Assassin: Code Name Vulture

by Nick Carter

  Stavros bent over me, and when he spoke, his voice was a leopard's growl. "1 see you don't recognize me," he hissed. I saw the army officer glance at him. "Now you know the kind of man you are dealing with."

  Yes, a psycho, I thought. A ruthless man who preyed on others. Now I realized why they called him The Vulture. I kept my mouth shut this time. He straightened, grabbed at his shirt front, and tore it open dramatically. I stared at the mass of scars across his torso, apparently from a fire. It appeared that they covered much of his body.

  "Do you see this?" he snarled, his eyes sparkling a bit too brightly. "I got this in an apartment fire when I was a boy. My father took a lit cigarette to bed with him, the last of a series of wantonly negligent acts toward his family. But I survived, you see. Don't think I will go to hell, because I have already been there."

  So that was the big missing part of the Stavros puzzle. The fire had snapped something inside him. It had burned out what he had left of a soul, leaving only a charred core. As he rebuttoned the shirt, I realized why he stood so erect. His entire torso must have been board-stiff from the scar tissue.

  "Now you understand," he hissed at me. "Now you will tell me who you are and what you are doing here on Mykonos spying on me."

  The husky, dark-faced fellow beside him took a short length of something from his pocket, apparently a club, just in case I was foolish enough to defy Stavros.

  "Is it the CIA?" Stavros' ugly voice came to me. "Did you make the call to Galatis pretending to be Minourkos?"

  I had to spare myself or it would be all over. If Erika were unharmed at the hotel desk, as it appeared, she would soon be back up here. If I got lucky and she was paying attention, she wouldn't just walk into the room and fall prisoner to them. She would make a fight of it I would have to be conscious to give her help.

  "Yes," I said. "The CIA."

  "Ah. The truth will out," Stavros said. "And you are here to initiate a coup against me?"

  Stavros' eyes flashed maniacal hatred at me.

  "Something like that."

  "What are the details of this CIA plot?" Stavros demanded.

  I hesitated. If I said too much it would sound phony. The husky man raised the club again.

  "Wait," the young officer said with a thick accent. "We have learned certain techniques recently in Greece to gain the complete cooperation of prisoners. But he will make too much noise to embark on such an interrogation here. We have to return to camp anyway. We will take him with us."

  Stavros thought about that a moment. "All right," he said darkly.

  They grabbed me from the chair. I wondered where the hell Erika was. She should have been back from the reception desk. Maybe they had found her after all. But I couldn't ask.

  As they herded me into a waiting car outside the place, at a remote parking area from the entrance, I thought of making a try for an escape with the stiletto. If they got me to that camp, I would never leave it alive.

  But there was no good opportunity to make a move with the knife. The husky man held a gun in my ribs, and I was flanked on the other side by Stavros. The officer drove.

  On the way out of town along the cliff road, I kept thinking of Erika. It was hard to understand what had happened to her. She had known that she would have had to return to the room immediately when Stavros arrived.

  We were out of town about a mile when we rounded a sharp curve and saw the stalled car just twenty yards ahead of us in the narrow road. I remembered that I had seen the car parked at the hotel earlier and had concluded it belonged to the management. The officer slammed on the brakes and the military car skidded to a halt a few feet from the other vehicle.

  "What is it?" Stavros asked curtly.

  "A broken-down car, it seems," the officer grumbled.

  "Well, get it out of the way," Stavros commanded.

  On the right side of our car was the cliff and on the other side was a steep bank of rock. The officer got out on the left side and warily started toward the car that blocked the road. Stavros, sitting on my right, opened his door on the cliff side and stood on the pavement watching. I was in the car alone with the husky man who held the gun at my side.

  "Shove it over the cliff!" Stavros ordered from beside our vehicle.

  "I will try," the officer said.

  Those were his last words. As he paused beside the other car, I saw Erika's head pop up over the cliff. She had obviously been listening outside the hotel room and heard them decide to take me to the camp. She had stolen the hotel car and beaten us to the road.

  "Look out!" Stavros shouted to the officer as he saw Erika aim her revolver at the man.

  The Greek turned as Erika's gun barked. A small hole appeared on the officer's forehead. He stumbled backward and crashed against the other car as Erika swung her gun to Stavros. He was drawing a gun of his own and I admired Erika for getting the officer first, for I knew how she wanted Stavros. She beat Stavros, and her gun barked out again and hit him.

  The husky man beside me in the car had kept his gun trained on me, confused about what to do first Finally when Stavros was hit, he decided to finish me off first and then go for Erika. I saw his finger whiten on the trigger of his revolver. I swung my arm outward and hit at his gun hand, and the weapon discharged, breaking window glass beside me. The stiletto was in my palm. Keeping the gun hand at bay, I shoved hard with the knife and felt it go in under his arm. It was over for him.

  Stavros had been hit in the shoulder, but it was just a flesh wound. He dropped to the ground and was returning Erika's fire as I jumped out the far side of the car. Keeping down low and using the vehicle for cover, I headed for the other car with the gun in hand. Stavros had forced Erika down behind the drop-off again. I wanted to get a clear shot at him from a place where he would least expect it for he thought I was still a prisoner.

  As I reached the other car, though, Stavros saw me. He fired two shots, and the slugs kicked up chips of asphalt beside me. I dived to the corner of the car and got out of his line of fire. In the next moment, Stavros was back inside the military vehicle. Erika's head popped back up from the rocky drop-off, and she fired a shot into the car but missed him. Stavros was behind the wheel. The engine roared into action.

  I stood up and took a shot at him. Suddenly the car lurched forward and came right at me. He was trying to pin me against the other car. I fired one wild shot and dived away from the onrushing vehicle. It crashed loudly into the other car. I lay very near the impact, covering my face and hoping the rending metal didn't slice into my flesh. Stavros spun the wheels in reverse and did a tight turn away from the impact site. He was heading back to town. In another split-second he was underway. I took careful aim, hit a tire and blew it, but he kept going. Erika fired two shots, the slugs whined off the metal of the car and missed Stavros.

  "Damn!" I heard her yell.

  I got up and pulled the door of the smashed car open. It fell off in my hands and hit the pavement. I climbed in and tried to start the vehicle. On the third try it was running.

  Erika met me at the car as I put it in gear.

  We roared down the road after Stavros. We kept him pretty well in sight until we got into town, then we found the car abandoned near the waterfront. We piled out and looked the car over.

  "He can't be far from here," Erika said. "I'll take a look down by the cafes."

  "All right I'll take a look at the boats. Be careful."

  "You too, Nick," she said.

  She started down the walk toward the cafes. There were a lot of places to hide there. I walked out onto a small pier where a handful of tourists were waiting for a boat. I was just about to ask for Stavros, when I heard the roar of a motor launch. Then I saw him on the launch at the end of the pier. The boat was pulling away.

  I ran toward him but I was too late. He was underway. I aimed the revolver at him, but didn't fire. Spotting a small, sleek boat near me, I hopped aboard with the owner who was standing slack-jawed watching the whole thing. I still had
the gun out.

  "Start it," I ordered.

  He obeyed silently. The motor roared.

  "Now get off."

  "But…"

  "Get off, damn it," I yelled.

  He got off. In that second I was at the wheel and pulling away from the pier after Stavros. I looked back and saw Erika at the far end of the dock screaming out my name. I couldn't go back. I waved her away.

  "Be careful!" I could hear her shouting.

  I was sorry she couldn't be with me for Stavros was important to her. But circumstances dictated otherwise. I saw Stavros pass through the entrance to the inner harbor, making a clean, white wake behind him. There were small, choppy waves outside this protected area, and when I got there, my smaller boat began bucking like a bronco and spraying salt water in my face from the dark blue Aegean. It was clear that Stavros was headed for an uninhabited island that lay adjacent to Delos nearby.

  My boat was faster than the launch Stavros had stolen, so, hanging onto my small craft desperately, I slowly gained on him. During this time I thought of Erika back there on Mykonos. There would be explanations to be made to the police. But a call to Colonel Kotsikas would tell the authorities all they would want to know. They would probably be pinning medals on Erika by the time I got back. If I got back.

  Suddenly I found myself within shooting range, but Stavros beat me to it. He fired two shots at me, and they chipped at the windshield of the small craft. Considering the way my boat was jumping around, it was quite a feat that Stavros hit anything. I pulled out the revolver and took careful aim on Stavros' silhouette. I fired and missed. I had only two shots left.

  We headed into a small abandoned area of the island, and the water smoothed out. Stavros made a run for the crumbled remains of a hot, sun-bleached dock. I had seen him reloading the revolver on the way in, so he had the advantage in ammunition. As he pulled up to the dock, he fired two shots at me to keep me away. I turned the small boat in a wide circle, trying to outmaneuver him. But I held my fire. I couldn't waste any shots.

  Stavros was bent over in the launch, working at something. The launch was already docked. I figured this might be my chance and headed the small boat in again. Just as I got close enough to fire, Stavros popped into view and hurled an object at my boat. It landed squarely in my cockpit. I saw the fuse burning and knew Stavros had found dynamite. It was being used on Mykonos for cutting a new road at the far side of the island. I had no time to try to throw it overboard. The fuse was short. Jamming the revolver into my waistband, I dived over the side and began swimming.

  The blast ripped my ears and shook the hot air, rippling the water into big waves. Debris rained down all around me, but I swam clear. I looked back and saw the flaming wreckage on the surface of the water, black smoke rolling skyward.

  I had been lucky. I continued swimming toward the shore adjacent to the dock area. Stavros saw me and fired two shots. The bullets plunked into the water just beyond me. He fired a third time and nicked my forearm. I swore under my breath. Even if I did reach shore, I might be weaponless because the cartridges in the revolver could have become waterlogged.

  When Stavros saw that I kept heading for the shore, he turned and ran from the weed-overgrown dock. He was going into the flat, low area of the island just behind us, toward the remains of a half dozen fishing shanties that had been abandoned long ago. He apparently intended to ambush me there.

  I climbed weakly onto an old sea wall that ran into the dock at a right angle. I looked across the open expanse before me, but didn't see Stavros. The hot sun began drying the salt water on me as I studied the terrain directly ahead. For a distance of perhaps three hundred yards, the ground was relatively flat except for scattered rock outcroppings and boulders that surrounded and made a backdrop for the brief line of crumbling stone shanties. Behind them the rocky hill rose rather steeply toward the center of the island, and there was another building higher up on the hill. It was a two story affair with the roof and one wall gone, probably some type of communal structure.

  I squinted into the glare of the sun and hoped to see Stavros, but he was keeping well-hidden. Pulling the revolver from my belt, I removed the cartridges and placed them on the sea wall. I flipped the cylinder open and peered down the barrel. Beads of water clung inside the metal tube, glistening in the reflected sunlight. Putting the muzzle to my mouth, I blew the barrel to clear it. The two cartridges I had so carefully saved might misfire when I was depending upon them. I had no other weapon, since the Luger was at the hotel and the stiletto was sticking out of the gunman's side on that road that led to the military camp. Erika would retrieve them, but that wouldn't help me at the moment.

  Stavros wasn't sure, though, that I wouldn't fire the gun, otherwise he wouldn't be running. That was a small break in my favor. Accepting that as the best I had, I rose from the wall and started toward the cottage, revolver in my hand. If I showed the gun, I might make Stavros think I was willing to fire it, wet or not, and keep him on the defensive. But I hoped it didn't come to that.

  I walked cautiously toward the stone cottages. Long grass grew everywhere, even inside the doorless and windowless skeletons of the small structures. The grass moved just slightly in the warm breeze where I was. The sun seemed somehow brighter here than on nearby Mykonos. It and the warm breeze were slowly drying my shirt and pants, but my clothing was still stuck to my body.

  I moved carefully through the long, brown grass. Two lizards, gray and prehistoric-looking, skittered over rocks to get out of my way. The place didn't have the smell of outdoors. The hot air clogged my nostrils and almost suffocated me with its odor of decay. There was a buzzing of flies all across the weed-choked field between the cottages and me and I saw Alexis Salomos in the back of my mind, lying by a twisted wreckage with the flies on him. Then I saw a movement up ahead near the closest cottage.

  I rubbed a hand across my eyes and looked again. There was nothing visible there now, no further movement, but I felt Stavros was there. I sensed it, every bone of my body sending out warning signals.

  I ran in a half-crouch to a chest-high boulder near the first cottage, freezing there, watching and listening. There was the constant sound of insects in my ears. I moved my hand on the boulder and put it on the back of the lizard. It jumped away startling me. Just then Adrian Stavros stuck his head out from behind the second cottage down the line and fired his gun.

  The shot seemed to echo in the sticky air. The slug chipped at the rock near my right arm, In a moment a second shot hit the rock and scattered grit into my face. I spit and blinked it out of my eyes. When I could see again, Stavros had disappeared. But I saw a movement of grass nearer to me, between the first and second cottages.

  Stavros apparently had decided that I wasn't likely to fire the revolver. Instead of my stalking him, he was stalking me.

  "The hunter becomes the hunted!" the voice came, followed by a low, spine-chilling laugh.

  The hollow, crazy voice seemed to come from inside my head rather than from the cottages. I couldn't tell exactly where Stavros was from the sound.

  "Then come and get me, Stavros," I yelled.

  "Alexander," Stavros corrected me from somewhere. "Alexander is the name" This was followed by another laugh, a high, psychotic one that rippled and undulated on the hot breeze.

  I heard a noise in a thicket beside the first cottage. I peered through the empty eyes of the crumbled windows and saw nothing. Then I heard the voice off to my right and a little behind me, out in the tall grass.

  "The gun is useless, isn't it?"

  I whirled to see Stavros standing behind me, in a completely different position from where I had heard the last sound. He might be insane, but he was still cunning. He pointed the gun at me and fired.

  I dropped flat on the ground beside the boulder as he squeezed the trigger. The boulder was no longer between us. The slug ripped at my shirt sleeve and scratched my left arm. I rolled over once as he fired again. The slug puffed up dust beside me
. I aimed the revolver at him in desperation as he pulled the trigger a third time. He hit an empty chamber. He stared at me as I pulled the trigger on my revolver. It clicked dead.

  Stavros' face changed, and he laughed that high, wild laugh as he slipped a cartridge into his weapon. I threw my revolver aside, dug my feet into the dirt under me, and leaped off the ground.

  I hit Stavros just as he raised the gun toward me. He didn't get a chance to pull the trigger before I connected with him. The gun dropped as we both hit the hard ground, kicking and clawing in the tall grass.

  I slugged Stavros hard on the jaw, and he hit the dirt on his back. But when I threw myself on him again, he still had plenty of frenzied strength left. He had somehow found the empty gun, and when I was on him again, he swung the barrel of the weapon viciously against my head. It connected with a glancing blow, and I grunted and fell off him.

  When I was able to focus on him again, he was up and running toward the two story ruin on the hill behind the cottages. There was an old wooden door hanging awkwardly on one hinge, and this was still creaking gently when I arrived. Stavros had passed that way.

  Slowly I stalked into the crumbling building. There was almost as much grass inside as outside in the field. Some of it had been crushed as Stavros had entered. But it humbled me to remember that this man had been chased like this all his adult life and had managed to survive. As I rounded the corner of a crumbling wall I saw a flash of his wild-eyed face, then a rusty iron bar swung toward my head. I ducked low, and the bar brushed my hair and crashed into the stone wall near me.

  "Damn!" I muttered. He had found a piece of junk left there by the island's last inhabitants. And again, he had an advantage over me.

  I grabbed for the bar, but I was off-balance. He pulled me off my feet, and I lost my grip. A moment later he was swinging the weapon again. It descended toward my face and would crush my head if it connected. I rolled, and the bar brushed my right ear and thumped heavily into the packed dirt under me.