Rising Tiger: A Thriller (45)

Willing to expend one of her precious rounds, she took aim, pressed her trigger, and blew the mirror clean off.

But instead of moving the way she had originally intended, she reversed and pushed forward, taking the fight to them, rather than waiting for them to bring it to her.

A person standing near the door of a kitchen shop tried to peer out, and Asha waved for him to get back inside. The presence of civilians only made the situation more dangerous. She didn’t want any civilians being harmed. Her remaining two attackers, however, were a different story.

Pressing forward, she continued to stay low and searched for any advantage she could find—a side-view mirror such as the bad guys had used, a reflective car windshield, a storefront window, anything. There was nothing.

Worse than nothing, the gunfire had been so loud that her ears were ringing. Someone could have come up right behind her and she wouldn’t have heard them.

Pausing her advance, she stuck her gun under her left armpit and spun her head to look over her shoulder. Fuck.

Without even taking time to aim, she began firing.

The truck driver had come up from behind and was about to take her out. Instead, she stitched a racing stripe of 9mm rounds from his balls up to his bulbous, pockmarked nose, dropping him dead onto the pavement. That left only one more. The motorcyclist.

“Where the hell are you?” she whispered under her breath.

Then she saw something. A flash, in a puddle, just beyond the bumper of the car she was hiding behind.

Dropping to the pavement, she tilted her Glock to the side, aimed it underneath the vehicle, and held her breath.

For a moment, it felt like everything had stopped. There was no breeze, no traffic, no people, nothing. Until a boot came into view.

When the second appeared, she exhaled and pressed her trigger—shattering the motorcyclist’s left ankle. She fired two more times, hitting him in the opposite ankle and shin.

Unable to bear any weight, the assailant fell over into the street. As he did, Asha continued to fire.

She shot him again and again. In the chest, the clavicle, the throat, and once through the side of his helmet.

Standing up, she crept out from behind the safety of the parked car and looked down on her attacker, lying in a pool of blood in the street. As she did, the man tried to raise his weapon and fire back.

Asha then shot him through his visor. Twice. They were the last two rounds in her Glock.





CHAPTER 28


“I have no idea who they were,” Asha replied, shaken from the attack and feeling wiped out from the adrenaline dump. She handed her phone to Raj. “Maybe you can find something. I took pictures of the bodies.”

She had snuck into the Blind Relief Association via the Delhi Golf Club, coming through the trees, making very sure she hadn’t been followed.

Gupta handed her a bag of ice to apply to her chest, while Raj swiped through the photos.

“I don’t recognize any of these men,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean somebody else won’t. I’ll get these uploaded and we’ll see what we can find. In the meantime, the fact that they tried to subdue you first tells me that someone thinks you’ve got valuable information.”

“Someone,” Gupta added, “whom Asha wouldn’t speak with unless she was forced to.”

Raj nodded, still studying the photos.

“And the fact that they then tried to kill me?”

“They see you,” said Raj, “and very likely us, along with what we’re doing here, as a threat.”

“You don’t think this could be blowback from a past assignment?”

“No,” said the man. “The timing would be too coincidental. And I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Ever the pragmatist, Gupta was already thinking ahead. “The first thing we need to do,” he said, “is to scrub you from the scene. CCTV, shell casings, all of it. We also need to muddy up any witness accounts that might help identify Asha.”

“But Delhi police must already be crawling all over the place,” she stated.

“Don’t worry about that,” Raj instructed. “I’ll make a couple of calls. In the meantime, we need to face the unfortunate reality that whatever we are up against, they have a much bigger reach than we had anticipated.”

“Which means we need to be even more careful.”

“Exactly. Unfortunately, any hopes I had of expanding our operational footprint, of bringing more people on board, are now dead and buried. This is going to have to be it,” he said, pointing at them all. “The three of us.”

“How?” Asha demanded. “This is a massive undertaking, not to mention that I was almost killed an hour ago.”

“But you weren’t killed,” Gupta clarified. “You’re very much still alive—a testament to your skill and training.”

“My skill and training aside, we can’t do this with just three people. It’s impossible. We don’t even completely know who and what we’re up against.”

“When a camel is at the foot of a mountain, only then judge its height.”

“You’re quoting Indian proverbs now? Seriously?”

“Trust me. Everything is going to be all right. We can do this and, Asha, we must do this.”

It was the first time her boss had ever addressed her by her first name. It was jarring, but strangely reassuring at the same time.