Page 39 of Into the Gray Zone

“They’re GPS smartwatches attached to the phones. They’re for the mission.”

“For the mission, or for tracking us?”

Mr.Chin said, “Both, but for your protection. Do not turn them off, and make sure each man gets the phone that’s linked to the specific watch.”

Kamal zipped up the backpack and said, “Do I need to go back to the train station?”

“No. The safe house is near here, in the Chandni Chowk spice market. You can walk.”

“Am I supposed to guess where it is?”

Mr.Chin smiled and said, “Put on your watch. It’s in that. It’ll show you the reason I want you to wear them.”

Kamal did so, strapping on something called a Garmin Instinct 2X Tactical. A huge thing with buttons all over the place. He turned it on and said, “What now?”

Mr.Chin manipulated the menus until he found a saved location labeled “house.” He pressed a button and the watch began showing an arrow and distance to the location.

He said, “Good for you to test it, because you’ll be using it on the mission. The passwords to the computer are in here as well, on the notifications. Make sure you don’t clear that.”

Kamal worked the buttons on the watch, saw the notification, and said, “You actually sent it to this watch instead of just giving it to me?”

Mr. Chin smiled and said, “Yes. I wanted you to learn the utility. There’s another one I want you to learn. You see that heart rate at the top?”

Kamal looked and indeed saw the rate of his beating heart. Mr.Chin said, “Don’t let that go to zero. I want to see a heart rate on each of your team for the next mission. Put the watches on as soon as you leave here.”

Kamal realized he was being boxed in, captured by Mr.Chin as surely as if the RAW was in the room. He shouldered the pack and thought about his next words. He said, “I’m not sure I’m doing the next mission. I’ll have to call my men and see if they’re still willing, since you haven’t paid anything yet.”

Mr.Chin said, “Call them? Why would you need to do that? They’re all out front eating mangoes at a smoothie stand and waiting for you to come back out.”

And Kamal realized the extent of his dilemma. They’d been under surveillance, probably since they’d stepped off the train.

Chapter23

I popped an olive in my mouth, turned to Kerry Bostwick, and said, “We couldn’t do this in your suite? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get some meals on the government dime.”

He’d asked us to meet at a restaurant called the Fisherman’s Wharf, an eclectic little place in the town of Panaji, the “new” capital of Goa, where the Portuguese had fled after disease had ravaged Old Goa centuries ago. It was a little gem of a town, complete with riverside casinos like one would see on the Mississippi Delta, but held nothing for my mission other than a meeting site.

Bostwick had chosen the restaurant’s outside patio for our sit-down. The only people around the table were my team, as the CIA/RAW/billionaire meeting had gone off earlier in the day, with both Riva Thakkar and the head of the Research and Analysis Wing long gone.

He laughed and said, “Well, I sure as shit couldn’t meet you at the resort. You guys are not associated with me in any way.”

I said, “Yeah, but let’s be honest, having the billionaire meeting here would have been better than that shit show location you used at the hotel—a known target site.”

Bostwick had arranged for a suite at the hotel for the meeting, which would have been incredibly easy to secure, but Thakkar hadother ideas. For whatever reason, the billionaire had decided he wanted the meeting in a public place, not in a hotel room—even if it was a suite—I guess to protect himself from enemies he couldn’t see. They’d agreed to host it in the workout facility on the grounds, a stand-alone building with a single entrance and exit, which I thought was absolutely idiotic, but I wasn’t calling the shots. I was only reacting to them.

They’d used a small conference room on the second floor next to a vegan coffee shop and climbing wall that stretched up from the first floor, the room itself having windows that anyone could see through inside. It didn’t do much to camouflage the fact that someone was meeting, but it did allow Thakkar’s robust security to be able to see out, giving them the ability to react if something went wrong.

Not that it would have mattered at that point, as the attackers would have been able to kill everyone through the glass outside of the room and there was nowhere to seek cover inside. Wouldn’t have been my choice, but luckily for the stupid billionaire, I had the outside covered with Knuckles and Veep.

Jennifer and I had dressed like we were just coming from the gym downstairs and had purchased a couple of horrible vegan smoothies, sitting at a table in the lobby and in constant contact with Knuckles and Veep outside.

Across from us, at another table, were two Sikh bodyguards, both looking extremely competent, complete with full beards and turbans on their heads. One had a scar on his cheek that traced through his beard and the other had a milky eye, as if he’d taken some shrapnel or other damage in the past. They glowered at us like something out of a Gunga Din movie. I’d ignored them, sipping my vegan smoothie like I was here just for the rancid amenities.

They most certainlylookedlike they knew what they were doing,but they couldn’t have been that switched on if they’d agreed to this junior varsity setup.

In the end, it didn’t matter, because the meeting came and went without any drama whatsoever. We’d called it a wrap and now we were conducting a final debrief with Bostwick before we flew home. Only his idea of what was coming from the debrief was a little different than mine. I still had to tell him about Jennifer’s little adventure.

Bostwick said, “The meeting location wasn’t my call. I’d have had it inside my room if Thakkar had agreed to it, but he demanded a neutral site. Seems he was a little scared after that attack the other night. He’s paranoid. He thought either RAW or the CIA had something to do with it.”

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