To tactical operators, to troops involved in the active warfare of military and sting operations, I’m nonessential personnel. If the order on any given day is kill or be killed? Then justice and the way something might play out in court are low on the list. They may not be on the list at all. The Ajaxes of the world aren’t the excavators, the scientists who have to interpret and decipher what they discover. Special ops shoot the cobras. It’s up to me to figure out if it was merited. That’s my job. I walked off it earlier today. I won’t again.

“No sign of anyone upstairs or down,” Ajax continues to brief us. “In fact if you ask me it doesn’t look like most of the house has been lived in for a while. Other than the master bedroom at the back of this floor. Someone’s definitely using that. Or was.”

He waits near the doorway, the three other cops behind him in the hallway, their forearms resting on the matte black stocks of the rifles across their chests, barrels pointed down, their night vision goggles flipped up on their helmets. When they shift their weight or move they are subtle and silent. They’re agile and nonreactive. They’re disciplined, stoical, what I consider the perfect hero blend of selflessness and narcissism. You have to love yourself if you’re going to fight gloriously and bravely, if you’re going to survive at any price while protecting a person or a people with your life. It’s a contradiction. It seems illogical. It’s not a stereotype or a cliché when I say that special ops aren’t like the rest of us.

“So unless there’s anything else?” Ajax asks Marino.

“Nothing right now except for whatever’s happened to Hyde.” He finishes labeling the bag and puts the cap back on the Sharpie, tosses it into the top tray of the open Pelican case. “I heard from Lapin but still nothing from Hyde. We know he made a phone call from here before he left this morning and it’s just more of the same crazy crap. We ping his phone and it comes back to a cell tower right here that doesn’t exist. It sounds to me like someone is scrambling, jamming radio signals, turning this location into a dead zone for communications.”

“Unless he uses his phone again we won’t get anything else.” Ajax joins his team in the hallway. “If you don’t hit SEND? There’s no signal and we can’t find you. It’s unusual that he’s not used his phone for the past three hours. Unless you’re sick, disabled or someplace that makes you turn it off, you’re going to use your phone for something.”

“No shit,” Marino says.