Page 61 of Into the Gray Zone

Agam sat up and said, “Why do you say that?”

“Mr.Chin called me on the contact phone this morning. He only wanted to know if we were good. He doesn’t suspect anything.”

Agam nodded and said, “But he will after midday. One of his minions is planting the drone with the explosives at ten thirty, and I’m supposed to launch it when Thakkar’s party is taking pictures in front of the Taj Mahal. He’ll know that didn’t happen by noon, as there will be no news stories.”

Kamal smiled and said, “I have the phone. I’ll handle that, and I’m looking forward to his panic.”

He zipped up his backpack and said, “I have to go. It’s a four-hour drive to Jaipur. Are you good?”

The question held more than it seemed. Agam knew he was asking if he could kill.

“Yes. I’m good. I’ll get the drone and use it, don’t worry.”

Kamal nodded and said, “It has to be a big enough attack to cause the state to freak out. I want every police officer from a hundred miles to collapse on the Taj.”

“I’ll do it. Trust me. How did Manjit’s meeting go?”

“Apparently pretty well. He has the entire plan for the attack, and there are now four insiders. Two who will let us through a back gate, and the two that I knew from home who are now Thakkar’s primary security. Manjit has weapons and explosives and a van now. It’s going to work.”

He stood up and said, “When you’re done, when the attack is over, ditch the phone and the watch and disappear.”

Agam nodded and said, “I’m going north. Up to the Kashmir. I’ll call you from there.”

Kamal hugged him, squeezing harder than he intended, the path they were on now set. Agam said, “Good luck. I’ll see you in Khalistan.”

Kamal smiled and said, “I will like that.” He turned without another word and left the room. For the first time, Agam wondered if he’d ever see him again.

He sat on the bed and stared at his own backpack. He looked at his Garmin watch and saw he had a little over four hours before he had to be in the fort. Time that would slowly leak out like blood from a wound, continuing to drain no matter how much pressure he used to stop it.

Resigned, he stood up and shouldered his pack.

***

I gave the valet my ticket and waited on our SUV to arrive, tapping my feet and feeling the press of time. Behind me, Brett was talking to Knuckles on the phone, trying to get some limited response at the Agra Fort but obviously having no luck. Veep was working a Taskforce GPS, which had satellite imagery instead of Garmin or Google Streetview roads, trying to pinpoint the exact location of the grid. Jennifer was working to find us a hotel in the area and coordinating for the Rock Star bird to be on strip alert.

I’d debated flying to Agra with the Rock Star bird, but it was close enough that I’d decided not to introduce the signature of a private aircraft into the area. If what I thought was about to happen came true, and I missed stopping it, I’d rather be leaving on a dusty highway instead of boarding a private plane at the Agra Airport with all the history and documentation that entailed. Better to get them sitting in the cockpit ready to pick us up wherever we ended up.

The SUV pulled into the drive and we loaded up, Brett behind the wheel and me in the passenger seat. Veep leaned over and showed me what he’d found.

“The grid is on the northern edge of the fort, next to the river. Doing a little research on the place, there are catacombs and tunnels that run the length of the fort at that location, along with walkways on the walls that surround the fort, so our problem is that the GPS grid is a 2D fixed focal point. It doesn’t show locations in three dimensions.”

I said, “Meaning what? The grid is useless?”

“No, no, not at all. Just that we can go to the grid on the surface of the fort, and the meeting could be below us, in a catacomb, or above us, on a wall. When we get to the location, the GPS is going to say ‘arrived,’ but it doesn’t know if the meeting is below or above us.”

I turned to Jennifer and said, “Get me a map of that fort. Start looking at it from a place that you’d like to meet.”

She pulled out a tablet and started doing the research, and I glanced out the window as we exited the hotel grounds, seeing another SUV loading up, all of them young Asian men.

Which, if I wasn’t so worried about finding the terrorists, would have been an indicator that we weren’t the only ones on the hunt.

Chapter36

Agam watched the security line for the fort. Everyone had to pass through a magnetometer and have their bags checked, but the guards were lackadaisical. They did their job perfunctorily, without any serious effort.

The fort was huge, stretching out for more than a hundred acres, with what appeared to be a small contingent of the Indian army on a compound attached to the walls. That was a surprise. Mr.Chin had said nothing about any official government presence here.

He’d gone out into the streets of Agra after Kamal had left, buying some breakfast from a roadside stand and patiently waiting. After a couple of hours of walking the dusty lanes, he was inexorably drawn to the fort. He walked to the long road leading to the entrance, conducting a reconnaissance of the security posture. Like a lot of the locals around him, he sat on the curb, just observing.

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