Fear Nothing

had not yet swept.
        I had to know what was happening up there on higher ground. If I didn't reconnoiter, I would be no better than a dumb rat in a laboratory maze.
        I thrashed through the brush to the right of the swale, crossed the sloping floor of the hollow, and then climbed the long hillside, because the searchlight seemed to have originated in that direction. As I ascended, the beam scared the land above again-indeed, blazing in from the northwest as I'd thought-and then scorched past a third time, brightly illuminating the brow of the hill toward which I was making my way.
        After crawling the penultimate ten yards on my hands and knees, I wriggled the final ten on my belly. At the crest, I coiled into an outcropping of weather-scored rocks that provided a measure of cover, and I cautiously raised my head.
        A black Hummer - or maybe a Humvee, the original military version of the vehicle before it had been gentrified for sale to civilians - stood one hilltop away from mine, immediately leeward of a giant oak. Even poorly revealed by the backwash of its own lights, n unmistakable profile: a boxy, hulking, the Hummer presented a four-wheel-drive wagon perched on giant tires, capable of crossing virtually any terrain.
        I now saw two searchlights: Both were hand-held, one by the driver and one by his front-seat passenger, and each had a lens the size of a salad plate. Considering their candlepower, they could have been operated only off the Hummer engine.
        The driver extinguished his light and put the Hummer in gear. The big wagon sped out from under the spreading limbs of the oak and shot across the high meadow as though it were cruising a freeway, putting its tailgate toward me. It vanished over the far edge, soon reappeared out of a hollow, and rapidly ascended a more distant slope, effortlessly conquering these coastal hills.
        The men on foot, with flashlights and perhaps handguns, were keeping to the hollows. In an attempt to prevent me from using the high ground, to force me down where the searchers might find me, the Hummer was patrolling the hilltops.
        “Who are you people?” I muttered.
        Searchlights slashed out from the Hummer, raking farther hills, a sea of grass in an indecisive breeze that ebbed and flowed. Wave after wave broke across the rising land and lapped against the trunks of the island oaks.
        Then the big wagon was on the move again, rollicking over less hospitable terrain. Headlights bobbling, one searchlight swinging wildly, along a crest, into a hollow and out again, motored east and south to another vantage point.
        I wondered how visible this activity might be from the streets of Moonlight Bay on the lower hills and the flatlands, closer to the ocean. Possibly only a few townspeople happened to be outside and looking up at an angle that revealed enough commotion to engage their curiosity.
        Those who glimpsed the searchlights might assume that teenagers or college boys in an ordinary four-by-four were spotting coastal elk or deer: an illegal but bloodless sport of which most people are tolerant.
        Soon the Hummer would arc back toward me. Judging by the pattern of its search, it might arrive on this very hill in two more moves.
        I retreated down the slope, into the hollow from which I had climbed: exactly where they wanted me. I had no better choice.
        Heretofore, I had been confident that I would escape. Now my confidence was ebbing.

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    8
        
        I pushed through the prairie grass into the drainage swale and continued in the direction that I had been headed before the searchlights had drawn me uphill. After only a few steps, I halted, startled by something with radiant green eyes that waited on the trail in front of me.
         Coyote .
        Wolflike but smaller, with a narrower muzzle than that of a wolf, these rangy creatures could nonetheless be dangerous. As civilization encroached on them, they were quite literally murder on family pets even in the supposedly safe backyards of residential neighborhoods near the open hills. In fact, from time to time you heard of a coyote savaging and dragging off a child if the prey was young and small enough. Although they attacked adult humans only rarely, I wouldn't care to rely on their restraint or on my superior size if I was to encounter a pack - or even a pair - of them on their home ground.
        My