The four horsemen, 2001. (Here Below).

FOUR MONTHS AFTER THE most infamous hour of terrorism in our time, we remain haunted by the four passengers who gave up their lives aborting the mission of a hijacked plane that had apparently been headed for the White House.

The hijackers had had all the weapons, but those four passengers had their special kind of armory -- heart, intelligence, athleticism, a take-charge mentality, and unbelievable guts.

Jeremy Glick (NJ), Thomas Burnett, Jr. (CA), Mark Bingham (CA), and Todd Beamer (NJ) had sat in the plane coldly reading the enemy. They're going to kill us, they thought, but we're not going to sit here quietly and take the hit. We're going after them.

No one will ever know exactly what happened in the plane that morning in Southwestern Pennsylvania. But there was no question that the cockpit had been rushed, the bad guys tackled, the plane crashed, and the mission aborted.

We remain awed by the guts of the four big Americans who did this incredible thing, so much in the manner of the firemen and policemen who walked into the blazing inferno of the Twin Towers and gave their lives trying to save those thousands of people they had never known.

John McCain, a man whose words always seem to come from a place very close to the soul, said it all magnificently in his eulogy to the six-foot-five former rugby great from the U. of California, Mark Bingham:

"I never knew Mark Bingham. But I wish I had. I know he was a good son and a friend, a good rugby player, a good American, and an extraordinary human being. He supported me in my presidential campaign, and his support now ranks among the greatest honors in my life.

"I wish I had known before September 11 just how great an honor his trust in me was. I wish I could have thanked him for it more profusely than time and circumstances allowed. But I know it now. And I thank him with the only means I possess -- by trying to be as good an American as he was."