When he was a mile from the destination, the road turned from tarmac to a simple dirt track covered in thick yellow dust. Ryker took a look at the map on his phone as he drove. He could see no indication of a town or even a village out here on the map; nor were there any signposts indicating what lay ahead. Ryker could only assume the address was a farm of some sort. His mind took him back to the conversation he’d had with Eva at the bullring, about her father’s friend owning a ranch where he trained fighting bulls.
If Ryker was heading to a secluded ranch owned by someone who was either connected to, or a member of, the Georgian mafia, he didn’t want to announce himself.
He was a little over half a mile away when he spotted another dirt track snaking off to the left of his destination. Ryker took it. He passed over rolling hills and soon came to a small cluster of trees and parked his car. He was in the middle of a valley, hills surrounding him on all sides – a mixture of scrubland, olive farms and grassy fields, yellowed by the lack of water and never-ending sunshine.
Ryker stepped from the car into the intense heat. He grabbed the compact binoculars he’d earlier purchased, and walked away from the car, in the direction of the address he was looking for. He crossed over a wooden fence into a field. The scorched grass underfoot crunched as he walked, almost as if it were frozen.
Ryker kept on alert as he traipsed across the barren field, not just for people, but for animals. He didn’t fancy coming head to head with a young toro bravo – a Spanish fighting bull.
When he reached the top of the hill, Ryker crouched down and slunk towards an isolated carob tree. From there, he now had an unobstructed view down to his destination, a few hundred yards in the distance.
As he’d expected, it looked like a farm. As well as a large white house there were several outbuildings, including a big corrugated-iron barn. Ryker could see two vehicles parked by the house, a car and a pick-up truck.
Ryker pulled the binoculars up and scoured the area. Both the car and the pick-up truck appeared old and battered, certainly not the type of vehicles he’d seen the Kozlovs driving around in Marbella. Ryker could now see one of the outbuildings was used as stables for horses. He also noticed a young woman – a teenager perhaps – tending to the animals. Other than that, there was no sign of life by the buildings. Ryker swung the binoculars around, searching the rest of the land.
In the distance, beyond the house, he spotted two men on horseback in a field, circling around a horned bull. Ryker watched intently for a few moments. The men taunted the beast, moving around, in, and out, striking the bull with long sticks. Ryker’s mind again went back to the conversation with Eva in Ronda. She’d said the bulls chosen for fighting were never put in front of a man until the day they went into the ring. But men on horses wielding sticks? Perhaps that was okay.
A loud and deep grunt caught Ryker’s attention. He felt his heart rate increase. He moved the binoculars away from his face and turned his head slowly. Sure enough, fifty yards away was a roaming bull. It was massive, its black coat silken and shining in the bright sunlight. The bull was walking past Ryker, heading toward where he’d come from. Ryker remained still, knowing that any sudden movement would be enough not just to alert the beast but possibly to cause it to charge.
Ryker stared at the bull: at its towering horns weaving in the air, the huge hulk of muscle around its neck and its hind legs shuddering with each step it took. Ryker could feel his heart thudding, so he took long and slow breaths. He had a gun on him; he was sure he could shoot and kill the bull before he came to any harm. Even so, being out in the open and so close to such a fearsome animal was nerve-racking.
When the animal headed over the lip of the hill, Ryker breathed a sigh of relief. He was caught in two minds for a moment. So far he’d seen nothing on the ranch that suggested this was a hangout for the mob. He could go back to his car and get out of there. But what would he do next? Miguel Ramos had found this address through his digging into Empire Holdings. There had to be a connection somewhere, something of interest for Ryker to find.
He’d already made up his mind to move closer to the buildings when the sound of a car engine caught his ear.
Seconds later, a large black luxury saloon car came into view, dust swirling out from behind it. As it parked by the farmhouse, an SUV and a panel van followed it in and parked alongside. The van wasn’t the one in which Sergei had escaped from Malaga, this one was blue rather than grey, but it was a similar type.
Ryker pulled the binoculars back up to get a better look. Several men stepped from the vehicles. None appeared to be armed. All wore dark clothes and most of them were big and bulky and menacing. Muscle.
But not all of them. One man was much slighter in height and frame, yet Ryker sensed the danger of the man nonetheless. Sergei.
CHAPTER 54
Ryker clenched his fist around the binoculars. He was tempted to blast his way down to the farmhouse there and then, take out Sergei and be done with it. But he couldn’t. He had to know what was happening. Who the men were and why there were there.
One of the men came over to the black car, opened the back passenger door, and helped out another man. Ryker knew as soon as he laid eyes on the man what he was looking at. The Pakhan. The mob boss.
The boss was in his sixties, possibly seventies. He had wispy white hair, a protruding nose, and a pockmarked face. His grey eyes, set deep in his face, were glasslike. He wore a clean black suit with a white shirt underneath, though the edges of his Vor tattoos – which, Ryker guessed, covered his whole back and torso – were visible above his shirt collar and his cuffs.
The old man hobbled along, supported by a silvery cane in his hand. Ryker debated for a few seconds. He had a gun and enough bullets to take out each of the men who’d just arrived, but that was surely a step too far. He had a beef with Sergei, but Ryker didn’t know enough about the rest of the men – what their crimes may be – to go in there all guns blazing. In any case, it was an unnecessarily risky approach.
But he had to do something.
Ryker waited until the men had moved away. All but one of them headed inside the white house. The man who remained outside, the biggest and meanest looking of the lot, stood guard by the front door. But from his lazy and bored manner, Ryker quickly determined the guy wasn’t much of a guard. He was a physical deterrent rather than a trained watchman.
Over the next ten minutes, Ryker stealthily moved across the field to within yards of the house, using the natural undulations of the land as well as sporadic trees and the odd cluster of foliage to stay hidden from view. He pulled up alongside a picket fence; then, when the opportunity arose, he jumped the fence and rushed toward the black car.