Fear No Evil

Chapter 94

Upriver several hundred yards, Raphael Durango did not hear the shrieking family of four, but he’d caught glimpses of them before they floated around the river bend fully into his view and plunged into the rapids.

He’d given no signal to his two men on the east side of the South Fork and told the man with him to stay put until the family was well past their position. Cross and Sampson were still somewhere upstream. But they couldn’t be far. Emmanuella was right. The transmitter in Cross’s belt had started moving more than an hour ago. They should have been here by—

Durango shifted the binoculars, trained them farther south, and caught a glimpse of a blue raft and two figures in it, hooded and hunched over in the rain. “Here we go,” he said to the man with him. “Move up, find a place you can shoot down on them as they go past.”

The man nodded, scrambled out of their dry ambush spot to the bridle trail, and began to run south. Durango picked up his AR rifle and walked a few feet into a large opening in the trees. He set the gun down and started waving an orange handkerchief with his left hand while training his binoculars at the bend above the whitewater.

“C’mon, Cross; c’mon, Sampson,” he muttered, his stomach fluttering in anticipation of action. “It’s going to be a fiesta just for two.” The second he saw the raft’s blue nose enter the rapids, Durango dropped the orange scarf and snatched up his rifle.

This will be over in seconds and we’ll get the hell out of here and go back to Mexico where we belong.