Two
It was dark, but the sandy ground she laid on still carried the warmth of the day, even though the air around her had cooled dramatically in the shift from day to night. A wind began kicking up sand. It still carried a note of the remnants of the nearly contained wildfire seven miles away. The massive efforts to contain the wildfire had been successful, and they worked now to extinguish the remaining embers, but the air continued to reek of the fire’s damage. It had burned in a twenty-mile crescent extending from Nogales. Hatch still felt the memory of its sting.
Ash and soot drifted like dirty snow, laying a thin coat over Hatch during the seven hours of waiting. She accepted the gift of gray camouflage now covering her body. She’d returned to the area in which the traffickers had taken Angela Rothman. She had travelled the same road where the first gunfight with Colton Gibbons and his fellow traffickers had taken place. When she passed by the spot, she was surprised to see no evidence of the violence that had taken place less than a day before. She stopped and looked for any shell casings. She found none. Even the blood was gone. None of the media sources she’d searched had covered the event. Her trail was clear, as well as the traffickers. She was dealing with a highly organized group of individuals.
It would only be a matter of time until she found what she was looking for. So she hunkered down and waited. Patience born by necessity. She skirted the border until coming to an empty swath of open space. There was no way she could enter Mexico legally without a passport or identification. Since she was legally dead, neither one of those things were available. To have it done through an alternative channel would've taken time she didn't have. So, she waited.
Hatch lay on the ground seven miles west of the Nogales border crossing. She selected her current location by asking herself one simple question, where would I try to cross the border? It had taken nearly eight hours before she’d proven her decision right.
She heard it before she could see it. There were no buildings nearby, no streetlights, no lamps, or sources of man-made light anywhere in sight. The only light provided came through the cloudy ash covering the sky. To Hatch's benefit, she was bathed in the darkness, giving her more flexibility in her choice of concealment.
There was a crunch up ahead followed by the coo of a baby and the mother trying to quiet it. Somebody snapped, yelling in Spanish a phrase Hatch didn't understand, but the tone of which was easily discerned. Anger. The cooing stopped and the procession continued. They weren't quiet by any stretch, although Hatch could tell they were trying to be.
As they came into view twenty feet from her position, she counted seven heads: an old man, a pregnant woman, a young mother carrying a baby, and two men. One of the men was heavyset and older and used a walking stick to navigate the uneven terrain in the dark. He stumbled once, and the younger man at the back of the pack kicked him hard, hard enough for Hatch to hear. The older man grunted softly, and then got back to his feet, offering no form of resistance to the violence he'd endured. Hatch knew why. The man who had kicked them was their coyote, a paid shepherd of human beings. Most of the people in that group undoubtedly gave their life savings for this journey, or would be indebted upon arrival, possibly for the remainder of their lives. Crossing the border from Mexico to the United States, with the hope of a better life, was no easy task. Often, the American Dream was more a nightmare than anything else.
Human trafficking was a modern form of indentured slavery. These people each had a predetermined destination, where they would serve out whatever sentence until their debts were paid. Hatch watched as the group came to a stop, now only fifteen feet from where she lay.
Hatch remained tucked tightly to a rock, making herself as small as her 5'10" frame would allow. The large rock aided in masking her from the headlights of the approaching van. The small boulder casting Hatch in the shadow cut the beams, keeping her invisible to the man driving. The coyote shoved the other six border crossers into the back of the van. A very brief exchange between the coyote and the driver followed and within a minute, they were gone.
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?"