by L T Ryan
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.
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.
She banged her head hard on an unseen object. Hatch ran her hand along the edge of what felt like the rim of a wood support beam. It was splintered at the center. She could still hear the coyote scraping his way along ahead of her. The weight of the ground above had collapsed at some point. Hatch blindly felt her way around the opening.
She pressed her body flat against the dirt and snaked forward in a low crawl. The tunnel walls gripped at her shoulders like a boa constrictor. Each breath filled her mouth with the dust and dirt kicked up from her exertions.
She shifted her torso and hips as she snaked her way for the next ten feet before the tunnel opened back up to its original size. Taking up a crawl, Hatch made up for lost time and quickly caught up with the coyote.
They continued unimpeded until they came upon a slight incline. The coyote stopped and Hatch ran her dirty fingertips into the worn treads of his cowboy boots, nearly jamming her knuckles.
"Just up there." It was the first time she could see his face again as light above penetrated a seam in another door, this one made of metal instead of wood.
He crawled up the rest of the way to the door and banged twice on its metal exterior. After the long silence, the noise was deafening. A few seconds later, a metal latch release signified the message had been received.
A hinge barked its request for oil as the hatch opened. The coyote's body shielded Hatch from the light pouring into the tunnel, bathing the once darkened surrounds in its pale glow. It took only a few moments for Hatch's eyes to adjust to the brightness.
A long-haired, leather-faced man stared down into the hole at Hatch. He then assaulted the coyote in a barrage of rapid Spanish. Hatch was worried the lid was going to come crashing down on her and the man who'd brought her here. Instinctively, her hand drifted back to the weapon tucked against the small of her back.
The coyote returned a volley of Spanish. The argument ended when the coyote tossed the cash-filled envelope out. The gatekeeper's long greasy hair flopped over his tanned face when he ducked to catch it. If Hatch were looking to kill these men, now would've been the perfect time to strike. But she didn't. She chose to wait.
The coyote went first. Hatch half expected them to close, or try to close, the lid on her, but apparently the money in her pocket meant more than her life. She saw the glint in the long-haired smuggler's eyes held a different intent, a lustful one, that may have contributed to his concession. Neither reason mattered. The only thing that mattered was that Hatch was now out of the tunnel and standing on Mexican soil.
The room was empty of people, minus the two smugglers. The space looked to have once been a cheaply designed bar, long since out of use. A table nearby was covered in empty and some not so empty beer bottles. A half-eaten plate of beans and rice indicated their arrival had interrupted the greasy one's dinner.
The two smugglers were shoulder to shoulder, blocking Hatch from the only door she saw. She towered five inches over both men. The coyote's right hand drifted toward the revolver on his hip.
"Don't go for yours and I won't go for mine," Hatch said.
It seemed to take the men a second to realize that a) she had a gun of her own, and b) the gun she had was already in her hand behind her back.
The coyote threw his hands up. The broken smile, worse in the light, reappeared. "Easy, pretty lady. This is just business."
Hatch slid her filth-covered right hand along the seam of her pants to the cargo pocket containing the remainder of the promised money. Hatch had another, more sizable, pouch of cash strapped along her ankle which she had no intention of sharing. The two men didn't move as Hatch retrieved the envelope. The brown stains from her encounter in the tunnel marked the white surface of the paper. She handed it over and the long-haired smuggler greedily snatched it up.
"Anything else you need?" The coyote asked.
"Did you two move a girl through here within the last day?"
The two men laughed, but it was the greasy haired man who spoke. "We run girls through here all the time."
"You'd remember this one. Red hair, pale skin. Young girl, seventeen." Hatch stared at them with her hand firmly rooted against the gun. "Ring any bells?"
"No."
"There's money in it if you cooperate." Hatch wouldn't pay that fee though. If she got a sniff these two were involved in the abduction and transport of Angela Rothman, Hatch would extract the information in a more brutal way.
"As much as I'd like to take your money, still no. And if she was anything like you, I'd remember."
Hatch read both men. Despicable as they were, neither gave any indication in their body language that they'd had contact with the teen.
Hatch stepped forward and the two men parted. Her shoulder forced the greasy haired smuggler back, almost causing him to drop the cash he was counting as she made her way to the door.
Hatch stepped into the warm night air. It smelled like a sewer line had broken nearby, but better than the hundred feet of tunnel she'd crossed to get here. She hoped to find some help, but first she needed to find a change of clothes, and a place to wash the filth from her.
Four
Splinter wood clawed Hatch's thighs as she sat on the wooden milk crate she'd used as a makeshift stool for the past couple hours. She'd allowed herself a brief reprieve from her crossing, resting but not sleeping in the alley between a bakery and a clothing shop aimed at tourists. The bakery had opened an hour ago. Hatch's filth covered clothes caught some looks from women behind the counter when she ordered.
Hatch consumed the last bite of her torta de tamal. She wiped the crumby remnants of the soft bolillo roll from her lips before washing the chicken filled tamale down with the black coffee. The nutty scent wafted into her nostrils and battled the overwhelming odor of human waste. Only one more hour until the clothing store opened. As strange as it was, at that moment, Hatch longed for her morning run. She felt off. New environments always made more sense to her after a run.
Exhaust from a passing bus swirled its noxious fumes as sunlight crept its way out from behind a building across the street. Daybreak spread across Nogales. Within seconds, Hatch felt the temperature rise, and with it, the smell of her own filth solidified her reason for remaining in her current location a little longer. A change of clothes was warranted before she presented herself at the Police Department.
Vacant eyes of the homeless wandering the alley passed over Hatch with little interest. An older man staggered along rattling a tin cup along the broken stucco of the graffiti covered alley wall. The sad tune of the thin metal against the wall's rough edges stopped abruptly. The old man's ambled gait quickened. Hatch followed the beggar with her eyes, watching him as he hurried toward the street. A rush of movement filled her view as others appeared out of nowhere. They were all drawn to a light blue ambulance pulling to a stop near the alley's opening.
As the ambulance driver exited, Hatch was surprised to see he was not wearing a paramedic's uniform. Instead, he was in a powder blue button-up, rolled to the elbow, and tight-fitting jeans. His potbelly protruded just slightly over the belt line, but his frame was thin, making him look like a half-used tube of toothpaste. She guessed him to be in his early to mid-sixties. Standing nearly six feet high, he towered over the crowd. Sun bounced off the top of his bald head giving his walnut skin an orange hue. He rubbed his neatly groomed beard, yawned, and then stretched his arms high into the air before closing the door and making his way toward the rear of his vehicle.
As the crowd clustered around him, he worked like a politician on the campaign trail, hugging and shaking hands with nearly every one of them. Hatch remained seated on her prickly perch and watched from a distance while she continued to wait for the store's opening.
About a half hour later, most of the crowd had gone, and those who lingered behind clustered in small groups. But the ambulance idled in the same spot. She had watched the man who'd driven there dispense basic necessities, toiletries, water, diapers, and clothes. A young mother walked away with a package of diapers and a box of formula balanced in one arm while her infant child clung to the other. He closed the rear doors to the ambulance, passing a worried glance in Hatch's direction as he did.
She dipped her head and rolled her shoulders forward. Hatch wanted to obscure her face and height from the approaching ambulance man, hoping to dismiss any good-natured attempt to help her. The people she was hunting were likely to have eyes everywhere. Coupled with a recent critical misread of character in Arizona that nearly left her dead, Hatch had no intention of letting her guard down again any time soon.
Her subterfuge did nothing to stop his approach. If anything, it worked to broaden the smile cresting his face as he stopped in front of her. The toes of his worn sneakers nearly touched her boots.
"Estas bien, querida?"
She understood enough Spanish to know he was asking if she was okay. Hatch could've likely inferred it from his body language. Although she was fluent in three languages, Spanish was not one of them. She did, however, have a passable knowledge for conversational Spanish, but was by no means fluent.
"Please leave me alone," she said back in his native tongue, but poorly delivered and without the proper inflection. Hatch saw the expression on his face and knew immediately her ruse failed.
His knees cracked as he squatted, putting his face in front of hers. She peered out from beneath the dirty tendrils of greasy hair splayed across her face. She met his brown eyes and registered their surprise.
"You're an American?" His English was good. Hatch picked up on a slight drawl. Texas or maybe Arizona.
"I'm fine."
"You look miserable. Can I call somebody for you? Maybe I can take you back to your hotel?"
"I don't have a hotel." He looked even more confused now. Looking down at Hatch as she no longer tried to hide her face. She pulled back her hair and sat up. The kind-eyed man stepped back, taking her in.
She looked at the man and then over at his ambulance. "You a medic?"
"No." A permanent smile was stamped into his beaming face. "I am a certified EMT—well—at least I was when I lived in Chihuahua. Retired now."
"The ambulance?"
"Bought it, fixed it up, and put it to good use." He waved a hand in the direction of the ambulance where the crowd had been. "I help the homeless whose numbers grow daily. Many are desperate for asylum and find themselves lost and cast away."
"You do what, exactly?"
"I provide basic needs. Food, water, hygiene, and medicines like Tylenol and cough syrup."
