before a barricade, you're keyed up. That's when you feel most alive, I guess."

Victor Rosado has been on the SAU just over a month. He and Darrin Hood are the rookies of the unit. They replaced Jeff Green and another officer who also was promoted to sergeant.

Rosado has been a cop for 10 years, five in New York and five in Phoenix. He's had experience around guys like these, and had spent time with the SAU -- "test-driving it," they like to say -- before he was chosen for the assignment.

So you'd think he'd know better than to put a framed photograph of himself on his new SAU desk. It was immediately seized and blown up into a very large poster with a nametag that reads "SWAT GOD."on the door of a second-floor apartment on Ninth Street, just north of Van Buren, looking for a guy that adult probation services wanted them to pick up. They didn't even expect him to be there.

But he was, half hidden behind a dresser in the small living room. He pulled a gun and shot them both as they stood in the apartment doorway. Then he ran, but not before witnesses said he stood over one of the officers and tried -- unsuccessfully -- to fire again.

One bullet hit Kilgore in the ear but stopped in the thick muscle below the back of his head, muscle he'd built up through years of weightlifting and strength training.

The first patrol officer on the scene found a stream of blood flowing from