The Devil's Assassin by Brian Page A

under his foot and fled. Then there was a
loud shot and the creature was moving the other direction as fast as he could
go, no longer concerned with stealth but with preserving his life.
    Pablo, who’d been
the target of the Maero, fired the shot, and he’s standing now. The first shot
he’d fired was at the squealing noise. He and the men next to him are now
firing at the receding wave of bending grass in front of them.
    Pablo shouts, “I
see it! I see it!” He fires again.
    Linus grabs his
own gun and moves rapidly from his seat near the campfire toward Pablo. He
skids to a stop and grabs a flashlight on the way. Other men start moving
toward the ruckus as well.
    Linus stops when
he gets to Pablo who points at the receding wave of grass. Linus shines the
light which catches a brief glimpse of the creature’s brown head in the
increasing distance.
    “There’s the
bastard. You’re not getting away this time.”
    Linus turns to
Pablo and two men nearby and his tone brooks no argument. “You three follow
me.”
    The three have
flashlights and guns, so as soon as Linus starts a sprint after the creature,
they are sprinting close at his Linus’ heels, all of them eager to catch the
killer.
    ›
    Arroyos comes out
of his tent, dressed but obviously tired. He looks a question at a nearby man
and then watches the four men running into the grass.
    “The American has
taken three men out after the creature!” says a man named Miguel.
    “All that shooting! Did anyone hit it?” asks Arroyos.
    Miguel shrugs.
“It’s hard to tell, but it left at a run.”
    Arroyos holds back
a curse. He reaches into the tent and grabs his gun and flashlight. Meanwhile,
June has come out of her tent.
    “I’m going out
there to turn him around before he gets lost or killed,” says the detective.
    “Who gets lost or
killed?” asks June.
    “Guess.”
    June is surprised
and fearful. Arroyos nods to Miguel in the expectation that he’ll follow. “The
rest of you get BACK to your posts. Half of us could have been dead by now if
the diablo has a friend.”
    He doesn’t wait
for comments; he’s out of the ring before a stunned June can say anything, and
an armed Miguel is close on his heels. She reaches into the tent and grabs her
dart gun and a flashlight.
    She’s not far
behind the two men when she starts running and actually closes the distance.
Miguel and then Arroyos notice her coming up behind them but do not take their
focus off the bouncing light in the distance that they are following.
    The three are
running in a line in the trail left by Linus and his group. The sounds of their
own breathing, their footfalls as they run, and the grass giving way before them are loud in the cloudy night. Their
flashlights jump around in the dark.
    After some time,
and a great distance, Arroyos stops, and the two behind almost run into him.
Each of them continues scanning the dark for trouble. Arroyos
puts a finger to his lips to indicate quiet when June starts to ask him
why he stopped.
    Now there is
silence and beams of light. Ahead of them, behind them, and all around them is
darkness and silence. “Damn it!” says Arroyos quietly. “He is one reckless,
hombre that friend of yours.”
    “You’d have done
the same thing,” says June. “You want this animal as much as we do.”
    “I will not be understanding if his recklessness causes the death of
more of my men.”
    Miguel has taken
to watching their rear so that they cannot be attacked from behind, but he
doesn’t have a light. He gets June’s attention and points to the rear so she
will shine her light back that way. “I can’t see the campfires,” he says.
    “We can’t be
far,” says Arroyos.
    “I am a runner,”
says June. “I’d say we just covered about two miles.”
    “What?!” exclaims
Arroyos. “I don’t like the sound of that. Turn off your light for a minute.”
    June does so as
well as Arroyos and the trio is engulfed in almost
total darkness. There are no