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roared overhead. Prop planes had a familiar, reassuring hum. But those new babies-they made a boy's insides rattle. August and Rodgers loved it.
        After school each day the boys would do their homework together, each taking alternate math problems or science questions so they could finish faster. Then they would build plastic model airplanes, boats, tanks, and jeeps, taking care that the paint jobs were accurate and that the decals were put in exactly the right place.
        When it came time to enlist-kids like the two of them didn't wait to be drafted-Rodgers joined the army and August went into the air force.
        Both men ended up in Vietnam.
        While Rodgers did his tours of duty on the ground, August flew reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam. On one flight northwest of Hue, August's plane was shot down. He mourned the loss of his aircraft, which had almost become a part of him. The flier was taken prisoner and spent over a year in a POW camp, finally escaping with another prisoner in 1970. August spent three months making his way to the south before finally being discovered by a patrol of U. S. Marines.
        Except for the loss of his aircraft, August was not embittered by his experiences. To the contrary. He was heartened by the courage he had witnessed among American POWs.
        He returned to the United States, regained his strength, and went back to Vietnam to organize a spy network searching for other American POWs.
        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