“What do you think of this?” I asked, grabbing a small alpaca figurine off of a shelf. “They really like their alpacas here, eh?”
“Like us and beavers,” he chuckled, admiring a brightly-colored toque, which I think the guidebook had called a Chullo hat.
I snorted. “I suppose.” I put down the plastic alpaca and joined him next to a big rack of hats. I grabbed one and pulled off my big Panama hat, instead donning the rainbow- colored toque, my hair falling down around my shoulders.
“Hey!” we heard from outside the store. Both Derrick and I spun around at the loud noise, and suddenly a man wearing jeans and a black T-shirt sprinted into the store and tried to snatch my bag. His friend, another jeans/black T-shirt guy (what was that the Peruvian thug uniform?), pointed at me while looking up and down the street.
“What the hell?” I screamed, trying to keep my bag while pushing the man off of me. Derrick was busy hitting the man as well and trying to pry his fingers from my bag.
“Bolso! Bolso! Bolso!” The man kept saying, not giving up and continuing to pull harder. When he realized I wasn’t going to give it up without a fight, he decided to switch gears and instead grabbed my arm and started pulling me out into the street.
“No fucking way, bud!” Derrick’s fist made contact with the guy’s face. And then all of a sudden, we were inundated with people, locals and shopkeepers and tourists alike, all intervening and, to our surprise, helping the guy to his feet. What the hell? But then I started to get dragged out. Someone else had a hold of my arm and my bag, and I was being roughly escorted out into the street. When I spun around to look, it was the other guy in jeans and black; he was using the kerfuffle Derrick was having with his accomplice as a distraction.
“Get off of me!” I tried to wrench myself away from him and out of his grasp, but for his slight build, the man was surprisingly strong. I flung my free hand up and started swatting at his head and face. “Derrick!”
Derrick’s head whipped around. Meanwhile, he was being held under his arms by two waify-looking Peruvian men. I’m sure he could have taken both of them with no more than a flick to the sides of their heads, but at the moment he was struggling or trying not to hurt anyone.
“Derrick!” I was still trying to bash my kidnapper over the head with my fist and scratch his arms and face with the other. But he snatched my flailing hand with his free hand and flipped it behind my back until I shrieked out in pain.
A black SUV screeched up to the curb, and another guy in jeans and this time a gray t-shirt jumped out of the back seat. “Bolso!” he hollered, pointing at my bag while waving a gun in my face. I froze. And then it was no longer a man only trying to steal my money; he was threatening to take my life if I didn’t hand my bag over. I stopped fighting his partner and unclipped my backpack from my chest and gave it to him, throwing my hand up in the air in surrender. Nothing was worth losing my life over, not even the two hundred sols I had in the bag, because money and lip gloss were all I had in there.
Derrick finally came up behind me, and he started speaking broken Spanish to the two guys. I didn’t have to understand the language to understand the tone; he was pleading with them to let me go.
The guy from the van took the bag with a smile, and then he stowed the gun in the holster on his hip. His two co-conspirators, one with a bloody nose from Derrick’s fist, and one with a bloody arm and face from my scratches, shot us both dirty looks and then climbed into the back of the vehicle. Seconds later, they peeled away, leaving the two of us standing there terrified.
Derrick grabbed my arm. “We have to go. NOW!”
I didn’t question him. The way the shopkeeper and the locals had come to the aid of the man who was trying to rob us, instead of the two innocent backpackers, was disturbing. And who was to say they weren’t going to try and pull something, take the shirts off our backs or hold us for ransom until our family or country put up the funds to get us back? No, we had to get the hell out of that neighborhood. Hell, we had to get the hell out of Lima!
We started running. I wasn’t even sure which direction we were going. But I was glad we were getting out of Dodge and running somewhere. I’d always been terrible at directions and getting my bearings; to me everything was North. And now that we were in the Southern hemisphere and the sun was to the North and not the South, things were really confusing. It didn’t help that there wasn’t really a sun in the sky to speak of anyway; even if I had known how to navigate, the smog that covered the city sky was enough to hide the sun, stars and anything else a ship captain or pioneer may have used to find their way. The smog trapped the heat, too, making it muggy and warm and difficult to breathe.
We weren’t running for long, through back alleys and down side streets, before I felt it in my chest, a painful burning and the need to stop, while sweat ran in rivulets down my face and throat.
“W-where…where are we?” I threw on the brakes when we ducked into our umpteenth alley. This one seemed to be behind a restaurant that served fresh empanadas. I felt my stomach gurgle.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“W-why...did they want my bag so badly? There was nothing in it.”
He shook his head again. “I don’t know. But something tells me it’s unicorns and not horses. And that because there was nothing but lip gloss and cash in your bag, they’ll be back. They’re not going to be satisfied. I don’t think cash is all they want.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
His eyes darted up and down the alley. “Me either, but we need to keep going.” His gaze flew to my head. “Where’s your big hat?”
Oh crap, I must have dropped it in the big fight with the mugger-guy. My hair was free-flying behind me now, like a blonde beacon of innocence and ignorance. Letting every Peruvian know, the good and the bad, that I was not from these parts. It’d be only a matter of time until the guys in the SUV and or the cops found me again. Not too many big-boobed, blonde gringos running around with a look of pure terror on their face.
He grabbed my hand and started pulling me farther down the alley, and then all of a sudden, we heard a car pull down the narrow street behind us. It was the same SUV, the guy with the black eye and bloody face from Derrick’s offense, riding shotgun.
“Oh, fuck!” Derrick muttered, pulling my arm nearly out of its socket. “How the hell did they find us?”
“What do they want?” I followed him down the alley, fear and adrenaline taking over my body and making me feel as though I were invincible. Suddenly nothing hurt. I could run forever. It was fight or flight now, and right now I was not willing to stand and fight. They had guns. I had nothing. No, it was flight time.
We took a hard right out of the alley and started running. Suddenly we saw a movie theater up ahead, and Derrick pulled me inside. Thankfully there was no line, so he reached into his pocket, tossed more than enough money at the girl behind the register, and then pulled me down the long, ugly carpeted hallway. It’s amazing how some places, no matter where you are in the world, look the same. It would appear movie theaters were one of those places. I could have been in Victoria for all I knew — the same posters (only in Spanish), the same doors, the same everything. It was a weird kind of comfort, but a comfort I couldn’t really appreciate at the moment.
Derrick put his hand on a door to enter a theater when we heard heavy footsteps. “Senor!”
I glanced back; it was a man in cinema uniform, not one of the bad guys (I hoped).
I was glad that we were able to stop, I needed to catch my breath. The theater guy caught up and started speaking very quickly, slightly angry Spanish at Derrick.
“Ah, perdon.” Derrick smiled, throwing charisma at the guy. “Canadian.” He shrugged.
The man’s mood faltered, and then he plastered on a big smile and nodded. “Canadian? I…I love Canada. You…you know Nickelback?”
Despite the mood of the moment I couldn’t help but snort. That’s the band he associates with Canad
a? Come on dude, what about Brian Adams? Rush? Shania Twain? Michael Bublé? We take responsibility for a lot of gems, but Nickelback, really?
Derrick just laughed and nodded. “Never met any of them personally, I’m afraid. But we know the band, yeah, though I prefer their older stuff.”
The theater attendant was all smiles now and then started speaking slower Spanish, mixed with a few English words to Derrick. It turns out the place wasn’t entirely identical to Canadian movie theaters, at least not the ones I’d grown up with, and we had to not only pay at the front register but also pick our seats. It wasn’t first-come-first-serve; it was like an airplane. We were assigned a seat.
With eyes flying around for anything suspicious, we hastily followed Roberto, as his name tag suggested, back up to the front, where we picked our seats, all the while being quizzed about how many Nickelback concerts we’d both been to and whether we were upset when Chad and Avril got divorced. Can’t say I really lost sleep over it, but it was sad nonetheless.
“All right,” Derrick said after we’d taken our leave of Roberto and were sitting way down low near the front, blindness by the end of the show pretty much inevitable. Roberto had gone so far as to usher us to our seats, using a flashlight and everything, as the movie had already started and the theater was dark and massive. “Let’s just sit tight for a bit, okay? Come up with a game plan and figure out how we’re going to tackle this. I doubt they’ll come looking for us here. And I told Roberto that we’re on our honeymoon and don’t want to be disturbed by anyone. And then I slipped him some more cash and emphasized the anyone.”
I gawked at him. Now we were bribing people? A sudden pang of regret and sadness hit me. I was on my honeymoon…kind of, our belated honeymoon. The honeymoon we were never able to have.
“Hey.” Derrick’s finger came up under my chin. “You okay? Where’d you go?”
I swallowed the sudden lump that had formed in my throat and shook my head, slapping on a giant fake smile while blinking away the tears that stung the back of my eyes. “Nothing, it’s uh…it’s just been a crazy hour. I’m still riding on adrenaline and trying to sort my thoughts.”
He nodded, accepting my answer. “It’ll be okay, Piper, I promise.” He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, not sure that he could make such a promise, but taking comfort in his declaration anyway.
I MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP, because the next thing I knew Derrick was rousing me with a soft brush of his fingers against my cheek, and the whole theater was flooded with bright light. People all around us gathered bags and coats and leftover snacks, while the credits rolled and a familiar rock song, but one I couldn’t quite place, played on the screen at the front.
“Wake up, babe,” he said quietly. “We should probably make our way back to the hostel. Call Chase and figure out what the hell to do.”
I yawned and stretched. Chase was going to be pissed that we’d defied “orders” and gone out into the city. Oh, well, we’d deal with him later. And then, as if on cue, the chaos started again.
People were being pushed out of the way, and men were hollering as the same man from earlier, the one who’d had the gun, fought his way down the aisle toward us, waving his firearm and cursing at Derrick and me.
My eyes flew around the theater. We were trapped. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. People were everywhere, and now with the presence of a gun, they were screaming and scrambling, ducking behind seats and shielding children.
And then something weird happened, something wonderfully weird. Roberto emerged from the front of the theater, down below where you’d have to crane your neck up so far to see anything you’d be left with a permanent crick. And he had a gun. He also appeared to have a bulletproof vest on. Was that a normal thing for theater managers to wear? But he held his weapon on the other man and started yelling at him in Spanish.
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 smirked 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?”
R
obert’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.
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