Page 23 of Into the Gray Zone (Pike Logan #19)

I popped an olive in my mouth, turned to Kerry Bostwick, and said, “We couldn’t do this in your suite? If I didn’t know better,

I’d think you were trying to get some meals on the government dime.”

He’d asked us to meet at a restaurant called the Fisherman’s Wharf, an eclectic little place in the town of Panaji, the “new”

capital of Goa, where the Portuguese had fled after disease had ravaged Old Goa centuries ago. It was a little gem of a town,

complete with riverside casinos like one would see on the Mississippi Delta, but held nothing for my mission other than a

meeting site.

Bostwick had chosen the restaurant’s outside patio for our sit-down. The only people around the table were my team, as the

CIA/RAW/billionaire meeting had gone off earlier in the day, with both Riva Thakkar and the head of the Research and Analysis

Wing long gone.

He laughed and said, “Well, I sure as shit couldn’t meet you at the resort. You guys are not associated with me in any way.”

I said, “Yeah, but let’s be honest, having the billionaire meeting here would have been better than that shit show location

you used at the hotel—a known target site.”

Bostwick had arranged for a suite at the hotel for the meeting, which would have been incredibly easy to secure, but Thakkar had other ideas. For whatever reason, the billionaire had decided he wanted the meeting in a public place, not in a hotel room—even if it was a suite—I guess to protect himself from enemies he couldn’t see. They’d agreed to host it in the workout facility on the grounds, a stand-alone building with a single entrance and exit, which I thought was absolutely idiotic, but I wasn’t calling the shots. I was only reacting to them.

They’d used a small conference room on the second floor next to a vegan coffee shop and climbing wall that stretched up from

the first floor, the room itself having windows that anyone could see through inside. It didn’t do much to camouflage the

fact that someone was meeting, but it did allow Thakkar’s robust security to be able to see out, giving them the ability to

react if something went wrong.

Not that it would have mattered at that point, as the attackers would have been able to kill everyone through the glass outside

of the room and there was nowhere to seek cover inside. Wouldn’t have been my choice, but luckily for the stupid billionaire,

I had the outside covered with Knuckles and Veep.

Jennifer and I had dressed like we were just coming from the gym downstairs and had purchased a couple of horrible vegan smoothies,

sitting at a table in the lobby and in constant contact with Knuckles and Veep outside.

Across from us, at another table, were two Sikh bodyguards, both looking extremely competent, complete with full beards and

turbans on their heads. One had a scar on his cheek that traced through his beard and the other had a milky eye, as if he’d

taken some shrapnel or other damage in the past. They glowered at us like something out of a Gunga Din movie. I’d ignored

them, sipping my vegan smoothie like I was here just for the rancid amenities.

They most certainly looked like they knew what they were doing, but they couldn’t have been that switched on if they’d agreed to this junior varsity setup.

In the end, it didn’t matter, because the meeting came and went without any drama whatsoever. We’d called it a wrap and now

we were conducting a final debrief with Bostwick before we flew home. Only his idea of what was coming from the debrief was

a little different than mine. I still had to tell him about Jennifer’s little adventure.

Bostwick said, “The meeting location wasn’t my call. I’d have had it inside my room if Thakkar had agreed to it, but he demanded

a neutral site. Seems he was a little scared after that attack the other night. He’s paranoid. He thought either RAW or the

CIA had something to do with it.”

I looked at Jennifer and said, “Yeah, about that attack. We need to analyze it.”

He put down his coffee and said, “Why? You guys stopped it, and we got what we wanted. They didn’t kill a bunch of civilians

and we got Thakkar to agree to bankroll the rare earth mine. It’s a win-win.”

I said, “Well, we’re not sure it’s over.”

“What’s that mean? The RAW went to the hotel the attackers had been staying at this morning. They found nothing. Nothing from

the hotel, nothing from the room, and nothing about any bigger plot. They were a few LeT guys that wanted to kill some people,

and that’s it.”

I looked at my team, getting some nods. Originally, I’d hated the tasking as some contract flunky doing nothing but guarding

a CIA meet, but I believed that Jennifer had turned up something interesting, and it was right up the Taskforce alley. I’d

wanted to flee this country on the first thing smoking after the meeting, but now I had a sense that our true skills could

be used. I only had to convince Kerry.

I said, “We don’t think it was a random attack. We think they were after the meeting. Yeah, we stopped it, but they weren’t here on an attack for Islam. They were here on a targeted attack for something else.”

As much as he wanted to be cheering about his success in his latest covert action construct, he was a good enough man to take

a pause. Instead of telling me to pack sand and go home, he said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, sir... we went to that hotel room last night. There’s a reason they didn’t find anything.”

I saw his mouth drop open. He was incredulous. He said, “You did what?”

I held up my hands and said, “Wait, sir, it’s not what you think. We were contacted by a member of the RAW while we were in

holding. They asked us to do it. They don’t trust their own men.”

He leaned back in his chair, his hands in his scalp, then came back to me, saying, “You broke into the terrorists’ room last night? Without authorization? What. The. Fuck. How did you know where it was? How did you even

have the intel to do it?”

He appeared more concerned about the mission than what we’d found, which aggravated me a little bit. I said, “Like I told

you, we had some help from RAW.”

He leaned forward, slapped the table, and said, “Pike, you had no Omega authority for offensive actions.”

I’d already debriefed my team the night before and was now supremely happy that Brett had had the presence of mind not to break the trigger on his weapon, which would have made things exponentially worse. A dead body would have led to the police being involved. As it was, there was just a fight at a hotel known to cater to dubious Russian tourists, and I knew the other side wasn’t going to the police. This was the difference between a true Operator and a gunslinger who just wanted to use the label. Ninety percent of the U.S. intelligence community would have smoked those guys to get Jennifer out of danger, but my team had not.

I came back at him, saying, “Bullshit. You told me I had Omega to protect the meeting, and that’s what I did: proactively

protect the meeting.”

I told him everything that had transpired, only leaving out the name of our RAW contact.

Incredulous, he said, “So this RAW contact doesn’t trust his own people, and he asked you to penetrate the hotel, taking an inventory so he could compare it to what the RAW found?”

I obviously didn’t tell him my contact was Nadia. I said, “Yes, sir, and we don’t have any proof that there is something rotten

in RAW, because the place was scrubbed while Jennifer was there. Someone came in to clean their tracks, and they weren’t a

bunch of Muslims from Pakistan. They were Asian.”

“Asian? Indians are Asian. What’s that mean?”

I wasn’t sure how to spell it out in a professional manner without using racial slurs. I said, “They were not Indian Asians.

They were... Asians.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Brett leaned over the table and barked out, “Come on, man, do we have to spell it out? They weren’t Indians. They were Chinese,

Japanese, Vietnamese, or some other - ese. ”

Bostwick turned to him and said, “How do you know?”

Jennifer said, “Because I saw them. And if you ask me, the men who chased me were Chinese.”

“Why?”

“Because they looked Chinese. They didn’t look like they were from Southeast Asia. They weren’t Cambodian or Thai. They were tall, bigger than someone Vietnamese, and they spoke what sounded like Chinese.”

Bostwick said, “You speak Chinese?”

Insulted, Jennifer said, “Well, Kerry, I also don’t speak French or German, but when I hear it, I know the difference.”

He held up his hands and said, “Okay, okay, so what are you saying here? China directed a terrorist attack on Indian soil?

Come on, that’s a little bit much. They do a lot of gray zone stuff, but it never rises to the level of bullets flying. Maybe

you’re misreading who came in the room. Maybe you had the wrong room.”

I said, “We didn’t have the wrong room. We had the key of the guy who was killed on the lawn. We went to that room, and while we were in it, a bunch of Asians came in and cleaned it out, speaking Chinese.”

Bostwick took a breath and said, “The RAW thinks it’s an Islamic terrorist attack, and they own this country. The head of the organization told me that to my face. Don’t build this up into some conspiracy. You did your

job and they did theirs. The meeting was a success, and our covert action is in motion. It will take much more than a terrorist

attack to stop it now.”

“The head of RAW may think that, but the rank and file don’t. I’m telling you there’s something more here. Those guys were

on the hunt for a body, and we know it wasn’t you, because nobody knew you were coming. It might be the head of RAW, because

my contact thinks they might be compromised from the inside, and that’s something we should look at. They take him out, and

it’ll throw this whole covert action into the trash bin, since he’s making it so close hold. He’s a single point of failure.”

My bringing up the long-term success of his plan gave him pause. He said, “So how do we figure out if it’s an insider threat?

Do you have anything to prove that?”

“No. Not from what we found, but we did find an address for further exploration, and I need your approval to go check it out.”

“Where?”

“It’s an address in Old Delhi. I have no idea what’s there, or why it was in the room, but I want to check it out.”

“What’s your RAW contact think? What’s he saying about a Chinese connection?”

“I have no idea. I’m meeting the contact tonight. They have the information we gave, and I’m waiting on their analysis.”

He nodded, then said, “Okay, see what they say, but they’ll have already slammed that address by the time you talk. They have

no love of the Chinese. If the RAW is involved, they’re probably dead by now.”

I said, “I don’t think so. My read is my contact wants this close hold and wants plausible deniability if they’re wrong. The

contact has no power in RAW, but really believes in the mission. They’re going to want me to check it out to protect themselves.”

He smiled and said, “That’s what I would expect. They want you to hang it out. If you’re right, then they’ll take credit.

If you’re wrong, then we’ll get the blame. But if you’re right, I need to know.”

“So I’m good to check out this address? I get the Rock Star bird for a five-day vacation with my team? Cover development after

the meeting? You’ll sell it that way to the Oversight Council?”

He exhaled, knowing he was putting his own ass on the line. He said, “Yeah, go for it. But watch your back. I don’t trust

the RAW any more than I trust the KGB. They have their own agenda.”