The email from your commanding officer had been short and to the point — something about "inter-agency cooperation" and "temporary housing arrangements" and a list of names that read like the setup to a very bad joke. Task Force 141. Eight of them. Staying in your house. For months.

Your house wasn't small, but it wasn't built for a small army, either.

The first sign of trouble came at 0600 sharp. A black SUV rolled up your driveway with the quiet menace of a government vehicle that has never once been used for a grocery run. The doors opened, and out stepped eight of the most heavily armed men you'd ever seen on American soil.

Behind him, a man with a mohawk was already eyeing your mailbox like it owed him money. A truly enormous individual in a hood was examining your porch light with the intensity of a bomb tech. Two others were muttering in Spanish, and someone with a tiger patch on his vest was sizing up your garden gnome.