Lust Abroad

by Whitley Cox

  Everyone in the theater seemed to freeze. It was eerily quiet as we all just watched the showdown transpire. The bad guy seemed to be a little taken aback that there was someone else with a gun now. He wasn’t nearly as confident as before. His eyes took on a beady and nervous twitch while flitting back and forth between Roberto and me. He gestured to me with his gun and said something to Roberto. But Roberto just shook his head and said “no.”

  “Bolso!” the man shouted.

  Roberto lifted his shoulder and then turned to me. “You have a bag?”

  I shook my head. “N-no, they already took my bag. They’ve robbed us once already today.”

  Roberto just smiled and turned back to the bad guy (what else was I supposed to call him? He was a guy, and he was bad), he lifted his shoulder again and then shook his head. The bad guy became more adamant and kept repeating Bolso over and over again. There was more noise behind us, and when I dared to look behind the hundreds of terrified people who seemed to be paralyzed with fear and just standing there watching the lone gunman and Roberto, there were men in uniforms making their way through the crowd with POLICIA emblazoned across their chests.

  Roberto tucked his gun in the back of his pants and nodded at one of the police officers. That police officer brought out his own gun (God, so many guns, my stomach was in absolute knots), and pointed it at the bad guy. He barked out an order, and the bad guy spun around, his eyes going wide with surprise. Roberto took this opportunity to sneak his way up through the aisles to us.

  “Follow me,” he whispered, his eyes never leaving the police officer who was still negotiating with the gunman to put his gun down.

  We didn’t hesitate and took off after him. He led us down through the aisles to a side door, which he nudged open and made sure we were safely through before following us.

  “Thanks, man!” Derrick breathed, his chest heaving just as much as my own. I said a silent prayer for the people still trapped in the theater with the madman and that the police would be able to diffuse the situation before anyone was hurt.

  Roberto nodded. “You’re in some real trouble. Care to explain?” My head snapped up. Where the hell did his accent go? He was speaking perfect English now, and if anything, it had a bit of a Southern twang to it.

  Derrick’s bottom lip dropped, mirroring my own. “Dude, what the fuck?”

  Roberto smiled. “Robert Cahill. I’m…undercover. We’re running an…operation. Care to explain what is going on?” Undercover with whom? Did he know Chase? Were they on the same side? Damn! First Chase and now this guy? Apparently, there was some serious shit going down in Lima.

  We filled Robert in, including Chase, Eduardo, and the robberies, in our detailed story. He just stood there and listened. The man had a very friendly face, a big smile with straight white teeth, and even though we’d just been in a movie theater with a gunman, his smile made me feel at ease. He was a handsome man as well and definitely had some Latin roots somewhere, which made him convincingly Peruvian, and his Spanish was perfect. His dark hair was cropped close to his head, and his big, dark brown eyes seemed to see everything. His lashes were like raven feathers, and I caught myself momentarily hypnotized by their flutteriness, as he batted them with each blink.

  “Well, sounds like you guys are in a heap of trouble. Let’s get you back to your hotel, shall we?” He motioned for us to follow him down a corridor.

  “Do you know Chase?” I asked, not sure what else to say. “Do you, um, special ops guys know each other?”

  He made an unidentifiable noise in his throat but didn’t stop walking, his strides long and quick, and like the day before with Chase, I struggled to keep up. “We know of each other. And we’re working toward the same outcome, I’m sure. But I don’t know this Chase you speak of personally. We might be working for different organizations, but all with the same goal in mind.” A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he stopped on the edge of a street. “But even if I did, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  Derrick snorted. “It’s like that, eh?”

  Robert’s smile just grew wider. “Yeah, it is, eh. Man, you Canadians really do use that word a lot. My ex-girlfriend was Canadian, and she used it all the time. At first, I thought it was just her, but nope, you all use it.”

  “It’s better than huh,” I quipped. “You Americans use huh all the time.”

  He snuck a peek around the corner and then waved us to follow. “Huh? What’d you say?”

  I just rolled my eyes.

  We came to another door, and he opened it just a crack, bringing his gun back out from the back of his pants and pointing it out the door before he stuck his head out for some quick recon.

  “Coast is clear,” he said, ducking back inside. We jogged after him down yet another alley. It was dark out now, and flashing lights from all of the police cars in front of the theater lit up the night sky like Christmas lights.

  But we took off in the opposite direction of the flashing lights and the wailing sirens. We weren’t running, but we were making good time, and eventually the alley spat us out onto a busy road, illuminated with street lights and commercial signs. People were everywhere, all over the sidewalks, all over the roads, while vehicles careened around daredevil pedestrians as if it were no big deal. I couldn’t get over the pure bedlam that was the streets of Lima, crazy drivers, crazy pedestrians and seemingly no fixed rules of the road. Red, green and yellow just seemed to be formalities and suggestions, but no one really adhered to their authority, while stop signs were more for decoration and a yield appeared to mean something different here than it did back home. Here it meant, “give ’er shit and pray.”

  Derrick’s hand found mine, and we hustled off into the throngs of pedestrians, falling in half a step behind Robert, practically stepping on his heels in fear of losing him. Had he been blond or a redhead we would have been able to spot him a mile away, but he was dark-haired and tanned, and he blended in like a needle in a haystack.

  Suddenly, a shiny black Hummer pulled up in front of us. I thought for sure it’d hit a person or two, given the way it’d abruptly stopped and how close the cars and pedestrians were, but there was no screaming or bloodshed. I prepared myself to bolt in the other direction, but then Robert opened the back door and urged us to jump in.

  I clambered in after Derrick, falling belly first onto the supple leather, my face in his crotch, while Robert climbed into the front seat.

  “Where’s your hotel?” he asked. I quickly righted myself and buckled up.

  “We’re at Hostel Travesura,” Derrick said, buckling up his belt. “It’s near the Canadian Embassy.”

  Robert nodded, as did the driver. I couldn’t see our chauffeur, besides the back of his head, which was dark red. He was enormous. Muscles upon muscles fought to get out of his tight navy blue T-shirt, while a tattoo of what appeared to be names in a stylized script peeked out from beneath his sleeves.

  “This is Aaron,” Robert said, slapping his friend on the shoulder.

  Aaron gave a curt but friendly wave, not bothering to turn around, though his eyes met mine in the rearview mirror and the corners crinkled in a smile. “Hello.”

  “What the hell is going on?” I finally managed to ask, after I’d regained my composure and wasn’t shaking like a leaf in a windstorm.

  Robert took a deep breath. “There’s a new drug movement here in Lima, and we’re monitoring it. I’m assuming you know what fentanyl is?”

  Derrick and I both nodded.

  “Well, there’s a new drug hitting the streets, and it’s laced with fentanyl and cocaine. They’re getting it from China and using Panama and Lima as their major distributing points in Central and South America. It comes from China. They dock down here in the harbor and then send it out into the rest of the continent. They do the same with Panama, because of the big shipping industry and the canal, and distribute it through the rest of Central America and up into Mexico. Though Mexico has its own problems at its own
ports.”

  I shook my head. “What does that have to do with me, though?”

  “Did anyone in Panama ask you to bring anything or smuggle anything in your bag for them?”

  I shook my head again. “No. Chase asked me the same thing. No one asked me anything. I mean, this one guy at my hostel in Panama suggested I stay at The Inca Treasure, but that was it. I left him with my bag for all of two minutes when I used the washroom. You don’t think…?”

  Both Robert’s and Aaron’s shoulders stiffened; they locked eyes for a brief moment.

  “What?” I asked, my own eyes shifting back and forth between them. “You think I smuggled something and didn’t even know it? But Chase figures my bag is clean because it didn’t trigger anything in the airport scanner.”

  Robert turned around in his seat and gave me a soft but wary look. “Smugglers are getting smarter and more creative. Plus, it doesn’t really concern them if you get caught. Have you been through your bag?”

  Both Derrick and nodded emphatically. “We’ve torn it apart a few times, and there’s nothing in there.”

  I wondered how I was ever going to get these lunatics off my back if I couldn’t find out what the hell it was they wanted. Had I smuggled fentanyl or some new super drug into Peru and not even known about it?

  We pulled up in front of the hostel, and I felt my chest constrict. I didn’t want to leave the safety of the Hummer. I felt safe with all these men, in this giant bulldozer of a gas-guzzler. The bad guys couldn’t get me in here.

  “Check your bag again. Really check it. You may need to cut it open and just get a new bag. These smugglers are crafty bastards and have perfected the art of concealment. So be thorough. And then” — he handed me a card — “if you find something, call me. Or call your Canadian friend. We’re all working on the same side toward the same goal. So, if you can’t get me, call him. Okay?”

  I took the card and gave him a reluctant smile. Nothing about this was smile-worthy, but he’d saved our hides and was being incredibly patient with us. He could be flying off the handle that we’d defied Chase’s orders and brought extreme peril to ourselves and others. But he wasn’t, so for that he deserved, at the very least, a smile.

  “It’ll be okay.” He smiled back. “Call us if you need anything.”

  I shook my head, emotion thick in my throat. “Why don’t you just come in and check the bag yourself? End all of this speculation and find out once and for all if I’m a drug trafficker.”

  Derrick’s hand fell to my back. I was getting upset again, and my voice was cracking, the words struggling to come out. “It’s okay. That’s not such a bad idea, though, eh? Come and have a look yourself. If you find anything, you can just take it.”

  “Not that that will stop the bad guys from thinking I still have it,” I said with a snort. “The only way they’ll leave me alone is if they have it.”

  Robert’s face was stoic in thought for a second. “Okay.” He nodded, his lips pinched in a thin line. “I’m undercover, and I’ve already blown it with you guys, so we need to come up with a believable story why I’m escorting you into your hostel.”

  I rolled my eyes again. “No, we don’t. It’s a party hostel; no one is going to care why you’re there, not when you look like sex on a stick.”

  His face lit up, while Aaron in the driver’s seat guffawed loudly.

  “All right, fair enough. Let’s go.”

  7

  “Looks clean,” Robert said after having pulled apart my entire backpack, rifling through my things, including my tampons and underwear. “No stone or thong unturned.” He laughed awkwardly as he gently, with gloved hands, handed me my hot pink G-string.

  “Then what are they after?” I asked again, wanting to cancel our trip to Machu Picchu the next day entirely and just head home. Give up on the dream, give up on the plan, on the promise and just get back to reality...not that there was really much waiting back there in reality for me either.

  Robert shook his head. “No idea. But for now, keep a low profile. Spend the extra money and hire a driver, not a cab, to take you to the airport tomorrow. Until then, don’t leave the hostel again, okay?”

  I nodded. I wasn’t even going to leave my room.

  “You should be safe in Cusco. Where are you going, once you return from Cusco?”

  “I’m heading to Santiago,” Derrick put in, as we followed Robert back down the stairs, preparing to see him out.

  “And I’d been planning to head to either Iquitos or Mancora.”

  Robert’s head bobbed, and he tossed his latex gloves in a nearby trashcan. “All right, that should all be fine. But if you can help it, maybe stay out of Lima. Cusco, Mancora, Iquitos, I don’t think anyone will follow you. And certainly not to Santiago. Maybe just getting out of Peru altogether isn’t a terrible idea.”

  I let out a weighty sigh. “Thanks.”

  His smile was small and genuine, laden with my own fears. For a big burly SEAL (because let’s be honest here, he hadn’t said it, but we knew what he was, and after telling Derrick what Chase had said, Derrick had pretty much confirmed that Chase was with the Joint Task Force 2 or a special Black Ops unit) he was quite empathetic. He seemed to absorb my emotions and wear them right out on his face, in his eyes.

  He let a hand rest on my shoulder. “It’ll all work out, Piper, it will. Call me if you need anything, okay?”

  I swallowed hard and met his eyes. “Okay, thanks.”

  “Hey,” Derrick piped up. He’d been rather quiet, contemplative and austere again. “What are you guys doing down here anyway? Peru has its own armed forces against the guerrilla group and all the drug trafficking. Besides, isn’t it mostly coke that this part of the world deals in?” Mr. Ultimate Traveler Smarty Pants was at it again with his random facts.

  Robert’s eyebrows flew up in surprise.

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s a journalist, so he knows stuff. But he’s also a big nerd who knows random facts about random things.”

  That seemed to suffice as a reason, and the big SEAL just nodded. “Normally we don’t get involved, you’re right. I mean on occasion we might, but not usually. We have bigger fish to fry on foreign soil.”

  We both nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about. Drug trafficking was small potatoes in comparison.

  “But there’s been a steady increase in fentanyl overdoses back in the U.S. and Canada in the last six months, and now this new drug that’s laced with fentanyl is even worse. They’re mixing cocaine, fentanyl, and other things to create a super drug. People are dying left, right, and center. And as we believe Peru plays a major role, we’re just trying to put our fingers on how. And now, apparently, Panama has a bigger hand in it than we thought as well.”

  “Didn’t a Canadian girl die from an overdose here, recently?” I asked. I’d been momentarily scared out of my skin, reading that exact headline at the newsstand as I stood in line at the grocery store just days before I left for my trip, my entire shopping basket loaded with travel-size shampoos and toothpaste, ready to see the world and finally fulfill the promise I’d made to Ray.

  Robert nodded. “Yeah, one Canadian girl and four Americans. And that’s just what you read in the news. Before that, it was six Americans who overdosed in a hostel; before that it was four Americans and two Germans. About three months ago, twelve Americans died, as well as several others from various countries. Although they’re claiming it was a building collapse, they were at an underground club. The M.E.’s report, when they arrived back onto U.S. soil, confirmed that the bodies had all been deceased before the collapse and that they’d all overdosed on this new drug.”

  “Holy shit,” Derrick whispered.

  Robert nodded again. “Anyway, I’ve already said way too much.” With his hand on the doorknob he turned to go, but then he stopped, a small smile on his face, though his eyes held a weighted and strained fatigue, unlike anything I’d ever seen. “And for the record, I actually do like Nickelback.�
�

  I was putting all my personal hygiene paraphernalia back into my bag when Elissa and Matt walked in. “What happened?” she asked. “You haven't been robbed again, have you?” Her eyes quickly flew around the rest of the room to check her own bag.

  I shook my head as I gathered up all the little white torpedoes and stuffed them back into my toiletries bag. “No, no more robberies...here. We were robbed in the streets today, though. Took my bag.”

  She rushed over and hugged me. “Oh no, honey, not again. What did they take?” She smelled like sunshine and chlorine; she must have been up on the pool deck all day.

  The tears came before I could stop them. “Nothing really, this time. Just my small day pack. Had some cash and lip gloss in it. But I really liked that lip gloss. It was Burt’s Bees.”

  She laughed into my hair. “Oh, I like those too.”

  I pulled away and wiped the back of my wrist beneath my nose. Robert had instructed us not to tell anyone the truth. People talked, and even though I trusted Elissa and Matt, they could let something slip, especially if they got too many pisco sours down the hatch, and then word could get out, and our safety inside the hostel would be compromised.

  I shook my head. “It’s nothing. Just a little shaken is all.”

  That answer seemed to suffice, and she nodded in understanding. “We’re all going to go out for dinner tonight, seeing as it’s our last night before we head back home. You guys want to come?”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Derrick answered for me, “We’re actually pretty beat. It’s been a long and a trying afternoon. And we need to make sure we have everything we need before we head up to Cusco tomorrow. Might do some laundry and stuff…you know, boring adult crap. Plus, I’m still waiting to hear from the embassy about my passport.”