Whitewater (Rachel Hatch #6)(3)

Hatch remained still. She waited until the van was out of sight. The brake lights disappeared as the van crested the small rise in the dune nearby. Twenty seconds later Hatch's night vision returned. The details of her surroundings came back in full view as she watched the man who had just offloaded the six people into the van.

He took a moment to smoke a cigarette. The embers burned, casting him in an orange glow, and blinding him to her movement as she broke cover and stood up. He wasn't looking in her direction. And he didn’t turn.

She crept along the dirt and rock beneath her feet, rolling heel to toe on the outside edge of her boot. She moved forward, keeping her knees bent just above a half squat. Like a tiger, she was ready to pounce. She wanted to get close to the man before addressing him. Within five feet, he still had not noticed Hatch. She could see now that he was armed. She hadn't expected otherwise. He carried a revolver, a strange weapon for a man in his line of work. With six shots and six people, he could've easily been overwhelmed. The power of a coyote didn't come from the ammunition in their gun, but from the influence they had over people's lives. The families left behind could easily be gotten to. Death, or worse, was just a phone call away for those who did not comply. There was power in the control mechanisms at play that went well beyond that of a one-hundred-eighty grain Hollow Point, like the ones in Hatch's gun. She didn't draw it or plan to. Hatch had other plans for the man in front of her.

He blew out a long puff of smoke, and Hatch spoke. "Hola. Cómo estás?" She knew little Spanish but figured it might put him more at ease if she started in his native tongue.

The man spun and reached for his gun.

Hatch threw her hands up. "Wait, wait, wait!"

He paused and looked back toward the massive fence dividing the two countries. He was frantic and looked as though he were about to run. "No policía," she said.

He looked around, expecting a hoard of border patrol agents rushing in his direction. But there were none. There were no cars. Hatch had parked her vehicle nearly three miles away. After clearing her DNA from the car, she lit it ablaze, and walked the rest of the way here.

He was curious now. His hand went off the gun, and he squinted his eyes at her as he took another drag of the cigarette. "What the hell do you want, lady?" he asked in broken English, but easy enough for her to understand.

"I don't want any trouble. I just need to get across the border."

"You need to get across the border?" He looked confused. "Why don't you...?"

She knew what he was going to say. "Why would any American citizen need to illegally cross the border into Mexico?" Her answer couldn't be given, but this was a man of secrets, this was a criminal, and her reasons didn't matter. Only one thing mattered to a man like this.

"I've got a thousand dollars. Take me across and get me into Mexico. Half now, half when you get me across." Hatch pulled out an envelope with five hundred dollars cash inside. She showed it to him, but didn't give it to him, not until he agreed, which he did with a shrug, before she allowed him to snatch the money from her hand. He stood there and counted it for himself. He flicked the cigarette off into the dry dirt beside him and didn't bother to squash it out. "Get you across the border and there's five hundred more?"

"That's it." She knew he had other plans in mind when they got across, but she'd deal with that when it arose.

"Nobody smuggles themself into Mexico. You must be either crazy or desperate."

Hatch knew better.

She was both.





Three





Hatch followed the coyote through the desolate landscape, among the dark shadows. The sure-footedness with which the smuggler navigated the uneven terrain, with limited to no light to guide him, spoke volumes to the countless times he'd taken this path before. Hatch thought of the innumerable human lives he'd shuttled across this same path. She thought of how this man, and men like him, had subjected his own people to suffering over the course of his career. Up close and personal, modern day slavery didn't look all that different when compared to smugglers of old, in a world with a long and ugly history of this unforgivable abuse.

She despised the man ahead of her. The smell of his stale cigarettes mixed with the funk of his body odor made the already repugnant man even more so. She hated needing to use his services. Hatch would've favored putting a bullet in the back of his head, but small fish needed to be thrown back. Killing the sour smelling man would do little to help the girl she'd come to save. Missing an opportunity to rescue the feisty redheaded teen, Angela Rothman, from a group of human traffickers in Arizona had led her here. Hatch couldn't allow her disdain for the coyote to affect her decision to follow. She'd had to illegally cross borders during her time in the military, in particular the years she was assigned to Task Force Banshee, with varying results. Working with indigenous people was the only way to effectively move about in a foreign land. It was one of the Green Berets' specialties and Hatch, being qualified on that front, understood it better than most. Still, she wouldn't hesitate should the smuggler turn on her. But that hadn't happened yet, and therefore he continued to breathe.

Two miles into their trek, light penetrated through the high, rust-covered steel of the twenty-foot fencing which separated the United States from Mexico. They were close, just shy of a hundred feet from the border when the coyote stopped in his tracks. Hatch stopped, too. A gap of five feet separated Hatch from her guide. He turned to face her. Hatch's left hand was already behind her back. The web between her thumb and index finger pressed firmly into the tang of the Glock she'd taken off the dead traffickers in Arizona. The coolness of the steel slide against which her index finger rested calmed her.