Marine Firefighter Read online

  Marine Firefighter

  Melrose Lane Series

  Book 1

  MK Dwyer

  A Marine is a Marine. I set that policy two weeks ago - there's no such thing as a former Marine. You're a Marine, just in a different uniform and you're in a different phase of your life. But you'll always be a Marine because you went to Parris Island, San Diego or the hills of Quantico. There's no such thing as a former Marine.

  —General James F. Amos, 35th CMC

  Marine Firefighter

  Copyright © 2018 by MK Dwyer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by MK Dwyer

  Cover Art elements

  © Leigh Prather | Dreamstime.com

  © Les3photo8 | Dreamstime.com

  Cover Fonts

  © Jayde Garrow | dafont.com

  © Imagex | dafont.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  MK Dwyer

  Visit my website at www.AuthorMKDwyer.com

  Published in the United States of America

  First Electronic Publication: Aug 2018

  Southern Canuck Press

  ISBN 9781718099463

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Social Media

  Prologue

  Will

  Two years ago

  Lighting their way towards the crash site, the waxing gibbous moon shone bright in the sky as they flew across the Afghanistan desert in the CH-46 Sea Knight “Phrog” helicopter. The moon would be full in a few days, but Will hoped to be on his way back to the states by then. A full moon made people crazy, and crazy and war didn’t mix.

  In the dark, he smelled the smoke before he saw it. A reminder hanging thick in the air that they were heading fast into a dangerous situation. The quicker they extinguished the flames and moved the casualties, the lesser the chance of complications.

  Staff Sergeant Wilson “Will” Braun was a United States Marine Corps Firefighter trained in search and rescue. Besides putting out any fires on the crashed bird, he could rescue any trapped Marines. If there were wounded, he and his fellow firefighters could assist the corpsmen with first aid. Corpsmen were like the EMT’s of the military except their motto was a couple of Motrin could fix anything.

  Will laughed to himself. At least, that was the common joke.

  A different crew would come in behind them to recover the helicopter. It was the job of first responders to focus on the casualties.

  Initial reports said there were six Marines aboard the downed CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter, but base command lost radio contact shortly after the mayday call came through. They were flying in blind. They had to be prepared for anything—whether enemy fire brought down the bird, or it was mechanical or operator error. They had no idea if they would be dealing with fatalities or if they would find six anxious Marines waiting for rescue. Likely, the scene would be something between the two extremes, but a guy could hope for a simple retrieval. GPS on the bird was still active. Thus, they at least knew where to look for it and knew it hadn’t moved positions since command lost contact.

  Though the crash happened only minutes from base, it felt like it took hours to get there. Will knew that every second counted in these situations. Arriving too late, even when there was nothing they could’ve done faster, was always a hard pill to swallow.

  Finally, smoke gave way to flames, and Will could see the crash in the distance. The scene lit up against the night sky, but it wasn’t burning as bright as he expected it to be. As the Phrog transporting them touched down, a few Marines from the crashed bird rushed over to give them the sit rep. Civilians might call that a “Situation Report”. The flames he’d seen were from burning debris around the helicopter. The Marines on the ground had already put out the fire in the bird itself. Everyone was alive, but there were injuries, some critical. Most critical of all, the unconscious pilot who was pinned in the cockpit.

  Will and a corpsman rushed to the pilot first. As quick as he could, he assessed the pilot’s situation and cataloged injuries. The pilot’s name patch told Will that he was a captain and his name was Hudson. Considering the hard landing, though unconscious, the pilot appeared to be in decent shape from the waist up. His legs were another story. Clearly broken under the crushing weight of mangled metal, Will prayed there was no irreversible damage. A couple of broken legs would put a man out of commission for months while he healed. But an amputation, or two, could end his career in the Marine Corps.

  As Will started to cut and pry the metal away from the pilot to free him, he heard dings and pings and tings, like metal bouncing off metal. In a split second, he realized the enemy was shooting at them, dropped his tools and flung himself over the pilot to prevent further injury. The fact that enemy snipers were shooting at them answered his question about how the CH-53 had crashed. Situations like that was why they brought enough Marines to return fire and cover them while the firefighters and corpsmen handled the casualties. Then he heard the CH-46 Phrog lift off to cover them from the air, and the machine gun fire from the door gunner joined the fray. Everyone had their roles on a mission, and though a Marine is an infantry man first, Will’s job was to free the pilot, not swing his rifle forward and go all “Rambo” on the situation.

  Soon, all the shooting stopped, and the scene went so quiet so fast that it was eerie. Everyone held their breath, waiting to verify it was safe to resume their rescue efforts. He heard a moan from the man underneath him. The pilot was regaining consciousness, but Will wanted to have him freed before that happened. If he woke up and started straining or thrashing around from the pain, it wouldn’t be good for anyone. While the corpsman payed close attention to the pilot’s bleeding and overall condition, he doubled his efforts to cut the pilot out of the cockpit. On the verge of freeing him, another firefighter and corpsman joined him by the cockpit.

  “Staff Sergeant. Let me take over here.” Will looked over at the speaker and laughed at his subordinate fellow firefighter.

  “Corporal. You’d do well to remember who you’re speaking to.”

  “Sorry sir. I’m just afraid you’re going to fall over.” About that time Will started to feel light headed.

  “Sir,” the c
orpsman spoke up. “Please sit down so I can assess your injuries.”

  “What injuries? I’m fine.”

  The corpsman looked at him like he’d grown two heads. “You’re not fine, sir. You’re bleeding, and the blood has soaked so far down the right side of your cammies that I’m afraid you won’t be able to maintain consciousness for much longer.”

  Will looked down, and as if coming out of a dream, the pain and wooziness hit him like a freight train. The corpsman knew the moment was coming and braced for impact as Will stumbled back into him. Despite being six inches shorter than Will and at least fifty pounds lighter, the corpsman caught him with practiced ease and set him down on a stretcher that he hadn’t noticed was there.

  With the other casualties already loaded into the Phrog that had returned after the firefight, a team of firefighters and corpsman were available to take over his efforts to free the pilot from the wreckage. At the same time, a few corpsmen located Will’s wound on the right side of his abdomen and attempted to stop the bleeding.

  Will watched the corpsmen tug on his cammies and put pressure on his wound. He flinched and grunted. The pain was excruciating, but he had no choice except to resign himself to the torment. At least, they weren’t giving him a Motrin and telling him to call them in the morning. He almost felt bad for joking about it in his head earlier.

  Almost.

  He clinched his teeth so hard, he should’ve cracked his jaw or at least a tooth. He got a short reprieve from the agony of people touching his wound when a group of Marines surrounded him, picked up the stretcher he was lying on and carried him to the Phrog. They loaded the pilot in after him, and the Phrog lifted off the ground, headed back to base.

  During the short ride, he retreated into his mind to keep it off the pain in his side. His thoughts jumped around more than a five-year-old on chocolate. He thought it was a shame they were retiring the Phrogs considering one had just saved his life, in a roundabout way. While wondering how the CH-53 pilot, Captain Hudson, was doing, he also wondered about the man’s family. Did he have a wife at home? Had she been notified of her husband’s condition? Did he have kids? Then, he realized that someone would be getting a call about him as well. Did he update his next-of-kin back to his parents after his divorce? He couldn’t remember, but he’d make his own phone calls as soon as he could. Then, he decided that he would not be reenlisting in a year when his current enlistment was over. He’d been on the fence before the deployment, but the gunshot wound made up his mind for him. He was done. It was time to head back into the civilian world. Most of all, it was time to settle down and see his son on a more regular basis.

  Chapter One

  Will

  Present

  Adam:

  The address is 737 Melrose Lane. See you at 6 to check out the place and meet the guys.

  Will grumbled at the unnecessary text message before replying with a quick “K”. The guy must be a complete control freak to text someone the exact information they’d just discussed over the phone. Maybe that’s why Adam Morris had a room available. His last roommate ran away from pure boredom—Will chuckled—he cracked himself up. Renting a room from an accountant didn’t sound like much fun even if the guy was a fellow Marine. Like Will, Adam wasn’t active, but once a Marine, always a Marine, and all that jazz.

  Of course, he only had the address committed to memory because he’d already scoped out the neighborhood, and then determined the route he would take from the house to work. Perhaps he had some “control freak” tendencies too. He believed in being prepared though, and there was no way he was going to wind up in another roommate situation without all the facts like last time.

  At twenty-nine, he wasn’t keen on having roommates at all, but between paying child support and being the low man on the totem pole of the San Diego Fire Department he didn’t have the funds to handle a place by himself. At least, not one within an hour of his fire house. Last week, an old friend from boot camp, who he hadn’t seen in years, called him to hang out and have a few beers. Will mentioned he was looking for a new living situation, and by coincidence, his friend knew a guy from his old squadron looking for a roommate. Since Will didn’t really believe in coincidences, he took it as a sign to act on his gut-feeling that the room was exactly what he was looking for. He called Adam from right there in the bar. Of course, he woke him up because it was after 1 A.M. on a Monday, but Adam had just laughed at his eagerness and promised to call him back with the details at “a decent time” later that day.

  Amazingly enough, not only was the rent price the best he’d seen for that area of San Diego, but the house was so close to his fire station, he could walk to work if he was so inclined. It seemed too good to be true which meant it probably was. There had to be something wrong with the place. Maybe the house was haunted, or maybe the neighbors threw crazy parties. Adam seemed nice enough, but maybe he was an asshole. Maybe all the guys living there were assholes. It was a four-bedroom house, so he would have three roommates. Odds were, one was bound to be an asshole. Right? All the maybe’s running through his head were giving him a headache. One thing was for sure though, he would endure anything to get out of his current situation.

  After separating from the Marine Corps just under a year ago, he’d answered an ad for a roommate and agreed to rent the room simply because the guy seemed cool. A year later, Will preferred to stay away from that apartment, and he only slept there when he didn’t sleep at the fire station. Call him paranoid, but he couldn’t still be living there when all hell broke loose. He was anxious at any moment the police were going to bust down their door, and he figured the less he was there, the less likely they would arrest him by mistake. Just imagining the shit storm that would rain down on him put him in a bad mood. He had no hard evidence that his roommate was a drug dealer, but he’d seen enough to know he didn’t want to see any more.

  His roommate, Tank, never left any paraphernalia lying around the apartment, and no one ever came to the apartment looking to score. But he always kept his bedroom door locked and left at a moment’s notice any time he got a phone call. A skinny kid, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, came by the apartment like clockwork every Wednesday. The kid delivered a bag and collected a different bag from his roommate every time. The two never spoke a word to each other, that Will saw, except once.

  The kid knocked on the door and Will answered. He paled when Will told him Tank wasn’t home and got more nervous the longer he had to wait. Less than half an hour later, Tank came bounding up the stairs, threw a bag at the kid and said, “Run.”

  The next week, the kid showed up with a black eye and a split lip. Will tried to ask what happened, but it was business as usual for Tank and the kid. They traded bags and left without speaking a word. He could only guess about what happened, but his gut told him he was better off not knowing the full story. That was the moment Will knew he had to get out of there.

  Slipping the phone in his pocket he turned his attention back to the beer sitting in front of him on the well-worn, wooden bar in Kelly’s Irish Pub. If he was going to make a good impression and secure the too-good-to-be-true room for rent, then he needed to get his head out of his ass and put his best foot forward. Besides the rowdy table of ladies off to his left, there was a whole lot of nothing going on that lazy Wednesday afternoon. He still had a few hours to stew in his melancholy mood before meeting Adam and his other potential roommates. He didn’t do well with down time. Never had. Sure, at the fire station they often had a lot of free time, but at least there, he could occupy himself checking gear, hanging with the guys and preparing meals. Come to think of it, he’d filled his time much the same way in the military too. Funny. Between the two of them, maybe Adam wasn’t the boring one.

  Interrupting his inner monologue was a soft touch on his shoulder. “Hey there.” A busty brunette whose fingers were travelling from his shoulder down his arm stood next to him at the bar. He enjoyed watching her eyes go round like saucers when
she reached his bicep and realized her hand could only reach about halfway around. She was a little thing. Even standing while he sat on a stool, she was barely eye level with him. It gave him the perfect view down her low-cut shirt. Her long chestnut hair fell in layers down her back and her bright blue eyes were piercing as if she had the ability to see beyond the surface. She wore glasses at the end of her nose like a naughty school teacher, and her pouty, plump lips had his pants growing tighter by the second. At that moment, the brain above his shoulders was wishing they were somewhere more private while the brain below his belt didn’t care where they were provided that her lips were wrapped around his cock within the next five seconds.

  Despite the growing concern behind his zipper, Will shook off that beautiful mental image so he could focus and take his time admiring the work of art in front of him. His eyes travelled down again to her breasts that would be more than a handful, then to her wide hips and shapely legs. Fair was fair since she’d spent the last half hour doing the same thing to him.

  He’d noticed the table of ladies, but above all, her, when he entered the bar. While all the ladies were pretty, she was gorgeous. And each time he stole a glance in her direction, she was looking back. Not in the obvious way that some of her friends were, but in a flirty, furtive manner. Equal parts shy and bold, like she might need a little coaxing, but once out of her shell, she wouldn’t be afraid to take what she wanted. He’d heard the table of ladies erupt in raucous laughter a few times as if they were having the time of their lives, and he could hear the rest of them giggle as his perfect wet dream tried to seduce him. What made it even more perfect was that she seemed nervous; like she didn’t do it very often.

  “Hey yourself,” he responded only after thoroughly ogling every inch of her and mind-fucking her six ways to Sunday. But before they could continue what was sure to be an interesting encounter, his phone began to ring. His first reaction was to let the call go to voicemail, but with each ring the hairs on the back of his neck rose higher, and he grew increasingly more uneasy about who may be on the other end of the line.