Disclaimer: As ever, don't own.
As Cat crawled down the slope inch by painful inch, she found herself wishing that she had the claws of her namesake – not to mention the balance. The dirt was treacherous, seeming solid enough to provide handholds yet often crumbling and running between her scrabbling fingers the moment she shifted her weight. As of yet she had seen no signs of pursuit – all around her was quiet, save for the soft wind and the bleating of goats far below.
At last, muscles aching ferociously, she let herself down onto a little ledge that jutted out from the side of the plateau and looked upward. The facility in which she had been held loomed up above, a cold, impersonal edifice of steel and reflective glass, all right angles and jutting corners. Atop its main entrance was a brightly painted sign:
OTOMOBIL FABRIKA
Cat shut her eyes a moment and concentrated. Dictionaries for hundreds of languages were stored in her voluminous memory, kept locked away so as not to overwhelm her conscious mind; now she lifted the floodgates, and they poured into her thoughts. One by one she sifted through them until she found a match:
Car Factory
Okay, I'm in Turkey.
She shut the other dictionaries away once again and summoned forth Turkish grammar books, phrasebooks, maps and atlases, cultural guides, gave them free rein to whirl through her cerebral cortex. Fifteen seconds later she opened her eyes.
"Hazırım." I'm ready.
She resumed the slow, agonizing climb downward. On the ground below a she-goat stared up at the small, red-haired creature with mild curiosity, then resumed chewing crabgrass. Bees droned, circling sparse purple flowers in the hope of nectar; cirrus clouds drifted lazily across the sky.
Then there was a crackle of gunfire.
The she-goat bolted in panic; her comrades followed in short order. Their herder, a boy of no more than sixteen, chased them on horseback, terrified by the rifle fire from the mountain but nonetheless determined not to lose sight of his charges. The bees fled in a swarm.
A squadron of the black-shirted soldiers – Cat could not see their faces – were rappelling down the plateau face in quick time. Close to the bottom though she was, it was painfully apparent that they were going to have little difficulty outracing her, especially as one of their number paused every few seconds to keep Cat pinned in blaze with a quick burst of bullets.
There was only one thing to do.
The moment she was low enough to be reasonably certain that she wouldn't break her neck, Cat let go of the rock and tumbled downward. Rolling over and over, dirt clogging her nostrils and stinging her eyes, her ribs bruised and battered, she said a silent prayer to every deity she could think of to let her survive.
At last she came to rest on solid earth – with the bulk of her body right atop her dislocated wrist. She unleashed a stream of mixed English and Turkish profanities, paused an instant to let the rush of adrenaline from her fight-or-flight response dull the pain, then took off, heading for the dirt road that led southward to a small city whose skyline was barely visible in the hazy distance.
A quick glance backward told her that her pursuers were catching up. The point man waved to his comrades to fan out and outflank Cat on both sides.
If they cut me off before I reach civilization, I'm done for. She drew upon every last drop of energy she had left; but her legs were short, her body weary, and these men were obviously professionals – hardened mercenaries, she guessed – who showed no signs of tiring.
A wave of despair flooded her. I tried. I tried so hard. And for nothing. I'm going to die here, in the middle of nowhere, and none of my friends will ever know what happened to me. Not even Robbie.
Something was moving toward her. She blinked, uncertain whether it was a mirage. No – it was real. A pickup truck. As it drew closer, she could make out the face of the driver; his expression changed from irritation at the strange girl blocking the road to astonishment and horror at the sight of her armed pursuers.
A scene from North by Northwest flashed into Cat's mind. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.
She leapt directly in front of the oncoming truck, then threw herself to the ground as the driver stomped on the brakes, his front bumper coming within inches of her prostrate form.
And here I thought that having all those damn YouTube clips downloaded into my brain was just a waste of memory space.
The driver leapt out and pulled her to her feet. "What are you doing, you idiot? You could have been killed!"
"Please, help me. My life is in danger."
He stared wide-eyed at her, trying to understand how this obviously American girl could speak grammatically correct Turkish – but there was little time to ponder the mystery. A burst of gunfire tore through the grass only a few meters away.
"All right, all right – get in!"
The instant she had clambered into the truck's cab – before she had time even to close the door – the man pulled a sharp 180-degree turn, kicking up great clouds of dust, and drove as quickly as the aging vehicle could manage toward the town.
"Oh, may Allah bless you," said Cat as her frustrated pursuers receded into the distance. "I thought I was finished back there."
"You're just lucky I came to check up on my goats," replied the man. "My ranch-hand Mehmet was in town for lunch, and he mentioned that one of the kids was suffering from stomach cramps and vomiting, so I came to see whether it had eaten any poisonous weeds."
I was saved by a vomiting goat? thought Cat. And, as she turned the thought over in her mind, it mixed with her relief at her unexpected salvation to produce laughter – at first just a chuckle, then a sustained guffaw, and finally uproarious, belly-shaking howls of laughter that all but took her breath away.
As the ancient truck wheezed and sputtered to a stop outside the city hall, the driver stared at this bizarre, tiny Turkish-speaking American who seemed to regard being shot at and nearly run over as the funniest thing imaginable.
Maybe it wasn't just the goats that ate poisonous weeds, he thought.
/
"Um, you guys do realize this is crazy, right?" asked Andre as the group of Hollywood Arts students collected their suitcases at the Antalya airport baggage claim. "Shouldn't we have just called, I don't know, the FBI or Interpol or somebody, instead of flying halfway around the world?"
"We don't know who we can trust," Jade pointed out. "And seeing as how Lane was kind enough to let us skip school for a week after we saved his life, I have no intention of just sitting on my hands while Cat might be in horrible danger."
"Um, Robbie?" Tori tapped the young ventriloquist gently on the shoulder. "How are you doing?"
He hadn't spoken once during the entire ten-hour flight, and his friends were beginning to worry about his mental health. For the first time ever, he hadn't even bothered to bring Rex with him.
Tori went on. "It was, um, really great work you did, hacking into those airline records and finding out what city in Turkey Gunther was flying to. You're pretty darn amazing, you know that?"
Still he said nothing. Tori exchanged a worried look with Jade.
"Hey, Shapiro," the Goth girl said as she squeezed his hand. "We're going to find her. You know that, right?"
Without turning his head to look at her, Robbie said softly, "Yeah. And then I'm going to find the guys responsible for all this, and I'm going to make them suffer."
"That's not what we're here for, Rob," Beck said gently. "And besides, Cat wouldn't want you to turn into some kind of soulless vengeance-seeking machine."
Robbie did not reply, but simply stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on something none of his friends could see.
"Look, first things first. Let's go find a hotel," said Andre as he hefted both Tori's luggage and his own in his powerful arms. "We need a base of operations so we can figure out our next move, right?"
"Good idea," Jade replied. "Come on, Robbie. Stewing in your own juices won't help Cat."
A still silent Robbie let her lead him by the elbow out of the airport, the others following. In the crush of tourists and businesspeople throughout the terminal, speaking French, German, Russian, Chinese and every other language under the sun, the little band failed entirely to notice the tall, muscular, sharply dressed man sitting nearby who watched them intently from behind a copy of the Hürriyet Daily News.
Once they were gone, he lowered the paper and slowly rose. "You kids made a mistake, coming here," he muttered in English. "And now you're going to pay the price."
As he left the terminal, a few passersby could not help but stare in revulsion at his face – marked by a scar that ran all the way from his lower chin to his cheek.