Four Days to Veracruz: A Novel - Hardcover

West, Owen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743229827 ISBN 13: 9780743229821

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2003

Synopsis

Darren Phillips is a presidential aide, a Harvard graduate, a decorated Desert Storm veteran, and now a husband. Kate North, his new wife, is a world-class adventure racer whom he met on an Eco-Challenge endurance team. When an out-of-bounds kayaking excursion on the couple's honeymoon in Mexico lands them on the private beach of a violent drug dealer, their exotic getaway suddenly turns deadly. And Darren and Kate are, staggeringly, fugitives.
They escape to the local police station - only to enter into a bullet-ridden confrontation with the dealer's federale brother. Broadcasting the carnage and devastation left in the couples' wake, the Mexican government declares them sex-crazed drug couriers and assassins, and the State Department, to avoid an international incident, tags them as murder suspects. But even as they flee, Darren manages to pass a message to his former roommate, teammate, and disgraced Marine corpsman, Gavin Kelly (hero of Sharkman Six, West's critically acclaimed first novel). The couple's only hope for survival hinges on Kelly's ability to interpret their message and to rendezvous with them in Veracruz.
The couple flees desperately on foot across the badlands of the Sierra Madre, unwittingly carrying a piece of the drug cartel's encrypted communication code with them. As they race toward Veracruz, they are pursued by corrupt Mexican police, federales, and bloodhounds. More terrifying, they are pursued by a man known as El Monstruo Carnicero - "The Monster Butcher" - a serial killer dispatched from the bloody desert of Juarez by the leader of the Mexican drug cartel. In all their military training, in all their endurance challenges. Darren and Kate have never before been tested as they are now, running for their lives across the wild belly of Mexico.

About this title

About the Author

Owen West attended Harvard College on an ROTC scholarship and was an infantry platoon leader as a captain in the Marines. He received his MBA from Stanford and is currently a commodities trader for Goldman, Sachs. He lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: Acapulco, Mexico

Darren Phillips awoke to a splitting headache and punched the air. He often dreamed of Somali warlords with machetes come to cut him again and he took a moment to orient himself. Still alive. A hotel room. Mexico. Honeymoon. Tequila. He heard the slat of a blind clap open and felt a stab of sunlight.

In the haze, two naked women approached, both blurry and multicolored. He blinked his eyes several times and the shapes merged. She was deeply tan with the creamy white outline of a bikini painted on her body. She stood over him now, about five feet seven, unwanted fat long ago burned off her curvy frame. She was obviously athletic -- he could now see the sheath of muscles that rippled her stomach. She had loose, straight dark hair wrapping an angular face, eyebrows that dipped toward a long nose, giving her a vaguely feline look.

My wife. Oh my God, my wife.

"Good morning, snuggle bunny," said Kate. "Not feeling so well, are we?" She hopped on the bed and straddled him, playfully bouncing him into the hotel bed. Bounce. Bounce.

"Leave me alone," he croaked. "And you promised to stop calling me that." The term of endearment did not seem fitting for a major of Marines, though in secret he enjoyed the moniker. Problem was, Kate liked to joust in public, often to break up a sea of testosterone. She had even dropped the S-bomb in front of the president, who had used it like a humorous cattle prod on his dogmatic aide.

"Sorry, cuddle bear. I'm just trying to roust you. It's past eight. I want to be at the cliffs by ten and I still need to get my morning loving." She planned a full day of rappelling, hiking, and sea kayaking near Acapulco's famous cliffs. Kate Phillips' -- well, she was still mulling Kate North-Phillips, but was waiting for a time to broach it -- idea of a vacation demanded adventure and activity, not lazing around in a beach chair. "Plus, we still have about ten shots left on the camera. I'm not sure if I got your good side."

"I'm never drinking again," moaned Darren. Before that honeymoon night, Darren had been drunk just one time in his life, the night before he flew to Saudi Arabia for Desert Storm. The night of the Crime Against Nature. After committing the Crime, he had stumbled back to the San Clemente bachelor pad and stared at himself hard in the mirror asking, Who am I? Who am I? before purging himself and treating his shower like a biologic decontamination drill. He detested the fact he had lost some control of his actions, however slight. His best friend and roommate, Gavin Kelly, had laughed at him and said, Welcome to the club, I guess you're as prone to beer goggles as the rest of us. But Darren Phillips didn't make mistakes like that. Not mistakes of judgment. Kelly might laugh at him for being wound too tight, but Kelly was too shortsighted to realize that if you have hundreds of skeletons like the Crime they'll come back to haunt you when you run for office. What if the woman sold the awful tale to the tabloids?

Darren peeked out from behind his pillow, and a flash went off.

"That'll be a good one," Kate laughed, raising the Canon Elph again. "Rated G, but our kids will have to be allowed to see something from the honeymoon."

Out of the recesses of Darren's memory came the blurred images of the couple rolling around naked and drunk, flashes occasionally lighting the room. "Oh no. What did you make me do, Kate?"

"I got you drunk and took advantage of you, that's what I did. The self-timer is a wonderful invention. You'll see the details later. Now let's finish this roll."

Darren suspected that her voracious sex drive had something to do with her athleticism, maybe boosting her estrogen level or feeding some female hormones or something. Whatever. Lately it had been off the charts. He pulled the covers up right against his chin even as she tried to snake her way under them, marveling at the role reversal. The death of sex some of his friends talked about was simply inconceivable in his marriage, he thought happily. "If you want access, you leave the camera behind. I'm too sober now. Let's expose the film. Could ruin my political career."

"Or make it. Look at Pamela Anderson." She tossed the camera on the sofa and peeled back the covers. He sat up to kiss her but she shoved him back down on the bed and leaned over him, her hair falling down and capturing his face, soft and warm.

An hour later they had parked their rental car by the kayak shop at Estero Beach and were carrying their K-2 down to the surf zone. Darren was irritated with his wife; the rental shop had been specific about using the ramp in the protected cove as a launching point and now Kate had convinced him to sprint across the busy street to make an ocean surf passage at Punta Pilares.

Darren believed in rules. He understood the need for conformity and excelled in bureaucracies: at Harvard, in the Marines, at CNN, and then as a Marine again where he currently served in the plum role carrying the nuclear suitcase alongside the president. The true test of a man was how well he performed within guidelines, beating others with determination and merit. If everyone made exceptions or bent those laws, he reasoned, there would be chaos.

"We're supposed to stay in the lagoon," he said.

"We'll be fine," she said as they negotiated the rookery of tourists, mostly college kids on spring break who were already digging into Pacificos. Scorched bodies littered the beach like a battlefield waged among alcohol, the sun, and common sense. To her right, a young woman with a glittering jewel embedded in her belly button removed her string-bikini top and raised her arms above her head, gyrating.

Her breasts must be three times as big as mine, Kate thought as she watched them sway. She twisted her own torso for fun, chuckling at the scant motion under her tight tank top. Too many laps in the pool. Too many paddle strokes.

Kate glanced back at her husband. Typically, he was just staring at the kayak, still grumbling. Sometimes he reminded her of one of those Wall Street types with whom she used to ride the subway, immersed in his own thoughts even as the microworld around him erupted. Still, he didn't have a wandering eye like her father, and most of the time his focus was just wonderful. A magnet.

"I'm not talking about our well-being. I'm talking about rules," Darren said, stepping between a comatose boy's legs.

"They told us where we should go. They didn't tell us where we shouldn't go. Besides, these dumb rules weren't made with us in mind."

Typical, thought Darren. Kate sneaked food into movie theaters, took their dog running on the beach without a leash, rappelled off the side of their apartment building. It was a spot that had been long ago rubbed raw. And a spot that was often sweet for some maddening reason. She is so right for me, he thought. His was a rigid personality that needed to be dragged kicking and screaming toward the boundaries in life that she regularly exploded.

Kate's plan would take them on a leisurely kayak near the cliff divers, then an extended paddle south to a deserted beach surrounded by cliffs where the couple could drink beer, picnic, and get the blood up with a few rappels. And, she hoped, the fulfillment of a beach fantasy to boot. She had stuffed the camera and lunch into the waterproof pack alongside the harnesses and the climbing rope they called the Hell Bitch. The rope was slightly frayed, but she could not part with it and buy a replacement, much to Darren's chagrin. Too much history lugging it around Eco-Challenge courses.

When the kayak was at the edge of the wet sand, Kate slipped into the rear compartment and picked up her paddle, struggling to seal her spray skirt when her Eco-Challenge belt buckle caught on the lip.

"You should take that damn buckle off," said Darren when he leaned over to help. "It could get caught and prevent you from getting out if we roll. I don't know why you wear it with shorts in the first place. Like you're a rodeo chick or something."

"Yee-hah, baby." Kate had been wearing the heavy silver prize whenever she could in the nine months since they finished the Eco-Challenge, style be damned. The buckle was just a finisher's prize, so Darren refused to wear it, but of the seventy-five teams that had started in New Zealand, fewer than fifteen had finished. She was proud of eighth.

"Really. I'm worried," he said.

"I'm fine, babe. If we capsize, we'll just Eskimo-roll back up."

Darren slid into his hole and tested the rudder steering pedals with his Teva sandals. He was waiting, but Kate, behind him, wanted to taste bigger waves like those in the set just rolling in. He could feel her scooting the craft forward.

A big blue plunging wave crested white and slammed shut in a foamy froth not twenty yards from them, hissing as the bubbles burst up across the sand, turning it from white to brown. "Isn't it beautiful? Let's go!" she shouted over the roar.

A small crowd had gathered so that when Darren turned to refuse, he was staring at some college kid with bizarre facial growth in a Britney Spears T-shirt, who said, "You two aren't going out through those nasty waves, are you, dude?"

"Hell yes, we are," Darren said.

"Right on."

Darren pried the kayak forward until it was floating. He churned the water, catching hold of it and powering it past, charged by the sound of the surf zone and the squirt of adrenaline. The undertow snatched the kayak and it gathered speed. Kate joined him on the paddle and the boat shot forward, spray flying past like BBs, then the waves themselves crashing over the bow and knocking Darren back against his seat every few seconds. He bent forward on impact and pinned his paddle flat and parallel to the gunwale so it would not be stripped away by the greedy waves. The couple paddled hard when they were clear of each wave to build momentum for the next plunger, the kayak pitching wildly. The final breaker in the set sucked them up its aquamarine face and spit them out on the ocean side.

"Wahoo!" screamed Kate when they were clear. "That's what I'm talkin' about!"

The Pacific was a deep cobalt blue, and they paddled easily for several hours, taking time to admire the kindred spirits that leapt from the hundred-foot cliffs at La Quebrada before they turned north and skimmed toward the secret beach. Kate hoped that it was deserted because of the severe terrain that protected it. It lay in a long stretch of private property carefully delineated on her map. She didn't tell Darren about the redlines and the warnings, of course.

Their beach was more beautiful than she had hoped: a tiny crescent of sun-bleached sand, not more than fifty yards long, surrounded by towering cliffs that announced their presence by kicking the surf with their coral feet. She could see a crew of sandpipers working the edge of the high water line, scurrying up and down the beach like giant ants. Above them, a precarious set of steep wooden stairs led from the cove up over the cliffs.

"Wow. Isn't it perfect?" Kate asked, leaning back against the plastic seat rest and resting the paddle across the raised oval lip of her compartment. Brine from the sea and her body dripped off her nose. "Wouldn't it be great to own a property like this? Build a house up on top of that cliff? Just work out, have sex, and listen to the ocean?"

"Yeah, but I get the feeling that a Marine and a full-time adventure athlete might not be able to afford it." Darren had retired from endurance racing after Eco-Challenge New Zealand to concentrate on his military career. His new assignment to the White House didn't allow for a life, let alone hobbies that demanded three-hour daily workouts. If he was going to transition into a high government office, his spare minutes would have to be spent networking, not riding some mountain bike into the ground the way Kate seemed to do every week.

Kate had been anointed the ambassador for the fledgling sport of adventure racing. She used her notoriety to found an adventure academy for girls called You Go Girl! where she taught them what self-esteem tasted like by encouraging them to push themselves in the outdoors. She had been featured in most of the fitness magazines, including a naked shot in Sports Illustrated. Well, not really naked, she had laughed with her grumpy husband, pointing out the gray clay that covered her as she ran with a full pack, chased by a camel.

"We own the beach today, babe. And I've got plans for it that I think you'll like."

Darren had heard the fantasy several times. He paddled a little harder toward shore.

The couple pulled the kayak past the high-water mark and stretched their towels for a picnic. Kate stuck her feet into the soft sand and happily kneaded it with her toes. The sun broke free of the cliff and the sand sparkled and winked at them like glitter painted by the swiftly retreating shadow. The water turned turquoise and dazzled them.

"What'd I tell you, baby?" she said.

"You were right. It's unbelievable."

"I'm just getting warmed up." She positioned a Corona against a log, popped her hand down hard against the cap, and extended the foaming beer to her husband.

"Where'd you learn that?" he asked.

"College."

"And the salient difference between Princeton and Harvard is revealed. No wonder I pinned every tiger I ever wrestled." Kate tossed him the Corona and he continued, "No mas. My head is killing me, babe. No more alcohol for me ever."

"You want to cure that hangover? Drink it and see what happens."

Darren didn't think he liked the taste of beer, but in a few seconds that changed. It was really goddamn good. Careful, he thought, this is how the weak are taken prisoner.

Kate pulled off her tank top and stepped out of her shorts, then reached back and untied her silver bikini top. Darren smiled dumbly.

She smiled at him and pursed her lips, swaying her hips in a hula motion, pushing her bottoms slowly down past her strong thighs and stepping out of them. She flicked them with her right foot -- still missing the big toenail she lost during the last race -- and Darren caught them before they smacked his face. She tossed a tube of suntan lotion at her husband and lay down on her stomach. "Back rub," she said.

Darren glanced up around the cliffs and then back at his bride. I am truly a lucky man, he thought. He knelt beside her and squeezed the tube, lathering her firm shoulders and knotted back, kneading her neck and grinding his fingers into the dense muscles of her lats. Her build did not ruin, but accentuated her curves. "Ummmm," she hummed happily. "That's a good boy."

He was not used to alcohol and on an empty stomach he felt a buzzing warmth. When he cupped his hands and stroked her hamstrings and calves he had the urge to drink a second beer. And a much, much stronger urge, as well. She started a slow hum and the vibration in his hands felt like a purring cat. When he reached her ankles, Kate spun around and stretched her ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0743229827
• ISBN 13: 9780743229821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384