Free Assignment - Ankara by Edward S. Aarons

turned and leaped away and vanished.
    “Halt!” Durell shouted.
    He fired again at the flickering shadow, then jumped from the rubble after him. Kappic shouted something from below, but Durell did not pause. Beyond the wreckage of the house, a flight of stone steps led up into a narrow alley that climbed the mountainside. Several other houses had suffered collapsed roofs here, and their tiles littered the paving. Durell scrambled upward, gun in hand, angry at the other man’s attempt to kill them and frustrated by the fugitive’s speed. He reached the top of the stone steps and looked to the right and left. The wind blew across an open field that tilted sharply upward to a stone wall, where barren fruit trees rattled their limbs under the starry sky. He paused, drew a deep breath. To the left were more houses; to the right were the back gardens and plots of the villagers, reaching toward the end of the settlement where Francesca Uvaldi was quartered. He started that way.
    The man had fewer choices of hiding places now, having been flushed out of the village streets and away from the earthquake rubble. But again he was nowhere to be seen. Durell moved cautiously, aware of the danger of another lethal trap. He heard Kappic call faintly from the street below, but he did not reply, hoping their quarry might think they were both still down there. A stone wall with a wooden gate in it blocked his way. Beyond was a small orchard, a field of brush, and a stone hut. He eased up to the gate, paused, listened, breathing lightly, hoping to catch some sound that might betray the other’s position. But he heard nothing except the wind in the fruit trees. Then there was a vague shouting from the dark shadows of the caravanary behind him. He turned his head and saw lights flickering down there, and a small group of men came out into the street with torches and lanterns. Perhaps the doctor had rallied them to hunt for the murderer. The villagers scattered, some heading toward the small bridge over the flooded river at the lower end of the village. A few others moved tentatively in Durell’s direction; but they were too far away to do much good, and he did not want anyone else to confuse the area at this moment.
    He went through the gate fast, dropped into a crouch, felt something whistle through the air close to his head, breaking with a clatter against the stone wall. It was a rock, thrown with brutal strength and speed. Durell leaped up and ran forward through the orchard. The earth was hard and rubbly underfoot. He heard a man’s thick-throated cry and saw his quarry rise like a giant from the shadows and run away again, from the opposite side of the clustered fruit trees, zigzagging into the brushy field beyond. Durell drove after him, holding his fire. If the man had had a gun, he would have used it instead of throwing the rock. And if it was possible to capture the killer alive, he wanted to do so.
    He fired once into the air, however, as a warning, and kept running. He closed the gap only slightly. Ahead, and a little to the left down the slope, was Francesca Uvaldi’s hut, and beyond that was the one occupied by John and Susan Stuyvers. The big man wavered, slowed, half-turned. In the starlight, Durell saw his chest heave as he struggled for breath, saw the dark open mouth in a strong, frustrated face, and also saw that the man was wearing a dark suit of Western clothes. The man ran again, evasively, down the hill—and then suddenly went down with a cry of alarm and surprise to go headlong down the gravelly slope.
    Durell was on him in a moment.
    “Hold it,” he gasped. “Don’t move.”
    The man looked up at his gun and said something in English between panting breaths and then lunged up again. Durell hit him with the gun barrel to drive him back, but he wasn’t to be stopped. The man tried to grapple with Durell, and his lightning move was unpredictable. His strength was enormous. He shouted something and Durell hit him