Whitewater (Rachel Hatch #6)(4)

No way he would have been able to unholster his six shooter before Hatch dropped the hammer. In the split-second action versus reaction equation it would take to end this standoff, Hatch was confident in her probability of victory. Knowing this still didn't remove the tension she now felt. Maybe it was the calmness in his dark eyes that gnawed at her nerves. He had a smug look, like he knew something she didn't. Was it a trap? She scanned her peripheral and saw no other indication of a threat.

He didn't seem to notice her hand or the intensity in her eyes. Or if he did, he didn't seem to care. "The hard part comes next. If you're ready?"

"Lead on." Hatch's grip on the Glock loosened, but she maintained her position.

The coyote slowly scanned the wall in both directions before squatting by a small rock and shrub. Hatch’s eyes tracked his movements. Atop the rock was a coiled rattler. She didn’t hear the familiar tat-tat-tat of its tail warning of an impending strike. It didn’t react to the coyote’s proximity. In that moment, she thought of Dalton Savage, the sheriff of Hawk’s Landing who’d given Hatch a new lease on life, and the snake that had nearly ended his.

The smuggler must’ve seen her reaction to the nearby snake, subtle as it was. His thin-lipped smile exposed the yellow stains of the few teeth left in his rotten mouth. “El senuelo.”

“No entiendo.” Hatch shrugged.

“Decoy.” He grabbed the snake and set it on the ground next to him.

Hatch squinted and realized the rattler was a fake, albeit a very realistic one. The coyote then pushed aside the rock. Using his hand, he began clearing away the dirt and sand, exposing a circular wooden door roughly three feet in diameter. He pulled a long knife from the sheath on his belt and began digging the tip into the seam. A few seconds later, the coyote pried it open.

Hatch stepped forward. The hole was pitch black and the coyote offered no light. She then looked out toward the wall. In that moment, Hatch realized the next hundred feet would make the two miles they'd just traversed seem like a walk in the park.

"You first." The coyote gestured his hand toward the hole.

"Not going to happen." Hatch was poised to strike. Unlike the fake rattler on the ground nearby, her venom came in the form of the match grade ammunition loaded into the semi-automatic pistol tucked in the small of her back.

The crooked smile fell away from the dark-skinned smuggler's face. He was silent for the few tense seconds following Hatch's comment. He shifted on his heels and grunted. He pulled out a cell phone and mashed his weathered fingers onto the buttons of the flip phone before dropping his feet into the hole. He looked like a kid wading into a pool. "Five hundred?"

Hatch slapped the thigh pocket of her tan cargo pants. "It's right here. Just get me across and it's yours."

"Pull it closed."

"What about the rock?"

He tapped the closed cellphone in his hand before returning it to the front pocket of his jeans. "They fix."

The text message she'd just watched him send made sense. A tunnel like this would require a team not only to build, but also to maintain its secrecy.

"After you." Hatched stepped closer. There was a new smell, a worse smell, and it emanated from the hole, making the coyote's stink seem like a bouquet of roses in comparison.

No further discourse followed. The tenuous deal had been brokered. The coyote disappeared, swallowed by darkness as he dropped into the hole.

Hatch waited half a minute to avoid piling on top of the smuggler before sliding in feet first as she'd seen him do. With her body halfway in, she grabbed at the wood door and inched it closer so that the outer lip protruded past the hole's edge. Hatch shimmied herself underground. Using her fingertips, she slid the door closed.

The limited ambient light above was now only visible through the imperfect gaps in the wood door's slats as Hatch began working herself deeper into the restrictive space of the tunnel.

Hatch inched downward. The tunnel dropped in at an angle like a crude playground slide. Instead of a smooth ride down, the surface she scraped along was lined with jagged bits of rock poking out from the packed earth. The butt of her Glock banged noisily as she moved deeper. She thought of the pregnant woman and the woman who'd been carrying her baby and the challenges they’d faced when navigating their way.

She could hear the coyote ahead but couldn't see him. The soles of her boots hit bottom at twenty feet down. From there, the tunnel leveled out and was slightly wider than the confines of the angled descent she'd just endured. The additional foot of space in the excavated tunnel enabled Hatch to assume a crawl. She edged forward in the dark, her knees banged painfully into the hardpack while the coyote led the way.

Her right hand pressed into something moist. She didn't need to see to know what it was. The repulsive stinging in her nostrils immediately answered that question. Whether the fecal matter was of animal or human origin was the only thing up for debate. She wiped off the remnants against the dirt wall as best she could before she continued.

Hatch kept track of the distance she had travelled by placing her hands tip to palm. Every time her right hand struck the dirt floor, she counted one foot. It was a rough system of estimation, but it helped ease the strain of forging ahead into the unknown. By her assessment of her underground trek, Hatch figured she had just passed the halfway mark.