No Turning Back (The Traveler) (12 page)

“Here she comes,” Gary announced to Taylor.

Taylor took a deep breath and gathered the three drinks at the bar.

“
Buenas noches, bonita linda,
” Gary had been waiting to tell her.

She smiled and answered, “
Sí, buenas noches. Y gracias.
”

Not to confuse her with his interest, Gary immediately introduced her to his friend.

“
Sí, sí, mi amigo es Taylor. Y me llamo es Garito.
”

His Spanish was crude and choppy, but his confidence inspired her to smile. Gary had only been practicing for about a week, so even Taylor was impressed.

Then she shocked them. “I speak
Inglés
a lit-tle,” she told them both with a grin.

“Oh,
un poco Inglés
?” Gary asked her.

“
Sí
,
un poco
,” she answered with a small pinch of her fingers.

Gary turned and said, “You hear that, Taylor? Now you can help each other to speak. So pull out that Spanish book I gave you. We’re all learning in here.” He grabbed her extra drink from the bar and offered it to her.

First, she hesitated. Then she nodded and reached for it. “Thank you,” she spoke in soft accented English.

“So, what’s your name?” Gary asked her. “Tell him,” he said, pointing to Taylor.

She looked at Taylor and answered, “Laura Dominguez.”

Taylor sat his drink down at the bar and extended his hand to her. “Taylor Hutchinson.”

“And he’s young and single with a good job,” Gary added. “
Mi bueno, amigo,
” he told her in Spanish. “
Y se muy gustas. ¡Muy, muy gustas!”
he repeated, telling her that his friend liked her very much. “So you two talk. And you don’t let her get away from you, Taylor. ¿
Comprende?”

Gary was obnoxious, but it worked. Laura and Taylor laughed and began to speak more intently while getting to know each other.

Taylor mixed his Spanish phrases from the book with his English.

“So, where are you from? ¿
Donde vives?”
he asked her.

“I’m from
Cali
. But I live now
en la
universidad
,” she answered.

“
Cali
? Like in California?” Taylor asked excitedly.

She even giggled attractively. “No, Cali in Colombia.”

“Oh, so Cali is a city in Colombia? ¿
Ciudad?
”

She smiled. “
Sí
.”

“So, you’re in school here? I’m
en la
universidad
too, in Kentucky. What year are you? ¿
Cual años?
” he asked her crudely in Spanish.

She grinned and answered, “
Dos años.
I’m nineteen—
diez y nueve
.”

Her communication in English was as choppy as his was in Spanish. Nevertheless, they were able to communicate with a comfortable connection. They were making it work.

Seeing them getting along smoothly, Gary sipped his drink and said, “All right, I’ll just move around the room and leave you two alone.”

Taylor barely acknowledged him while fully engaged with Laura. “All right, I’ll be right here,” he promised with a weak nod.

Gary grinned and raised his drink for a toast. He was pleased by his handiwork. He then wandered away into a whole group of Colombian women.

“
Hola. ¿Cómo está?
” he addressed them all. With his superior height, good looks, youth and swagger, the women immediately responded to him with curious excitement.

“
Hola. ¿Tu eres Americano?
” they assumed of him.

Gary nodded. “
Sí, sí, Americano à la Kentucky
.” Even his broken Spanish intrigued the women, compelling them to laughter. The young man was very daring, with machismo.

Back across the room, the plump older man was incensed by him. He felt that Laura Dominguez had been snatched away from him, and he was not pleased by it, so he told a Colombian associate, a hard-edged man with dark, curly hair, who was dressed modestly.

“Those two guys just pulled the girl away from me, and she hasn’t come back yet.”

The plump, older businessman was an American from Minnesota. His hardened Colombian associate looked in the direction of the bar and took in the dispute with no expression. The young American speaking to Laura looked harmless. He could be run off easily. The Colombian could read it in the young man’s affable face. But the taller American appeared more determined and ardent. He was parading around the nightclub as if he owned the place, exciting a huddle of working Colombian women.

Who does this young playboy think he is?
the hardened man wondered.
This young man has a lot of balls … or either he is a fool.

“Which one called her?” he asked his American customer. His English was clear and casual. He had dealt with American, Canadian, British and English-speaking businessmen regularly.

“The one over there with all the girls,” the plump man answered, with a lean of his large head. “He called her over and introduced her to the other guy.”

The Colombian nodded. It was what he had expected. Some men refused to respect the rules of international courtship and business.

He said, “I will take care of it.”

“I just want her company back,” the American man stated. “I don’t want any trouble.”

He understood how fierce the Colombian men could be. He had witnessed them in action.

His hard-edged associate dismissed his concerns. “There won’t be trouble,” he promised unconvincingly. Then he walked away.

Gary was so involved in entertaining his circle of beautiful Colombian women that he failed to realize how much attention he was drawing to himself inside the club.

“You guys play cards?
¿Te juegas?
” he asked the group of women. He pulled a fresh deck of cards from his back pocket.

“
Sí
, Black Jack,” one of the English-speaking women responded.

Gary sipped from his second drink. “No, no Black Jack,” he told them. “Poker
en la hotel
. I can teach you.”

“What hotel?” the English-speaking woman asked Gary.

“The Intercontinental.”

While several of the Colombian women discussed the idea of playing cards with him in Spanish, Gary quickly searched his book of phrases to say more.

Oh my God! I’m almost there. Don’t fuck it up!
he told himself.
“¿Vamos en la hotel
?” he stated desperately. It was after midnight with no time to waste.

A few of the women chuckled at his palpable attempts of Spanish, but he had already won them over. They loved his brash optimism. He was a man of deliberate mission. And as Gary had expected, they felt safe in numbers, and they were already familiar with the exquisite hotel. They were also curious to see how large and nice a room he would have.

“Yes, we’ll go with you,” the English-speaking woman confirmed.

Gary stretched his eyes wide in delight and was slightly buzzed from his second strong drink. He told them, “
Un momento.
I need
mi amigo.
” He pointed in Taylor’s direction at the bar with Laura and nearly stumbled to get to them.

Taylor was so preoccupied and smitten by Laura Dominguez that he had dropped his guard completely. Spiteful eyes had already locked in on him and his indomitable friend.

“Oh my God,” Gary expressed to him. “You are
not
going to believe this. Are you guys ready to go? I want to play a big game of poker back at the room.”

Taylor was taken by surprise. He looked back at the group of Colombian women, who were ready to leave the night club with his friend, and his eyes stretched wide as well.

“You actually did that?” he asked.

Gary laughed. “Hey man, it’s all about asking the right questions.” Then he addressed Laura. “
Vamos.
”

Laura hesitated and looked across the room in the direction of the older man that she had left earlier.

“Wait. Pardon,” she told them softly in English.

Taylor and Gary eyed each other as she headed back across the room.

“Man, you really set that up?” Taylor repeated of Gary’s plan of a strip poker game. He was amazed that his friend had even tried it.

“Yeah, but what’s up with you and her?” Gary asked of Laura.

Taylor searched for the words to explain it. “Aw, man, she’s just beautiful. She’s a college student from the Colombian city of Cali. She’s taking international studies. And get this, her dream is to travel the world and meet interesting people.”

As Taylor explained it, Gary watched the girl having a less than friendly conversation with the older man that she had left earlier. The man didn’t appear to be pleased by whatever she had to tell him. So she walked away from him in anguish.

“
Hijo de puta
,” she cursed him in Spanish.

Gary read her aggravation clearly. She had obviously chosen them over the out-of-shape, older man. However, he wasn’t so sure how he felt about it. He wondered how deeply she was involved with him.

“Taylor, don’t go falling in love on me, man,” he warned his friend. “They
all
want to travel and see the world here. So don’t get too caught up into that. Just have a good time with her and leave it at that.”

Taylor responded, “No, I’m dead serious, man. I really like her.”

“And it looks like she really likes
you
,” Gary told him as Laura returned. He figured he would say more to his friend about it later.

“Let’s go,” Laura told them and grabbed Taylor’s hand.

Gary studied her strong affection toward his buddy and shrugged. It was too late to back down. Taylor would have to figure things out for himself.

“Okay, let’s go,” Gary agreed.

Outside the festive night club, several Colombian comrades communicated by cheap cell phones. They alerted each other to watch for two young American males who were leaving the night club with a group of women. The comrades had at least four cars stationed at various points of
Parque Lleras
. They were informed to abduct the two men if possible to teach them a valuable lesson about international respect.

However, the police presence in the area was imminent. So the men were prepared to be tactical.

Once the young Americans were spotted, climbing into a taxi van with a large group of women, the men sprang into action with their cars.

“
¡Vamos!
”

A block away and around the corner from the street where the taxi began to drive off, the men staged a collision between two of their cars, crashing them into each other to create a distraction.

Upon the collision, two drivers jumped out of their cars and began to curse each other, stopping traffic.

“
MARICA!
”

“
MALPARIDO!
”

“
GONORREA!
”

“
PUTA!
”

As they had planned, the collision and the ensuing shouting match forced the local police to rush into action while leaving stations.

Sirens blared as several squad cars responded to the accident around the corner, making the Americans and their taxi an easier target for abduction.

“What’s going on?” Taylor asked in confusion. They all watched as several police cars zipped by them.

Gary said, “It’s life as always in the big city, man. Shit happens.”

He sat low in his chair, feeling nauseous. The strong drinks were doing a number on him.

“You okay?” Laura asked him softly. She could see the glassiness in Gary’s eyes and the wobble in his stance.

Gary couldn’t deny it. Maybe the drinks were much stronger in Colombia. He felt light headed and sick to his stomach.

“Ahhh … I hope so,” he moaned, struggling to gain his composure. A few of the women helped him to sit back in his seat. Gary could hear them speaking in Spanish all around him.

In a flash, the large taxi van came to a violent stop, making his head and stomach feel even worse.

“Uhhh, damn,” Gary groaned, holding his weak belly. He felt ready to hurl, with both hands cradling his abdomen.

“What the hell?” Taylor shouted as two masked men burst into their taxi with assault weapons. They were screaming and yelling in loud, hard Spanish at the Colombian women.

“LAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAAH!”

The men yelled and moved in haste, aiming their assault weapons at the driver and the women to force them out of the taxi. And it became obvious they were only after the Americans.

Laura Dominguez refused to leave Taylor’s side.

“LAH DAH DAH DAAH!” she screamed back at the armed men. Their urgent yelling and screaming was far too fast and hectic for the Kentucky natives to comprehend.

“What’s going on?” Taylor repeated to Laura while Gary keeled over in agony.

The men quickly aimed their assault weapons at Taylor’s head before Laura finally agreed to leave the taxi and join the others outside.

“No, no,
no-o-o
,” she screamed in tears as the taxi pulled off into the street. A third masked man drove the taxi van away, while a car followed behind them.

Laura fell to her knees on the sidewalk and looked up into the dark Colombian sky with tears of panic running out of her eyes.

“
Lo siento,
Taylor.
Lo siento-o-o-o …
”

As the taxi sped away, with the two armed men guarding their American prisoners, Gary hurled the contents of his drinks, nachos and salsa sauce all over the backseat.

“HURRRRGGHH!”

The men backed up and laughed with their guns aimed.

“What did we do?” Taylor pleaded to them, while tending to his sick friend. “What did we do?” he repeated in vain.

The masked men laughed and ignored him as they drove toward an unspoken destination.

By the time they had reached a barren building away from the main city, the two Kentucky friends were roped together, back to back, and sitting on a cold, hard and grimy floor. They were surrounded by seven armed Colombian men, all wearing colorful bandannas as masks while holding assault weapons.

“What do you think about this Colombian trip
now
?” Taylor whined to him. They hadn’t even spent their first night in the hotel.