August felt a special kinship with Grey because the sergeant was at home in the air. But August was close to all his personnel. Privates David George, Jason Scott, Terrence Newmeyer, Walter Pupshaw, Matt Bud, and Sondra Devon the Medic William Musicant, Corporal Pat Prementine, and Lieutenant Orjuela. They were more than specialists.

They were a team. And they had more courage, more heart than any unit August had ever worked with.

Newly promoted Corporal Ishi Honda was another marvel.

The son of a Hawaiian mother and Japanese father, Honda was an electronics prodigy and the unit's communications expert. He was never far from the TAC-SAT phone, which Colonel August and Rodgers used to stay in touch with Op Center The backpack containing the unit was lined with bullet-proof Kevlar so it would not be damaged in a firefight.

Because it was so loud in the cabin Honda sat with the TACSAT in his lap. He did not want to miss hearing any calls.

When he was in the field, Honda wore a Velcro collar and headphones of his own creation. They plugged directly into the pack. When the collar was jacked in, the "beep" was automatically disengaged; the collar simply vibrated when there was an incoming call. If Striker were on a surveillance mission there was no sound to give them away.

Moreover, the collar was wired with small condenser microphones that allowed Honda to communicate subvocally. He could whisper and his voice would be transferred clearly to whoever was on the other end.

But Striker was more than just a group of military elite drawn from different services. It. Colonel Squires had done an extraordinary job turning them into a smart, disciplined fighting unit. They were certainly the most impressive team August had ever served with.

The plane banked to the south and August's old leather portfolio slid from under his seat. He kicked it back with his heel. The bag contained maps and white papers about Kashmir.

The colonel had already reviewed them with his team.

He would look at them again in a few minutes. Right now August wanted to do what he did before beginning every mission. He wanted to try and figure out why he was here, why he was going. That was something he had done every day since he was first a prisoner of war: take stock of his motivations for doing what he was doing. That was true whether August was in a Vietcong stockade, getting up in the morning to go to the Striker base, or leaving on a mission.

It was not enough to say he was serving his country or pursuing his chosen career. He needed something that would allow him to push himself to do better than he did the day before. Otherwise the quality of his work and his life would suffer.

What he had discovered was that he could not find another reason. When he was optimistic, pride and patriotism had been his biggest motivators.