FEATURED NOVEL

An Escape to Calpe ©

by Ken Larson

An Escape to Calpe takes the reader on a sometimes romantic, sometimes dangerous, but always exciting adventure. From the jungles of war-torn Vietnam, through Europe and into the deserts of East Africa, the reader learns that terrorism is coming to America. And, the weapons are not just bombs and guns, but unbelievable high-tech weapons against which there might be no defense. Only one man is in position to stop the horror. Will he succeed? Or, is the United States about to experience its worst nightmare?

EXCERPT FROM PROLOGUE -- AN ESCAPE TO CALPE

Horrendous sounds from the big jet engines were quickly drowned out by the blast of explosions. In stark horror and disbelief, Shin watched as the entire village, his home, erupted in flames. Thick black napalm smoke roared skyward and deep orange-colored flames swirled and seemed to roll along the ground.

In the youngster's mind these were huge, evil dragons worse than any nightmares he had ever experienced. Four dragons were breathing fire and blowing thick, black smoke from their huge nostrils. As the monsters moved across the land, they clawed the rich valley soil into dust with their giant taloned feet, throwing it high above their scaly backs. As the dragons moved down the hillside, they left behind only scorched earth where fertile gardens had been neatly laid out by Shin and the other villagers. Huts, farm animals and the villagers themselves were smoldering in the wake of the giant monsters' tracks.

Soldiers camped by the village farm plots and their trucks parked in neat rows vanished in the conflagration. The sounds were an evil roaring of a fire storm unlike anything Shin could have imagined.

The jets that had struck so quickly and completely were gone. Shin stood motionless on the hillside and blankly stared as his childhood home was totally engulfed by the intense inferno and the oily, black napalm smoke. As he watched through tearing eyes, Shin felt a hand gently grasp his left shoulder. He slowly turned his youthful face upward and there stood his uncle. The boy could see the reflection of horrible flames from below in the moist eyes of the man.

Through choking sobs, Shin finally spoke, "Uncle, who did this? Who burned my village?"

The boy's uncle spoke only two words: "The Americans."

Shin was stunned for a few moments, his uncle restraining him by the shoulder as he looked down the valley and watched the black smoke and flames destroy his home. Then, Shin broke free of his uncle's grasp and ran. He ran wildly and blindly down the trail that he'd climbed only a few minutes before. He was running down the steep hill as fast he could and he slipped. He fell head first off the side of the path. A tree root, sticking up out of the ground, jabbed into his cheek and ripped it open, clear to the bone. The jagged gash was deep and long, stretching from near his eye to the corner of his mouth. In some of his nightmares, that tree root looked like the arthritic finger of an old witch, with a sharpened fingernail.

He scrambled back up to the trail, his feet digging deep in the earth for purchase and his fingers clawing to pull himself upward. Shin was driven by forces beyond his comprehension to run, not away from the fires below, but toward them, hoping beyond hope that he could find his parents alive.

He found his mother. The stench was incredible and the oily napalm smoke burned his already watering eyes and offended his nostrils. Near the edge of the village lay a grotesque, unhuman form, blackened and burned beyond physical recognition by the Americans' napalm. Shin saw her mouth agape, her soft lips burned away into an unholy expression of teeth and bone, frozen in a scream of terror far beyond comprehension. The corpse had no hair remaining and its flesh was black and cracked open, showing deep crevasses of cooked meat where soft skin and firm muscle had been. The eyes were completely gone, scorched vacant sockets stared blindly skyward.

Shin knew beyond a doubt that this grisly sight was his mother because partially melted into the cadaver's neck and chest, the same chest to which Shin had been cuddled as a small child, was the small necklace that his mother had worn ever since he could remember. He had never seen her without it. Shin reached down and touched the necklace, planning to pull it free. With a sound like water dropped onto a red-hot griddle, it burned his fingers, causing blisters to form immediately. Shin yanked his hand away in pain, then covered his bleeding face, contorted in anguish, with both hands and wept.

A grown Shin Kim Minh now sat upright in his bed, sleeplessly staring at the wall. The fear caused by the memory of the holocaust he had lived through years before in North Korea was slowly replaced by the nearly constant feelings of disassociation and loneliness which had become the watermarks of his life in America. He touched his right index finger to the ragged, disfiguring scar on his cheek and hatred spread through him, further poisoning his soul. Minh renewed his vow to bring violent destruction to the United States, the country which had murdered his loving parents.

Read A News Article About the Author

Ken Larson and his wife, Lisa, now live in North Idaho, after spending years working and traveling throughout the world. His daughter, Michelle, was born on Guam. His son, Milo, was born while the couple lived in east Africa. Larson is the author of numerous nonfiction articles, textbook chapters and the 1400-page Somali Maritime Code, which was adopted by the Scientific Socialist government prior to the latest civil wars. His second novel, American Justice, will be out soon.

Larson was an instructor pilot in fighter-type jet aircraft during the Vietnam war era and continues to fly, specializing in teaching aerobatics to other pilots. Following his time in the US Air Force, Larson earned a law degree, then a Masters of Laws degree from the University of Washington.

After years in the cockpit of air force jets, office work as an attorney was unbearable, so he moved to Micronesia. This move led to years or working and fishing in the Tropical Pacific, then Africa.

Larson began writing fiction after thinking about a line from a Jimmy Buffett song -- "We do it for the stories we can tell. . . ."

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#201:  An Escape to Calpe, Soft-Bound Book -- $9.00

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