Page 89 of Into the Gray Zone

I closed the doors and turned to her. I knew I was in the right, and so did she. I just needed to remind her. I said, “Is that what you were thinking when the Chinese assassins were chasing you in Goa? Did our ‘standing’ help you then? You wanted to do what was necessary at that point.”

Her face became truculent, looking like she did when she found me about to launch our house cat with my foot, but this time it was much more serious. What she said surprised me.

“You’regoing on the warpath here. Not Knuckles. Because youwantto. You want to let the beast out, and you’re using this as an excuse to run amok.”

I heard what she said, and I knew she wasn’t wrong. I’d been fighting the release of the demon since the assault in Goa. I thought I’d won with the action in Agra, where I’d been the steady hand like always, but the assault at this hotel had breached something in me. She knew it and I knew it. I wanted to break something apart. Or someone.

While talking to Knuckles from our aircraft on the way to Jaipur, I’d felt the scab tear. His earlier confidence about the security of the party had disappeared, and he’d told me what had happened. The price had been enormous, and I felt impotent riding in the aircraft. I was so angry I had difficulty communicating to him on the phone. Jennifer had seen it, and now she was worried, but the bottom line was I had screwed up, letting the Chinese guys intervene in Agra. They’d thwarted our ability to capture the terrorist with the drone, and that loss of intelligence had cost a plethora of lives. I should have seen them coming, but I hadn’t, and because of my failure, a lot of people were dead. It was my fault, and now I wanted some payback.

She came to me, taking my face in her hands. She said, “I see what’s happening. I don’t understand it, but I see it. You want to let the beast out. I don’t know why now, after all we’ve been through, but we can’t go back to what you were. It tore you apart. Let the Indian government handle this. Don’t go there.”

I took her hands in mine and said, “Telling me not to go there is like screaming at a volcano to keep the lava inside. It does no good.”

She stared into my eyes and said, “So the volcano is already erupting?”

I glanced away, not saying anything. She said, “Am I wrong?”

I wanted to tell her to stop the psychobabble bullshit, but she was right.

I said, “You’re not wrong about me, but you’re wrong about the solution. India doesn’t care about the hostages. The government only cares about what they’ll look like when it’s all over.”

She said, “This isn’t our fight.”

I said, “It is now. You saw Knuckles.”

She backed off and said, “Yeah, I saw him. He’s just like you, wanting to kill to alleviate the pain.”

Knuckles was still processing what had happened last night, going over and over what he could have done differently, not the least because he’d failed to stop the assault. He felt like it was his fault, which was exactly how I felt.

I said, “So that makes a difference? Because he has a connection to Nadia it means we can’t continue? But you’d rescue Nadia if she was some random stranger?”

She looked like I’d slapped her, saying, “What? What does that mean? OfcourseI want to rescue her, but we don’t have the assets for that here. And I worry about you. When this is over, we still have to live.Ifwe’re alive at the end of it.”

I smiled and said, “One step at a time. Let’s go see what Kerry has found. Maybe it’s already over.”

I went to the door and she stopped me, saying, “It’s never going to be over until you believe it’s over. There will always be another.”

“Maybe that’s true, but right now, I have Nadia, and I’m not going to let that go. The next one can wait.”

We walked out of the room and across the grounds to the next section of villas, where Knuckles was staying. We knocked and he opened the door, looking haggard.

He said, “Come on in. Kerry will be here in a minute. He’s bringing over his kit for the off-site with the Oversight Council.”

We entered, finding the villa a carbon copy of our own. The bedwas unmade, and Nadia’s clothes were still over a chair. I said, “Hey, how are you doing?”

“As well as can be expected.”

I waited, but he said nothing else. I said, “You know this isn’t your fault.”

“Fault’s got nothing to do with it. Nadia’s been taken by those Islamic assholes and she’s probably getting violated right now. We saw what Hamas did.”

He balled up his fists in frustration, his imagination running wild. Like me, he wanted to punch something, but there was nothing to hit.

I went to him and put my hands on his shoulders, saying, “Don’t do this. It won’t help. Nadia’s okay, and so is Thakkar’s daughter. We just need to find them.”

He knocked my hands away and said, “Those motherfuckers have her right now! They have her at their will.”

He saw himself in a mirror on the wall, hated the reflection, and drove his fist into it, the shattered glass falling to the floor.

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