Ник Картер - Assassin - Code Name Vulture

“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.