay, let's roll." "Let's roll" was a favorite catchphrase in the Beamer household; three-year-old David used it all the time, as did his parents.

We know that the fight to take back the plane did not last long, and again we know it from the phone calls: Jefferson hung on the line for 15 minutes waiting for word from Beamer, but heard nothing more. The final words Jeremy Glick spoke to Lyz were, "I love you. Hold on to the phone and I'll be back." Lyz couldn't bring herself to listen. Her father, Richard Makely, took the receiver, then held his daughter close. He heard a minute of quiet, then screams, another moment of calm, more screams, then silence. He kept the phone to his ear for a painfully long time—more than an hour—hoping against hope.

The Boeing 757, which much earlier had made a hard turn over Ohio, signaling the more alert passengers that something—besides the hijacking itself—was not right, roared low over the Pennsylvania countryside, startling a caddie master who was on the grounds of the Laurel Valley Golf Club in Ligonier, Pa. He watched as the jet disappeared over the horizon. He saw it start to wobble just before it was out of sight. About three minutes later, at 10 a.m., it crashed in Shanksville, killing all 45 aboard. The hijackers' mission—the Capitol? the White House?—had been foiled.

Tom Burnett had a personal motto: Everybody else first, me second. It speaks for the four of them, and any others aboard Flight 93 who determined to take back the plane, take back their own fate, take away the murderous intent of the terrorists. They saved many lives, on a day of wanton killing.