I got it in unusual circumstances: saw some guys in New York impersonating a firetruck crew and one of them dropped it. I kept it—at least at first—as a reminder not to trust anyone at first glance.

But as time went by, I came to love my battered FDNY helmet. It’s accompanied me on many adventures and saved my head numerous times.

I’ve also grown to see it in a new and, I think, better light.

You see, the professionals who put on helmets like mine—the real firefighters of this world—wear them for the sole purpose of protecting others. There is no other use for it.

It is worn by those who run toward the danger with the sole goal of helping regular people.

This, in the end, is what has driven me my whole life.

I don’t seek fame or fortune, promotion or power. I just want to see the regular people of the world—mums and dads, kids and grandparents—be able to live their lives, love their families and chase their dreams without some entitled king or emperor or whatever ruling over them.

That’s what my helmet means to me.

Basra, Iraq

Operation Desert Storm

March 1991

The mission had gone to hell in a handcart.

Deep behind enemy lines, having just taken out a SCUD base, Jack had been separated from his American Delta Force teammates.

He was on foot and fleeing for his life from three hundred members of the Republican Guard, the only part of the Iraqi Army worth anything.

They were killers and they desperately wanted to capture a Western special ops soldier and drag his body behind a jeep through the streets of Basra, preferably while he was still alive.

Two hundred metres ahead of him, he could see his American colleagues running for the LZ. Beyond them, in the sky, he saw two inbound rescue choppers.

Fucking Delta, he thought.

Missions with Americans were always a toss-up.

The Marines and Rangers were great: they were reliable.

But not Delta. Delta guys were only ever in it for themselves. If there was credit to be taken, they grabbed it. But if a mission went to shit, they left you for dead to take care of yourself and also to take the blame.

And this Delta team had been led by the biggest and most selfish asshole of them all, a dead-eyed operator named Cal Kallis.

When it turned out that the SCUD base had been guarded by a heretofore unknown battalion of Republican Guards, Kallis and his Delta shits had bolted, leaving Jack—their forward scout—alone.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Jack was due west of Basra, in undulating scrubland on the edge of the open desert.

To his left was an abandoned Iraqi airfield, covered in decades of sand and rust.

Jack raced after the Delta team. He might still catch up to them before the choppers lifted off.