Page 11 of Into the Gray Zone

I chuckled and said, “What if I’d have said no on this?”

He smiled back and said, “Wouldn’t happen. Might as well throw a steak into a lion’s den and ask, ‘What if he doesn’t eat it?’ I knew your answer before you got on the plane.”

Chapter8

Kamal heard a knock on his door and said, “Come in.”

The old brass knob rattled but didn’t open. He shouted, “Pull up, then turn it.” That worked. The door released and his men filed in, looking a little ragged.

Kamal smiled and said, “So Tito’s Lane lived up to expectations?”

Agam let slip a sheepish smile, saying, “We’re Sikhs. We don’t imbibe alcohol.”

Kamal said, “Sure. Right. As long as you didn’t do anything stupid to draw attention, I don’t care.”

The men took their seats around a small wooden table with enough drink rings to make it look like an Olympic emblem, the wooden chairs creaking ominously with their weight.

Manjit stood back up, saying, “Nothing in this place is safe. Last night, I thought my bed was going to collapse to the floor.”

Randeep pointed at a plaque on the wall, saying, “And what’s up with all the Russian?”

Kamal looked where he was indicating and chuckled. On two red plaques were the twenty-five rules of the hotel, one in English, the other in Cyrillic/Russian. There was only one rule in bold type: “PLEASEDO NOT BRING IN ANY DRUG DEALERS OR PROSTITUTES WHO ARE NOT ALREADY REGISTERED IN THE HOTEL.”

He guessed it was okay to bring in both if they had a room.

He said, “Before they invaded Ukraine, this place was like the Riviera for Russians. They all came here for the beaches and night life. The same night life you saw last evening. They don’t come here anymore.”

Manjit said, “So if this place is not good enough for Russians, why are we here? I thought we were going home.”

“We are, but I’m waiting on Mr.Chin before we go.”

“It’s been two days since Sidak died. What are we waiting for?”

“For payment. That bastard is going to give us our money. Once we’re paid, we’re out of here.”

Agam leaned back and said, “I don’t even want the money. I just want to go home. Forget all of this happened.”

Incensed, Kamal said, “Forget about Sidak? Is that what you want? They killed him. We agreed we were doing this for a reason.”

Agam said, “They killed him because they thought he was an Islamic terrorist. We sent him in with that blanket to wear. We can’t blame them for killing what they fear when we dressed him up like a terrorist and sent him in.”

“We didn’t dress him up as anything! He was just a Muslim. They killed him for no reason, just like they kill us. Sikh, Muslim, it makes no difference. The RAW and the government is against everyone except Hindus. It’s why we started on this path.”

Manjit said, “We started on this path to protest against the oppression. We didn’t start on this path to get killed as Muslim terrorists. Even I don’t give a shit about them.”

At that, Kamal stood up and said, “So you aren’t willing to kill toget our own state? Did you think they’d just hand it to us? Make no mistake, we’ll be called terrorists as well.”

Manjit jerked upright, slammed his palm into a wall, and shouted, “That’snotwhat I meant. We can’t do anything for Khalistan by acting like Muslim terrorists. You talked a good game, and all it got us is one of our own killed. Fornothing.”

The words stung, because Kamal knew they were true. They faced off, the tension thick enough to fog the air. Agam stood up and said, “Stop it! Stop right now. Sidak wouldn’t have wanted this. He would have wanted unity.”

Kamal stared at Manjit, and Manjit broke the tension, turning to his chair and saying, “This whole thing was stupid anyway. We aren’t the Khalistan Commando Force. We’re a bunch of kids from the Punjab. Nothing more. We should have never begun this.”

Kamal sat down, knowing this was a turning point. He said, “The government is killing Sikhs all over the world. They tried to kill two in the United States and assassinated one in Canada. We all saw that. It’s time we took the war back to them.”

He looked each man in the eye and said, “We aren’t a bunch of kids from the Punjab. We were once, but we’re more than that now. Slumdog millionaires. That’s what we are.”

The men chuckled at the reference to the movie, all of them having scoffed at its misappropriations of Indian society, but each believing the heart that beat within it.

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