Hatch did look and could see the tremors shaking his body as if a giant plow pushed along his entire body, spreading seeds which bore the fruit of its labor in the goosebumps popping up along his outstretched arms.
"I understand."
Ayala stopped shaking almost immediately. "I thought you were going to give me another pep talk. Like the one you gave me on the rooftop."
"The time for pep talks has long passed. Aside from that, I understand because I know the debilitating effects of fear."
"I don't see it. That's because the worst scars, the ones that never truly heal, are always the invisible ones." Ayala's eyes drifted to Hatch's right arm and the damage it spoke of, written in the pale twisted vine extending the entirety of it. "If what you say is true, I can't imagine the ones I can't see."
"You don't want to." Upstream, the red nose of a raft appeared.
In the rear of the sun-faded raft sat a ruggedly handsome man. His bronzed nut-brown skin shimmered in the late afternoon light. The setting sun's beams played with the water droplets in the air, casting him in a hazy glow, making Arturo Sanchez appear as though Hatch was looking at him through the smudged lens of an 80's Glamour Shot camera.
He navigated the raft to the rocky riverbank with a look of confidence matching the resume Ayala had heralded during their race to the river. The race now over, and Ayala's task of getting them there complete, it was time for Hatch to say goodbye.
"I'd like to see your smiling face walk through my doors at Cafe Rosa someday, and you and I can reminisce on the good we've done. And talk of the crack that we put in that boulder."
"Next time we talk again, I hope we don't just put a crack in it, I hope we've split the damn thing in half."
"I'd like that."
"Me too." Hatch hugged the man, favoring her damaged left hand while doing so.
Ayala faced his fear, or at least a portion of it, by walking between the two women he'd saved, as they made their way the last few feet.
The reporter turned human rights activist stopped dead in his tracks at the first wet rock, as if the water soaking its smooth surface was a forcefield barring further passage. And that is where he stood as Hatch looked upon the man who had risked everything to help a woman he didn't know find a girl he'd never met. A purity resonated in the kindness this man had shown.
In that moment, just as it did with Sanchez, the mist in the air combined with the sun to give him a glow. Hatch thought of Ayala's story, the one about seeing a glow around Maria that tragic day. Then she thought about the old woman who’d claimed to have seen a similar glow around Hatch before letting them into her home, knowingly sacrificing herself for people she did not know and had never met. She looked at the Peacock Man standing before her in the shimmering water’s glow and wondered to herself, was he glowing?
The brightness surrounding Ayala, regardless of its significance, real or imagined, vanished into shadow as the man casting it fell into the water lapping at the rocky shore.
Miguel Ayala lay face down in the riverbank, exchanging a blood payment for crossing through its invisible forcefield. Hatch pulled Ayala from the water and into the raft as the second shot missed Angela, sailing by the teen’s head with only a gnat's ass separating her from an instant death.
Without Angela's body to stop the shot, it continued its path to the rubber floorboard of the raft while nicking the thwart, a long inflatable cross tube used to keep the raft rigid.
That second shot did something else, maybe not for Ayala or Angela, but definitely for Hatch and most likely Sanchez. This bullet told of its origin. When the first shot rang out and Ayala dropped, Hatch had immediately scanned the jagged horizon for sign of the shooter. The second shot gave her that.
A black, wide-brimmed hat loomed above the scope of the rifle.
Sanchez shoved the raft from shore. Hatch didn't ask the why. When she had found the shooter, so had Sanchez. A good operator is a good operator, regardless of the team they play on.
And although Hatch and Sanchez had never before worked together, the training that molded them and the battlefields they were tested on were the same. And so, they too were the same. The bond of brotherhood, of sisterhood, occurring in those briefest of shared seconds, was established in a way few could achieve in a lifetime of friendship.
The battle cry of warfare instantaneously bridges years in minutes, forging while at the same time sealing a bond rarely broken. That happened in the millisecond both realized they were thinking the same thing at the exact same time.
The car can't be reached. The only way out is through.
Hatch was on point while Sanchez steered. Angela tended to Ayala's wound.
Hatch had her Glock out the second she safely placed Ayala in the raft. She tucked her knees between the lip of the man tub and the floorboard, stabilizing her shooting platform. The wet rubber was now more blood than water as Ayala's blood steadily drained from his shoulder. Hatch pushed the gun out and fired six steady, controlled shots in the direction of the hat.
The distance would've been tough for any shooter but the fastmoving river made it nearly impossible to hit the target she was aiming at. Hatch was not just any shooter, but even her skill was tested by this obstacle. So, she did the next best thing.
To keep the impending third shot from coming, Hatch used the rounds to keep the shooter's head down. That's not to say she didn't take aim. The shots weren't delivered in a burst. Rather, she paced her shots to conserve ammo while giving Sanchez enough time to steer in front of the rock the shooter hid behind.
It was Hatch's sixth and final shot that hit its intended mark, or at least close to it. In the moment before Sanchez brought the raft past the shooter's nest and blocking the aim of the man in it, Hatch saw the bullet hole.
Hatch found it strange the shot hadn't knocked the hat off. She reasoned it must've been glued to the man's head. The third shot never came. The only sound filling the aftermath came by way of Ayala's murmured groans and the sound of the rushing water, all of which were drowned out by the hiss of the leaking stabilizing tube as they raced down the river and away from the killer wearing a peculiar wide-brimmed black hat that now had a hole in it.
Thirty-Eight
Blood leaked from Ayala's shoulder, soaking into his shirt, and transferring some of its spillage to Angela's clothes, whom Ayala had landed on top of when Hatch pulled him into the raft.
Everyone remained low, pressing themselves flat against the floor of the raft as best they could until they passed a thick cluster of trees and disappeared around the bend. With Sanchez handling the navigation of the river, Hatch requested Angela care for the wounded Ayala. When she turned, Hatch was happy to see the teen was already applying pressure. She'd undone his green fishing vest and used it to pack the holes on both sides with a relative degree of effectiveness. Hard to tell with the water mixing in, but the flow seemed to have slowed.
In the lull of the battle that followed the protection offered by rocks and trees, Sanchez offered his explanation as to why a third shot had never come after they passed by to the other side of the boulder.
He said, and Hatch agreed, it had been doubtful and highly unlikely the shooter, if still alive after Hatch's headshot, would have been capable of navigating the distance by foot. Sanchez had been correct in his assessment.