They needed a lot, so much so that it was embarrassing. Their group commander, forty-five-year-old Colonel John Mulholland, had taken charge of the soldiers just two months earlier, after a staff posting in Washington, and a stint as a student at the National War College. Tall, massively built, with the intense, pinched gaze of someone who did not suffer fools, Mulholland had served during the 1980s under General Lambert as a Special Forces lieutenant in Latin America, and he'd worked as a Delta Force operator in the mid-1990s. He assured each team that they could have whatever new equipment they needed. After much cajoling and pressuring on his part and Lambert's, the Pentagon has agreed to pull out the golden credit card.