I’ve been issued a helmet, as I said, from beneath whose brim and behind whose visor I can’t see jack shit. My headset is malfunctioning. The deluge drowns sound utterly. Here in the vacant lot, guys are shouting at max volume into each other’s ears. There’s no other way to make yourself heard. Gleason, issuing last-minute instructions, has to move man-to-man and bawl straight into our faces.

GLEASON

Forget staying dry. We’re gonna be drenched two seconds after we dismount the vehicles. Don’t fight it. At least the rain is warm.

Gleason orders his officers not to discard any gear, no matter how sodden or cumbersome it may become.

GLEASON

Every officer must display NYPD ESU at all times. It can save your life and it can save an innocent civilian’s.

Remember, he says, we’re after three men. (Though Gleason has, grudgingly and at the last minute, secured a magistrate’s okay to append “Jake Instancer” to the bust list.)

GLEASON

This is not a war. Don’t start pulling triggers unless someone pulls on you. Secure these three assholes and let’s get the fuck outta here.

Manning pulls up at my shoulder now, returning from a confab with Silver and the ESU team leaders. The last warning Gleason issues is don’t do anything that’s gonna get you on the six o’clock news.

GLEASON

Follow procedure. Perform like professionals. Remember: every idiot on the street has an iPhone and they all want to shoot something that goes viral.

That’s it.

From the assembly area the teams advance by vehicle, in this case two assault trucks carrying the ESU operators, two armored Tahoes for DivSix’s teams, a comms truck to control intra-team and ops control traffic, a K-9 Toyota Land Cruiser, and four squad cars from the Six-Oh Precinct for traffic and crowd control if necessary.

I’m the only woman among the teams. I’m packing, as I said, a twelve-gauge Mossberg. I have never fired a shotgun in my life. I’m terrified I’ll blow my own foot or somebody else’s head off. Manning has been issued a Colt M4 Commando assault rifle with a selector switch that thumb-flips from semi to burst to auto.

“Use your nine-millimeter,” he tells me (meaning my regular service weapon) as we dismount from our Tahoe onto Brighton Beach Avenue and commence the approach march to our assigned entry point—an eight-foot cyclone fence we are to overmount. “If you pull the trigger on that cannon, it’ll knock you flat on your ass.”