Page 59 of Into the Gray Zone

That got my attention. I sat up and said, “What’s that mean?”

She said, “Me leaning over you doesn’t get a rise, but Creed giving us a call does?”

I grinned and said, “Don’t test me. If the choice is between you, Creed, or this pillow, you might not like the results.”

That brought a smile, because she knew the answer. She said, “The computer was firewalled with Trojans, but Creed found some random numbers and a time. Ten thirtya.m.today.”

“That’s it?”

“Apparently so. As soon as he started to drain it, it started to wipe itself. He got five hundred gigabits of gobbledygook, and all of it was triggered because we bypassed the password. We really should have risked staying in that safe house and cracking it first.”

“Too late for that. So all we have is a time?”

“Yes. Well, Creed got one other thing. Someone cut and pasted a bunch of numbers to a document in the hard drive. The document is corrupted, but the cut itself was still in the memory, which was outside the firewall.”

“Numbers for what?”

“Don’t know. Creed’s sending the data now.”

My phone pinged, and I snatched it up, seeing a text from Creed. All it had was 44RKR0484009823, followed by the number 10:30 and today’s date underneath it.

Leaning over my shoulder, Jennifer said, “Well, that’s not a lot of help. Looks like just random trash.”

I stared at the numbers and said, “No. This is something. Get your computer.”

She didn’t question me, sliding off the bed to fire up her MacBook. Once it was online I said, “Pull up Google Earth.”

She did and said, “What do you see?”

“That first bit of trash is an MGRS grid. I’m positive. Put it in the computer and see what happens. If it ends up in Africa, I’m wrong, but I’ll bet it doesn’t.”

She did so, and Google Earth spun, then zeroed in to India, showing a fort in the town of Agra, south of Delhi, within spitting distance of the Taj Mahal.

Now I was really engaged. I took the laptop from her, saying, “Didn’t Nadia say that Thakkar was going to the Taj Mahal? He was going to stop all tourist traffic for his little party?”

Jennifer slid in next to me to see the map and said, “She did, she did.”

I pointed at the screen and said, “Something’s at that grid. That he also found a time means it’s fleeting. We need to get there before the deadline to see what’s happening.”

“But why is there a grid reference at all? What’s that about? Why go into a fort that’s a tourist attraction?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s a thing. Maybe they’re meeting their contact for follow-on operations at that grid at ten thirtya.m.Either way, I don’t think the RAW commander or Kerry Bostwick was the target. I think it’s Thakkar.”

She looked at the Google Earth map and said, “Why not just meet outside the fort? Why go inside, past security? That makes no sense. If they’re using drones, they already have them, and they won’t be able to get them past the checks.”

I hated it when she used logic. I said, “I don’t know, but we can only judge the information we have. Get Knuckles on the phone.”

She dialed and I kept looking at the map. I said, “We might be able to get there before ten thirty if we move out now.”

Jennifer started talking, and I saw her pause. She waited a second and then said, “Are you awake?”

I squinted and said, “Is he in her bed right now? Is that what’s going on?” Knuckles was my 2IC and I’d trust him with my life—had, in fact, trusted him with my life numerous times—but sometimes the fairer sex caused him to think with his little head instead of his big one. I honestly didn’t think that would happen here when the plans were made, but maybe I was wrong.

Jennifer shook her head, which was women-speak for “Let me handle this because you embarrass me when you do it,” and I started demanding the phone. She batted my hand away and said, “We have some intel on Thakkar’s visit to the Taj tomorrow. We need Nadia to get some assets in place.”

He said something, then Jennifer said, “Look, we need to speak to Nadia. Is she with you?”

I got sick of the back-and-forth and said, “Put it on speaker.”

---