I had a pretty good sense of what was going on. I’d been there. I’d been there a lot of times. The procedure was pretty much the same whether it was Fallujah or Detroit. Isolate the neighborhood. Nobody in and nobody out without an escort. I didn’t know for sure, but I would have bet undercovers were knocking on doors, quietly moving civilians out of the area. Somewhere, the D-unit, the designated soldiers going in, were saddling up—putting on equipment; testing night vision, cleaning weapons, checking battle buddies, looking at sector maps, reviewing intel, going over their plan, then going over it again. Lock and load, then go to that quiet place in your mind free of all ordinary concerns; then focus, focus so completely on the mission that nothing else exists.

Been there, done that. I knew exactly what those guys were feeling. I could close my eyes and channel those feelings: the anticipation, the excitement, the confidence; that little dash of doubt.

I wondered who they were sending in; and then it hit me. Hello. Mouth to brain, where have you been? About a year earlier I’d heard scuttlebutt that Homeland Security was positioning small self-contained antiterrorist units in waiting stations at heliports around the country. My contacts in the Special Ops community have always been solid, and became even more so after I went down. We help our own. The story was accurate, I was told; there were thirty-five such units, each of them consisting of twenty-five special operators. They were designed to move fast; they carried light weapons and used troop carriers with remote firing cannon. Their mission was to put boots on the ground on any populated site in the continental US of A within thirty minutes following the identification of a terrorist cell. Of course. I’d wondered how any army unit could have gotten to the Lincoln Tunnel so quickly after the attack had begun. Bing-go!

Detroit, with its large Muslim population, would have been an obvious choice to station one of those units. Who would know, I wondered? I mentally flipped through my contacts, going from A to Z. I got to M. “Cher,” I said, “call Oley Masterson.” Command Sgt. Major Masterson had been in it with me. He’d retired, but no one I knew was plugged in better than him.

He answered his cell on the second ring. “Oley Masterson.” Polite but inquisitive.

“Bucky Dent.”

“Fuck you.” Oley was a die-hard Red Sox fan; when he was in the soup, he’d carried Carlton Fisk’s autographed baseball card in his top hat for good luck. We exchanged the usual affectionate insults until he asked the usual “What can I do you for?”

I told him what I needed. Oley and I had been together when it counted; that was forever trust. He knew I would never use information for my own benefit if it might put people at risk. He didn’t know the answer offhand, he said, but he would make some calls. Twenty minutes later he called back, “It’s the 8th ATM,” Advanced Tactical Mobile unit. On the TOE, the official Table of Organization and Equipment, it was designated as a Quartermaster unit. And yes, the 8th was on the move. It had mounted up three hours earlier. Full gear. “I’ll tell Derek Jeter you send your regards,” I said, my attempt at a thank-you.