Page 86 of Savage Obsession

“Is the farm accessible by road?”

“Just about, though it’s difficult to be sure.”

Kris straightens. “I want eyes on the place. Within the hour. Get men stationed in those woods. Henio, any idea how many men they have there?”

“Not many. I’ve been surveilling this farm along with several others. There’s been hardly any coming or going, apart from the van just now.”

As we watch, the door opens, and a figure emerges.

“Who’s that?” I demand.

Henio duly zooms in, to reveal a slim, dark-haired girl dressed in the simple, cotton smock typical of the working people hereabouts. She trots around to the van, opens the rear doors, and drags a box of what appears to be mixed fresh vegetables from within. She hefts it back to the front door, where a tall man emerges and takes it from her.

“Get a close-up still of both of them,” Kris instructs. “I want to know if that’s San Antonio.”

Moments later, we have our confirmation.

“That’s him, all right. So, at least we know where he is. I want eyes on him at all times. If he leaves, follow him.”

“Sure, señor.” Henio huddles over his screen again.

“What about the girl?” I ask.

Kris’s brow furrows. “She looks familiar. I’d swear I’ve seen her before, somewhere.”

I can’t place her, but don’t sweat about it. She’s not my concern. “Any sighting of Julia?”

“No, señor, but one of the windows is boarded up. So, perhaps…”

“Fair enough. We’ll assume that’s the bedroom where she’s being held.” I do a quick calculation of how many men we can get to the location, and how soon. “We have almost a hundred soldiers on the island, most here in the warehouse, though we do have a few units in that vicinity checking out the original meeting site. Playa de Castro is two or three hours away from here, on the north coast, so that’s how long it’ll take us to get our main force in place. We need to move armaments as well, ideally without drawing attention from the police.”

“I’ll make a couple of calls. The authorities will look the other way,” Kris assures me. “Get the troops moving.”

“We saw at least two dozen men disembark on the beach two days ago, and as far as we can tell, they haven’t left the island. They had plenty of weaponry, and that has to be somewhere. Henio?”

“Still in the woods surrounding the original beach,” he replies.

“Why?” I wonder aloud. “The meet with Kris was abandoned when he did his deal with me. Why set an ambush there?”

Kris scratches his chin. “He probably doesn’t think he needs his army now. You’re going to do his dirty work for him. Why not leave them where they are, nicely hidden, until it’s time to leave?”

I’m not buying that. “It would have made more sense to relocate them into the forest surrounding the farmstead.”

“Can we be certain he hasn’t?” Kris demands of Henio.

The lad shrugs. “Not if they stayed under the canopy of the trees. It’s pretty much unbroken forest between the bay and Playa de Castro, not visible from the air, so maybe… I could attach a heat-detection camera to the drone.”

“Do that,” I growl. “If he has men squirrelled away in those trees, I don’t want our troops being ambushed. Meanwhile, we start the shift north. I’ll redeploy our soldiers to the outskirts of the woods, ready to close in and take San Antonio’s men in a pincer movement if they are there. They can travel in groups of a dozen or so to avoid attracting attention. First priority, neutralise any potential reinforcements and isolate San Antonio.”

Men scurry off to do as I’ve instructed. Within the hour, we’re on the road, heading north. I didn’t want to leave Lily. She begged to come with us, but obviously, that’s a non-starter. In the end we compromised. A man is to drive her to the marina, to Firebird. Janey will look after her until we return with her mother.

I’m in the lead truck, receiving updates from those troops we already have on the north coast.

“Boss, there are men camped out in the woods around the farm.” The intel comes from Aleksey who led the team to stake out the bay.

“Not some sort of outward-bound crowd?” It pays to be cautious.

“Not unless the tree-hugging brigade have started toting sub-machine guns and rocket launchers for hunting rabbits.”

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