She kicked forward and felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her bicep and it scared and hurt her enough that she almost yelled underwater. She forced through the fear and quelled her panic, then moved her hand through the blindness to see what happened. A submerged tree, with bayonet-like broken branches lay in her path.
As her lungs bucked against her closed throat for breath, Hunter slowed, taking her time to move around and between the branches, hunting for a way through. She realized that some of the bayonet-like points of the larger branches stuck out of the water several inches, so she couldn’t go over the tree. She fought the panic of suffocation and worked her way deeper and started through the branches under the large trunk. Her gun belt snagged on a branch and stopped her progress, so she tried to untangle it, but the situation grew worse, and her extra exertions took more air.
Her lungs burned and she fought panic, but was losing fast. A last hard jerk seemed to cinch her side to the trunk. Hunter had no choice. She unbuckled the gun belt and felt it and the holstered pistol slide away in the murk. She had no remaining air to hunt for it or retrieve the pistol and could only think of air, air!
Still underneath the trunk and branches, she regained control once more and refocused on what she had to do, making it through a space so tight that her back touched the trunk as her stomach scraped bottom mud, and then she was beyond it, still submerged.
Her next stroke put her front hand against a muddy wall that went almost vertical.
The bluff. It was the bottom of the bluff, under water. She eased her way to the surface, always leading with her hands, and felt them touch river cane, also under the water like on the other side where she’d come from.
When she felt a narrow parting between two dense clumps, Hunter eased forward, feeling in the watery darkness with her hands. Her body was panicking, revolting because of the lack of oxygen and she felt close to blacking out, with purple and red spots and lines in her vision.
Her hand touched mud beyond the water, with dense cane on both sides. Pulling herself forward to allow her face to emerge above the water’s surface was the hardest. When her eyes cleared the water, but her mouth and nose were still under it, she almost jerked up in response to her body’s needs.
Controlling herself took all of her strength and will as she turned her head to the side and upward, raising her nose and mouth just above the surface to exhale and take in a long, deep, sweet breath of the night’s air. Hunter kept that position as she breathed and let her hammering heart catch up on oxygen, and gradually slow down enough that she could function.
Easing her head out of the water took Hunter a long, slow minute as she listened intently to the night.
Felix’s voice came from across the river, “Chuy, I found her radio and her phone. Why does she leave them here?”
“She’s a woman, that’s why. No man would panic and do that. Maybe she thinks she can hide better without that stuff. Just keep looking. We’re getting close, primo.”
“We shoot her, right?”
“Seguro. Empty your pistol in the bitch.”
“Bueno.”
Hiyoki called from the bluff above her, “I want to see her body when you get her.”
Chuy said, “We’ll even take pictures for you, pose with our feet on her like big game hunters.” Chuy was feeling the adrenaline rush, knowing they were close.
Hunter heard all of it as she eased out of the water and crawled deeper into the thick, sharp-leaved cane. A raccoon watched her as she passed, but it did not run away. When she was far enough in the cane, hunter eased to her hands and knees, then slowly stood. The tops of the cane were still ten feet above her head, so she felt hidden. Hunter watched the drone in the sky hover over the river area on the U.S. side, and twice she saw lights in the cane where Felix and Chuy hunted for her.
Stepping with care, Hunter pushed deeper into the cane and away from the river until the lip of the bluff above her blocked Hiyoki’s view directly below. Two silent steps later and she emerged in the narrow space between the cane and the bluff face.
She remained close to it and moved carefully along the bluff as she eased her way north, going upriver. In several places thorny mesquite grew thick, and she had to force her legs through it. The sharp spines pierced her pants and legs, but Hunter bit her lip and continued forward. When some of the brush became too thick, she returned to the cane where she had to move much slower to keep the tufted white tops from moving and signaling her location.
Sweat ran into her eyes because of the lack of breeze. As the river cane border became increasingly narrow and the bluff crowded her toward the water, Hunter went to her knees to avoid being seen, but continued to work her way upriver.
The runoff arroyo seemed to appear out of nowhere, hidden by brush as it was. It was narrow, extending from the top of the bluff all the way to the water, with most of it concealed by tall grass and several types of brush. She studied it, noting that it widened towards the top, and had more mesquite and prickly pear cactus around it there. She also saw where the two men had carried the aluminum boat down it and crossed the river.
She looked across the river and saw both Felix and Chuy emerging from the cane as the drone hovered at thirty feet. They looked at other places for her as they widened their search, including across the river at the bluff.
Hunter slipped into the arroyo and worked her way to the rear wall. Rocks, gravel, and the edges of small boulders protruded into the open space of the water-carved cut in the earth. She didn’t hesitate, instead she climbed, glancing over her shoulder as she went, feeling the prickling sensation of being in someone’s crosshairs.
The brush and mesquite provided solid handholds, and she used her feet on the protruding boulders and shelves of packed earth as steps.
Once she heard the drone approaching, its buzzing getting louder, and she froze behind a bushy mesquite growing slanted at the edge of the arroyo. The branches and leaves covered a portion of the vertical gash in the earth. She held her breath and her heart quickened as the drone slowly passed six feet over her head. Then it was out of her sight and crossing the river to again search with the two men. She breathed again.
Hiyoki walked so close to the arroyo that Hunter heard him talking to Chuy and Felix across the river, “Don’t stop hunting. She’s here and we’re not leaving until we find her.”
The voice from across the river said, “We won’t. Either we’ll find her or you will w
ith the drone, and she’s dead either way.”
So, Hunter thought, There it was. She couldn’t stay hidden all night or they would find her, either under the full moon or when daylight came and lit the entire area with light. She was cold in her wet clothes and fought not to shiver. She remembered learning that wet clothing made a person lose body heat fifteen times faster than when dry. It could make her movements slower, she knew, but she wasn’t going to stay hidden and be shot while doing a passive thing like that.