Page 38 of Into the Gray Zone (Pike Logan #19)

Mr.Chin sat at the Imperial Hotel bar, surrounded by dark oak walls and artifacts from the time of the British empire. He

was the only patron on a stool, the bar having just opened, the bartender serving him a bourbon old-fashioned.

Dressed in a red uniform with a Sikh dastaar, his beard shaped in a V sharp enough to carve beef, the bartender said, “Watch

it with those, because they’ll bite you if you aren’t careful.”

Mr.Chin took the drink and said, “I will, trust me, but I have no work today and you make the best ones I’ve ever had.”

The bartender nodded in thanks and Mr.Chin pointed at the television, saying, “Can you put that on the local news?”

The bartender picked up a remote and changed the channel from a cricket match to a local New Delhi channel, saying, “Do you

speak Hindi?”

“No, I just meant national India news, in English if you don’t mind.”

The bartender clicked through the channels, found one, and disappeared in the back. Mr.Chin saw a breaking news story and

waited with bated breath, not wanting to show his interest. It was a bus crash in another Indian state. He relaxed and waited

again. Any minute now his operation would make the news.

He sipped his drink, not really liking it at all, and then it came: a breaking news report from the Taj Mahal. He leaned forward, seeing a smiling reporter discussing Riva Thakkar’s unprecedented closing of the monument for twenty minutes. The clip was obviously recorded and not live, the video showing them walking around the grounds with the reporter giving a voice-over. The video showed armed security pushing back the regular tourists, then the group taking pictures in front of the facade before moving into the monument proper.

The reporter continued talking about the unprecedented nature of the event and spent his time discussing the juxtaposition

of Thakkar’s wealth allowing him to do such a thing with the average tourist’s “trip of a lifetime” stalled because of it,

focusing on the inherent inequality and castigating the government for allowing it to happen.

The story ended with the glaring excess of a helicopter landing on the Taj Mahal grounds, Thakkar’s party entering it, and

all flying away. Mr.Chin was dumbfounded. He looked at his watch and saw Thakkar had been gone for at least thirty minutes,

maybe even an hour.

He reached into his briefcase and removed a tablet, booting up his tracking software. He saw all four heartbeats at the Agra

Fort, right next to the Yamuna River. A perfect location for the drone attack that had not occurred.

His first thought was, Why are all four there ? Kamal had shown himself to be smart, so why put the entire team inside the fort, past security? What did that give them

when only one man could control the drone?

His next thought was, Why hasn’t the attack occurred?

He removed the contact phone from his backpack and dialed Kamal, tapping his fingers on the bar, waiting on an answer. None

came, the phone going to an automated voice mail system.

Growing a little alarmed, he looked at the tablet again, seeing the four rectangles on the satellite image of the fort, all stationary.

What are they doing?

He pulled up the history of their movements and saw that the triangles had been within five feet of each other for at least

twenty-four hours. That made no sense. He checked the health tab for each watch and feared he’d see the same numbers, but

they were all different, with different step counts, different heartbeats per minute, and different stress levels.

The watches were working, because it would have been inordinately hard to fabricate that data, but the locations couldn’t

be accurate. Especially with the step counts being different. How had they all been together for the last twenty-four hours,

and yet some had walked twice as far as the others? He began to worry, and then his other phone rang. The one from the Condor

team.

He answered and heard, “Go secure.”

He pulled the phone away from his face and pressed a sequence of buttons, initiating an encrypted handshake with the far handset.

After the handsets synched, he could talk without anyone listening, the conversation encrypted end-to-end. If either he or

the Condor team were being tracked, someone could still get the location data, cell tower history, and everything else with

a call, but they would hear nothing of what was said.

It was a double-edged sword: while it protected the conversation, it also alerted any state agency that was doing routine

monitoring of him because of his Chinese affiliation that he was something beyond what his cover said. What businessman has

a phone that encrypts? Only drug dealers, organized crime, or state intelligence.

Something he couldn’t help, and he desperately needed answers.

He waited, saw the lights in the display change, and put it to his ear, saying, “Secure. What is your status? Did the Americans stay in Delhi?”

“No. They went to the Agra Fort, just like you suspected they would. When they did, following your instructions, we committed.

You didn’t tell us they were armed.”

That didn’t sound good.

“I told you I thought they were an arm of United States intelligence. That should have been enough. What happened?”

“I took that to mean they were like you, living here under cover but without any particular skill at fighting. They aren’t

just intelligence people like yourself. They’re a Condor team in their own right.”

Mr.Chin listened to the after-action report and realized he had touched a tiger, something his masters in the Ministry of

State Security would have to understand now. Although he was sure he would get the blame.

The man finished his report, ending with, “We had to break it off, as there was no way to eliminate the threat and still escape.

We were at a stalemate, and we needed to exfiltrate.”

Mr.Chin said, “What’s the status of the men left behind?”

“They’re dead.”

Mr.Chin spit out, “I know that. That’s not what I’m asking. What will the police find? Are they clean?”

“Absolutely clean. The weapons are untraceable, and they have no identification on them. They have never conducted any operations

here, so there’s no way to match up fingerprints or DNA, and we have the vehicle, so they can’t trace that.”

“What damage did you do to the Americans?”

“Vehicle severely damaged, one member hit, but unable to discern how bad. Most definitely out of action.”

“In your estimation, can they continue?”

He waited, the man considering his question, then heard, “They can continue if they don’t care about the one who’s down. If

they want to evacuate him with whatever infrastructure they have, it will require them to focus on that mission.”

“So that team is now committed?”

He heard nothing for a moment, the man reconsidering. He came back and said, “No, not fully. There was one man who was a devil,

and if he wants to continue on his own, he’ll do so, and he’ll be effective. The most I can say is they’ve been slowed, but

not stopped.”