August remained undercover for a year after the U. S. withdrawal. After he had exhausted his contacts trying to find MIAs, August was shifted to the Philippines.

He spent three years training pilots to help President Ferdinand Marcos battle Moro secessionists. After that August worked briefly as an air force liaison with NASA, helping to organize security for spy satellite missions. But there was no flying involved and being with the astronauts now was different from being with the monkey Ham when he was a kid. It was frustrating working with men and women who were actually getting to travel in space. So August moved over to the air force's Special Operations Command, where he stayed ten years before joining Striker.

Rodgers and August had seen one another only intermittently in the post-Vietnam years. But each time they talked or got together it was as if no time had passed. When Rodgers first signed on at Op-Center he had asked August to come aboard as the leader of the Striker force.

August turned him down twice. He did not want to spend most of his time on a base, working with young specialists. It. Colonel Charlie Squires got the post. After Squires was killed on a mission in Russia, Rodgers came to his old friend again. Two years had passed since Rodgers had first made the offer. But things were different now. The team was shaken by the loss and he needed a commander who could get them back up to speed as fast as possible. This time August could not refuse. It was not only friendship. There were national security issues at stake.

The NCMC had become a vital force in crisis management and Op-Center needed Striker.

The colonel looked toward the back of the plane. He watched the group as they sat silently through the slow, thunderous ascent. The quick-response unit turned out to be more than August had expected.

Individually, they were extraordinary.

Before joining Striker, Sergeant Chick Grey had specialized in two things. One was HALO operations-high-altitude, low-opening parachute jumps. As his commander at Bragg had put it when recommending Grey for the post, "the man can fly." Grey had the ability to pull his ripcord lower and land more accurately than any soldier in Delta history. He attributed this to having a rare sensitivity to air currents. Grey believed that also helped with his second skill-marksmanship. Not only could the sergeant hit whatever he said he could, he had trained himself to go without blinking for as long as necessary. He'd developed that ability when he realized that all it took was the blink of an eye to miss the "keyhole," as he called it.

The instant when the target was in perfect position for a takedown.