Assignment - Ankara by Edward S. Aarons Read Free Book Online Page A

considered the way they had been living up to now, in a neutral privacy, out of consideration for what had happened to her. But if he had asked her to bed with him, she would have done so. She felt she owed him anything he asked for.
    Whatever he was about to say, whatever he was about to do as he reached out a hand to touch her as she sat there, was interrupted just then. Someone knocked on the hut door.
    The quick rise of strange excitement in her died abruptly. John turned, facing the door. His breathing made a harsh sound in the little room.
    “Who is it?” he called.
    It was Susan who opened the door, before John could stop her. But it was only an old peasant woman from the village, who spoke to them in a dialect neither could understand. . . .

Chapter Four
    IT WAS long dark when Durell and Lieutenant Kappic reached the high wire fence that encircled Base Four on the summit of Musa Karagh. It had been a long, hard climb up the military road that switched back and forth along the rocky slopes, and they had met no one on the way. Landslides, rocks, and uprooted trees marked the passage of the earth tremors that had shaken the mountain.
    They were above the mists that shrouded the valley village below, and in the starlight and the dim glow of the moon that shone from behind ragged clouds, Durell saw that the striped guard booth was empty and the wire mesh gate in the fence stood wide open. A silence, emphasized only by a thin wind in the pine trees, enveloped everything.
    Kappic pointed to the deserted barrier. “What do you think of that? I do not like it, my friend.”
    “Nor do I.”
    “Can they all be dead up here?”
    “Let’s go see,” said Durell.
    They went through the open gateway, climbed a winding graveled road, then crossed a lot where flying rocks and debris had smashed a U.S. troop truck and a command car into twisted wreckage. Nobody challenged them. No floodlights showed them the way ahead.
    They passed a mound of rubble of stone and splintered wood, that had been a laboratory and officers’ quarters, judging by a broken wooden sign on a shattered doorway, and then climbed a flight of stone steps that slanted crazily from the effects of the quakes. Evidently the tremors had struck with particular ferocity at the mountaintop, slicing off huge ledges of red rock and sliding houses, men, and equipment down to destruction far below.
    Lieutenant Kappic looked pale. “Do you think everyone is dead? It would explain why no word had come from here to your headquarters in Ankara.”
    “I hope not.”
    “Professor Uvaldi and his tapes must surely be gone from here.”
    “Perhaps.”
    They reached the top of the stone stairway to a level area where the radar towers had soared into the sky. In the starlight, everything looked as if a giant hand had reached playfully down from the smoky heavens and swept everything aside in a crushing, implacable grip. The steel girders and dish-shaped radar screens were tumbled and twisted in utter ruin, like a child’s toy. Rocks strewed the level area, and one huge boulder had smashed through the radio shack at the base of the antenna tower. Wires hung like tangled spider webs, torn and gray in the starlight.
    “It is terrible,” Kappic whispered.
    “Hold it, Mustapha.”
    Someone was coming toward them at last, limping, calling in a harsh challenge. In the dim light, Durell saw a chunky, grizzled sergeant in a torn uniform. His face was battered, his nose broken and swollen. But the man held an Army Colt .45 in a big, rock-like fist.
    “Hey, now,” the man said. “You got our rescue message?”
    “No,” Durell said. “But you can put down your gun.” He gave the sergeant his identification card and the man looked at him quickly, nodded to the Turk, and blew out a gusty breath of immense relief. “You got any military rank, Mr. Durell?”
    “No.”
    “That’s too bad. We need somebody to give orders around here. Somebody’s got to take charge of this mess,