Excerpt: Susan Carterwink Goes for Broke

I'm told that I look remarkably like Cheryl Bingstalk, the Ambassador to the Republic of Paka Suyu which, under normal circumstances, I suppose should have been flattering, considering the fact that Ambassador Bingstalk looks like a besuited cover girl for one of those girly magazines that adolescent boys, soldiers, and dirty old men are reduced to terminal drool over. In a word, she's a fox. Unfortunately, I knew nothing of this likeness to my country's representative to Paka Suyu when I signed up with Mugbrite Tours for a 21-day "unforgettable" excursion to that "paradise of the Andes", or that Ambassador Bingstalk was an imminent target for kidnapping by the notorious Ejército Revolucionario Indígena de Zorros Osados, ERIZO. By now you must be putting the pieces together of what was about to transpire, but that's not the half of it. Remember Freddy Pangborne, the notorious fugitive astronaut? Yep. It just so happened that Paka Suyu was also his hideout. And when I met Freddy Pangborne, everything changed.