Any Readers out there? - ive written the first couple of chapters of a book and could use some feedback

[Matt.2504]

Thanks for taking the time to read this:
Personally I've never really been into reading- never been able to concentrate for longer than 5 mins when doing it but ive decided I want to try writing a book;
Here are the first two chapters; would really appreciate some feedback
( thinking i may add in some more chapters before the current chapter 2, maybe have it as chapter 4 or 5)


Please be kind; this is purely a first attempt.

Chapter 1

Mason Lee awoke to the sound of waves breaking against the beach. The dreams — memories, more accurately — of his former life faded as consciousness slowly returned. The former pipe-hitting operator turned federal agent now lived a quiet life of early retirement in the paradise of sunny San Fuego.

He stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. Turning on the tap, he scooped cold water over his face before staring into the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot from one too many drinks at the local watering hole the night before.

Straightening up, he studied the aging man staring back at him. He was still lean, though years had stripped away much of the hard definition he once carried. He flexed his bicep, examining the faded flintlock and trident tattoo etched into his tanned, leathery skin. Beneath it sat a far newer mark, the word SYOTOS inscribed in black ink, though even that had begun to fade — a painful reminder of the past.

For a moment, he let himself drift back to the night of The Incident. The memories returned whole: the noise, the screams, even the smell of cordite and smoke. Fifteen years had passed, yet it still felt like yesterday.

Mason splashed more water across his face, forcing the memories back down. Half-donning his shortie wetsuit, he grabbed a cup of coffee and stepped outside. Lowering himself into the hammock, he stared out to sea and watched the sunrise.

Once he finished his drink, he grabbed his favourite surfboard, propped against the tree, and hit the waves — his best hangover cure and mind-clearer for the day ahead.

“Breaching! Breaching! Breaching!”

A team clad in black surged through the doorway as flashbangs detonated inside the building with deafening cracks and blinding white light. M4 carbines up and ready, they cleared room after room with practised precision, neutralising every hostile in their path.

The stack reached the final door.

One hard kick sent it crashing inward.

Inside, a man cowered in the corner with a hostage locked tight against his chest, a pistol jammed against the terrified woman’s head.

“Drop your weapons!” the man screamed.

The lead operator slowly lowered his rifle and stepped into the room, his voice calm and controlled as he tried to de-escalate the situation. The hostage taker’s attention shifted for only a fraction of a second — but it was enough.

The second man in the stack fired once.

The round snapped through the room and dropped the gunman instantly.

“End-ex, end-ex! Gentlemen… outside. Debrief in five,” Mason called down from the observation platform above before descending the ladder and walking outside.

Now standing outside San Fuego Police’s newly established Tactical Operations Command Centre, Mason watched the team he had spent the last twelve weeks training.

It had started innocently enough. When applying for a firearms licence for a hunting rifle and home-defence shotgun, Mason had disclosed details of his military and federal law enforcement background. Within days, a senior police official had approached him with a proposition: select and train a specialist tactical unit for the island police force while serving as a reserve officer and tactical advisor in return for a healthy stipend — and a little more latitude when it came to firearm ownership.

At the beginning, some of the officers had barely handled a rifle, let alone understood CQB or breaching tactics. Now they moved as one: disciplined, aggressive, and efficient. Watching them flow through the shoot house, Mason felt a rare sense of pride.

They had become protectors.

The kind of men willing to stand between the flock and the wolf.

Looking at them all reminded him of his younger self and the brotherhood forged through blood, sweat, and spent brass.

Mason looked over the group of officers gathered outside the shoot house. Every one of them stood silently watching him, nervous and eager for his approval.

A stern expression rested across his weathered face.

In the past, these debriefs had been brutal. Mason dissected mistakes with relentless precision, sometimes tearing into an officer after a catastrophic error. Never personal — never malicious — but driven by the same philosophy drilled into him all those years ago: harsh lessons in training kept good men from ending up in wooden boxes.

But this debrief was different.

Mason adjusted the brim of his old cowboy hat — because you could take the boy out of Texas, but never Texas out of the boy — and finally cracked a faint smile.

“My work here is done.”

For a moment, the officers simply stared at him.

Then the cheering started.

He climbed into his custom Jeep Wrangler — lifted, stripped down, roofless, built more for freedom than comfort. In the Caribbean, protection from the elements hardly mattered.

Next stop was Sal’s, the beachfront watering hole only a five-minute walk from home. The beer was always cold, the cocktails dangerously strong, the sunset views unmatched, and the music choices impeccable.

One of the perks of investing in the business to help keep it afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mason had never been one for attention or showing off. Even in his prime, back in his operator days, he had never carried himself like he was above anyone else. The years of BUD/S training and Green Team selection that had earned him a place within DEVGRU had never inflated his ego.

When people asked about his past, he usually shrugged it off with a quiet smile. He did not think he was better than other men.

He had simply wanted it more.

That mentality had never left him. So while the tourists drank, danced, and chased the last light of the evening, Mason sat quietly in the corner of Sal’s, watching the sunset and occasionally laughing as drunken visitors fell victim to the bar’s notoriously lethal margaritas.

Looking out toward the water, Mason noticed a boat sitting roughly three hundred yards offshore.

Something about it felt wrong.

He could not explain why, but years of instinct suddenly set every nerve in his body on edge.

Then came the flash.

A muzzle flash.

A split second later, the crack of rifle fire rolled across the beach.

Screams erupted inside Sal’s as a tourist collapsed onto the floorboards, blood pouring from a hole in her chest.

Jason — the bartender and fellow veteran — vaulted over the counter and rushed to her side, desperately trying to slow the bleeding.

Mason was already moving.

He sprinted to the Wrangler and unlocked the secured rifle case mounted inside. His custom-built AR platform was exactly where he left it: Geissele handguard, foregrip, EOTech optic paired with a magnifier, weapon light, laser designator, BCM Gunfighter SOPMOD stock. A rifle built for fighting men by fighting men.

By the time he reached the beach again, the boat was already accelerating into the darkness.

Mason dropped to a knee and fired controlled shots toward the fleeing vessel, muzzle flashes briefly illuminating the shoreline as the craft disappeared into the night.

In the distance, sirens began to rise.

Paradise had just been stained with blood.

And for the first time since retiring to San Fuego, Mason suspected the island would truly need the tactical unit he had built.

​

 

[Matt.2504]

Chapter 2 – The Incident
Born in 1980, Mason Lee had grown up on action movies, football, barbecue, country music, and, of course, firearms. Shooting was simply part of life in Texas. He had been handling guns since he could barely walk, first learning on his father’s old .410 shotgun and a Ruger 10/22 used for plinking cans behind the house before steadily graduating to larger calibres.
By fifteen, Mason already knew exactly who he was.
A warrior.
A man built for service.
On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, he walked into the military recruitment office intent on joining the Marine Corps, following in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather. Fate, however, had other plans. The Marine recruiter was out sick that day.
Mason had almost left to come back another time when a photograph caught his attention: a frogman in a wetsuit crouched aboard a RHIB beside the Navy recruiter’s desk.
That single image changed the course of his life.
Basic training came naturally to him, and before long he found himself enduring the brutality of BUD/S training. Two years later, he was serving with SEAL Team Three in California before volunteering for the next step: Green Team selection for DEVGRU.
Virginia Beach pushed him harder than anything before it. The training was relentless, designed to expose weakness, arrogance, and fear. But Mason endured it the same way he approached everything else in life — through sheer grit and refusal to quit.
In July 2001, he earned a place on Echo Team.
Up until then, Mason had been a peacetime frogman. Most operations involved overseas training missions, hostage rescue preparedness, and joint exercises with foreign units.
Then September happened.
Almost overnight, the tip of the spear became a combat force consumed by the Global War on Terror. Deployments became constant. Raids blurred together. Afghanistan. Iraq. Horn of Africa. Names, faces, and body counts eventually melted into one long violent memory.
Mason specialised as a sniper, most often carrying either the Mk 12 Special Purpose Rifle for ammunition compatibility with the rest of the team or the SR-25 for longer-range engagements.
Nine years later — Jalalabad, 2010.
The operation was a nighttime hostage rescue mission targeting a senior insurgent facilitator. Capture intelligence. Eliminate threats. Bring the hostages home.
Mason lay concealed six blocks from the target building with his swim buddy, Tom, acting as spotter beside him. Their hide site gave them a perfect line of sight over the compound and the surrounding infiltration and exfiltration routes.
Now they waited for the assault force to move.
A local indig van rolled slowly toward the target compound, its IR strobe blinking through Mason’s night vision — the signal identifying it as the team’s infiltration vehicle.
The moment the van stopped, the side door flew open.
Operators poured out with practised speed, moving like men who had rehearsed this exact sequence a thousand times before.
Movement caught Mason’s eye.
A figure appeared on the rooftop of the target building, AK-47 in hand, reacting to the sound of the vehicle below.
Mason settled the crosshairs onto the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger once.
The threat dropped instantly.
The assault team breached and disappeared inside the building.
Over Mason’s headset came the muffled sound of gunfire and shouting. Someone had accidentally hot-mic’d their radio.
Then came the words.
The words that still haunted him fifteen years later.
“Avalanche! Avalanche! Avalanche!”
Emergency exfil.
Abort mission immediately.
Then another voice screamed across the net:
“S-Vest!”
Suicide vest.
A split second later, the night erupted.
The explosion tore through the building in a violent fireball that lit the entire street orange. The shockwave slammed into nearby walls as smoke, dust, and debris consumed everything in sight.
When the dust began to settle, the target compound was gone.
Reduced to nothing but burning rubble.
And Mason’s team was still inside.
“Move!” Tom shouted.
The two men sprinted from the hide site, boots hammering down the stairwell as Tom radioed frantically for QRF, CASEVAC, and immediate air support.
Mason barely heard him.
He was already screaming into the radio for his brothers to answer.
Any answer.
But the entire neighbourhood had awakened in chaos. Armed fighters flooded into the streets from every direction, rifles flashing in the darkness.
Two surviving operators were pinned down near the rubble, fighting desperately to reach the collapsed structure where the rest of the team lay buried.
Mason charged straight into the firefight.
Rounds tore through the street around him. One punched through his leg. Another ripped into his shoulder.
Beside him, Tom took a round square in the chest plate, the impact throwing him violently onto his back.
“Mason—!”
Then silence.
Ignoring the pain flooding through his body, Mason dragged Tom behind cover and returned fire, holding off the advancing fighters until reinforcements finally arrived.
That morning, he had deployed with six brothers.
By sunrise, he was the only one left alive.
After months of brutal physiotherapy, Mason returned to operational duty with Charlie Team. But something inside him had changed.
He no longer cared what people called it.
Justice.
Vengeance.
Retribution.
The names meant nothing.
All Mason cared about was finishing the mission for the men he had lost.
And once it was done, he handed in his papers and walked away from the Navy for good.
The following day, he sat in a tattoo chair and had six letters inked beneath his trident:
SYOTOS.
See You On The Other Side.