Page 107 of Into the Gray Zone

In seconds, the man was unconscious.

Breathing heavily, Brett let go, saying, “I have done some stupid shit before, but that is probably a record. What were you going to do if the rope snapped?”

Knuckles rolled off, checked his forehead for blood from the elbow blows, and said, “I’d have just entered the fight a little more dynamically.”

He looked around the room and saw the target was gone. He immediately got on the net, saying, “Pike, Pike, target is on the loose. He’s gone back up.”

Pike didn’t respond. Knuckles ran to the stairwell, taking them two at a time and saying, “Pike, Pike, are you on the net?”

He got nothing. He kept driving his legs up the stairs and reached the ground level, Brett right behind him. He tried again, saying, “Pike, Koko, Pike, Koko, come back.”

They jogged across the courtyard, looking left and right, then stopped, Knuckles saying, “Where the hell did they go?”

Jennifer came on the net, saying, “Knuckles, this is Koko. We have jackpot.”

Knuckles looked at Brett and said, “Say again?”

“We’re in the parking lot. We have the target. Pike says no thanks to you.”

Chapter62

I’d decided to wait until we had our target safely on the Rock Star bird before telling Kerry Bostwick we’d been successful. The last thing I wanted was to alert him about our operation only to have him say he’d coordinated for a rendition team in a tiny town on the way back to Jaipur, telling us to just pass him off in some dark alley. I wanted my time to question him, and most certainly didn’t have that opportunity in the parking lot of the Amber Palace.

Jennifer and I had heard the call that Knuckles and Brett had eyes on the target, and we’d hustled over to their building, blending into the other tourists milling around in the colored lights splashed about. When Knuckles alerted me about a possible meeting, I’d really considered attempting to move in close enough to ascertain the purpose, but immediately knew there was next to nothing we could glean from the encounter, not the least because they would probably be speaking in Mandarin. It would have taken a choreographed advanced force operation with technical surveillance emplaced days prior to execute something that complex.

As much as I wanted to find out why they were meeting, I made the call to simply let it go and keep eyes on the target, focusing on the primary mission, which was to roll this guy up and quiz him onthe hostages. The next thing we heard was that the target was being assaulted—which made absolutely no sense, but it would directly compromise my primary end state of an interrogation.

I ordered Knuckles to intervene, but, given the conditions, I knew there was little chance he could do anything. I gave him my intent and let him sort it out, thinking that if he couldn’t do anything, he’d let me know.

Jennifer and I waited to hear something, the adrenaline flowing from a fight-or-flight response we could do nothing about, and then the target burst out of a stairwell, running right by us. If someone had had a camera, our expressions would have been the perfect viral computer meme.

We recovered quickly and I gave chase, following him out of the portcullis and down the road toward the entrance. I heard a call from Knuckles saying the target was on the loose, but ignored it, as I had him in sight. When he came within view of the entrance security he slowed to a walk, and so did we.

He left the lights of the entrance and wove through the cars of the parking lot. As soon as he was in the darkness, I sent in Jennifer to distract him, just like we’d planned. She went to him and held out a map, asking a question. He looked at her with a dazed expression, obviously overwhelmed from the last few minutes, but then engaged, focusing his entire attention on her. As soon as that happened, I struck, taking him to the ground.

I rolled him on his back, crossed my wrists over his neck, and snatched his left and right collar with my hands, ignoring his feeble attempts to fight back. I violently pulled outward, the fabric cutting deep into both carotid arteries like a closing scissor. He flailed a bit, but in five seconds, he was out cold.

Jennifer returned with our vehicle, and I heard Knuckles calling again on the radio. I hoisted the man over my shoulder and told Jennifer to answer, instructing her to poke them in the eye about the lack of help.

We stuffed him in the back of our car and waited for the rest of the team. They arrived, and I heard about the insane actions they’d taken to prevent the loss of our target. Besides the heroics—which would earn them both a beer later on, but nothing more—I was intrigued that our target’s very own masters had wanted him dead.

It was something I fully intended to use once we had him in our little “safe house” called the Rock Star bird.

After an uneventful thirty minutes on the highway, we pulled into the Jaipur airport and followed the signs to the general aviation section, passing by Riva Thakkar’s helicopter. I noticed a flurry of activity around it, and wondered what that was about.

We reached our rented hangar and I went inside, finding the pilots ready and waiting in a small office. I had Brett and Knuckles bring in the car, closing the roll-up door behind them, and they loaded our target into the aircraft. He had a blindfold over his eyes, noise-canceling headphones over his ears, and was flex-tied at the ankles and the wrists, but he was awake, twitching like a worm on a hook.

I let them finish getting him settled in a chair and made my call to Kerry. Once the phone went encrypted, I said, “Hey, sir, we have a jackpot and we’re clamshell at the Rock Star bird. No issues.”

I expected to hear the next steps for extradition of the target, or at least a congratulations. I got none of that. Instead, I heard: “We don’t need him anymore. We’ve located the hostages. This entire place is moving to Mumbai.”

Which explained Thakkar’s helicopter preparation, but not what they’d found. I said, “Mumbai? Where and how precise is the intelligence?”

“It’s precise. The crazy bastards have taken over Thakkar’s residencein Mumbai. He has the most expensive house in the world. Twenty-seven stories, and his head of security apparently just waltzed right in with the hostages and locked it down.”

That made no sense. “How did we get the intel? Is this cell phone data from the other bodyguard, an inside source, or what?”

“It’s from the head of security himself, a guy named Jaiden. He literally contacted Riva Thakkar on the phone and sent a video showing Annaka. Claims he’s going to kill the hostages in the next forty-eight hours if they don’t read the manifesto on the air.”

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