Dark Fire: Tomorrow's Awakening

By David Benson

The long-awaited sequel to 2015's Dark Fire: Yesterday's Tears, finds billionaire tech genius Edan Duff and his wife, Jane Garrison, the ex-military pilot and master combatant better known as Sim, repatriated to the United States and back in their cliff side California home. Their return followed a years-long self-imposed exile in Barbados to avoid imprisonment or worse by the ruthless former U.S. President, whose wrath they incurred after permanently disabling the time travel device Edan had built. Working in his underground lab, Edan has now succeeded in creating a miniaturized version of the device, intended for use as a speed enhancement and fuel saving device for military aircraft. Its success would provide the U.S. with a significant strategic advantage in the air over its foes. Testing takes place at Edwards Air Force Base, supervised by Edan and Sim's long-time compatriot Dale Bowdoin, with a military drone aircraft piloted remotely by Sim. Early successes lead to further evaluation in a manned stealth fighter jet and brings with it the personal attention of the new U.S. Vice President. But then there is a potentially life-changing surprise, courtesy of one of the two Voyager spacecraft, hurtling through deep space, years out from Earth. This would seem unrelated to the work of Edan's team. But is it? The Vice President doesn't think so. In his mind, the deep space surprise is no less than a cosmic question the answer to which all of humanity has long sought. His fervor to be the one to find that answer pushes a tale of science, love, intrigue and some very human emotions, to the brink.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Benson
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733369213

David Benson

David Benson is a Senior Lecturer based in the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) at the University of Exeter, Penryn, Cornwall. His research encompasses a range of issue areas at the interface between political and environmental sciences, most notably EU environmental and energy policy, comparative environmental governance and public participation in environmental decision-making

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DARK FIRE: TOMORROW’S AWAKENING

by

David M Benson

This 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 events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by David M. Benson and Bruised Peach Productions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN

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Havana Homicide

Three Strikes and You’re Dead

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FOR LAURA, AGAIN (AND AGAIN)

Prologue

The command center of Edan Duff’s hillside house overlooking the Pacific in Monarch Beach, 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles, could be described as state of the art only if one was referencing what that state was likely to be five years down the road.

It was in this room that the ultra-high-def monitoring screens and the electronics and control units for the dozens of cameras and other security systems, as well as various countermeasures that protected the house, were arrayed. It befit the home of a man who was variously described as the Steve Jobs of his generation and the sharpest scientific mind since Einstein, as well as a billionaire several times over.

The room was the lair of Dale Bowdoin, former Army special operations officer, combat veteran, sometime benevolent mercenary and for the past several years Edan’s head of security. He was asleep now, though, in his suite down the hall, the tablet computer that linked him to the command center reposing on the nightstand next to his bed.

At 4:53 AM one of its several alarms began to sound, this one’s individualized tone indicating a breach of the airspace above the house. Seconds later another alarm, this next one’s tone very different from the first, sounded, indicating that an unauthorized vehicle had entered the long, winding driveway that led to the house from the Pacific Coast Highway. Several seconds after that a third alarm, this one announcing a possible threat from the sea, began to sound.

Bowdoin slept in briefs and a tee-shirt and he was already zipping up cargo shorts and strapping on a nine-millimeter Glock semi-automatic by the time the third warning had sounded. Seconds later he stood in front of the command center door, his right thumb pressed against the fingerprint reader, his right eye staring into a retinal scanner.

When the door latches released, he sprinted to his post, remaining on his feet, gazing at the half dozen oversized monitors arrayed on the wall in front of him, above multiple computer terminals.

Shit! he muttered.

The cameras and laser array on the roof of the house had already locked onto a trio of drones moving up the hillside from the ocean and fast approaching the house. A quick scan of the central monitor confirmed that all of the drones appeared to be unarmed but that they were equipped with video cameras, which meant that their most likely mission was to aid in guidance for a coming attack. They immediately became Bowdoin’s first priority. He sat down at the central position at his post, a long, narrow table that faced the wall and had on its top surface three keyboards and three large touchscreens. He tapped an icon on one of the screens, opening an application, entered a password on the keyboard, gazed up again at the monitors to see that the drones were slowing to enter a hover 50 feet above the roof and tapped a now-blinking red icon labeled FIRE.

In an instant the drones disappeared from the screen, replaced by falling debris. As he watched, he tapped another icon on the screen. This one would send an alarm to Jane Garrison, Edan’s wife and Bowdoin’s partner in all things soldierly. A tap to yet another icon would summon his offsite security team.

A switch of his gaze to the giant screen to the left of center on the wall in front of him was on split screen mode and showed two different views of a pair of vehicles stopped halfway up the driveway. Bowdoin smiled when he saw that the first had crashed into the steel barrier that the black Mercedes G-Wagon’s unauthorized progress had caused to spring from a recess in the concrete drive. A second G-Wagon, this one Army green, had rammed into the first. The driveway was narrow, with the house on one side and a tall row of hedges on the other, so there was no option but to reverse course or proceed on foot. The drivers of each got out of their cars and briefly conversed while the other men inside the cars waited, and Bowdoin prepared to activate other countermeasures. Both SUVs were not badly damaged and the drivers got back inside, but as they began to reverse, Bowdoin tapped another icon that raised a similar steel barrier 10 yards behind the second SUV and an additional crash and ramming ensued.

Idiots, he muttered

He turned his attention back to the touchscreen in front of him and aimed laser sensors mounted on the side of the house into a tight pattern around the SUVs. The pencil thin shafts of eerie green light were a warning that something much worse was now aimed at them. As expected, it kept the men who were inside the vehicles from even thinking about exiting.

Bowdoin then switched gears and moved on to the screen on the wall in front of him that was displaying views out toward the ocean, and as he stared into the dark display the command center’s door opened and Jane Garrison rushed in. She had fought with Bowdoin in the same Army special operations unit in Afghanistan and since then was also known as Sim, a sobriquet of her own making and short for simulated girl. She had come up with it several years earlier, after a number of her original parts had been replaced with high-tech substitutes built by a medical devices company owned by Edan Duff. Bowdoin had saved her life and Edan had rebuilt her after she had been far too close to an exploding mortar round while preparing for an attack on a house where a small group of Taliban commanders had congregated.

Now, as she came up beside him, similarly dressed and armed, Bowdoin pointed to the display of the driveway.

Got the assholes pinned down out there for now and three drones downed on the roof, as well, he told her. "I can’t make out what triggered the seaward alarms, except I can tell you that the drones came from out there. If there are boats out there, they’re running dark. I haven’t had a chance to hit the spotlights and the drones apparently didn’t trigger them, which—

Which means we need to make some adjustments to the sensors, Sim said. I’ll hit the spotlights manually.

She had brought her own tablet along, opened an icon and tapped in a few commands. A line of high-powered lights, similar to those that illuminated night games at major league ballparks, which were built into the hillside beneath the terrace at the back of the house, came to life.

Well, well, well, lookie there, Bowdoin, glancing up at the monitor on the right, said. I’d swear that’s the same damn boat the FBI had sitting out there for months back when they were keeping an eye on Edan a couple of years ago.

Sim sat down at Bowdoin’s post in the empty chair to his right and used one of the keyboards to zoom the main camera mounted near the bank of lights in for a closer view.

Yup, for sure that could be a 52-foot Princess, she said as they stared at the image of the boat, which now took up nearly half the screen. On the other hand, I can’t imagine why the feds would be after us again.

I wouldn’t put anything past them, Bowdoin said, although you’re right, it wouldn’t make sense. He paused for a moment before adding, You know, you’d’ve thought the sudden glare of the lights, the loss of their drones and the fact that whoever’s on that boat must’ve heard from the guys in the SUVs by now would’ve made them get the hell out of here—

Except for the guys in that Zodiac who are halfway to shore, Sim said. Shit!

There was a six-foot-tall gun safe in a corner of the room and Sim ran to it, entered the combination and yanked open the door and grabbed the first of several M16s lined up on one side and a pair of magazines and ran out the door.

Stay in touch! she yelled as the door closed behind her.

As it did, Bowdoin tapped an icon on his tablet and shut off the house alarm.

Sim jogged to the kitchen and, in a crouch, went out the door, onto the terrace at the rear of the house. Staying low, she moved slowly along the railing, which was made up of steel supports and glass panels. There were two-inch-wide gaps between each steel support and the edge of each glass panel and she got into a prone position on the terrazzo tile floor in front of the closest gap and stuck the muzzle of the M16 out through the gap.

The Zodiac inflatable with a half dozen black-clad figures huddled inside with what looked like AR-15’s strapped across their chests was less than 100 yards from the rocky shore and because of the slope of the hill would soon go out of sight.

Gotta keep those fuckers in the boat, Jane, Sim muttered as she squeezed off a barrage of 5.56 cartridges.

The fusillade was aimed in front of the approaching boat and had the effect of forcing it into an immediate left turn. As it changed direction, presenting her with a bigger target, she let off another volley. It was aimed at the boat itself and by the yelling that ensued she was certain it had been hit several times at least. And by the slumping figure on the near side she was also sure that someone had been hit.

Within seconds the boat began taking on water and as it did, turned again, this time heading back toward the much larger boat from which it had apparently been launched. Sim’s iPhone buzzed and she glanced at a text from Bowdoin.

Nice shootin’ cowboy. Oh & the guy you hit ain’t dead—yet

Sim slowly got to her feet and watched the Zodiac retreat. There was a pair of binoculars on the credenza and she watched the recovery effort as the stricken inflatable barely made it back to what they had thought might be a 52-foot Princess yacht. A rescue operation then began and two men on the larger boat started to haul the six fighters on board, the wounded man moving more or less under his own power.

Guess the fucker didn’t die, Bowdoin, standing in the kitchen doorway, an M16 in one hand and binoculars in the other said, and joined her at the railing. On the other hand, you managed to kill a perfectly good Zodiac.

As both watched through binoculars, what was left of the wrecked inflatable craft slowly floated away and a moment later the yacht started its engines, turned and started to move away, finally showing the name painted in gold on its transom.

ELVIRA.

Same fucking boat, Sim said, and as she did one of the two men who had pulled the fighters to safety remained on the rear deck, hands on his hips, staring at them.

Sim made an adjustment to her binoculars, slightly enlarging the departing image.

OMG, she said, glancing at Bowdoin, That’s Rip Carver.

I’ll be a son-of-bitch, said Bowdoin, his focus locked on ELVIRA. "I thought the CIA kicked his ass the hell out of the Agency after the, ah, debacle, I think they called it, that he failed to prevent at Camp David. So, what in the goddam world is he doing here?"

No idea, Sim said, thinking back on those events, but I sure as hell hope this doesn’t mean we’re going to have live through all that shit again.

In a way, the government had been right to keep an eye on Edan at the time. They had thought he might be creating a new generation of weapons and they quite wrongly got the idea that he was looking to sell them to the highest bidder, possibly the Chinese. And while Edan had in fact perfected a new class of compact, low energy laser weapons, as the people who had dispatched the three drones had just learned, the real focus of his work had been on creating a time travel device, and he had succeeded.

The then-President of the United States himself, a quite nasty piece of work named Edwin Greavy, had convinced Edan, through a subterfuge, to bring the device to the Presidential retreat at Camp David, in the Maryland countryside. Rip Carver of the CIA, who had at a late stage in the surveillance operation joined the FBI agents on the boat, ELVIRA, keeping an eye on Edan, had been there at Camp David, as well. As it turned out, dealing with the government in good faith had nearly cost Edan and Sim their freedom, and came close to costing them their lives, and they had been left with no option but to leave Camp David without the device.

At considerable personal risk, former Army teammates Sim and Bowdoin had skydived from a high altitude, flying their ram air parachutes down to a spot in the woods near Camp David. After a brief skirmish with the handful of Secret Service and CIA agents guarding it, they were able to render Edan’s device permanently inoperative to keep the technology out of Greavy’s hands and those of the CIA, and managed to elude capture. Not long afterwards, however, the morning after her marriage to Edan, Sim had been killed by a sniper’s bullet as she and Edan boarded Edan’s plane, which was to take them from their Southern California home to Barbados for the start of their honeymoon.

That was when life got really weird, as Sim was inclined to describe it from time to time.

Edan’s version of grieving for the loss of his new wife had been to buy a large, used yacht and re-outfit it as a floating laboratory, similar to the lab at his home in California where he had created the device. He then traveled the world, Bowdoin by his side along with a small staff and crew, acquiring the components, rare earths and chemicals needed to re-create the device. The boat, which he re-named DARK FIRE, stopped in dozens of ports and he spread out the purchases among three continents and a large variety of suppliers, some of them highly specialized, to avoid drawing unwanted attention. After a year, when the new device was completed, he and Bowdoin had used it to travel back to the day of the wedding. It had not been difficult to determine the sniper’s location and it had been simple enough, too, for Bowdoin to neutralize him.

Sim had not been killed, on that timeline, at least.

Bowdoin had uncovered evidence that the sniper, a former Army Ranger, was a former member of Greavy’s Secret Service unit, and Edan had then threatened the President with the disclosure of that information should anything further befall he or Sim. The newlyweds had then retreated to a modest hillside house in Barbados overlooking Bathsheba Beach on Barbados’ turbulent east coast where Edan spent his days, as he had in his teens, surfing, and Sim had come to terms with the fact that she had died in one universe, as Edan tried to explain it, but was alive in another. She never understood the explanation or fully came to terms with what had happened or the conflicting memories she was left with, but over time accepted it and settled into her new life, with Edan.

Two years later she and Edan had sat in front of the TV in the living room of the Barbados house, watching coverage of the U.S. Presidential election until the results were finalized shortly before 2:00 in the morning.

Greavy, who most of the polls predicted would be re-elected by a narrow margin was instead defeated by virtually that same margin. At his concession speech at three in the morning he appeared to be on the verge of a stroke.

The next morning, he had had a heart attack and died and Edan and Sim had begun making plans to return to California.

Sim’s and Bowdoin’s iPhones buzzed and she snapped out of her reverie and glanced down at its screen.

Looks like your guys are here, she told Bowdoin, glancing up at the screen that showed the driveway, and they seem to have things under control out there.

Don’t worry, Bowdoin said, turning to go, I’ll make sure to tell them they got the easy pickins this morning.

Sim smiled.

Let me know if you get anything from the assholes in the G-Wagons, she called after him. I’ll call the local cops, assuming they’re not already on their way, given the gunfire. Oh, a nd I’ll go let Edan know what’s been going on.

1

A week after the early morning, failed attack on Edan’s house, Dale Bowdoin and a handpicked team of aerospace engineers and technicians spent the night in an otherwise empty hangar at Edwards Air Force Base gathered around one of the oldest Reaper attack drones still in service. It was roughly the size of a civilian single engine airplane but had a narrower fuselage, much longer wings, no windows and was coated in a special matte gray radar absorbing paint. It was also enormously more expensive than the average Cessna or Piper.

Four members of the team had been busy since midnight installing a new device that Edan had built into the humped forward end of the Reaper’s fuselage that, were it a typical manned aircraft of that design, would have housed the cockpit. The device was the size of a picnic cooler and fit easily in the space from which Air Force personnel had recently removed aging surveillance equipment. It was surprisingly light, however, belying even its modest size, and the two members of the team that had spent their time installing it and wiring into the Reaper’s electrical and control systems had also added ballast in the unmanned aircraft’s nose to compensate and restore its proper balance.

Two of the others on the crew had spent hours making modifications to the hardpoints on the craft’s surface to which armaments were normally attached. Instead, they had installed cameras where Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs were typically carried and connected them to a special wiring harness they had added to the Reaper’s electrical system. The cameras were carefully aimed at strategic points on the craft where failures were thought most likely to occur, such as the intersection of the wings with the fuselage and the control surfaces, and then locked into place. A laptop was used to test the system, a few minor tweaks were made and the monitoring array was deemed operational.

Shortly after 5:00 AM the lead engineer pronounced the vehicle ready. Bowdoin wandered off to the far reaches of the cavernous hangar, iPhone to his ear, while the others dug into a nylon bag filled with energy bars and such and went to replenish their coffees from an urn that was precariously balanced on a card table in another corner of the hangar.

Ready to rock and roll, he said when the call was answered. Power should be live.

One hundred and forty miles directly to the south, standing in the command center of his home in Monarch Beach, Edan Duff smiled.

Excellent, he said. How long till engine start?

Give us 15 minutes, Bowdoin replied and ended the call.

Sim, who was seated at Bowdoin’s usual post, before a newly acquired triptych of flat screens, looked up.

Fifteen minutes, according to Dale, Duff told her.

Sim’s reply was a thumb’s-up, after which she busied herself opening communications with the