You’re holding your gun close.
It’s impossible to know exactly what you’re walking into — these things are unpredictable. They could come out with their hands up or they could come out firing.
Before the raid, your fellow agents in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), along with their state and local law enforcement counterparts, are telling jokes trying to calm everyone’s nerves — including their own. Everyone is silent, hoping things will go as planned and fearing they won’t.
Thick with tension, the air is inhaled more quickly as the anticipation begins to rise. All are anxiously waiting for the signal to start the raid, thus entering the world of the unknown.
| From the Author: If you're a drug dealer in the Shenandoah Valley … look out. Valley Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents Travis Moran and Scott Fairburn could be busting through your door next. Working hard with local law enforcement, Moran and Fairburn put their lives on the line to protect the Valley from drug trafficking and the inherent violence that almost always accompanies it. With the growing amounts of methamphetamine showing up in the area, their job is only getting tougher. But ATF won't back down from this mounting problem, no matter what. It takes a special breed of person to do this dangerous job. A mistake at work for some means they might get fired; a mistake for these two means they might get fired upon … or even killed. For Moran and Fairburn, putting their lives on the line by going undercover or raiding drug-houses is all in a days work, and they wouldn't have it any other way. |
