it’s proven nearly impossible to cuff the sales force. These youngsters are fleet of foot, and while most of the guys in the tac squad are young and lean, you can’t outrun a desperate kid on his home turf. He knows where the pitfalls and loose boards are and you don’t.  But over time, Kosala has noticed that one of their favorite escape routes is through the abandoned townhouse across the street at 4847. Tonight he plans to cut them off at the pass.^[11]

But just as the last of his guys are getting in position, one of the squads is spotted and they have to jump the gun. In the blackness, men leap from their cars and dash headlong into the unknown. This is the moment of maximum danger, with cops racing in from all sides, dim silhouettes stumbling through terra incognita, potential targets for a shotgun blast from any nook or cranny. Kosala, like Mike Hoke, is a Vietnam vet and he experienced his share of heart-pounding terror on a Mekong River gunboat. Fear is nothing new to him. But the rest of these guys are too young to have witnessed any of that carnage. They think they’re immortal. One crew dashes into the shadowy gangway alongside the building and another goes for the basement as Kosala lunges through the back door and leads two men pounding up the stairs shouting “Police!”

If there can be anything more terrifying than a night landing on an aircraft carrier, this must be it. A scared kid will cut you down in a second because he doesn’t know any better. Rushing into a black room with a gun in your hand not knowing which door may suddenly kick open and spit fire or which floorboards are sawed through and ready to drop you into the basement—that requires more than just discipline. This is not TV.

The men fan out through the first floor, yanking doors open, poking around the sagging sofas and crates that serve as furniture in this clubhouse of the damned. The streetlight streaming in through the broken front windows casts an eerie camouflage of light and shadow over the cluttered rooms, but in seconds they’ve combed the first floor and they’re moving to the stairway