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Mayday Protocol: A John Avery / Sentinel Fire Thriller
The fire was built for a competent crew.
The smoke over the Faye Road warehouse is wrong before Engine 7 even arrives moving against the wind, splitting in two directions, pulling firefighters toward an exit that was never meant to save anyone. Inside the wall, a tactical team is trapped. With them is a protected federal witness who whispers one name as she is carried out.
For Engineer John Avery, the man who once handed back his captain’s bugles after a firefighter died under his command, the trap feels personal. Someone queried the hospital where the witness would be taken before his crew even chose it. Someone has studied how good firefighters think and designed a fire around it.
Then the offers a special Army Reserve unit, a mayor who owes a commander his life, a seat in rooms Avery was never cleared to enter. Dr. Dianne Brinkley, the forensic psychologist he is learning to trust with more than his secrets, is pulled into a sealed federal review that may be aimed at both of them.
As the trail leads from a burn chamber in an empty building to a twenty-year-old fire overseas, a missing document cylinder, and a call sign no one is supposed to remember, Avery learns he was not chosen to find the truth. He was chosen to replace it.
Written by a retired fire-rescue captain, Mayday Protocol is a tense, procedurally authentic thriller about duty, grief, and the courage to call for help when the system itself is the fire.
Every alarm tells a story. Not every story is an accident.
The smoke over the Faye Road warehouse is wrong before Engine 7 even arrives moving against the wind, splitting in two directions, pulling firefighters toward an exit that was never meant to save anyone. Inside the wall, a tactical team is trapped. With them is a protected federal witness who whispers one name as she is carried out.
For Engineer John Avery, the man who once handed back his captain’s bugles after a firefighter died under his command, the trap feels personal. Someone queried the hospital where the witness would be taken before his crew even chose it. Someone has studied how good firefighters think and designed a fire around it.
Then the offers a special Army Reserve unit, a mayor who owes a commander his life, a seat in rooms Avery was never cleared to enter. Dr. Dianne Brinkley, the forensic psychologist he is learning to trust with more than his secrets, is pulled into a sealed federal review that may be aimed at both of them.
As the trail leads from a burn chamber in an empty building to a twenty-year-old fire overseas, a missing document cylinder, and a call sign no one is supposed to remember, Avery learns he was not chosen to find the truth. He was chosen to replace it.
Written by a retired fire-rescue captain, Mayday Protocol is a tense, procedurally authentic thriller about duty, grief, and the courage to call for help when the system itself is the fire.
Every alarm tells a story. Not every story is an accident.
428 pages, Paperback
Published October 9, 2026
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