Page 51 of Into the Gray Zone (Pike Logan #19)

I entered our villa, threw my suitcase on the bed, and turned to the man who’d let us in, saying, “We’ve got it from here.”

He looked nervous, which, given what had just occurred at this hotel, was understandable. He said, “Sir, I need to scan your

passports.”

I thought about telling him to pack sand, but Jennifer handed them over, saying, “Sorry. Here you go.”

He scanned them, then said, “Would you like me to show you the amenities of the room?”

I said, “No. That’s not necessary.”

He understood that we weren’t here for the amenities and left without another word. I turned to Jennifer and said, “This is

not going to end well.”

I could tell that Knuckles wasn’t going to be on an even keel the minute I’d met him in the lobby. He was too close to this

one. We’d separated when a guy in a golf cart came to take us to our room, and I told him we’d talk soon. The golf cart guy,

wearing a historically British uniform from something out of Disneyland, took us to our villa on the grounds, about a hundred

meters from the one where Knuckles was staying.

The trip was surreal, because the hotel space was completely locked down due to the attack, forcing us to spend the better part of the night just trying to get inside, but once in, everyone was acting like it was business as usual. As if more than a dozen people weren’t slaughtered last night.

Jennifer said, “Kerry Bostwick is here. The Oversight Council is meeting in three hours, and they have that guy that Knuckles

captured. Maybe it’ll be easy.”

I shook my head and said, “Nope. Knuckles is going on the warpath. And we’re going to have to back him up.”

She said, “Back him up how? We don’t have authority to operate here. We’ve already—”

“We don’t have authority yet .”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means we have to convince the Oversight Council to continue. We’re going to find those hostages. I just need to convince

the Oversight Council that it’s in their interest to do so.”

I opened the French doors to our little garden, saw a peacock walking around, and realized again how weird this whole thing

was. I watched the bird pecking at the ground and said, “You ready for that?”

She said, “Pike, we have no standing here. We’ve already pushed the limits on this one. Veep’s got the bullet wounds to prove

it. We should let the country team solve this.”

I closed the doors and turned to her. I knew I was in the right, and so did she. I just needed to remind her. I said, “Is

that what you were thinking when the Chinese assassins were chasing you in Goa? Did our ‘standing’ help you then? You wanted

to do what was necessary at that point.”

Her face became truculent, looking like she did when she found me about to launch our house cat with my foot, but this time

it was much more serious. What she said surprised me.

“ You’re going on the warpath here. Not Knuckles. Because you want to. You want to let the beast out, and you’re using this as an excuse to run amok.”

I heard what she said, and I knew she wasn’t wrong. I’d been fighting the release of the demon since the assault in Goa. I

thought I’d won with the action in Agra, where I’d been the steady hand like always, but the assault at this hotel had breached

something in me. She knew it and I knew it. I wanted to break something apart. Or someone.

While talking to Knuckles from our aircraft on the way to Jaipur, I’d felt the scab tear. His earlier confidence about the

security of the party had disappeared, and he’d told me what had happened. The price had been enormous, and I felt impotent

riding in the aircraft. I was so angry I had difficulty communicating to him on the phone. Jennifer had seen it, and now she

was worried, but the bottom line was I had screwed up, letting the Chinese guys intervene in Agra. They’d thwarted our ability

to capture the terrorist with the drone, and that loss of intelligence had cost a plethora of lives. I should have seen them

coming, but I hadn’t, and because of my failure, a lot of people were dead. It was my fault, and now I wanted some payback.

She came to me, taking my face in her hands. She said, “I see what’s happening. I don’t understand it, but I see it. You want

to let the beast out. I don’t know why now, after all we’ve been through, but we can’t go back to what you were. It tore you

apart. Let the Indian government handle this. Don’t go there.”

I took her hands in mine and said, “Telling me not to go there is like screaming at a volcano to keep the lava inside. It

does no good.”

She stared into my eyes and said, “So the volcano is already erupting?”

I glanced away, not saying anything. She said, “Am I wrong?”

I wanted to tell her to stop the psychobabble bullshit, but she was right.

I said, “You’re not wrong about me, but you’re wrong about the solution. India doesn’t care about the hostages. The government only cares about what they’ll look like when it’s all over.”

She said, “This isn’t our fight.”

I said, “It is now. You saw Knuckles.”

She backed off and said, “Yeah, I saw him. He’s just like you, wanting to kill to alleviate the pain.”

Knuckles was still processing what had happened last night, going over and over what he could have done differently, not the

least because he’d failed to stop the assault. He felt like it was his fault, which was exactly how I felt.

I said, “So that makes a difference? Because he has a connection to Nadia it means we can’t continue? But you’d rescue Nadia

if she was some random stranger?”

She looked like I’d slapped her, saying, “What? What does that mean? Of course I want to rescue her, but we don’t have the assets for that here. And I worry about you. When this is over, we still have

to live. If we’re alive at the end of it.”

I smiled and said, “One step at a time. Let’s go see what Kerry has found. Maybe it’s already over.”

I went to the door and she stopped me, saying, “It’s never going to be over until you believe it’s over. There will always

be another.”

“Maybe that’s true, but right now, I have Nadia, and I’m not going to let that go. The next one can wait.”

We walked out of the room and across the grounds to the next section of villas, where Knuckles was staying. We knocked and

he opened the door, looking haggard.

He said, “Come on in. Kerry will be here in a minute. He’s bringing over his kit for the off-site with the Oversight Council.”

We entered, finding the villa a carbon copy of our own. The bed was unmade, and Nadia’s clothes were still over a chair. I said, “Hey, how are you doing?”

“As well as can be expected.”

I waited, but he said nothing else. I said, “You know this isn’t your fault.”

“Fault’s got nothing to do with it. Nadia’s been taken by those Islamic assholes and she’s probably getting violated right

now. We saw what Hamas did.”

He balled up his fists in frustration, his imagination running wild. Like me, he wanted to punch something, but there was

nothing to hit.

I went to him and put my hands on his shoulders, saying, “Don’t do this. It won’t help. Nadia’s okay, and so is Thakkar’s

daughter. We just need to find them.”

He knocked my hands away and said, “Those motherfuckers have her right now! They have her at their will.”

He saw himself in a mirror on the wall, hated the reflection, and drove his fist into it, the shattered glass falling to the

floor.

He looked at his hand, seeing the blood start to run free, and Jennifer went to him with a towel, wrapping it and saying,

“Knuckles, this isn’t helping. Let’s work the problem.”

He looked at me and said, “You know how these guys are. They aren’t going to negotiate.”

I said, “What makes you so sure they’re Islamic? I don’t think they are.”

Now interested, the question tamping down the pain he was feeling, he said, “You don’t think they’re crazy Muslims?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I know for a fact that China was paying them. They might be Muslim, or they might be something

else, but either way, China’s behind it. I think they lost control of the plot they’d planned, but that’s where we need to

focus. We find their handler, and we find them.”