Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [57]
Provided they made delivery all right they’d collect their software and cables from Miss David, who was holding them in Antalya. Then they’d be able to pump the tank computer dry of its secrets. Possibly they’d get some weapons system information.
After the noise of the van had faded the marina was silent. She looked around. Boats lifting gently on the swell. The flat‐edged moon, a few nights short of full, glowed above the sea.
From the centre of Marmaris she could easily get one of the small buses that shuttled tourists back to their beach‐front hotels. But Ace was still coming down from the adrenalin of the operation on the island. She needed to walk it off. She turned her back on the docks and set off, tired, empty and happy. Her feet slapped the pavement steadily, carrying her forward, a steady rhythm of sound in the soft night.
When the pavement ended she walked in the road. Past half‐finished buildings, concrete shells surrounded by rubble. She was quite alone. Her head was pleasantly empty. It would take maybe half an hour to walk to her destination. Another hotel, another night in clean sheets that smelled like mothballs, then a flight back to Europe. Her ticket was already booked.
There were frogs singing in the ditches beside the road, a deeper, more liquid song than crickets. Ace crossed the quiet street, moving away from the half‐finished buildings. Then she paused. There was something in the road. A small hunched shape, black under the yellow light of the street lamps. It was lying in the middle of the tarmac. The turtle, or one just like it, shell crushed by the tyres of a car. Ace looked at it for a moment then turned away and kept walking. Then she found herself turning around and coming back. She couldn’t stand the thought.
Ace opened her rucksack and pulled out a flashlight. She held the beam of white light steadily on the turtle, hoping it wouldn’t move, hoping it was cleanly dead. The turtle was absolutely still. Ace wondered if it had been trying to get back to the sea. She could carry it to the sea again now. It was too late, but she could send it home.
Ace bent down to pick the turtle up, and because she bent down, the steel bar hit her on the shoulder rather than the head. The blow drove her down to the road surface. Grit stinging her cheek. Smell of the tarmac and tyre rubber suddenly close against her face. There was dirt in her mouth, her lip fattened by the impact. Her shoulder was numb and the breath had been knocked out of her. Ace had been in combat. She knew the wound would begin hurting as soon as the initial shock passed. Here she was again. The slow‐motion car‐crash feeling as time slowed down and she tried to stay alive. Objects were spilling out of her open rucksack. A grapefruit rolled slowly past her face, looking goofy and strange. Ace felt as if she was in the middle of a very stupid cartoon. She knew another blow was coming but she didn’t want to move. She forced herself into motion, twisting on the road, and the sharp curved end of the iron bar dug into the oily tarmac a few centimetres from her face. She rolled over and rolled again, then got up to face the man.
For some absurd reason she had expected him to still be dripping wet. But he’d had all afternoon to dry his clothes and get ready. He crouched in front of her holding a bent iron bar that had come out of the construction debris. He moved forward