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!