Page 52 of Into the Gray Zone

He put a hand on Agam’s arm and saw regret in his eyes. Kamal said, “I’m sorry for the deaths to come just as you are, but it’s necessary. By visiting the Taj Mahal, they are supporting our persecution. Remember that.”

Agam nodded, then raced the drone into the target again, shattering it in a small hurricane of plastic and metal. He turned to Kamal and said, “I’ll do my part, but don’t let it be in vain.”

Kamal smiled and said, “It won’t be, as long as you’ve fixed this watch problem.”

Agam bent down for the next drone, saying, “It was actually easy. The watches are tied into our phones. Right now, he’s seeing four men here instead of just two.”

“How is that? What did you do?”

“I slaved all of Mr.Chin’s phones to mine through the Garmin app. It was easy once I did a jailbreak on the phone and got to the root of the app. The watches talk to that app alone, and all I wanted to do was make sure that data was sent to my phone first, before anyone accessed it. I’m sure Mr.Chin is watching my phone, but what he doesn’t know is that he’s seeing all of our watches through my phone. Where I go is where you go.”

“What about the health reports? The heartbeats? I mean, the watch is transmitting how many steps I take.”

“I couldn’t do anything about that. All I could do is spoof the location. Your steps and your heartbeat are still transmitted, albeit to myphone, so I suppose he could say that you took more steps than were shown in the history of my geolocation, but he’s not looking at that. As long as your heart is still beating, it’ll show him you’re wearing the watch. It just won’t show him where you are.”

“So he thinks there are four of us in this field right now?”

“Yes. Unless Manjit and Randeep have a heart attack, they’ll show up as living and breathing right here.”

Kamal considered that, then said, “So when you do the attack tomorrow, it’s going to look like all four of us are at the fort?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“I don’t know. He might become suspicious if we travel in a group for the next day. Sometime, somewhere, we’d separate.”

“I can turn it off when Manjit and Randeep come back. Revert it to individual use.”

“They aren’t coming back. They’re getting the launch point in Jaipur and talking to the security people.”

“What security people? The ones on Thakkar’s detail?”

“Yes. Apparently, our little team has grown. Thakkar has twelve on his security detail. Six are Sikhs, and four have now joined our mission.”

Agam said, “What about the men controlling us? The Chinese? Do you really think they’ll let this happen?”

“They will, because they do not know what we have planned. They make the mistake of assuming we’re just vassals for them to manipulate. Just like the Hindu state. We will prove them all wrong.”

“And the Americans? What about them?”

“The Americans? What do you mean?”

“The ones who stopped the assault at the resort. Mr.Chin thinks they did it on purpose. I could tell by the way he reacted.”

Kamal scoffed and said, “They were just lucky. America has no fight here.”

Chapter31

I went down the street with Jennifer feeling as if we stood out like circus clowns attending a funeral, everyone in the afternoon sun gawking at us because we were the only gringos within five miles. Under my breath, I said, “Tourist area my ass. This is absolutely stupid.”

Jennifer said, “It’s a tourist spice market. We’re fine. We belong here.”

I chuckled and said, “Where are the tourists?”

“It’s the end of the monsoon season. They aren’t here yet.”

“Well, that’ll be something we can say when we’re arrested. ‘We’re blending in. It’s not our fault we did it two months early.’”

We’d flown the Rock Star bird to New Delhi late last night, getting a room in an incredible establishment called the Imperial Hotel. I suppose I should have put some price constraints on the team, but had not, and now we were getting five-star amenities. Veep and Brett, of course, had done this just to poke me in the eye about giving them the work. I only hoped the Taskforce would cover the bill.

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