Last month, the team was atop a crane in Parole, trying to rescue an injured construction worker.

Last September, Company 23 manipulated ropes and its ladder truck to pluck an injured worker from under the Bay Bridge. The unit won an award this week for that work.

"These people want the extra challenge," said Capt. Chen, Company 23's commander since March. "Me? It's the adrenaline. It's high risk, but high reward."

He said the desire to do extra-hazardous work comes from a sense of, "wanting to be a part of taking care of things." But he also is quick to insist it's not about him, but the team and the work.

That work runs the gamut. Water rescue, hazardous material spills, confined spaces and collapses, trench cave-ins and dive rescues.

The 32 men and women of Company 23 respond to all those missions, plus regular fire calls, fires, accidents and medical runs.

Last year they even saved five ducklings from a Severna Park storm drain.

All of the county special operations firefighters are stationed out of the Jones Station firehouse on Ritchie Highway in Arnold.

It's a proud, cohesive team. Their Web site shouts about the company's multi-disciplinary mission: "Jones Station: The Super House … Yeah … We do that!"

But none of them "do that" without intense training. Some firefighters are stronger in some areas, others are masters of another, but all are cross-trained.

This week they were scheduled to practice hoisting patients and themselves from a helicopter at Martin Airport.

Last week they practiced the rope rescue techniques - used on the Bay Bridge last fall - at the fire department training center in Millersville.

It is a carefully choreographed ballet, with safety first. Ropes are attached to the base of the 100-foot ladder on Quint 23, the company's ladder truck.

Systems of knots attach both rescuer and stretcher to the ladder.

"It's a long line bowline," Firefighter III Keith Hamilton said to a fellow firefighter.

"It's redundancy, backed by redundancy."

Two lines come off the ladder, both attached by a bowline knot to a heavy ring. Each of the lines below that connection is used for further safety, one to the patient, the other to the firefighter who will be hoisted along with the patient.

"Each line is a separate system," Mr. Hamilton said.

The crew makes two runs, simulating lowering a patient from a 5-story roof. It's a team, usually six people.

"It's two lieutenants and four firefighters," Lt. Richard Cleary explained. "One lieutenant is the command officer, the other the safety officer. One firefighter operates the ladder, one is the attendant working with the patient, there is an upper-safety man and the sixth firefighter is on the rope and rigging."

Once a patient is secure in the Stokes basket, the lines are tied off at the base of the ladder, locking patient and attendant safely in the system. To lower the patient, it's the ladder that does the trick, as it is lowered from full extension the patient is soon on the ground.

Once done all the equipment - rope, safety harnesses, helmets and other gear - is packed into Squad 23, a 2003 Pierce Rescue/HazMat truck.

"It's basically a giant tool box," Firefighter Hamilton said. "We keep all our equipment in it, except for dive and collapse-rescue stuff."

After their exercise, they pass a sign as they leave the training center heading back to Jones Station, "Make Safety Part of Every Decision."

That is what practice is all about. That and the repetition to plant procedures deep in the brain so that once on a scene there are no questions about what to do.

Back at the "house" it's lunch time. It's a family feeding affair, sandwiches are on the menu.

It's time to cut up.

There is a lot of ribbing, like calling any firefighter dangling from a rope rig "dope on a rope." And there is gallows humor, a necessary coping mechanism: "It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop."

Two firefighters fuss over a bag of cheese balls. "It's like two kids," Lt. Cleary said.

Mid-meal, the alarm goes off. Multiple two-tone reports come over the loudspeaker. The banter is hushed. Squad members push themselves back from the table as they anxiously listen for the double tone signalling Company 23.

If their tone comes across the system, the details of the call will automatically come over the station's loudspeakers, again calling them to duty.

It doesn't. This time.

But no matter the nature of the call the response from 23 is the same.

"Yeah … we do that."