"I am indisposed outside of Rancho San Rafael cleaning up a bit of unpleasantness. Mr. Fuentes would like you to handle him? I'll send you their location. You might want to get moving. They're only thirty miles from your location but moving quickly and looks like they're heading for the river as we speak."
"And how would you like this handled?"
"Dead. All of them."
"Consider it done."
The phone clicked off. Machado took one last look at himself through the brown of Maria's eyes, seeing himself once more as the boy he was and not the killer he'd become. "I must go."
"But papa, you just got here."
"I know." He looked at the pantry with the money and back at the girl. "Two days."
"Two days." She repeated through a forced smile.
He stood up from the table and walked back to the coatrack, grabbing his wide-brimmed black hat and walking out into the sunlight to march, once more, to the orders of the devil.
Thirty-Seven
The clotted blood clung to the gauze and angrily protested as Hatch adjusted the dressing on her left hand. Angela had Ayala's first aid kit ready to go the minute Hatch dove inside Ayala's beloved clunker.
The teen, relying on a health class from high school, had done a great job patching her up with the limited supplies on hand. Angela cleaned the headwound from the pistol whipping and, using some medical glue, she sealed it enough so the blood no longer rolled down Hatch’s face. Her left hand was in bad shape.
Hatch knew why Moreno had chosen the left, instead of her right, to dig around inside the web of her hand with the long black fire poker. It was her shooting hand. Few knew it had not always been that way. The blast that ripped Hatch to shreds and gifted her right arm the wicked branching of scar tissue served as reminder. She made the compensation in a failed effort to remain in service to her team after tragedy struck.
In effect, Moreno's fire poker had only rendered one of her two dominant hands lame. She shifted the butt of the pistol to the right side.
Wind, following the contours of the bullet-riddled Nissan, whistled loudly in the hole where Ayala's rear windshield used to be while he muscled the accelerator pedal with the bottom of his boot as they raced to the location on his phone’s GPS. He was using the address provided by his contact, the man who'd be meeting them and ferrying them the rest of the way to the crossing.
Ernesto Cruz was Ayala's most trusted friend and confidant. When it came to keeping alive, Ayala trusted one man above all others. Hatch had already heard the story of how Ayala had first come to know Arturo Sanchez, the former special forces operator who protected him during the fatal drug raid that left two parents dead and their flower-drawing daughter missing.
Hatch knew of the Fuerzas Especiales, Mexico's elite military unit with a specialty in maritime operations. She had had no direct experience with them during her time in the special operations community. Most of what she learned came by way of Alden Cruise, her former SEAL boyfriend, who spent several months in a water survival school with several of his Mexican counterparts.
Hatch remembered Cruise talking about his experience, but beside their involvement in Operation Black Swan, where they recaptured Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman after his second escape from a Mexican federal prison, the only details she could recall now was how that unit got its nickname. The Fuerzas Especiales were more commonly known as the FES, coined after their unit's moto. Fuerza, Espíritu, Sabiduría. Strength, Spirit, Wisdom.
Those same three words described what was needed of all of them if they were to survive these dire circumstances. This was something Ayala said Arturo Sanchez had in droves. And this would be the man leading them down the snaking path of the river.
His combat skill was beyond reproach, but it was Sanchez's familiarity with Mexico's waterways, and his proficiency in navigating twists and turns of the Rio Grande, snaking its way across northern Mexico that would make all the difference in their escape attempt.
Sanchez took to the water shortly after the shooting of Maria's drug dealing father and the unfortunate death of her mother. He found peace in the ranging rapids of the river and became a whitewater rafting guide. It wasn't long before Sanchez heeded the call to serve again, this time taking a different approach to it however.
Ayala explained to Hatch that Sanchez hung his gun up after killing Maria's mother, vowing to never kill again. When Ayala reconnected with Sanchez years after the shooting, he told the military man about the work he was doing in freeing those enslaved and trafficked by the cartel. Sanchez used the snaked path of the river to transport victims to safety. And in cases such as Hatch and Angela's, finding a way across the border.
Ayala pulled off the road and made his own path through the dirt and weeds until the Nissan could go no further. Thirty feet from the riverbank, Ayala parked and shut the motor off. He looked at the red pushpin on his cellphone's mapping system. He was in the right spot. But there was no Sanchez. And no boat.
The trio left the car and Hatch scanned the perimeter. The only sound was that of the river. A white Lincoln town car skittered past too quickly for Hatch to get a view of the man driving, but took comfort in the fact she could see, in the passing blur, that he was alone.
Experience taught Hatch the reward of patience. She applied it in the silent vigilance as she watched the Lincoln whiz by and continued watching the direction it travelled for several minutes after it disappeared around a bend in the road, shrouded by a cluster of rocks and trees.
Hatch didn't look away until the car vanished from sight. The reward of her diligence came in the red glow of the Lincoln brake lights illuminating. The car didn't stop, only tapping its brakes one time. Her hand instinctively hovering by the Glock tucked at the small of her back, Hatch waited until she felt the threat pass.
Ayala sighed and uneasily rubbed at the moist air accumulating on his brown arms. Hatch could see the strain on the reporter's face. "It's a river, not a road. I'm sure your guy will be here. If not, we drive."
"Driving would be more treacherous. Every passing car or truck has the potential to be loaded with the cartel's killers. Too dangerous. It's for this reason, we use the waterways whenever possible."
"Okay, then we wait until we can't." Hatch saw that Ayala was still coiled tight as a barrack mattress. "If it's not that, what's eating at you?"
"Goodbyes."
"We're a long way off from goodbyes. We still have to get down the river to the crossing."
"You. Not we." Ayala turned and, even against the obnoxious yellow of his Hawaiian pineapples peeking their way out from behind his fishing vest, looked blue. His sad aura was conveyed in the deep brown of his eyes. "I will not be making the rest of the journey with you."
"I don't understand."
Angela offered no response, verbal or otherwise, at Ayala's declaration. Hatch saw the lack of surprise in the teen. She assessed that Ayala must've already explained this to her in the interim while Hatch was having her less-than-pleasurable chat with Moreno.
"I should have told you my story when you so bravely shared yours. It's something I regret and something I hope to reconcile someday. Now, however, is not that day. All I'll say for brevity's sake, is that my mother died in that water many years ago. I've never set foot in it since. Look at me." Ayala held his hands out in front him. "Look at how I'm shaking just being around it."