Tonka took the phone now and all three men closed in around him. ‘Another interesting thing—all these text messages are blank. Strange someone is sending blank text messages, isn’t it? And why isn’t there a name attached to the number?’

‘I thought you said they were from your mum?’

‘Yeah, Mum’s not too good with the mobile.’ It didn’t matter what Jack said now, he knew he was in trouble.

‘We got him!’ Dave yelled. ‘I’ve got a signal from his phone.’ Two officers ran to his side and looked at the laptop screen. Then they high-fived each other.

‘Alert the STAR team, they’ve been on standby along with the air wing. We’re going to need that chopper. Too far to go by car. GPS coordinates are …’ He read them out and one of the officers ran to do his bidding, while the other stayed close by.

Over his shoulder, Dave snapped, ‘Get Steve on the phone and tell him we’re back in communication.’

The officer snatched up the phone, spoke quickly and then hung up.

Dave opened the internet browser, and typed in the location on Google Earth. ‘Come on, come on.’ He tapped his fingers, frantically trying to speed up the search.

‘Okay, this is what we’ve got.’ He looked at the photos from Google Earth. A shack in the middle of nowhere. Trees, bushes, scrub. A two-wheeled track wound its way in from a main road. A safe house, that’s what he was looking at.

Dave traced the track back to the main road. ‘Get an outer cordon set up about five ks from those coordinates. The choppers will need to drop the STAR team on the beach, I reckon. We need ambulances on standby in the outer cordon. Let’s go.’

‘Sir, you’re not supposed to be coming with us. That’s not protocol. You should be coordinating from back here.’

Dave rounded on the young constable. ‘You think I’m going leave my man out there while I stay safe here? I don’t give a fuck about protocol.’ Grabbing the laptop, he jogged out the door with the officer in tow.

After they got on the road towards the airport, Dave went back to Google Earth and looked closer. ‘Okay, we want a drone up in the air. We don’t know how many people are in there and whether there are firearms. We’ll have to assume there are. If we get some aerial footage of the campsite, then we can work out how to go in and get him.’ He couldn’t let himself feel anything right now. Jack’s life depended on him. All he hoped was they would get to Jack soon enough and it wasn’t a booby trap.

CHAPTER 33

Chapter 33

‘Who are you?’ Crumbs took another menacing step towards him, but Jack didn’t flinch.