This Incredible Team

333.

Without time to unpack, we get the news. Julie has launched the mission in three of the four target cities. Our orders are to get to Sacramento sooner than possible. With Davis and The Queen in Madison, Drysdale and Saunders in Austin, TX, and Julie and Harlan in DC, the fourth and final state capitol experiencing dramatically increase chatter is ours. Take the GulfStream she adds, its ready to go, and please file your report on Boulder while you're in the air. I inhale deeply and let the urge to ask a sarcastic, 'anything else?' go along with the lung-full of nitrogen, oxygen, argon and carbon dioxide. Mustang looks at me with huge sympathetic eyes glistening with hope. I silently wonder if she is having second thoughts about signing on with this troupe of mercenaries, one-third SEAL one-third CIA and one-third FBI, but she appears to be all-in, so I leave it at that, glad to have her special talents and calming influence on board as my temporary partner.

Preston navigates through the afternoon traffic and drops us at the landing strip connected to Reagan Intl. Waiting, as always, is a USAF pilot and one assistant, in this case a young Staff Sergeant acting as everything else. I am surprised to see the pair of new faces and inquire about their predecessors, friends from several missions flown together over the last decade.

"Major Tomkins is in Kabul and AFC Torres running air-cargo into and out of Diego Garcia."

"Good men, both. How fast can you get us to Sacto?" I ask stowing our meager gear and setting up shop in the GulfStream's ground-to-air war room, an area we call the Eagles Nest.

"Have you been?" I ask.

"To Sacramento?"

"No, DG."

"Not yet sir, I hear good things though, can't wait to get out there."

"I was there on 9/11, leading a SEAL team through a rehab tour, it is one of the most stunningly beautiful places on the Earth, but on that day, also one of the busiest - and deadliest. I will never forget the Skippers all-hands announcement about the terrorist attacks - and how they would impact us, the base, in response. He said, and I get goose bumps every time I think back on hearing his steady voice finish the announcement with a sober 'This is not a drill.' We were as of that moment, at war."

"One we're still in," he offers in a objective facts-only tone, one in which I detect notes of both regret and resolute acceptance.

"Yes, we are. Sounds like you might have that as part of your story, too."

"I enlisted on 9/12."

I salute and note his name, suddenly proud once again to be part of this incredible team.