Welcome to the World of FIRE TEAM

I’ve wanted to write a story featuring a bank heist for a long time. Back when I was in college I worked at a local bank as a teller, then a banker. During that time there were several robberies in my city, and we were always receiving alerts from other banks about armed robberies across the region. While I was never involved in one myself, it was only natural to play out the sequence of possible events in my mind.

You might say my writer’s imagination ran away with me, and I knew one day I wanted to write a thriller that would kick off with a violent bank heist. It probably didn’t help that while I was a teller I worked at a branch that had been robbed multiple times in the past. During one such event, the robber had even popped off a few shots and blown a hole in the sheetrock above the teller line.

The bank that I worked for (I will protect the names of the guilty) was so cheap that they erected bulletproof glass to protect the tellers…but refused to pay to have the bullet hole fixed. So there I stood day after day behind the glass, chatting up customers with a bullet hole over my head. True story.

Mason’s adventure in a bank kicks off in Jacksonville, a city I’ve long wanted to explore. I took several trips to coastal Florida this year to prepare for Fire Team, and of course there were plenty of pictures. Here are a few to give you a glimpse into the real world of the story…

Or maybe whet your appetite to give Fire Team a try. Enjoy!

Crossing the St. Johns river, this is the bridge the bank robbers flee over during the harrowing moments following the bank heist. You may recall a critical critical moment during this scene where Brooke attempts an escape…or does she?

The bridge is technically called the John T. Alsop Jr. Bridge, but that was a mouthful to fit into an action-packed story, so I generally referred to it as the blue bridge. There is a walkway along the outer edge of both sides to allow pedestrians to cross. The view of the city is pretty spectacular…

…as is the view at night!

Beneath the bridge running along the riverwalk is a sort of open tunnel where Mason first collides with Dufort. Due to the action-packed nature of the scene, I wasn’t able to weave in many details of the glass artwork inlayed on the wall that Dufort slumps against, but it’s pretty incredible.

I wasn’t able to pay a visit to Washington DC for the handful of scenes that appear in the book, but luckily those locations were easy to research. In Chapter 72 Mason meets Brooke at the Washington National Mall, depicted here. It’s a gorgeous spot with a host of monuments, many of them dedicated to the military conflicts the U.S. has engaged in.

The Vietnam War Memorial stands directly across from Mason and Brooke while they sit together on the bench. Depicted on this wall are the names of all 58,318 Americans who died in the Vietnam conflict. It’s a heavy place to wind down a story, but given the themes of the novel it felt right. Mason is and always will be a warrior, and those values ingrained in him by the US Army will never die.