I did a thing.
I’ve always wanted to write a book, and I finally did. Let me introduce you to my debut novel: The Heart of Poseidon!
It is free to read from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program – link appears after clicking Continue Reading. You can also buy the ebook, paperback, or hardback books if you desire.
I think it’s pretty darn good, but I may be delusional, too.
Here is an exclusive excerpt, the first scene from the Prologue:
Asher “Ghost” Kincaid
High Desert, Nevada
Thirty-five thousand feet above the Nevada desert, Colonel Asher Ghost Kincaid felt it—a subtle shift, the whisper of something wrong. Nothing on the boards, all systems read nominal, but his gut flashed an evil red in his mind.He tore across the sun-baked desert in the YF-81 Raven’s Claw, the latest experimental marvel in American airpower. At 35,000 feet, the earth below was just dust and memory.
Nothing like a hypersonic flight to wake a guy up, Ghost thought, a grin tugging beneath his oxygen mask as he rode the edge of a supersonic storm.
Flying the Raven’s Claw was like jumping from a Model T into a Lamborghini—sleek, brutal, fast. The sixth-generation fighter was designed to replace aging F-22s and F-35s, ensuring air superiority for decades. This test? It was everything. The future rode on it.
His advanced flight suit squeezed around him as the raw power of the craft pushed it into supersonic speed. The fuselage rumbled and flexed around him—music to his bones. Ghost held steady and throttled back, bleeding speed as he dropped altitude. One mistake out here and he’d be nothing but dust in the wind.
The Claw was built on the ASCEND platform—Aerospace Superiority through Combat Evolution and Next-Gen Design—a next-generation systems package that drives the aircraft.
But the real breakthrough was TALOS, its onboard AI: Tactical AI for Lethality and Operational Superiority. TALOS translated Ghost’s coarse movements into millions of seamless corrections per second.
A soft strobe pulsed in the upper-right of his helmet’s HUD—the waypoint marker flashing green.
He craned his neck, scanning the sky. All clear. He keyed the mic.
“Crypt Keeper, Specter-3. Dropping to angels two-five. Engine performance nominal. Proceeding to waypoint Alpha.”
“Good copy, Specter-3. Descending to angels two-five.”
A few minutes later, Ghost checked his screens. “Specter-3. Approaching waypoint Alpha. All boards green. Noticing slight buffeting on the left wing. Check it out, would you?”
“Affirmative, Specter-3. Reviewing now.”
Buffeting wasn’t rare in a test craft, but this had a rhythm to it. Something almost…wrong. He tried to shake the feeling.
“Specter-3, Crypt Keeper. Systems nominal. Weather shows crosswind at your altitude.”
Ghost exhaled. There. Nothing. “Roger that. Initiating test sequence Alpha now. Let’s burn this candle.”
“Light her up, Specter-3. Monitor and report.”
He jammed the throttle. The plane screamed back up to 35,000 feet, nudging Mach 3—still well shy of her limits.
“Roger. Leveling out at 35,000.” He scanned the status screens—hydraulics, avionics, fuel flow, wing integrity. “Left wing’s still shaking. Recheck and advise.”
This wasn’t wind.
He brushed the St. Michael medal beneath his suit. Jalalabad. The wing hadn’t just snapped—it’d spun him like a pinwheel before the chute deployed. He still woke up sweating, hearing the crack of metal and the smell of burning fuel. Two years in a cage after that. Two years. Praying this moment would never repeat.
He shuddered.
Alarms shrieked in his helmet. The plane jerked violently to the right.
His eyes darted to the wing—and his heart sank.
The last third of the left wing was gone. Jalalabad all over again.
He clamped down on the controls, keeping the plane level through sheer instinct.
“Crypt Keeper, Specter-3. Declaring an emergency.”
“We see it too, Ghost. Looks like the wing was sheared. Can you confirm—”
“Confirmed,” he snapped.
“Can you make it back?”
“I think so. But it won’t be pretty.”
“Understood. First responders are on standby.”
“Copy that. On my way.”
He turned slowly right—the only option with the imbalance.
“Specter-3. I’ll need a straight-in approach. Can’t make the landing pattern. Advise area traffic.”
“Roger that. Runway 32R is clear. You’re green. First responders standing by.”
Ghost allowed a thin laugh. “Let’s hope I didn’t validate your call sign this morning.”
“Acknowledged,” Crypt Keeper replied, deadpan. A good break in the tension.
Then more alarms.
Warning lights flashed—left engine failure.
He cycled the shutoff, then tried a restart.
Dead.
“Specter-3. Another issue. Fuel leak. Left tank’s bone dry.”
“Copy—we see it.”
While they scrambled through the manual, Ghost worked the problem. He activated the cross-feed pump to transfer fuel from the right tank, but the gauge didn’t move. Then he looked out the window. A glistening arc of fuel vented into the air from the mangled wing. The pump was stuck open, dumping fuel he couldn’t afford to lose.
“Shit.” He hit the pump shutoff. It didn’t respond. The fuel gauge kept falling.
“Crypt Keeper, Specter-3. Left tank tore open when I lost the wing. Tried to transfer fuel—no joy. Pump’s stuck open. I’ll be bingo fuel before base.”
A new voice cut in, gravel-throated and serious.
“Specter-3, this is Crypt Keeper Actual. Ghost—I hate to ask, but can you land her in the desert?”
Ghost blinked. He’s gotta be joking.
“Negative, Actual. That’s a hard no on the dirt nap.” His voice wavered just slightly. “I plan on a much more lively retirement.”
“Understood.”
Ghost took a breath. “Punching out. Have pararescue meet me.”
“They’re en route. Godspeed.”
He yanked the yellow ejection handle.
Nothing.
“Shit.” His mic was still open.
“What’s wrong?” The general’s voice had lost its edge.
“Ejection failure. Can’t punch out. Looks like the desert it is.”
“Godspeed, Ghost.”
Ghost flipped the gear lever. By some miracle, the wheels deployed. He lined up the approach—flaps locked.
The rear wheels kissed the sand and glided smoothly.
Then the front gear hit a soft patch.
The nose dipped.
The ground grabbed the plane.
The Raven’s Claw flipped—metal shrieking, canopy shattering. Just before the world went black, Ghost saw a flash of light through the dust.
The desert swallowed him whole. That flash. Not fire, not wreckage. Something…ancient? Metallic?
He didn’t have time to be afraid—just time to wonder.
And then—darkness.
Malcolm Danner
High Desert, Nevada
The rotor wash blew over the desert sand as the black UH-72 Lakota dropped fast. A lean, tall man leapt out of the craft before it even touched ground. Malcolm Danner looked over the crash site through fashionable sunglasses. His curly black hair was blowing over his eyes. He sprinted toward the medical team that was carrying Asher Ghost Kincaid to the medevac chopper.“How is he?” he asked.
The flight surgeon stood at attention, momentarily neglecting the patient on the stretcher. “Bad. Broken bones, internal injuries, and likely a concussion. His flying days are over.”
Malcolm looked down at Ghost on the stretcher—his head wrapped in bloody bandages, an oxygen mask barely hanging on. He took the pilot’s hand in his. “Ghost. You stubborn bastard. You pushed the envelope one too many times. Now it’s finally caught up with you,” Malcolm reproached.
Ghost raised his hand a bit and flipped Malcolm off. The medical team laughed—Malcolm did not—a billion-dollar test plane—up in smoke.
Malcolm turned to the flight surgeon. “Get him to Groom Lake,” he ordered. Groom Lake—officially nonexistent, unofficially the CIA’s most classified site—was where the unacknowledged was buried. “…and make sure he’s stable. He doesn’t get passed off to the base hospital. I want the best team working on him, and that’s an order, Lieutenant.” And where I can keep an eye on you. He didn’t wait for a response. He placed a hand back on Ghost’s. “You’re not done yet. You’re gonna finish what we started.”
Ghost was loaded into the waiting Blackhawk.
Moments later, Malcolm approached the crash recovery sergeant. “Status, Sergeant Blundt?”
“Sir, the wing just…tore off. No warning signs, no fatigue. Nothing.”
“Wings don’t fly off mid-air, Sergeant. Either give me a reason, or I’ll make sure you’re assigned to some icy, distant land counting polar bears.”
“Yes, sir. The fuel vented into the sky once the wing went. Tore open the tank.”
“The ejection seat?”
“It failed, sir—like it wasn’t even armed.”
Malcolm ignored the sergeant’s rambling. “I want answers, Sergeant, and I want them by EOD.”
The sergeant sighed and stammered, “Y-Yes, sir.”
Malcolm turned and marched toward the sinkhole. Another team—the 42nd Special Investigations Unit—was already at work. The 42nd, a black-budget task force buried deep within CIA and Air Force Special Programs, handled Fallen Angels—objects that crashed to Earth—sometimes from orbit, sometimes from who-knows-where—and they never followed the laws of physics.
“What do we have, Rum? You said it was important,” Malcolm asked as he approached Captain Morgan “Rum” Sheridan of the 42nd.
“A Fallen Angel, sir,” she said. “This makes three anomalies in two years,” Rum muttered. “But nothing this…unique.”
“Explain.” Malcolm crossed his arms.
“The sinkhole the YF-81 opened is bigger than we first thought. The crash recovery team looked into it and called us.”
“And you found?”
“Sir, if I could explain it, you’d think I’ve been huffing jet fuel. Better if you see it yourself.”
Malcolm walked over to the sinkhole and peered over the side before slipping into the winch that sat above it. He climbed into a harness and descended into the void.
As he dropped, the abyss unfolded below him. Two headlamps from men working around a stalagmite came into view. The spire stood over a hundred feet tall, a glow of a color unlike anything he had seen—somewhere between blue and…something unnamed—emanated from the opposite side of the spire. Something wrong.
Malcolm’s brain stuttered, trying to categorize it. It reached into his soul. It felt ancient. Intelligent. Alive.
He swung around the rock spire, boots brushing the surface, and caught his first clear view of the object embedded in its core.
“What have—” The words caught in his throat.
An ethereal blue light slowly pulsed through the artifact, like blood through veins. The pulse snaked around shimmering silver glyphs inlaid into the stone. The air thickened with a static charge that smelled faintly of ozone—it felt like a storm on the horizon.
He looked at the soldier to his right, whose eyes were wide. The man smiled. “I’ve seen anomalies, but this one…it feels like it’s watching us.”
Malcolm said nothing. The last artifact that watched them had cost three men their minds.
Finally, he asked, “Any theories?”
“Other than being a glowing obelisk covered in glyphs? No, sir. But it’s old—ancient.”
“How old?”
“Best guess? Over ten thousand years, based on stalagmite growth around it.”
For the first time today, Malcolm was speechless.
“You scanned it?”
“Yes, sir. CBRN sweep came back clean.”
“So it’s safe?”
There was a pause. “As far as we can tell.”
Malcolm studied the artifact, narrowing his eyes. He moved closer. “Why did you take out my test plane?” he murmured.
The soldier heard him. “Sir?”
“Just thinking out loud,” Malcolm said, brushing it off with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
The soldier resumed scanning. As the scanner moved closer, the pulsing blue light jumped and reached out toward the scanner.
Slowly. Deliberately.
Malcolm’s stomach tightened. That wasn’t random. He reached out and placed a hand on the soldier’s arm. “Let’s not disturb it further.”
The soldier nodded and returned the scanner to his pouch. “I agree, sir.”
Malcolm stared at the artifact, its secrets locked behind glowing glyphs. Finally, he said, “Use full containment protocols. Prep it for transport to Groom Lake. I want it in the Artifact Intake Lab before sunset.”
“Sir, that only gives us six hours,” the soldier said, disbelief edging his voice.
“Then you’d better get working.” Malcolm looked up and pressed the winch button. As he rose toward the surface, he called back, “By sunset, gentlemen.”
Hours later, the artifact was winched out and shrouded in a light-blocking cover to shield it from sun and sand. A placard on the side read: Designation: A-24 Obelisk
Malcolm placed his hand on top of the shroud, feeling its power tingle through his fingers. Rum stepped beside him.
“One hell of a riddle, sir.”
“And then some,” he said. “Those glyphs are strange. Hopefully, we can get a translation.”
“Maybe you should get Leo working on it. He’d have it cracked in no time,” she jested.
Malcolm chuckled. “Imagine an eight-year-old beating a lab full of PhDs.” He looked toward the recovery team. “Get it back to the Lake. I want it in the lab in thirty minutes.”
A chorus of “Yes, sirs” followed as he walked back to the helicopter.
Malcolm ran through the loose ends. Ghost had uncovered the artifact, which made him a liability. Even if Ghost didn’t know what he’d found, Malcolm couldn’t risk it getting out.
The recovery crew wasn’t a problem. They were loyal to him—his own true believers.
He pushed the doubt away—but it lingered.
Not fear. Not yet.
Just a whisper of the cost.
This wasn’t just an artifact.
It was the key.
And if Malcolm had to burn everything else to keep it, so be it.
