Page 44 of Into the Gray Zone

The lock sprung open and he exhaled, raising the roll-up door and entering the safe house. He waited until the men had followed, flipped an overhead light, and slid the door closed. He turned and saw a narrow storefront no larger than a passageway, the entire area maybe twenty feet wide and sixty feet long, with empty shelves and cabinets on each side and a wooden ladder at the rear leading up into darkness.

While his men explored the downstairs he went up the ladder, feeling along the wall until he hit another light switch. It blazed into existence, revealing four mattresses on the floor and a wooden table with a laptop computer, a MiFi cellular data device attached to the back.

He went to it and opened the lid, seeing a sign-in screen. He went back to his watch and pulled up the notifications menu, retrieving the instructions. He typed in the login and password and was met with a screen that had a single document in the center. He opened it and began reading. As he read, he couldn’t believe what Mr.Chin wanted them to do.

He heard clattering on the ladder and Agam appeared, holding something above his head, saying, “There are four of these downstairs. What’s that about?”

Kamal looked closer and saw he held a small commercial drone. A folded quadcopter. He returned to the screen, studying the instructions, and it all became clear.

The rest of the men made it up the ladder, each of them standing around the entrance, looking at him expectantly.

He said, “We’re supposed to attack the day after tomorrow. Thakkar is doing a pre-wedding party. A small group of prestigious people from around the world. Chin wants us to kill him there with a drone.”

That set them back a bit, Agam saying, “He wants us to fly a drone into him? That won’t kill him. Even if we fly all four from downstairs. At most, it’ll knock him to the ground. Is Mr.Chin hoping for a heart attack?”

Kamal returned to the screen and said, “According to this, those are for practice. The real one will have explosives.”

Manjit said, “Explosives? Like we’re in Ukraine? Like it’ll hunt him down on camera and kill him?”

Kamal continued to study the screen, absently saying, “Yes. Exactly like that.”

Randeep said, “This is getting out of control. He wants us to flat out assassinate the billionaire on camera?”

Kamal turned from the screen and said, “Yes, he does, but that’s not the worst part.”

“Seriously? What’s the worst part?”

“He wants us to do it on a visit to the Taj Mahal. He’s visiting there the day after tomorrow. Thakkar’s apparently locked down the locals’ gate and purchased a block of time for him and his entourage to tour the place. There will still be some foreign tourists there, but no locals. I guess he doesn’t want his entourage mixing with the real world. They’ll be out front of the Taj, taking pictures during a span of time.”

Manjit said, “You know how I feel about that. I’m not going to kill a bunch of civilians because Mr.Chin said to. I’m not doing it.”

“The drone is embedded with facial recognition. We fly it above the site, and it’ll go straight to him. It’ll kill him, and only him.”

Chapter26

I handed the key to the valet at the Grand Hyatt resort and walked inside like it was just another day. Which, of course, it wasn’t. The sun had gone down during our time at the Panaji police station, and I still wasn’t sure if we were good to go. Our cover of GRS appeared to have held up well enough, and the event had been chalked up to a random mugging, but you never knew who was looking at what. The last thing we needed was a foreign government digging deep into our company.

As for me, I was sure it wasn’t a random mugging. Those men were after us for a specific reason, and that reason had something to do with the meeting between the RAW, the CIA, and Thakkar. I had no proof of that, but the circumstances were too coincidental, and the leader of the group had made that strange statement before I crushed his ass, telling us that we were “not going home.”

Not something a mugger who was out for a score would say but something a team on a mission would let slip out. A mugger would have wanted compliance, telling us sweet nothings that would make us feel that if we gave him our stuff, he’d let us go. Threatening to kill us right off the bat didn’t fit. I was convinced that they weren’t after our valuables but instead were after us, specifically. The police didn’t care about any of that, and in the end, I thought they were more concernedwith us posting a negative review on TripAdvisor than they were about solving the crime.

Jennifer and I had gone back to our room to clean up, getting ready for our meeting with Nadia, and she’d finally cornered me. Something I knew was going to happen.

“What was that back there?”

I said, “What? Back where? You mean when you were having trouble with your guy?”

She put a finger to my lips and said, “No lies. What was that? I haven’t seen you like that since Amena was in danger. Actually, since we first met andIwas in danger. You lost it for a minute against some guys youknewwe could handle. Why?”

I took her hand in mine, moving it away from my face, and said, “I didn’t ‘lose it.’ I did what was necessary.”

In truth, I didn’t have an answer, and that alone scared me. I had gone from zero to a thousand miles an hour over three guys I could have handled in my sleep. She was right. That had never happened unless someone I cared about was in extreme danger. Something had slithered out from my soul, and I didn’t control it.

I didn’t know why I had reacted the way I had, like an old man trying to cut an apple, only to find he didn’t control the knife, the hand tremoring and doing something outside of what the brain said it should do.

I really had no answer.

She said, “What you did wasn’t necessary. It was primeval. You know it and I know it. Why?”

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